uncensored-transitions

[uncensored-transitions]

It was a rough year...

I had a mental breakdown last year, in 2020. I was being forced by a job (that I was already unhappy with) to go into a not-well-ventilated room, with a couple hundred other people... without a mask mandate... in the middle of a pandemic.

I was working from home for the month or so that Texas was in lockdown. And frankly, I was doing fantastically during that time.

You see, I am a Type-1 Diabetic. Therefore, I have an Auto-Immune disease. If I got COVID-19, there was a high likelihood that I would die, and a certainty that I would not survive an infection unscathed, because my immune system is _already_compromised, and this disease thrives in that environment.

But... it wasn't a problem... I was ready to die.

I feel like I always had been.

It was a regular joke that death wouldn't bother me (because I was severely depressed, though I would have denied it at the time).

And yet... Staring death in the face while I did not have to made me realize something... I was covering for something, and more importantly, I was scared. I had a breakdown, and I cried for hours, and hours, and I did not understand WHY I was scared...

But... I do now.

And that's what this is.

From here on, I'm going to get very in-depth, and personal about my personal life, and mental health (which I do not bring up to people), and it will be uncomfortable for me, and certainly for you...

So beware. The journey begins...

So, Let's Start at the Beginning...

From the time I was very young, there was something not quite right. I always had a streak as a kid of wanting something "different"... I had silly times where I would try to wear my mothers clothes (don't @ me), putting on her high-heels, dresses, a myriad of things. This was put to a stop fairly quickly in my life, people would think I was a weirdo, or worse, a faggot. So, I stopped, the curiosity was there, but I stayed away.

I moved on, when I was in Intermediate (Middle) School I loved art, and loved to draw. I had the opportunity to take an art class, so I did. It was great, and I had a talent. Until I was informed it was a useless talent that only girls liked to do, and when I grew up, I was told I could not make a "living" off of it. Yes, my art class was almost exclusively girls, and 12 year-old me knew I needed to earn a "living"... whatever that was.

These expectations were a lot to put on a kid, so I stopped trying to be good at art; I would doodle, sure. But, I excused it for being better able to focus during class when I could Doodle. Later I realized I just had undiagnosed ADHD.. but that's a story for another day.

So, every now and again, I doodle, but I stopped practicing art, and my skills are worse than shit now, I think.

But the misogyny stuck with me. I learned that * 1.) Doing things a woman does is bad. * 2.) Things women do are not as good as doing things that men do. * And 3.) If you do those things that women do, you will be an outcast, you will be shunned for liking these things.

Women are bad, Men are good.

Faggots are bad, "normals" are good.

You might think you know where this going, but I need you to follow me because I certainly didn't...

These might seem small and silly, but I bring them up because they are representative of the type of things fed to me when I was very young. There are other examples, I liked my hair long, and my mother would forcefully shave my head, because it made me look like a girl, but again, these are just examples.

All of this is to say there was a point at which I was desperate to go through puberty, and become a man, to prove I wasn't a fucking weird-o.

So, I went through puberty, surprise, surprise. And at a similar time, I for some reason also became very depressed. I mean, I feel like I had every right to be. I had parents that were divorcing, an alcoholic, and abusive father, and (though I did not know it at the time) a mentally ill mother who was abusing me mentally, again, story for another time. And, even better I had no recourse, and no experience to know what the hell was going on. On top of everything, I was doing terribly in school, again the undiagnosed ADHD, along with the depression I just kept getting worse and worse.

I thought about suicide often. I sometimes blamed my depression on the diabetes, I blamed myself, and my diabetes for my parents getting a divorce.

I mean, I didn't kill myself. Obviously, and thankfully.

But, I also mostly didn't talk about it to anyone about it, and therapists/psychologists were out of the question due to some... trauma(?) I had from a court-ordered one. Story for another time, etc, etc.

But, there was always something lingering at the back of my mind which was that I was upset anytime I looked in the mirror. I wasn't happy with how I looked. It was conceited, for sure, I told myself. I had spoken with many people, and they all told me that no one really liked themselves, or how they looked. Everyone wished they could change or improve on something about themselves. I mean, that's why plastic surgery is so popular. And besides, I didn't think I was unattractive, per se, and everyone would tell me I was a very handsome young man. I agreed. I still agree, I was actually conventionally handsome.

And yet... I wasn't happy with my own reflection, and it tended to get worse as I got older. I had an answer though: I wasn't manly enough.

It fits, right? Even though I had gone through puberty, I still didn't feel manly enough, so I paid more attention to what was happening around me, and the signals that men gave in my life, and in entertainment... Men have sex with women. So I did.

I won't be explicit, but let's just say at the ripe young age of 14 I lost my virginity. I may not have felt manly enough, but this was something that Men did, and it felt great! So boohoo, poor me, I had a lot of sex in and around High-School. I know, I know, but I started paying close attention to how men were supposed to be in relationships with women, and I used those things.

But the sex in relationships would become unsatisfying. It wasn't necessarily them, it was a feeling about myself that I was struggling with...

You could say I was compensating... And you would be right.

I even went, and bought a big, stupid, Manly man's truck of manliness; just to really drive it home. The compensatory behavior was enormous.

You see, Men where I grew up were racist, homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic, and in many cases, just straight up Nazis. Maybe they weren't always open about it, but it was very clear that they were different from us, and should be treated as such.

Therefore, I followed suit.

I believed Obama was a secret Muslim, I believed he fraudulently won the election, and more importantly he wasn't born in America. I believed that the gays were out to molest children, and letting them marry would lead to marriage with dogs. I believed that women and people of color were just naturally inferior to me, and to us. And while I am not proud of any of this, I was also basically a Nazi, I went so far as defending the actions of Hitler. I would have labelled myself "alt-right" if it were a term at the time.

I was depressed, and I was compensating because I was not feeling manly enough. I was an asshole to everyone I knew, friends or not, and to the women I was in relationships with. I treated them poorly, and in certain times my behavior verged on what I now recognize as abusive.

(Note, I am not excusing any of this behavior, merely giving context to the culture, and society I grew up in, and explaining why it happened. To anyone I was an asshole to, I'm genuinely sorry. You should not have been put in the cross-fire of the feelings, and struggles I was having. Not all journeys are unlearned so easy, and while I've come a long way from those feelings, and beliefs; I, and basically everyone has a long way to go.)

But all throughout, I had another issue lingering...

Near the end of High School I realized I was bisexual, or pansexual depending on how pedantic you would like to be. In a basic sense, I found that my attraction to someone had almost nothing to do with what was between their legs. It seemed obvious at that time that this was the logical way to be, and also probably the reason I was doing the "not-normal" things as a child! I actually was, in some way, "gay".

A whole new world opened up to me. I realized with this, I was already not "Manly ™️" by the standards set up for me, so... I could be a better person, suddenly I was more accepting of people... I had a ton of Bullshit to unlearn instead of embracing, sure, but I was on the path!

While this world opened up to me by being queer, and most of the people in my life went ahead and accepted me for who I was, I would still get tripped up every now and again.

And then... I was kicked out of my mothers house.

I don't actually know if it was related to me coming out, but who would know?

I've become more comfortable saying it now, but I was homeless. I was 17, and had never had to deal with something like this.

So... what do I do? I moved in with my then girlfriend. I was struggling. The depression hit hard but, while I think the relationship was probably fine, moving in with her and her father was... not ideal. In hind-sight, I obviously had a series of self-destructive behaviors with everything else I had going on, and with everything I will talk about soon, but I was a difficult person to put up with at the best of times.

I once again blamed myself for my misfortunes. It must have been my fault that I was now homeless, and I would not, no could not let that happen again.

Those who were abused, etc, etc...

I was manipulative because I did not want to end up back on the street somehow. I kept pushing the relationship further because I felt I had no other option. I even at a certain point implied I wanted to marry her... that's the thing I feel worst about. I was unhappy with the relationship, so I was scared it would crumble, and then I wouldn't even have a roof over my head anymore, and I acted worse, and worse towards her because of the anxiety of not wanting the relationship to crumble, and the depression that comes along with everything else, that was really exacerbated by the unhappiness of the relationship...

Again, a lot of terrible behavior that I was also convinced is how Men were supposed to act.

Now, with this girlfriend I went to a pride parade, and there I saw men in dresses. I know from movies and TV that I was to be disgusted with these people... those who I saw and called slurs not too long ago. And so I was. Absolutely disgusted.

I didn't know ANYTHING about the transgender community, obviously it was something that was not brought up in the terrible environment I grew up in, and even with my newly opened up world, I was scared of these people. They revealed to me that sneakily trying to wear women's clothes was not something that the "gays" did. It was something that freaks and perverts did.

I am ashamed of those feelings now as well... but again it was also all I knew at the time.

... But it stuck with me. I began by questioning why clothes, literal stitched cloth even had "gender". Then for a short time, I even questioned my own gender identity. I tried wearing clothes of the opposite gender, and I actually thought a lot of it was really nice, but I looked in the mirror... again, unhappy, and even worse, I saw a "man in a dress"... So I stopped right there, I knew there was nothing more to see down that road.

And so I slipped deeper into depression, and self-destructive behaviors.

And then... Me, and that girlfriend broke up.

Though... maybe that wasn't clear enough. I was sleeping on a couch. And eventually I met the man that would become my husband. I won't go too far into detail, but I moved in quickly.

I told him some fibs about myself, which is a stupid thing to do, but the relationship went really well, and still is going well, I'm happy to say.

And with that, I needed to be able to find a real job. which I did. I got a call-center job in an office that paid really well, from my poor-persons perspective.

I worked there for 6 years, and... It wasn't pleasant, but I felt I had to do this to survive. It was stable at least, and I was progressing quickly. Turns out it was mostly a dead-end job, but I would make the most of it.

🎶 Hello darkness my old friend 🎶

Depression didn't really accept this goal.

But I still didn't understand why I felt this depression. (Even if you may have already figured it out...)

I hunkered down and worked. I worked as hard as I could. I neglected thinking about anything. That new relationship was sometimes difficult because I was neglecting it. I neglected my health, I was eating especially poorly, I was stress, and depressed eating (on top of that, I had no impulse control due to the previously mentioned undiagnosed ADHD), and I didn't have the energy to exercise regularly, I became more and more unhappy with seeing myself as this happened, and health-wise, I was having sodium intake, cholesterol, and blood pressure issues during this time.

We are nearing the endgame now...

I no longer considered suicide. Most of my depression I was able to manage, was it there? sure, but everyone hated their job, and I was better able to manage it at this later age... But there was always that something else lingering...

But, I can't think about it right now. I've got a job to do, and I have bills to pay.

Then... 2020 showed up. I started 2020 in an interesting spot, I was unhappy with my career, and I finally came to the realization that the attention issues I was constantly feeling... were not the feelings everyone around me had. I was shocked, and surprised, but my employers health insurance wouldn't cover the testing required to see if I actually had ADHD, and thus get the medication I required to be productive in a conventional sense.

I know it is a weird tangent, but these factors together made me realize I needed a career change, so I finally started up, and got my shit together to study up, and switch careers...

Then COVID-19 hit.

And we are finally back where we started.

Again to recap, we exit lockdown in Texas, and the call center management decides we need to be together in a single location to... make, and receive phone calls instead of safely working from home as we were doing up to that point.

I had, as stated, a mental breakdown. I finally took in and accepted that I don't want to die. In fact, I was desperate not to die... but why didn't I want to die...?

I stopped what I was doing, I stopped everything, I sat down, and thought about everything I talked about here, and more.

What was the source of my depression? What was the source of this constant discomfort?

I realized I have been running, and hiding from something pretty fundamental to my being for 26 years, and I was tired.

I realized that like with the attention issues, not everyone felt the same way about their bodies, their face.

Not everyone stares, and cries, and yells at a mirror because they are unhappy they do not look... like... well, a different gender.

I admired femininity, and I was crushed by how much my face, and my body... was not that way.

I finally understood the meaning of a term I was hearing so much more lately...

Gender Dysphoria.

I did not want to be a man. I did not want the body I was given by puberty. I did not want the feeling of dread from looking in a mirror.

I've spent 26 years, pretending to be a man because that gave me acceptance, but in the course of that also pretending to be happy. And I'm done.

I wanted to be a woman.

I want to be a woman.

I am transgender. And god damnit, I am proud of myself for getting to this point.

I use She/They pronouns.

As a small P.S., I am sorry to the women, and people I treated terribly while fraudulently living as a man. I hope you can forgive the most toxic parts of me, and I hope this helps to explain the trouble I was experiencing.

With Love,