#thank you mental hospital /sarc

[yellowyarn]

i have this fear that a nurse is going to come into my room with a flash light and shine it in my face while i sleep. i am afraid that if i close my door i will be yelled at. i am afraid that i will hear a knock from a nurse on the other side of the bathroom door when I shower. sometimes i think i hear somone (a nurse) knocking, footsteps, the click of a flashlight, or somone unlocking my door and i freeze with fear waiting for them to appear and that ill be back there.

[the-indecorous-flower]

A few years ago I tried to transition.

I didn’t get very far with that at all, in all honesty I got so far as getting referrals for the endocrinologist but never set one foot inside her office. Lots of things kept holding me back, money for one, also I could never get a hold of her at the right time and just never really got there.

Also I noticed that getting on the road to transition for myself was as easy as just hopping into a doctors office and saying “I wanna do this, where can I go?” and boom, I was given a way there. Now I know the endo probably would have had me do a lot more because a few of my friends went to her and they had a lot to do before they could transition, but it really was far too easy in the first place. To put things into perspective, it was harder for me to get on the path to get mental health and trauma assistance than it was to begin to transition.

But you know, that’s not an issue, for some people it could be what they need and I’m not here to stand in judgement over another persons decisions, only my own.

So to get things kicked off in this story, I will first state I am a woman (Female, XY. Just to make it extra clear). And at one point I did have dysphoria.

My experience with dysphoria first began when I was younger, a teenager. I experienced same-sex attraction for the first time and I was a part of a horribly oppressive and homophobic religion, which I at the time believed in because no other evidence had been presented to me and I was afraid to leave it. (That’s another story)

To experience same-sex attraction in that religion, no matter if you are a lesbian, bisexual, or homosexual, is a major sin. If you experience it you are expected not to act on it, talk about it, and to basically if you can, force yourself to be heterosexual. Otherwise it’s just a lonely life for you.

So here I was, in that religion and having those exact feelings or thoughts that are considered so sinful. So what am I to feel?

Of course I felt disgusted with myself for feeling those things but also that planted the seed of “wouldn’t it be just easy and great if I found out that I was actually a man” and that seed grew and grew, but not on it’s own. At a young age I was also molested and that also planted a seed in my mind, that these things wouldn’t have happened to me if I wasn’t a girl, if I was stronger somehow.

So that set me off on a long journey of dissatisfaction with my sex (meaning biological gender, just to make it extra clear). It only grew and grew as life went on and eventually culminated in me taking on the gender identity of a man.

If I am Flower, then my male name would be Thorn. Obviously neither of those are my real name, but to begin with I picked a name similar to my own real name, so we will refer to who I became when I started to present as the opposite gender as; Thorn.

It began with me cutting all my hair off, I let it grow out a little and then went to a hair dresser and insisted on getting it cut in a male style, (I had to explicitly state that I didn’t want a feminine version of that style, I wanted the version as is. Male. Which is another story for me to rant about later because that whole interaction was stupid as fuck.)I also stopped wearing any clothing I perceived as feminine, and purchased a bunch of mens clothes for myself and for the most part I wore exclusively those things, excepting for the times where I had to go be with family who didn’t know yet. I also insisted that people who knew called me by my new name; Thorn. But that’s not the end of it.One thing I feel guilty for is I rejected behaviours I considered feminine and started emulating male behaviours, and by that I mean things like casually sexualising my female friends and just in general being a bit of an asshole.Sure you could say that “oh not everyone does that” and sure, that might be true. But this is my experience with masculinity and I subconsciously emulated every part of it I hated, and I liked it at the time. It made me feel stronger. When I presented as a woman I felt weak and exposed. I hated being flower, I hated having to be delicate and keep up with those expectations. I hated being afraid of someone seeing me as flower and taking advantage of it like I had been before.In short, I hated myself. Of course this kind of self destructive behaviour can’t last without causing some major damages or bringing some problems to the fore, and with trying to decide on whether or not I wanted to take the leap and begin HRT and reassignment there was a lot of self reflection on whether or not I would be happy once I rid myself of all my estrogen and became a man.I know now that I wouldn’t have ever been happy, and chances are things would be worse off for me because by taking HRT I would be ignoring other much more pressing and troubling issues thinking I had everything solved. Everything came to, lets say, a messy conclusion when a good deal of time ago I had a major episode, a break down. It wasn’t enough to send me to the hospital luckily, but I was on the verge of voluntarily admitting myself, that’s how bad it was.So I got myself on antidepressant medication and began to see my local mental healthcare providers, and they got me onto someone who would help me deal with all my traumas. Don’t get me wrong, fixing all that is not as easy as snapping my fingers and “woo it’s all gone”. Yes, I did finish my first round of therapy, but no, I’m not “all better” it is an ongoing personal project to recover from those traumas, but I’m going off on a tangent here. Along the course of my doing therapy we dealt with a lot of things, and the therapist did know my issues with my gender identity, and she said we would get around to that eventually if necessary but right now we focus on the trauma.And so we did.And slowly the feelings of weakness associated with my body, and the idea that I could never be comfortable presenting as I truly was went away. And we never even touched the subject of gender identity once. We only dealt with the traumas and damage I’d been holding over the years.If I am Flower, then thorn was just me stripped of my petals, and no, I don’t mean ugly. I mean all that was left were just sharp and hurtful points, and that I had torn off parts of myself to fit into the image that was “thorn”.By petals, I also don’t mean things like makeup, dresses, hair, I don’t mean things that you would consider as “gender presentation”, I just mean the things that make me, me, to me those things are beautiful and without them I am not myself. Through therapy (and combined with medication) I was able to bloom again, it was really subtle but there just came a day when I realized that I felt stronger and empowered to just be who I am, body and all. Sexuality and all. (Although the jurys still out on my sexuality but I’ll let you guys know as soon as I know.)Overall, I am not sad that I was once ill at ease with my own body and gender. It was a side effect of an underlying issue I had and everything I experienced, I had to experience to be the person I am today. I am disappointed with my behaviour when I perceived myself as male. But that is in the past and thankfully I did not do or say anything so bad that I caused a rift between myself and my friends. And another thing I’m thankful for is that my friends have been very understanding of my experience and never tried to push me one way or another.Ultimately, the reason why I am sharing this experience is to say, really nobody can say what to do but you. I really want people to think critically before they jump in and make major irreversible changes to their body, there’s a lot more going on with dysphoria than meets the eye and sometimes the solution isn’t the glaringly obvious one.Obviously it is not up to me what anyone decides, and I don’t have any personal stakes in anyone elses decision. My only goal with this is to give people food for thought and to perhaps help a few other people who are going through similar things to I was.Feel free to send me asks if you need more info about ways of getting help for CSA trauma, I’m not an encyclopedia but I know a few things you can look up on it.If you live in Australia and are in urgent need of assistance due to sexual assault get in touch with SARC (Sexual assault resource center) they provide free help for those who have gone through sexual assault, doesn’t matter whether it was yesterday or 500 years ago.