Updates, I guess

It appears that I have not written on this blog in a while. I think I started tapering off when people started using my posts to justify being assholes to me. But anyway, there have been a lot of changes recently. As you can see from my poem "Five Sons," I have fairly recently come to the conclusion that I am in fact a man. Well, I say recently. Those of you who are allowed to read my other blog know that my gender identity is something I have been struggling with for a year or so. And possibly longer than that, although I was not willing to admit it. Certainly my mother and I always had struggles because she desired me to be more girly, to help with the housework, etc, while I just wanted to do all the things my brothers did. That and other, similar instances throughout my childhood, while they did not make me realize it at the time, are yet another thing that makes me say that I am not wrong in my identity.

But along with being transgender comes gender dysphoria. I have always disliked my body, especially since puberty. I don't think one can self-injure without that requirement, but I could be wrong. I have only my own experiences to aid me. But when I finally admitted to myself that I was a man, it was as if a switch flipped. Suddenly I went from passively disliking my body to actively hating it. "This body betrayed me. This body is wrong. This body makes people think I am a woman. This body...is responsible for me getting abused."

At the same time, I was already spiraling down to a very deep depression, although to be honest, that happens pretty much all the time. But when combined with body hatred, it very quickly went from deep depression to actively suicidal. I did everything I could to stop it. I talked with my therapist. I talked with the person who prescribes my meds. I reached out to friends. I bled. I even went back to Harper's Place willingly, just after the first of the year. I knew I needed help, and I was trying my hardest to get it. Five days in Harper's Place was not enough. I left, and immediately crashed again. Not a week later I moved on to actually attempting suicide. I ended up in a psych ward for three days, then I was back at Harper's. I got removed from Harper's Place for helping a friend make a run for it, and spent over a week in another crisis center, in Madison.

I actually started getting better. I felt happiness like I have not felt in years, like I cannot remember ever feeling. I was so excited. I knew that this euphoria likely would not last, but still, I rejoiced. So I came home. And now we come to the present. Not a week ago I got back from that crisis center. Things were good for the first day. The second day, I started to feel a little sad. But I knew I was not going to stay ecstatically happy forever, so I just assumed I was having a bad day. Then the next day, it got worse. And the next, worse again. And now I find myself back in the apathy of depression. Not in the deep blackness that I was at the start of the year, more of my normal day to day depression for the last dozen years or so. But it is quickly becoming apparent that I need to do something about this body, this body that should never have been mine. The problem is that my state is one of those who do not think transgender therapy and hormones and surgery are a legitimate problem that should be paid for with the state healthcare I'm eligible for, even though the statistics show that going without those things greatly decreases my life expectancy. Did you know that 41% of transgender people have attempted suicide? But I must pay for these things myself, and I do not have the money.

But something has to change, and quickly. I do not need the darkest depths of depression to be suicidal. Indeed, I am now, again. Not so much in a "I want greatly to die" sort of way, but in a "I want this body to be punished, and if I have to greatly harm it and I end up dying, well, that won't be so bad of an outcome." The county thinks it has left me safer by only giving me medication for a few days at a time, but after two overdoses I think I am done with that sort of thing. There are still bridges to jump off and razor blades to slice and many things that could cause me some level of harm. I am not "safe." The only helpful thing to come out of this month of treatment is the knowledge that maybe I can be happy for a few days once in a while. And that is a good thing to know. But it doesn't stop the depression. It does not stop me from wanting to harm this body. That will not stop until I more closely match what I should have always been, and perhaps it will not stop even then.

I do not know if I have hope for the future. I only know that the present cannot continue for very long.