| The most important entry I have ever made with regards to my mental wellbeing |
[16 Feb 2003|12:44pm] |
I originally wrote these three entries on my own personal lap top computer. I intended only for one of them to be posted, but I eventually decided that I should post all three simultaneously, as they have a lot to say about one another. I apologize for the mention of specific people, and the assumptions made about their opinions. These may have changed. I apologize for the length, but I haven’t any ability to link it to another place wherin this entry could be posted.
2/01/2003
This post contains serious emotional material regarding deep things in my personal life. If you intend to mock or make light of this then please do not read on. This is very important to me, and I have had a horrible time dealing with it. There are some things in here that I have never told anyone, some things that perhaps no one wants to know about me. I accept this, but please do not read this post simply to comment that you didn’t want to know.
I feel I need to express this. I haven’t been this honest with myself or with anyone ever. I’d just like to say that what I am about to say is the most private part of myself. This is the thing that I never tell anyone, and have only just now come to completely realize and accept. I don’t ask anyone to understand. I don’t want anyone to judge me. If my parents (who now have this address) read this, then so be it. If my sister or friends read it and are shocked (which I am not sure they will be), then so be it.
This is who and what I am, and I am finally strong enough to admit it. Finally. To the whole world: This is me.
Someone here asked me some very personal questions that I felt very comfortable in answering, because I both respect and admire this person, as well as trust and feel comfortable with them. This person is a new friend, but one I think I will very much like to keep. I sorely misjudged her and I feel horrible that we did not get to know each other better before now.
She asked me some personal questions and made me feel as though she was going to support me no matter what I said, and so I said what I felt.
*This is so hard for me to do. To be honest, I am writing this on my private journal and am not even sure if I can post it. Maybe some of you already figured this out or whatever, but go easy on me please.
God this is so hard…Patrick I have so much respect for you*
All my life I have been struggling with a part of myself that people at my age are not supposed to know about. I was molested by my brother when I was 1, 8, and 10. I need to get that out of the way, simply because I need to talk about it later.
Ever since I was 4 I have been a sexual entity. I don’t know if it was because of my brother, many people would say yes, but I don’t think it is. I don’t remember anything about when I was one, and I only realized what a sexual entity was when I was 4, but had always been aware of sex and sexual tensions. When my brother molested me again, it wasn’t that I thought that was what sexual contact was, because I knew it was wrong. I didn’t tell because I didn’t want my brother to get into trouble. When it happened again I felt something I cannot explain.
It was something like the deepest guilt because I knew that this thing had occurred because I didn’t tell the first time. It was my fault. I could have done something and I didn’t. The day after the last time he did it, I went to school like I normally did, but I couldn’t get rid of what I remembered him saying ( I won’t repeat it). It echoed in my head all day long and I never have in my life felt so much shame.
I told my mother that day. My brother never touched me again, nor my sister (thank god). But later molested his own children.
What does this mean?
I don’t really know, except that it is the beginning of what I remember of sex. It is, I suppose, relevant in any psychoanalytic BS anyone wants to spout at me.
The important thing is, I always knew that that kind of sexual contact was evil, there was never any question of that, but things I did outside of that situation felt different, and better, not shameful or evil.
*God please don’t say this is disgusting because I don’t think I could bear that right now*
When I was five, I was French kissed for the first time, by a girl in my class.
It was fun, and it never felt bad.
I was hit on by a girl in the 3rd grade
I had my first real sexual experience with a guy at 8
Another at 14, this was not full intercourse, but simply a test-like relationship to help me get over the last incident with my brother (he’s adopted btw).
I had my first sexual experience with a woman at 13.
High school was one big test-time for my individual likes and dislikes. It was there that I first began to realize that what I was wasn’t “normal”.
Freshman year at UCSB made me think it all out. I could be whatever I wanted now. I could say that I was different, and people wouldn’t freak out too badly, because this is a learning institution and they want to be exposed to difference.
That was when I finally, for the first time in my life, told everybody, unequivocally, that I was bisexual. This helped me adjust to my environment more quickly, and I soon realized that no one really cared. It didn’t bother anyone but me and my parents (who still don’t know anything).
My dad asked me once why gay men have to talk like that…and told me that if I (jokingly said on my part) ever became a lesbian he’d be very disappointed in me.
However, this was all a lie. I don’t think there is a term that applies to me. I don’t think anything makes sense now. I am really confused and I want to try and explain it, because maybe if I can tell someone else, then it will make sense to me.
I started working at the Queer Resource Center at UCSB first quarter of my freshman year. It fell through.
I couldn’t go. For once in my life I will say that I COULDN’T DO IT. I felt like shit, in the one place where I should have been at home, the one place that I should have felt secure and able to tell someone what has been eating away at me for as long as I can remember. I felt like a poser, because nothing they said applied to me at all. Nothing made any sense at all. What they said didn’t sound like me. I wasn’t these people, and the QRC wasn’t my place.
So I just fell. I re-contacted the only person in my life who knew anything close to what this post is discussing. That being Ben, someone with whom I have some history. I didn’t contact him, and I admit this is wrong, to see him, or to patch things up with him, or to fall back in love with him. I began speaking to him simply to be around someone who I thought might somehow understand, but I realized that he couldn’t, because I had never expressly said anything like this to him. So in order to get rid of him and allow myself the time to figure shit out, I grasped a hold on a situation that was present, and banished him in a way I knew would work. It did. We no longer speak, and I am sorry for that.
So I was alone again, and tried being with people. I found Justin, and I liked him.
I “lost my virginity” on January 7, 2002.
Not like it was a huge stepping stone or anything, except in one way. I no longer feared what repercussions I might suffer from my parents.
Now more than ever, I fear them not understanding, I fear them telling me they don’t want me as their daughter, I fear them telling me that I have to be alone.
Because of this year, because I have had to change so much, I can do this now, and say this. I’ve realized that nothing anyone can do to me will ever be more important than me being happy and comfortable with myself.
I know my parents love me, and I love them. I know they think that by being what I am, I am bound to Hell, and they want me to be happy. They want what is best for me.
Here is where these things contradict. How can I be happy if I can’t be what I am, and how can I be what I am if it leads to eternal damnation and pain?
I don’t believe in Hell, or Satan, or God. It’s all too big for those narrow minded concepts. I believe that we are the way we were supposed to be, and that we should celebrate that and be that thing.
So here goes.
This will seem weird, but maybe after I have explained it out a little, it will make more sense.
I’m not straight, I’m not a lesbian, I’m not a woman, or even a gay man. Those things don’t fit the me inside my mind or my feelings, and I won’t sit back and let people tell me that it’s a phase, or hormones, or psychological anymore. I am just going to say it.
You’ve probably heard me use the phrase “I’m a gay man trapped in a woman’s body” as a joke, if you know me.
You don’t understand what it means to me.
I heard the phrase “I’m a lesbian trapped in a man’s body” on a talk show one day, and it changed my entire life, because at that moment I realized that I wasn’t the only person in the world who felt similarly to me.
I don’t care what people call it. Most everyone who reads this will laugh about it and tell jokes about it to their friends. I don’t care anymore. I don’t care who gets it, or who likes it or hates it. I can’t stand this anymore.
I think I shall call it the only thing that I feel describes it.
I think I am a bisexual man trapped in a woman’s body.
*Holy shit, I don’t believe I finally wrote that down*
Tell me I need counseling Dad. If you think that, fuck you. Tell me I need religion, or drug therapy, or whatever promise you want to make. I can’t be anything else, and no matter what caused it, it is me.
I will attempt, if I can, to clarify how this works, for the ones who are genuinely intrigued, or care at all.
I’ve never been a girl, never. For as long as I can remember. Sure, I fantasized about what it would be like if I were a girl, really, in my mind. I thought about how demure and beautiful I would be. How perfect. Even at a young age. The earliest I ever remember thinking about this in these words was appx. 6 years of age. I was sitting on my tire swing thinking about the kids at school who made fun of the fact that I didn’t brush my hair or play girls’ games, like ‘make up party’, and I was singing Phantom of the Opera (of all the clichés!). When I realized that I didn’t want to play girls’ games because I wasn’t a girl. I didn’t want to brush my hair, because I didn’t want hair. (But due to a horrible incident in preschool which sent me home crying, I was afraid to cut off my hair, for fear my friends wouldn’t know me and would hate me).
I didn’t want to be Christine, I liked the Phantom better. Juvenile and silly maybe, to an adult brain, but I was a little person then, and it was overwhelming. I cried for a long time and didn’t know what to do.
Off and on throughout my life, I have tried to be a girl, tried to be a “guy”, tried to be anything that was well defined, but gave up a miserable failure.
After having actually been with a woman, I realized that was possible for me, and that I enjoyed it. However, in my mind, when I was with her, I never thought of her as I think a lesbian would. I don’t know how to explain this to someone who isn’t in my head, but I will tell you what I told Jaime
“You know when a guy sees a girl walking down the street and he really thinks she’s…mmmmm…?”
“Yeah”
“I think that same thought.”
“And with a guy?”
“I think ‘mmmm…what I could do if I was a guy’”
“I don’t mean to be rude, but that’s strange. I’ve heard things like this (she’s a psych major) before, but I’ve never been able to ask questions.”
I want to explain the above example more thoroughly, since it links to something else that has bothered me for a while too. When I see an attractive person on the street, I don’t actually think about what I could do with them at all, that was purely for examples sake. I have no desire whatsoever for them.
I see a pretty face, but have no inclination to ask that person out, or get a phone number, or anything. They are just another person. It isn’t until I know someone well, I’d say at least a month or two, that any real feeling of any kind ever develops. However, this has, in the past, only led to more failures because I had to try to tell them this secret and couldn’t ever get it out in a way that made sense.
It mostly came out like this
“I like men and women.”
“OK”
“I don’t think about it the right way though”
“Whatever you say.”
Whatever…
I hate my body. I don’t hate it because it’s ugly, or because it fails to get me wonderful attention from attractive people, that’s not it at all. I hate it because it ties me back from being what I want to be. I am sick of failure where this is concerned. I haven’t ever failed at any goal that concerned my overall happiness, ever.
Maybe I should get a sex change. I ‘ve thought about it a lot. But if I did that, I wouldn’t be a man. Not in the true sense. I wouldn’t be me still, but would be some sad attempt at me being something in particular (no offense to those who have done this). I wouldn’t be me even then, so why bother, when now I can blend into society almost perfectly? Maybe, some day, I will rethink it and it will be an option once again.
Being this thing that I am, I don’t know what to do next. I think I will always be alone. I don’t think it will ever make sense to anybody, or ever be acceptable. I’ll probably lose friends over this. I don’t know, but I have a high opinion of my friends.
I will never marry, because that would be (under CA state law) admitting that I am a woman. I will never have children for the same reason. I’m not a mother, I’m something else that can’t even comprehend of myself in that role. I hate all gender bias, but for different reasons than most.
People piss me off when they dis women, because I think that they’re assuming several things:
a) they’re better (which in my point of view is crap because to my mind I am neither)
b) I’m one of “the women”
c) That my mind is limited and confined to my genitals
People piss me off when they dis men:
a) does that include me?
b) Am I that way?
c) Who are you to say?
In my mind I am male, but perhaps with a “woman’s” instinct or temperance or something. I can’t make sense of it.
I have no particular sexual preference, and I don’t like being told that I have to wear a skirt to church.
My fantasies aren’t from a woman’s point of view.
I, in my deepest ideal dream of myself (that will probably never come to pass because of society and cowardice on my part) would wear gender like a coat, and throw it aside if I felt like it. I wish I could be a guy all the time, but sometimes it is fun to dress in drag.
I feel so much better now.
I don’t think you’ll ever know how long I’ve debated writing about this. How long I have wanted to discuss it, or figure it out. Now it is here, and everyone will know it.
I’m not asking my friends to forgo the use of gender specific pronouns or anything, you don’t have to call me ‘the female formerly known as Kris’
Just please understand that I am not nuts, that this is the truth, that it feels right, and for the first time, I feel satisfied with myself. Please tell me this is ok, because I would hate to have to go out and find new buddies
*weak attempt at a joke when I am really sick right now*
Thanks Pet rock for the courage, Pam for the openness, Heidi for her insight into things I don’t have to explain.
Please support me in this. I don’t know where to go next, but there it is.
I love you guys.
2/03/2003
I’ve been thinking a lot about the whole issue. My mind seems to continually question whether or not I am certain this time as to my identity. But each time I ask myself that question, the answer always comes out a resounding ‘yes’. So what now? I can’t tell anyone really. I’ve tried three times to post that entry on LJ, but for some reason I can’t seem to push myself enough to do it. Some part of me still feels like I’d be placing myself to much in harms way. I mean, do these people really need to know that much personal information about me?
Do they really need to know how my sexuality works?
Maybe not. Maybe they don’t really care to know. But if I feel like I need to tell, what then?
Why do I need to tell if it doesn’t matter to them? Because I need to know if they can still accept me, I guess. I also want to know if anyone feels the same as me.
Maybe I am a total idiot about to make the greatest mistake of my life in posting an entry like this.
What’s the function of LJ anyway? Is it for us to post all about how we had to argue with someone today, or about how our parents are stupid, or post quiz results that aren’t ever a clear reflection of who we are? Is it for us to post song lyrics or witty sayings? Is it a way to simply keep in touch and know a little something about the person’s life?
Maybe it’s all of the above. I think that posting something that is this central to my personality is a must, but it’s not something people often want to talk about. It’s not something that people will support you in because it’s not understandable. I mean sure, they commend homosexuals for coming out, but that’s only because we’re just now beginning to grasp that it’s not weird or evil. But my particular situation isn’t something people will be able to identify or easily define.
That’s what I think anyway. The problem is that it’s a part of me that I am tired of being ashamed of. I’ve sort of touched upon the subject a few times with my close friends, but this will be the first time I ever just come out and say it in public. I’m tired of hearing, “well, when you find the right guy…” from my parents. What if I don’t want a guy? What if I want a guy, but it’s not in the same way you think it will be? What then? Am I a total freak?
Until I say it, and hear a positive response, I will be in my mind. Definition of freak these days tends something toward the outsider. Maybe that’s right. I am an outsider.
Up until half way through last year, I was one of those people who sought after attention. I never understood why before. I do now. If you feel uncertain about your personality, you try to call attention to the parts that seem stable. If you’re unsure but want to seem like you’re fine, then you pretend like that part doesn’t exist by overcompensating.
I think that if I can just get this out, I’ll be able to completely mature. I’ve already matured so much just in realizing and accepting that I am this way.
How will my parents take it if I tell them? Jaime thinks I should, but I don’t think I should unless it’s a problem. Let them have their illusions until I have to explain why I am seeing a woman.
That’s another reason why that post hasn’t made it out. What if they tell me that they think I need counseling?
I’m not sure I could handle that. Obviously what you are is wrong Kris. So, let’s just go see a counselor and they’ll make you see the error of your ways, and then we’ll convert you.
I don’t think it would be that way, but the fear remains.
If I told my family, or if they read my entry, they’d be really quiet for a while. They’d discuss it, and then they’d probably want to sit me down and ask me some very pointed questions that I would feel too uncomfortable in answering because they’re my parents. My dad would be torn between whether or not sexuality and preference is God given, and if it is, then why is homosexuality wrong, etc. My mother would either think it had something to do with my brother and would blame herself because she didn’t turn him in after the first time he did it. She’d think I was tainted or something. Either that or she’d remember her sexuality class she took and try to do something she’d never ever thought or considered she might have to do, that being to attempt to apply what she learned to real people she’s related to.
I could be totally wrong, but I think that’s what would happen. What ever does happen, I don’t think I’d want them to ask me any questions.
They have a tendency to ask questions they say are simply for discovery purposes and yet ask them in a way that makes me feel bad about myself. I don’t want that. I want them to maybe, one on one, ask me questions about how it works, so as to better understand it.
What would I do if they couldn’t accept it, or if they insisted on counseling?
I wouldn’t go to a counselor, first of all. They’re isn’t anything wrong with me.
I don’t have any pent up anger or hurt as to what happened with my brother, because I have told him how I feel and he has apologized. I know enough about his illness to know that you can’t cure it and you can’t make them understand. He knows he was wrong, that’s as good as I can expect. I don’t think it has anything to do with him. I think if it had anything at all whatsoever to do with him, it would be simply that he may have triggered sexuality at an early age. Beyond that, he’s a sick fuck and I’d never be like him.
If they told me to go I wouldn’t. If they couldn’t accept it, I’d have to cut myself off from them. I’d have to say that who I am is who I must be. I won’t pretend. I don’t like being asked if I’ve found a boyfriend yet. Especially if I am looking for a girl.
If they thought it was a phase, then it’s a phase that has been going on my whole life, changing, developing, becoming more prevalent in my mind, sometimes less. They’d be wrong.
So what will I do? What will they do?
Should I tell them? Should I even post that entry?
I don’t know. But I am on the way to the movies and can’t think about it now.
2/14/2003
It occurs to me how silly this is. Everyone’s sexuality is odd, it is simply a matter of whether or not they’ll admit it to the world. Am I being stupid to feel this way? Am I being silly to feel this shut in by something that isn’t really that big of a deal?
It is a big deal, maybe not to my friends or to the world in general, but to me and to my parents, it is.
What bothers me is that I might be doubted, that somebody will say that they don’t believe that that’s at all possible or even that it’s a mental problem caused by hormones or something.
The reason I feel this way, isn’t due to some half doubt as to the validity of my sexual/gender identity, but due to memories of when I first began to lose my vision.
I told them I couldn’t see, that something was wrong. Rather than help me or believe me, they said many different things, ranging from ‘It’s psychosomatic’ to ‘have you had counseling for manic depression?’ (because of the chronic fatigue that accompanied my vison loss), to ‘You or your parents must have offended God, and this is just punishment’.
You’re not really this way…it’s a phase…you’re a sinner in God’s eyes…you’re possessed…it’s a rare mental condition that blah…it’s caused by an extra chromosome…it’s due to a lack of estrogen…etc.
Why can’t I just be right about my own condition for once?
This is what nags at me. This is what I think people will say every time I consider sharing this.
It’s all very silly, because I know my friends well enough to know that they won’t care. Either they’ll say, ‘you’ve already told me’, ‘we figured it out’, or ‘that explains a lot’. I don’t think that in any case will I lose a friend over my sexuality.
Unless…and I hate to say this, but I feel I should…it is Adria. I say that because Adria is very certain of many things. No doubt, given her back ground in mental blah, she thinks she’s got the answer.
I don’t want an answer, that’s what I am saying. I am me, and whether or not it is fixable or ‘wrong’ or whatever, I don’t care because I like who I am and I shouldn’t have to cater that to the outside world.
Seth would question me on it. Seth is a champion of continual self-evolution. I am less of a human in Seth’s eyes (in his own words) because I can’t see perfectly. I don’t happen to think it matters how little of one sense you have, considering the fact that every single one of the blind people I know are more capable of living in the outside world than most sighted people their age. Kirsten at 18 could out do Seth at 22 any day. Disabled people deal with a lot more shit, and so are better, more well-rounded people. Physical ability has very little meaning if one feels they can’t function. How many intelligent, strong, healthy people have committed suicide because they couldn’t take care of their problems?
Digression aside, my point is, that to some like Seth, what I see as me might be completely odd. If it was ‘fixable’ he’d say I should strive to get it fixed, just like when he told me I should fix my eyes.
I would only fix my eyes, if they were causing harm to my body, but that is solved now, and no harm is now being caused by them, they are simply altered. I would not ever change them, because this is the way it is. I can function, I can cope. It has made me strong. I wouldn’t give that up, ever.
My sexuality has made me the character I am. Living with the knowledge of my ‘secret’ for so long has made me painfully aware of how others perceive me. It has made me very conscious of how people behave towards me, regard me, treat me, people’s motivations, their opinions, and all other things that have a bearing on whether or not they think I am a lesbian, a freak, if they question my sexuality, etc.
I am sure my gay friends would agree. Before Javier came out, he always went around asking little surveys about how people felt about different things, one being how they thought of homosexuality. I caught the hint, because I was ‘passing’ too. It’s easy to get that hint. When he called me to come out, I greeted him with, ‘so you’re gay then?’ Javier was the first person I ever told about my bisexuality, besides the woman I slept with.
I wouldn’t ever change this. This is another reason why I don’t think I’ll ever get any kind of operation.
So what does the entry mean to me?
I’ve acknowledged that my good friends probably already knew much of this. I’ve sort of outlined in my mind the type of responses I imagine I will receive. So what does it mean to post the entry and see?
It is a tentative extension of my secret toward my family.
It is a definite declaration to my friends.
It is getting something off of my chest for the whole world to see so that there is no doubt about it.
It’s the most honest thing I have ever posted, and it sets me up for a great big fall.
It’s as concise an explanation of my various personality traits as I have ever cared to give.
It’s a plea for advice.
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contemplative