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Gratitude & Love
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Gratitude & Love This may be a difficult post for some to read and I apologize in advance. With Thanksgiving tomorrow and so many things swirling in my heart I just needed a safe place to write a little. Depression... PTSD... Food Addiction... Gender Identity Disorder... Schizoaffective Disorder... These are the names of issues which I have been given by professional psychiatrist and therapist. I have lived with these most all of my life. Some of these issues were brought on by mental, physical, and sexual abuse by an adoptive father and an ex-boyfriend. Some are probably genetically inherited from my mother and/or grandmother. Before I started transitioning on Nov 5th of last year, that's the day I started hormone therapy, I pretty much just had to deal with mood issues/depression. Once in awhile I would get triggered by the audible voices I hear but not very often. I would sometimes use food as a means to manage depression. During this last year as I have been in therapy I have come to realize the harm that I have caused myself by not getting help when I was younger. That locking away all the things that happened to me as a , , and young adult made the problems so much worse. That trauma became like a cancer and has been eating away at my soul for two decades. In light of how difficult it has been to overcome some of the most horrific events of my past I have made some huge progress this year. I am so proud of myself at what I've been able to accomplish in just one year. I can look into a mirror and smile and love who I am seeing. I have been able to love another human being. I have been able to allow another human being to love me. I have been able to openly share who I am and offer love and support to anyone who will accept it. I have been able to experience happiness in as myself. I have been able to forgive my adoptive father for much of which he did to me. I have been able to forgive my natural dad for giving up his parental rights and never wanting to see me again. I'd say that I've had a pretty fantastic year in that regard. I am so grateful to the many people who've been a part of this fantastic ride. I really could not have done it without them. This year has also been mired by some pretty difficult times too. I have had days where I have been seriously suicidial. I have on at least two occasions not only planned it but started the process. I have been hospitalized three times this year, once of those requiring a five day stay. I was also being treated by a doctor for ten months who has absolutely NO business treating transgender patients. So for ten months I was being prescribed medications which I shouldn't have been on or weren't enough to help. In mid-Oct. I had a massive mental break down while a friend that I cared for deeply and was in love with was visiting me from Chicago. Throughout this year I have had increasing issues with audible voices which are extremely cruel to me. These are voices just as if you were talking to your SO or family. If you want to experience what it's like put on some headphones, turn up the volume really loud, and listen to def metal for an hour without stopping. Now image this 18 hours a day every day. This break down would lead to a month and a half long cycle of increasingly harmful behavior towards myself and towards those whom I loved and cared for. Between the mental issues, the election, medication, and hormones I have been a train wreck. I have had a number of close friends give up on our friendship this last month. Two of them were so tired of my 'whining' actually told me that I should commit suicide to do myself and the world a favor. Several others, and one in particular whom I loved, just could not handle how sick I have been and my pushing them away (I have this very bad habit of pushing people out of my life who I care for out of fear that I'm going to get hurt. It's irrational I know but it's born out of abuse and hard as fuck to overcome). As I have begun to cycle out of this very serious depressive cycle, as the medications I take to control the voices really start to work, as the new hormone meds I'm on are improving things, as the new depression meds I'm on are finally kicking in, the realization of how bad things have been, how deeply I've hurt people, how deeply I hurt myself is really starting to settle in. I don't think any of my lost friendships can be saved. Even if they I can't I do believe that after the pain wears off there are still footprints of love we leave on each others lives that will always remain. If we can see where we made mistakes and work hard to improve them, those that we've hurt, including ourselves, can look back with fondness and pride of having been in each others lives. I have been writing out a Thanksgiving Thankful doc in word and listing out all the things that I am thankful for and why. I've never done anything like this before but it's really neat to see the amount of things that I have to be thankful for right now, even in the wake of some incredibly difficult times. There is even as I try and be thankful and even as I'm moving out of this horrific cycle one thing I am and probably will struggle with for awhile: being so close to having the life that I have so desperately dreamed of. Having real love in my life. The realization of what could have been if I had just tried to address the trauma of having been violated, nearly killed, the domestic violence sooner. This is one of the things that really sucks about having issues like mine, as you get better and look at all the broken pieces in your life you can sometimes be left with a feeling that this is just as good as it's going to get and that sucks. Can I love again? Yes. Can I grow from this and heal enough so I can let people get close to me without pushing them away? Yes. Can I prove to myself that I can do better and make the world around me a better place to be in? Yes. On this Thanksgiving Eve I am grateful that those of who've decided to reach out and connect with me see me as an equal. I am grateful to all those who continue to support me in-spite of the flaws that I have. I am grateful to those who fought so hard but just reached a point where self preservation was absolutely necessary and they didn't want to be hurt any longer and needed to exit my life. Most of all I am grateful that I am me with both the bad and the good. For each of those has shaped my story and my story continues to become more beautiful each day. <3 |
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