All you can ask of life

So, its been a while since I've posted anything, and with some luck I'll be in a mindset where I can post some more of what has been going on in my life of late.

The reason I haven't been able to post anything lately is that my despair and sadness with being the wrong gender of late has been so much that I haven't been able to do more than make it to work and hope that time will pass, and with the passing of time, perhaps the deep sorrow will lessen and there will be a time again where many of the things you did before would once again be enjoyable.  Now, I'm sure you are saying to yourself..."wait, doesn't this just sound like depression?"  In a sense yes, but overall I would say no.  I've experienced depression in my life, true clinical deression and have been on meds for it.  This is so much different, the sorrow, the pain, the ripping despair of it all...it is now quantifiable, unlike the depression where there is no deffinition to the emptiness.  Yes, depression is a part of the pain of gender identity dissorser, but it is merely a symptom and not a cause in anyway.  The depression a despair of gender identity dissorder stems from truely feeling you are the opposite gender than the body you are in is telling you that you are.

Breaking point...again

So it's been a while, I've been doing everything I can to simply keep myself distracted from my gender identity (or possibly simply lack there of) that I haven't been function in life hardly at all.  The only thing that is survivng is my job, and that probably only because I have a couple of friends there that understand and are supportive.  Anyway, the distractions are starting to not be effective, and I am totally about to snap, I can't take not being me for very much longer I don't think.  It also seems, though my doc is looking for more of a specialist for me at this point in time, that I wasn't born with both sets of organs, so I guess it simply means I'm mental.  Mental or not, I can't function like this, and I'm almost about to be seriously thinking about making do with what I have and simply making the transition reguardless of what is there or not, though there is nothing simple about it.

Woman last month, can't I just stay?

Up until the last couple of days I have felt so alive, vibrant, and far happier than I have been in some time.  What is the change you ask?  I had embraced myself as a woman, something I've wanted to do my entire life.  For the first time in years I have been truly happy, and for the first time in my conscious memory, almost outgoing and far less reserved.  I've absolutely loved every second of the "new" me.  The past couple of days my male side has been creeping its way uninvited back into my life, and it's so disorienting and painful that it's all I've been able to do to go to work for my scheduled shifts and actually have some level of functionality.  School hasn't been so lucky, I've missed classes and homework lately over this because I haven't been able to handle it.  I've always known the pain of never feeling right in my own skin, and in so many different ways that I could go on for some time about it.  After going for a couple of months fully embracing myself as a woman, however, I can more clearly see what for me might be an even greater pain than not feeling right in my own skin and mind.  The constant, almost unnoticeable change in thought processes between male and female can be, to say the very least, excruciatingly painful...not physically of course, but emotionally, and emotional scarring will more easily incapacitate a person than any physical ailment that could possibly infect a person.

The All Encompassing Reach

 For any skeptics reading this particular post, you may need to take a leaf out of the book of many a mystery novel readers and read the last bit first ;-)

You know that feeling after watching a movie or TV show where you've put yourself into the life of the person who's fictitious story you've just watched, and you feel like one of the characters who was portrayed within the story?  Well, this post could be partially in reaction to that feeling...I did just finish watching an episode of "Smallville" in season 3 called "Shattered" where Lex Luthor has been drugged and is trying to be made out as crazy and unbelievable.  With that thought it mind, I write this post, but I think it is accurate or I wouldn't be writing/posting it =)

For almost as long as I can remember, I've been looking for answers to my current issues.  In the beginning my issues were viewed by my therapists only as, for example, and addiction to pornography.  This is accurate enough at the time, but completely and totally incomplete to the whole reason to why the issue even existed.  When I was about 7 years old, I went looking online for answer to, little as I could imagine at that point in my life, were my gender issues.  Instead of finding some of the help that I can find at this point in time, not only from the expansion of the internet, but also with my increased intellect from my additional 16 years of life, I found pictures of naked women...

In any case, cutting the soap opera short, from about as far back as I can remember, I've been looking for answers to my questions concerning my gender, and who I really was.  If you can think of something that might could give me answers to these questions, I've probably tried it, or something closely related.  Here is where the crazy part comes into play, and my story could be come unbelievable.  Through various forms of meditation, yoga, spiritual awareness, etc, I have become quite in tune with the functioning of my body, even to the point where what I'm doing could be considered "voodoo."  I even refer to what I'm doing as voodoo most of the time, because if I didn't feel for myself what was going on, I wouldn't believe it for anything.  I'm quite hesitant to believe it at this point in in time, but all the changes I've felt with my body, well, let's just say that after a while with the number of coincidences continuing to add up, I'm starting to become a believer (though admittedly a large part of me is waiting for, shall we say, conversion, until after the results of my next CT scan in 3 days.)

Assuming that I am correct and that I shouldn't be locked away in a padded white walled room with a nice warm, tight new jacket to wear, and I am an intersex individual and am not suffering from gender identity disorder, I've had quite the change in the functionality of my mind the past 48 hours or so.  Again, I'm hard pressed to believe this, but I swear that I've felt the changes in my brain as I've focused and made the changes into a physical reality for myself.  I feel that I've been able to balance my body (through the meditation etc) so that it functions on female hormones alone, and not male hormones, or a split between the 2 as I have my entire life.  And feeling that immediate change in my body, actually feeling the male hormones drain out of my brain and later for a while some fatigue as my body got used to the change, is/was quite amazing.  At this point in time, if I'm reading my body correctly, there are no male hormones running through my system (though some testosterone is needed in the female body, at this point in time I've blocked it from entering my system) and my mind is far more clear that it has been in my entire life =D  it is an amazing feeling to have that slight cloud, that constant buzz inside your head go away.  It is a feeling that I sure hope is actually in reality and not some vain imagination of my mind.


The last bit ;-)

The final sane note to this post:

I know my theories seem crazy from the outside, but for a final sane point to this post, no matter if I am crazy or not, one glaringly huge fact remains true.  Those of us who deal with gender issues on a daily basis live in a world not of our choosing, where confusions such as these are seemingly our only constant and ever present companions.  Our conditions are as REAL as anyone who has cancer or who has lost an arm or a leg in a car accident, and like these conditions, it affects every aspect of our lives.

Every day, often countless times a day, we question man's very first, unseen assumption, the assumption of our outward gender, and there is no aspect of life left untouched by its all encompassing reach.



PS: I know, I didn't use the right formatting for the media that I mentioned, but it's late, I'm tired, and maybe I'll fix it at some point, but as for now, I don't care and we can pretend that maybe it is correct =D

Content with life and who you are

I'm in class right now, and it's a party day.  Looking around I see groups of happy people, eating junk food, listening to the background music, talking, laughing, and having a great time.  Through my entire life, or at least the parts I can remember, I've never been able to relax and enjoy myself like I'm watching everyone here now doing.  Trust me, I've tried to be myself and enjoy it, especially in group settings, but when your base belief of who you are has never felt right, it seems impossible to me.  That belief has the ability to control every aspect of your life, and nothing escapes its shrouding blanket of control.  If you aren't male or female (physically or otherwise), then what are you?  It becomes difficult to even take religious answers like "you are a beloved son (or daughter) of God."  And what place can you have in this world (or the next)?  You can't do hardly anything without claiming male or female, and having real proof to back that claim up, and lets face it, it has to be quite obvious or you get labled as some kind of pervert or freak (staying within the nicer labels anyway.)  Being comfortable with who I am is the base of my desires with sorting out my gender issues.  Every other aspect of life will then have the ability to eventually fall into place, and though it won't make life perfect, it will give a set of problems that can be faced in a way where fitting into life and society is completely doable.  Or at least far more so than before.

Craving girl time...what does that even mean?

Okay, this is a step up from wanting to join in with the girl talk at work (which I have to a degree the last little bit), and I don't even know what it means really, but last night I was desperately craving girl time.  It looks like one of the girls from work is probably going to be getting married soon, so that was the talk from last night that triggered these feelings.  While talking with them about it, everything from her family, to dresses, to parties, receptions...the excitement of it was nothing like I've ever felt before.  I've had people I've considered better friends than the girl from work get married, and it's nothing like the feelings/thoughts from then.  I don't even know how to explain it, just me feeling far more girlish is the only discernible difference, but it was definatly different, either that or I keep becoming more and more insane by the day.

Further study on "intersex" conditions

In the last month or a little more, my symptoms have quickly turned from the more traditional physiological conditions of "Gender Dysphoria" (or more commonly known as "Gender Identity Disorder" or "GID") to far more of a physical condition that seems to fit with a term I recently found called "intersex."  I don't know a lot at this point in time, but I was excited with the new information and wanted to share.  From one source (which I will share in a moment) it says that 1 in 2000 infants born in the US have an intersex condition, though many of those affected by it can go their whole lives and not notice a difference, while for others, let's just say for now they do notice a difference.

"It is common to believe that all people fall into one of two categories — female or male. But that is not true. Some people are born with external sex organs that are not easily identifiable as female or male. Other people have sex chromosomes that are different from the usual XX (female) or XY (male). People whose biological sex is not clear in these ways have intersex conditions. About 1 in 2,000 people born in the U.S. is intersex. There are many different ways that intersex conditions appear."

- http://www.plannedparenthood.org/health-topics/sexual-orientation-gender/female-male-intersex-26531.htm

This quote was taken from a site that should be fairly reliable (near as I've heard and had gotten help from them in the past for family members),  though I will continue my research and post some finds here as I come across them.

To kind of wrap up my thoughts on this subject at the moment, I just want to say that it seems my condition is not as rare as it seemed, and I'm not as alone as I thought I was, and it is a great comfort to me to have this new information =)

Only patience, no instant gratification...

It isn't possible to go into debt for the world's instant gratification desires when it comes to waiting for your body to make certain changes, and patience is something I've ever been good at.  Guess I get to try to learn some patience the hard way...and, shall we say, I'm not liking it much at all...

First thing when I'm finally me :)

First thing I want to do when I'm finally me, though it will take the longest of the firsts I want to do lol, is to start growing my hair down to at least my waist.  I LOVE long flowing hair and am totally jealous when I see women with hair like that.  Now, I'll probably get half way there or less and decide it is too much work, but I sure am going to try :D

It's the simple things in life

It's the simple things in life like having painted toenails that can make you smile :)

Girl talk again

Lately I've felt so much more comfortable with being more like the person I feel like inside.  I don't go around dressed like a woman (let's face it, at this point I don't look it, and it just doesn't work, at least for me) but I've let me come out and be who I feel like.  I'm not "out" by any means, but it is an amazingly freeing feeling to be who you are inside, and I love the personality I have as a woman, but when I look in the mirror and see a man staring back at me, I know my personality as a woman isn't socially acceptable.  I hate having to smother who I am to attempt to be accepted.

First time I ever truly thought...

Yesterday at work was the first time I ever truly thought this, and it scared me to death because it felt so natural, and because I don't yet know if living as a woman is even going to be possible.  The thought (giving it the proper tonal inflection) was this: "he is cute."  It wasn't forced, I wasn't thinking anything similar...it just came out of nowhere.  Needless to say, I was kind of freaking out for the rest of my shift lol.

Unexplained Feelings

I heard the song "You'll be in My Heart" by Phil Collins on the way to class today, and these lyrics really stuck out to me.

Why can't they understand
The way we feel?
They just don't trust
What they can't explain

It fits perfectly with how I feel, and how I'm sure a lot of us feel with similar feelings.

Preferences

So, growing up as a male, despite never feeling like I fit in with the guys totally, I still grew up as a man, and was therefore taught/expected to follow general male tendencies.  I also am still physically male, and mostly grew up with all the male desires, including to a degree the desire to love a woman, hold her close and be everything to her, and care for her with all that I had.  I've never been attracted to women the way that most men describe it, but I did fall madly in love with a woman at one point in my life, and I married her.  I would have done anything for that woman, and if she hadn't divorced me, I would never be able to think about my desires to live as a woman, as I've felt I should be my entire life.  Even though the jury is still out on whether I have the female organs and possibly have the option of truly living as a woman or not, I never would have been able to consider changing despite how I feel, because of how I felt about her.  As it is, she did leave, there is no hope of getting her back, I do still feel like a woman, I just might have the parts to live as a woman, and I am considering it, a lot.  Along those lines, lately I've really let my female side have me, and I've never been more comfortable in my life, and I've never desired the strong arms of a man to hold me and keep me safe, to surround me with his love, and for me to truly be able to return the feeling.  This feeling/desire feels so much more natural to me, at least as far as I've let myself think about it, not wanting too much heartache if it turns out I can't have it.

Beyond Heartbroken

This is a text that I just sent to a friend in responce to his statement and question:

I thought you wanted to fight to be a guy. Or was that because of church and family?

And this was my response:

Because of church and family. And the church is against a "sex change" but if I have the parts, it would be just getting rid of what I don't need (the male parts) and living like I should (as a woman), or at least that is what I'm hoping and praying for, and if I really do have the parts and the church says no to my being a woman, I don't know what I'll do, I'd be beyond heart broken to get rid of my female parts.  It would be like killing me and making me live on life support against my wishes.

Test results

So, my chiropractor tested me in his way, and I seem to have both male and female reproductive organs.  He is looking for a specialist for me to get an actual medical test done, some sort of ultrasound or something.  Having this information is quite the relief, and also quite the burden.  It's a relief because I know that there is actually something causing my feelings; but a burden because I have no one to confide in.  I'm utterly alone.  I've never fit in anywhere socially in my life because of my gender disphoria, so try as I might, I don't really have friends, just a couple of closer people that I know from college.  I could confide in them, perhaps, but they always have seemed too busy in the past when I've tried to do less.  Why then, should I try to confide in them with something like this, despite my utter need for a friend right now?  So this is me, pacing the halls waiting for my next class, deep in the despair of being alone and not fully knowing what to do.

Going crazy?

I sure wonder a lot if I'm just going crazy with the 2 sides going back and forth in my head all the time, or if I really am more a woman than a man in any way...and how in the world do you tell the difference?  And what path do you follow in either case?

Tears and Prayer

I sure don't feel like a guy, and I'm tired to trying to be one, and it's so emotionally painful that it's near impossible to describe, but it's against my religion to change and be who I feel I am with what this subject matter is, so what in the world am I supposed to do?  I just finnished, once again, pouring my heart out to God, once again on the verge of tears, asking the same question...

A little catch up

Here are a couple of thoughts that helped to inspire this blog before it was created :)

1/16/2012 8:30pm

I so just want to come out of the closet, so to speak, and be able to just talk girl talk with the gals at work. Its painful to try to be Asher and not Ashley, and it would be so, so easy to join in. It feels unnatural to not join in, to not just he "natural" and "who I am." And yes, I'm on the verge of tears right now...

1/17/12 1:20pm

(After watching Breaking Dawn part 1 for the first time btw...)

soooo confusing and conflicting...wanting to be a man and love a woman with all that you have and are, having her be the reason you for your existence; and being a woman, surrounded in those loving, gentle arms, he being everything you need, and you wanting to be everything to him, the center of his world, and with him as your eternal protector, to love and hold...