A New Beginning

I've tried to do this a bunch of times. Never really got very far, beyond setting up a blog, and then feeling contemplative for a while, before eventually giving up.

I suffer from pretty bad insomnia; it waxes and wanes, and right now, it's waxing pretty good, so I have a chance to lay down with my laptop and think about writing things that will help me figure out my own head. After all, that's my goal with this.
Equally, I expect these entries to begin and end abruptly, I'm not attempting to directly tell a story to anyone, and even though it is directed towards the third person; that's mostly for ease of self-analysis and just plain how I write. Mostly, I believe the entries will be free-typed, as a stream of consciousness, and I don't intend to go back and prettify them after they're written.

I was inspired while reading a friend's blog, where she mentioned self-analysis, and archived everything that had come before so she could start over.

I guess this is my new start, my chance to get it all out there and analyze; to try to figure out what needs to change, and how I can change it.

I don't want this to turn into one of those self-piteous blogs. I already have one of those, and I badly need to fix things, instead of dwelling on them. That said, no doubt, one has to dwell before one can fix, and so, I won't apologize if I do dredge the very depths of my self-hatred and self-pity, in search of some specific answer. I'm not asking you to read this, after all.

There was a relatively famous person once, who said something. For one reason or other, I'd never really consciously seen/heard it. That was, until Mom & Dad decided to go off on a big adventure, and home-made a load of notification cards telling everyone of their plans. I received one like everyone else, and on the back, it said:

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. -- Mark Twain

In her case, it's a blatant reference to the fact that they plan to sail around the world; on reading those few words, it struck a chord, and I realized that I'd been in denial for far too long.

Denial is the wrong word. It was more like repression, entirely due to fear. I've known since as far back as I remember that my body is the wrong gender; what was holding me back, was some sort of societal instilled reaction to being different. Even that doesn't exactly sum it up correctly.

I came out to my Mom when I was 13. She asked me "So, do you want to change sex then?", and for some reason, I blurted out "No.", then immediately regretted it for the next 11 years. I think that I was afraid to let her down. I'm still afraid of letting her down somehow, but, only about the serious, life-ruining things like getting thrown in jail; which is incredibly unlikely to happen.
I'm a fucking nun. Except for the drugs. And the alcohol.

Those 11 years were some of the most fucked up years of my life. I admit, some very fucked up things took place before I was 13, and probably set me up for all of the mental issues I have, exacerbated by the disparity between (and I hate to put it like this) brain and body. I say I hate to put it like that, because, well, I feel that there's more to someone than just a bunch of electricity in a computer. If that's all we are, then we're just programs. I'm an athiest to a degree or other (and a pretty big feminist), however, I can't help but think that the word "soul" sums it up so much better. The brain is a part of the body, after all.
To put it in other terms, the body is very much an avatar for a personality; in the same way that the internet gives people avatars to attach to their personality, the body is merely a predefined one that we get issued. Being unable to choose our avatar, and placing that in the context of societal demands and expectations aimed directly at our avatar for being too fat, spotty, ginger-haired, asian, black, sexually deviant, etc., puts an undue strain on our soul and changes its personality.
Everyone displays varying degrees of mental illness, the broken, bruised and distorted aspects of our personalities showing through; some more than others of course.

It took me 24 years to become blasé about coming out to people. (Admittedly, the one group of people who I am uncool about knowing right now, is work. It's a choice thing: right now, I'm not prepared (mentally or otherwise) to go down that path of life-fucking.) It's matter of fact now; I'm past caring what their reaction is going to be, if my getting something I need from them hinges on them knowing, the conversation usually goes along the lines of:

"XYZ? Why do you need that?"
'Oh, I'm transgendered; so, can you do that for me?'

Without skipping a beat. Hell, I don't even go red anymore. It's part of who I am to the degree that if you're not cool with it, then I'll find someone else who is, because while everything else about me might change, how I might never have another suicidal thought again, might never self injure again, might never abuse pharmaceuticals again, I will always be this, and I need help to deal with this.

I sounded strong then, surprisingly. Why a surprise? Well... to talk to me, you'd quickly figure out that I hate being different. Besides all of the other stuff, the drugs and fucking myself up, the only thing that I truly hate about myself (everything else I hate about myself, except for some of the very early childhood fuckery, can be traced back directly to this), is being transgendered. That's not to say I'd rather be back how I was before I recognized it - a relatively unassuming male -; because that's so far from the truth you wouldn't believe.
No, if I could actually choose, then I'd choose female, 100%. Not semi-half-way-almost. Give me fucking bleeding from my cunt every month and the pain that goes with it, give me being trodden on by patriarchal society, give me pregnancy, give me a chance to actually be me, give me womanhood. Not a half-way approximation. In many ways (and I've heard a few other people, both transmen and transwomen say similar), I feel that if it turned out I had XX chromosomes, but physically male, I think I could probably accept it and cope better.

Genetic validation. Totally fucked up.