And that's how I see it, darkness. I have spent my life feeling trapped in a shell, unable to break free. But I fear that once the shell breaks, there will be nothing underneath. A large part of my depression focuses on this lack of substance, truly a lack of an identity. My entire life I have never felt like there was a me, that I lacked the basic structure that makes me whole. Even worse, I felt wrong in my own skin, that the me on the outside did not match the me on the inside. Because of this, I have hated myself, I truly loathed me. I couldn't look at myself in the mirror for longer than ten seconds, I would feel a mixture of both shame and disgust.
I am getting better about this, because I had a realization in January. I should qualify this statement, however, by saying it was less of a realization and more of an admittance. My lack of an identity came from trying to co-opt a gender that wasn't mine. I was born male, and that is my sex, but that is not my gender. I spent my life trying to be male, and I kept failing. In January I came across the descriptor Genderfluid, where a persons gender flows between male and female, and everything in between, and that, I felt, described me perfectly. The stories I read, the testimonials I heard, matched my experience and I realized that I wasn't cis.
Because of this, I was also able to admit that I wasn't straight, either. I was able to finally explore this side of myself, and admit the truth. I like men. But of course this made things more complicated. The terms I use within my own mind is pansexual and androromantic, which means I can find any gender attractive, but I prefer men. To the world, I say I am gay. But that doesn't describe me well. When I am female, am I straight? When I am male, am I gay? When I am neutral, what the hell am I?
With time, and these questions racing around my brain, also came additional questions about my gender, and I began to doubt myself. What if I am not Genderfluid, but fully Transgender? And this question keeps coming... and coming.... and coming. It won't get out of my head. I can only see two options, and they are both terrifying. If I am truly a Genderfluid, I will feel this way, the doubts, the fear, the unknown, for the rest of my life. If I am truly Transgender, I am not sure if I can transition, and if I can, I am not sure if I would. In other words, can I ever be truly happy?
I know I can't answer these questions quickly, but it is torturous to have those thoughts constantly bouncing around in my head. I know I need to take each day one at a time, and I just need to remind myself that I am on the journey to answer these questions. Purhaps the next light I see will truly be the end of the tunnel. God bless
My dearest darling donut, I think your shell HAS already cracked and begun to fall apart. Only instead of nothing inside, there is this beautiful being that is beginning to stand up and blink in th' light of day. I think it's perfectly normal, after ages trapped in th' stuffy dark of who you thought you might be, to suddenly break out, stand up and wonder, "now, what th' hell does all this mean?"
ReplyDeleteMind, that's scary as hell, too, but it's a start...!!