One thing that I really wish cis people would understand is that boys and girls, men and women, aren’t that different.
I grew up constantly being told how different they were, how it was built in, it was intrinsic.
Men’s brains are like spaghetti, womens are like waffles.
Men are impulsive, women think ahead.
Girls are kind and sweet, boys are rude and loud.
Hey everyone, I just want you to know, it’s all bullshit. It’s all made up.
Its ok though, it’s actually better that way.
It means we understand each other more than we ever thought.
It means each of us gets to be our true selves.
Think of every gender trait you should embody but don’t.
Think of every time you aren’t “man enough” or “women enough.”
Now think about how none of that actually is real or matters. Let it all go.
Let it go for yourself, your partner, your kids, your parents, your friends.
Sometimes people try to back up these ideas with brain structure, which there is no modern science to back up.
Every older study which showed a difference between the sexes brains was actually just sexism at play. There is no real brain differences between the sexes.
People will then say, well its hormones, it’s the hormones make us different.
And I can attest that hormones do affect how you feel to a degree, but having lived in both an estrogen dominant body and a testosterone dominant body I’m here to say, it’s different, but not that much different.
My day to day thinking and feelings, and way of being in the world is still basically the same.
There were times I struggled with being irritable before and there are times I do now.
There were times I felt joy before and times I do now.
There were times I was sad before and times I’m sad now.
I still experience every feeling in the same way.
There just is no big significant biological difference between men and women that should or could be used to possibly justify the insane gender differences our culture expects and even demands.
Men and women both experience strong feelings of every type. They both experience the word in extremely diverse ways that are not tied to their sex. Its tied to being a human in a body.
I just want people to stop acting like men and women are different species.
We are all people, and we are at a basic level all the same.
So have some goddamn empathy for each other, becuase you are all far more alike than you are different.
Depression
The last few weeks I’ve been struggling really hard with depression.
The last two days… I’ve suddenly felt a lot better. So now, I have an even clearer view on just how deep I was.
It was bad. And the worst part is that I know it will come back. It might be tomorrow or in a week. If I’m lucky it will be years. But most likely sooner than later, because the biggest stressors that led to this most recent bout aren’t going away.
There is still a pandemic. It is the worst it’s ever been.
My business is still mostly closed. I can’t host sessions, or classes, or lessons. The things I designed my business to do and the things that make us the most money.
Luckily I do have the retail side of the shop and I’ve really bulked it up since March when we closed the first time.
This pandemic has really stretched my problem solving skills.
But you can only problem solve yourself so far.
A week or two ago I was agonizing over the fact that I couldn’t come up with the perfect plan to make up that lost income. I couldn’t figure out a way to hold outside sessions, or a venue to do lessons. I just couldn’t problem solve my way out of it. That was one of the biggest things that pushed me deeper into a place where I felt hopeless and I mostly shut down.
I’ve had moments of suicide ideation over the past few weeks. I’ve never been in any danger. I know how to handle it well enough when it comes and when it’s bad enough to get help.
The fact that it happened at all was scary and alarming though. I don’t think I’ve felt that since before I went on testosterone.
I’ve been scared to write about this or even talk about it for fear that people would think my depression is transition related. I don’t want people to think that it is becuase I’m on HRT or becuase I had surgery.
My transition is one of my greatest sources of joy! But that joy can’t out weight the heaviness of nine months of pandemic.
The only reason I am still in my home is thanks to our loan companies generous forbearance program. The only reason we have most of our bills paid (not all) and have food on the table is thanks the the generosity of friends and various aid programs.
Christmas time has brought out even more generosity in our friends and family and that has helped lighten the load on my shoulders.
Today a friend was able to give me the exact gift my son asked for this Christmas. The only thing he named which would have cost me over $100, she had in her basement and was ready to pass on.
Several friends have sent us money this month, from very small amounts to larger amounts and I greatly appreciate every dollar.
The other night frozen pizzas, soda, and a salad appeared on our doorstep.
These acts of community have lifted me out of my slump.
I also upped my dose of testosterone a bit this week after my 1 year results came back on the very low end of normal. I am absolutely sure that has played a role in my feeling better.
The reasons both for becoming depressed and for coming out of it are complex and impossible to know completely, but I know the pandemic is the largest contributor.
If you read this and you live in the US, please, stay home this holiday season. If you must see other people keep it close to home, keep it small, keep it masked.
Our lives are in your hands, and all gatherings are dangerous right now.
We can do this. We can stay home this Christmas so more people can live to see another year. Vaccines are coming. We just need a few more months to get them rolled out. Stay strong and stay home.
International Women’s Day
One year ago I made a post celebrating my “women owned business.” We were just over one month away from the grand opening and working like crazy to finish the build. It was just one short month after the opening that I had my gender crisis™️.
Owning a business slowed down my coming out pretty significantly. I realized I was “Not-cis” so quickly after I opened the business. I had been on TV and in the paper and met hundreds of people in person how could they now possibly learn that I’m not who I just said I was.
I tried to just not come out for several months. It didn’t work. I was starting to loose it a little bit being one person at home and another at work/in public. I needed to be fully me.
Here we are a year later and I’m fully out. Lots of people still don’t really know or if they do they don’t get it. Most people still see me as a women. I’m not.
Upon my gender crisis™️ last May the first thing I knew for sure was I was definitely not a cis woman. I wasn’t sure what I was, but I knew what I wasn’t. I very quickly started using they/them pronouns and I still use them today.
This year’s international women’s day was hard. I didn’t feel right hanging out with my skater friends at an international women’s day event. I didn’t feel right at all. I was exhausted physically from a big event yesterday, and exhausted emotionally from being misgendered about 1000 times at the event. Then just add some sensory overload to all that from the same event and you’ve got a big mess.
After an early morning at work I was home at 2pm and spent nearly three hours in bed on and off napping. I woke up just feeling the weight of not fitting in.
I don’t fit in with men. I don’t fit in with women. I just don’t fit. I never have.
I’ve come to terms with my identity as a non-binary trans man, and I’m totally open to that identity potentially changing or evolving in the future, but it feels like no one else has accepted that’s who I am. People don’t do much to acknowledge it. Only those in my inner circle get my pronouns/titles correct. Most people still call me she/mom/wife.
Today, fortunately, is the day of the week my wonderful non-binary support group meets. I was able to be heard about how hard today is and have some people empathize with me in these feelings. I’ve also spent some time texting with some really supportive folks, some who have experienced transition themselves.
I needed that reminder that I am not alone. There are other people who this is their first year realizing they aren’t a women. Or maybe their relationship to womanhood has changed. Maybe this is the first year they are celebrating being a women, as is the case for my partner.
Today is not bad, it’s just complicated. I have a complicated past with womanhood and a lot of baggage to work though still. Gender is hard and I’m here for the ride.
Next year should be a whole lot easier.
Three Months on Testosterone Update
Three months in and life is good.
There is a part of me that is more happy and at peace than ever before. There is another part of me that is constantly disappointed and frustrated. It feels like the part of me that was frustrated with my gender has just morphed to now be frustrated with the way the world responds to my gender.
Lets start there.
For the first time in a long I have a growing sense of character. I know who I am. But this can be hard to communicate to people who have never struggled with their gender, especially because I don’t fit easily into the gender binary. Even though I feel comfortable with calling myself a trans man now I still strongly identify as non-binary. My full answer to who I am gender wise is, “I am AJ, a non-binary trans man.” That’s too much for most people though.
Depending on my audience I introduce my gender identity differently. Usually in introductions in queer or progressive spaces I just boil it down to “I’m trans” and let them figure out what they think that means. Only in small trans or non-binary specific spaces do I bother to explain the whole thing.
Most of the time moving though the world though, I’m not introducing myself. People see me and they make an assumption of my gender, as we all do in our strongly gendered western society. 99% of the time they gender me as female. “Good morning Ma’am” “Thanks Miss” “Nice Lady” I get these all. the. time. every. single. day.
Twice now someone has greeted me as “Sir” and then “corrected” themselves to “Ma’am.” These interactions give me hope. I’m starting to confuse a few people. Confusion is better than being read as female all the damn time.
This is one of the only negative parts of my transition thus far. Each day being misgendered over and over starts to wear on you. You get tired and frustrated and sometimes I just need to go home and have a really big cry. I think any man walking though the world being called a woman non-stop would feel similarly frustrated. I expect many would react much more angrily in the moment, whereas most of the time I just grimace and move on.
Passing is complicated and problematic, but I would rather be read as a man than a woman if I had to choose. The lack of this out in the world can really get me down.
Let’s move on to the good stuff.
I’m happy. Overall I’m happy and less stressed and less anxious than I was a year ago. All of my close friends get my name right now and most of them get my pronouns correct (they/them). I love this. It makes me feel right inside. There are times people deadname me, and I honestly don’t realize they are talking to me. Changing my name to something not strongly gendered has allowed me to fully explore who I am with less baggage and expectations that come with a strongly gendered name.
I enjoy seeing myself in the mirror (at least above the chest) which is something I’ve never experienced before. I used to look in the mirror and see a stranger, I would stare at them and say “Who are you?” Now I see a boy hitting adolescence, just a bit later than most do and I smile. Even though my cowlicks frustrate me, I enjoy doing my hair. I love getting tips from other guys on how to style it. I have a reason to care for the person in the mirror, I like them. I want to be them. I want to be this version of me.
I need to shave now. I LOVE shaving. It’s one of the single most affirming things I’ve ever done.
My dad died so young I have very few memories of him, none of him shaving. But I remember strongly staying over at my cousin’s house at a young age and watching their dad shave in the morning. I was fascinated. I remember the smell of the shaving cream, the water running, him rinsing the razor and looking closely in the mirror. Now I have enough facial hair to need to do the same every few weeks or look like patchy 14 year old boy (which looks extra weird when you have a large chest ). I’m obsessed with my mustache stubble (the only part that feels like real stubble so far, just give me another year or two) and I’m looking forward to being able to really rock the full stubble look.
I love the way my relationship with my partner has changed. This might be the most wonderful and fulfilling part of it everything so far. She understands what I need better than anyone in the world. She knows when to throw those masculine terms in to just make me perk up and help me feel great. She also understands that most of the time I feel best with neutral terms and pronouns. She just gets it, and the way we interact has changed a lot, for the better. We are constantly checking in with each other about gender stuff, and looking out for each other. We communicate well and affirm each other in new and wonderful ways.
There is something different about the energy I exude now. It just feels very masculine and just… right. I know that sounds woo as shit, but I really don’t know how else to explain it. It’s taken me a long time to allow myself space to feel and express myself in this way becuase its always always felt off limits. The space I inhabit mentally feels like it’s less work now, less of a performance and more natural. I can just be.
More practically speaking (and the question most often asked), is about how I feel physically. Being on Testosterone has made me hungry, horny, hot, and hairy. Also pimply. The acne is getting really bad, but it comes in waves. One week it will be awful and painful and everywhere, and the next week will be mostly ok. From what I understand this will get worse over the coming months, and then, hopefully, slowly better. I have a routine and it seems to be helping, but it’s just part of the process of going through some extra puberty.
I’m so hungry that some days I feel like I can’t stop eating. I’ve definitely gained weight, and gotten larger in both my gut and my shoulders. I’ve gone up a shirt size, but my pants still fit fine. I’m not a gym rat, but I try to do full body strength training at home a few times a week and I went from barely being able to do pushups to doing ten quite easily in a very short while. I’m looking forward to continuing to gain strength and very much looking forward to some fat redistribution, even if it means a bigger belly.
I don’t want to go too deep on the horny part except to say it’s confusing and hard to work though and somehow good all at once. My whole experience of sexuality is shifting so massively despite the fact that I don’t experience much in the way of sexual attraction. It seems like something that’s still evolving rapidly at this point.
I’m hotter. I’m just straight up warmer than I used to be. I’m not in hoodies and shivering all the time. I’m sweating at the skatepark when its 65 degrees, and then I come home to our 70 degree house and it feels like a furnace. I wake up sweaty at night and pull of all my blankets. I’m very worried about summer, as I already don’t do well in heat. I will be getting our pool fixed before any hot days come and probably have the AC on more often!
Lastly, the hair. I already talked about shaving above, but I’ve already got more body hair, and I love it. Every time I get out of the shower I take stock of how much its grown and I revel in it. At least one trans friend of mine is jealous (haha, sorry dude). Lots of trans guys want body hair and struggle to grow it. That’s not gonna be a problem for me, the men in my family tend to be pretty hairy, so it’s in my genes and I can literally see the progress every week. I’m going be a short bear before you know it.
Overall, I’m so happy with where I am and where I am going. There are growing pains along the way, but no real growth comes easily.
I Also Make Youtube Videos Sometimes
I’ve made a few videos while I’m doing my Testosterone shot at home. I’ve actually started to enjoy this. I don’t edit them or script them. I turn on my camera on my phone and talk for 5-10 minutes. Today I made a thumbnail for the first time!
So sit down and watch some trans thoughts™ if that sounds interesting to you.
My Sexulaity is Evolving!?
Reader be warned, this blog is going to talk about my sexuality, primarily sexual and romantic attraction. Not sex itself.
I got my first crush when I was seven years old. Of course it wasn’t sexual at the time, but I knew my feelings for this boy were different from how I felt about anyone else. I remember writing furiously in my first little diary about him. I cut his picture out of the year book so I could tape it where I could see it everyday.
I loved a boy. I didn’t really talk about it. I didn’t know what to do about it besides try to play with him more at recess and try to get in more group projects with him.
It happened becuase he was nice to me.
I have been bullied for as long as I can remember. Sometimes worse than other times. I went to a new school in 2nd grade after a poor experience in our local public school. In our class our seats were arranged by our last name, and this kid happened to sit next to me because of our last names. He turned out to be a very kind person. He never made fun of me for my height or gender or lack of fine motor skills or anything. He never made fun of me.
I don’t remember a lot of specifics from that young of an age. I do remember he was nice to me and part way through the school year it made me get new big feelings. I had heard enough about crushes to know that’s what this was. But I also knew I didn’t want to like… kiss anyone yet.
This crush lasted on and off for about seven years. It was my only grade school and junior high crush.
Because our school was small we were with the same kids all the way through 8th grade. So he and I were in the same class and same classroom, often next to each other becuase of the ongoing last name organizational system for years. And he was always nice to me.
We were friends all those years, and as we got older even did very typical Jr. high things like go to McDonalds together and see movies. But they were never dates. Even though in my heart all I wanted was for them to be dates. I’m not sure how much I told him, I was very scared to share any intimate feelings at that age. I don’t know if he knew or if he knew and wasn’t interested. Either way he stayed kind.
We went to the same high school for one year, but that was the same year my heart found its next crush.
This boy also sat next to me at school. We had our last class of the day together our freshman year. I already knew him from the skatepark. We would often sleep though our last class and then go skate after school, catching a ride from his brother or my mom to a skate spot for the afternoon.
It really didn’t take long for me to fall for this boy. But it was clear that once again that the interest wasn’t mutual and I had to fight down those feelings for fear of losing my only good friend in my new scary high school. This was the worst year of bullying in all my schooling and I had drifted away from most of my friends from 8th grade in this new school, leaving me vulnerable.
After that year I again switched schools, starting at the local public high school for my sophomore year.
I still hung out with the boy from freshman year all the time, and my heart still crushed on him pretty hard, until my junior year when I became closer with a kid who I had met though our school music program. This kid was a year younger than me than me, but we had become very good friends and eventually I realized I liked them more than a friend as well.
My heart had moved on to its next love, who happened to be my new best friend. All three crushes had been best friends at some point before becoming crushes.
Throughout all these years average teens were a mystery to me. They seemed to have actual crushes on celebrities and people they barely knew. They were attracted to people just by looking at them. I literally could not understand this. I had never experienced this. I had only fallen for best friends.
The third crush was my last for a very long time. We started dating my senior year and got married a few years later. We are still together. I married my third crush, the first one to return my romantic feelings.
My fourth crush didn’t come until more than a decade after the third one. I literally felt no romantic or sexual attraction to anyone except my partner for over ten years. And then I found a new best friend.
We had known each other for a while, but eventually we started hanging out together late at night smoking weed and just talking for hours. After a few weeks of this, I fell hard. I hadn’t experienced a crush in so long that it was all consuming and wrecked me.
It was hard on my marriage but ultimately something that forced us to talk about a lot of things that had been previously “off limits” due to our time spent within conservative Christianity. The experience helped us grow as a couple and stay close to the person I was crushing on. He’s still one of our best friends, and his new partner has also become one of our closest friends!
A few years ago I discovered the term “Demisexual”, which describes a sexuality in which you only develop sexual attraction after forming a deep emotional bond with a person. When I learned what it meant I immediately identified with it. Read more about demisexulaity here. I used this term for myself for the past few years, but now I’m not really sure anymore.
It turns out as I’m figuring out my gender my experience of attraction is changing dramatically.
For the first time I’m finding myself attracted to seemingly random people. I’m getting these weird small crushes, and they are entirely on queer people, or people I am close with. People whose gender is hard to figure out are the ones I’m most likely to fall for. I wasn’t exposed to a lot of genderqueer people until very recently.
It’s taking me by surprise.
I’ve never experienced life like this. Just seeing a random person at a bar and thinking “Oh they are cute, I would totally be into them.” Having a friend get flirty with me and not only feeling anxious, but also feeling somewhat into it. Its all new and weird.
Looking back it turns out all my crushes except crush number 2 are openly queer in some way. Number 1 came out as gay at some point and I found out when I found him on facebook years later. Number 3 is my trans partner who wrote an entire album about her bisexuality. Number 4 recently told me he’s bi.
There’s something about queer people I guess. And now that I’m more comfortable in my body and my identity than I’ve ever been I’m finding myself attracted to people in various ways all the time! It’s really wild. But overall it’s good.
I’ve always understood sexuality as fluid intellectually, but now I’ve experienced it first hand. Sexuality can change and evolve! It can catch us off guard, it can overwhelm us with feelings. It can be a gift and seemingly a curse at times, but I’m grateful for it. I’m grateful for healthy intimate relationships of all types. I’m happy to have so many in my life both past and present. I’m extremely thankful for those boys who befriended me and protected me as a young person who was so often bullied.
I once heard it said “Once you love someone you love them forever” and with those four big crushes I have I found that true. Even if I’m not close to them today, my heart will always have a special place for them.
A Big Step Forward!
I’ve spent the last few months wrestling with my gender and what exactly I need to feel more like myself.
I’ve consistently found that the more masculine I allow myself to be and feel the happier I am.
When my partner or good friends drop a masculine “He” or “Husband” my heart leaps out of my chest. Yes. That is me. That is what I want.
I still have a lot of work to do and each day I’m slowly tearing down walls. I still believe I’m not allowed to be this or do this. I’m not “allowed” to be a boy.
When I was a kid I was intensely and quietly jealous of my male cousins. I wanted to be them. I wanted that maleness. I didn’t want to have to constantly prove my identity as “one of the guys” but I did have to prove that over and over again.
I had no idea that trans people existed when I was a kid. If I did I would have spoken up. Instead I just did all the boy things and played with all the boys. I was recognized as a tom-boy, but when it came down to it, I was a girl. At school I was in the girls uniform, girls teams, girl everything. Besides having two great female friends to hang out with in those situations, it sucked. I wanted to be with the other group. I was in the wrong group.
“It Feels Selfish. It feels like giving myself… too big of a present.”
– Maia Kobabe on Top Surgery
I heard one of my favorite authors, Maia Kobabe*, say in an interview on Gender Reveal that top surgery would be “too big of a present” to emselves.
This resonated deeply with me. I feel this way about top surgery, I also felt the same way about testosterone. Its too nice, too big, and I don’t need it, so it’s just like a huge gift to myself. I also had a lot of worries about testosterone. Both of these thoughts slowed me from making any quick decisions, or even seeking out a doctor to talk to.
I’m a very sensitive person, I don’t do well on most meds, so I worried about just messing with my system at all. I worried about becoming angry and irritable. I worried about not getting to pick and choose my changes. I might get really hairy. I might go bald! I might have a lower voice! I might… I might… I might…
After months of research and watching videos and talking to trans friends, I finally decided it to move forward. I knew I could do a low dose and stop at any time and if I stopped early on I wouldn’t experience many changes and it takes time to reach the irreversible ones.
It took a few months for me to get in with a new doctor who cares for several trans people, but when I finally did the appointment was amazing. He was so affirming and kind and gentle. I was anxious but decided walking in that I had to be 100% honest and if it didn’t go well I could find a new doctor. That wasn’t necessary, he was great.
I struggled to articulate to him why I wanted to go on testosterone, “I’m not looking for any specific physical changes, I know it’s kind of a grab bag. I just want to feel… more like me… and I think maybe this will help.”
This cis-male dotor was tearing up and replied “I understand what you are saying and have heard similar sentiments from other paitents.”
I told him I wanted a low dose and he listened and did exactly that.
This day was the first day I felt confident enough to write “non-binary trans man” on my paper work. I had only said “non-binary” publicly before this. I gave myself more freedom to be me and it felt really good.
After finishing with the doctor I got my blood drawn. At the end of the blood draw I noticed the man who had taken my samples for testing had a trans flag sticker on his name tag, and was only about an inch taller than me. Until that moment I had read him as cis. I don’t know that he’s trans for sure, but not a ton of cis people go around wearing trans flags, and a lot of trans people work at this clinic.
This interaction alone gave me so much hope. Maybe someday someone will see me working my job and call me “he” and think I’m a short cis-guy.
A week later on 12-4-19 I went back and met with a nurse (also trans) who taught me how to do my injections and watched me do the first one around 11:30am. I felt really anxious.
After that I went on with my day, we got coffee, I went to therapy, had lunch with a friend to celebrate the occasion, and went to work. I didn’t feel any different.
The next evening I was just doing stuff around the house, hanging christmas lights, and all the sudden I felt different. I felt warm, calm, happy, energized, and… horny…. What?? I felt so good! I honestly think this is what I first felt the testosterone in my system, about 34 hours after my first shot it was affecting me and it felt awesome.
Over the next few days I realized I was actually excited about every possible change. I’m not sure how many times I’ve mentioned how hungry and tired I am to my friends (common feelings when you are early to T). I’m actually looking forward to my voice changing. I’m watching the hair on my belly start to get darker. I’m happy about all these things and more! I’m happy about the things I was scared of!
Going on T has been one of the best gifts I’ve ever given myself and I have zero regrets here in week two!
Footnotes:
* Maia’s book “Gender Queer” was what helped “crack my egg” or make me realize I wasn’t cisgender. In the book Maia talks about Spivak pronouns which Maia uses. Here are links to eir book and info about Spivak pronouns.
Most Days
Today I feel normal. Or at least what I think is normal. I didn’t feel bad. Well, actually I started the day feeling quite anxious, but then I had a good conversation with an insurance agent (right?) and went on a long walk with my husband and then I just felt like, kinda good.
I feel like my executive function is better than most days, though still quite scattered, and I just feel happy. I enjoyed having friends over somewhat unexpectedly tonight. It was nice. I cleaned the living room and kitchen and didn’t resent it or have to use all my effort to force myself to do it. I just knew it needed to be done, so I just did it and it was even a bit enjoyable.
I feel like I have the space to breath and be introspective for the first time in….months. I’ve been going so hard and my mental health has not been good. I took some time off work for Christmas, 4 whole days in a row that I didn’t work. It was amazing. But it wasn’t until now, a week later, that I started to feel lighter, more whole, able to work on things other than survival.
Being working poor is fucking awful. It really is. It’s so hard to struggle every week to just barely get by, everything else falls away except work work work. You find meaningful moments here and there to connect with your spouse and your child, but there is no room for so much of what makes life worth living, because you can’t afford to not work on the weekends. 2018 was a fucking slog. It was really hard.
The skatepark was a roller coaster and still is. I wish I was certain about that spring opening date, but that easily could get pushed back again. There was a time I was certain we would be open in October, then it became December, then January, now I’m cautiously optimistic for April.
I’m constantly scared I’m doing too much, or too little regarding Stronger. But I’m constantly aiming at a moving target.
Delivery driving is now the longest single job I’ve ever held, well over 2 years now. It was never supposed to be this way. It’s not a terrible job, that’s why I keep doing it, but it’s not terribly rewarding either and some days can be quite stressful with traffic and parking and restaurants running behind.
Again, I’m struck by how clear-headed I am today. It’s just so abnormal that it makes me grieve the 99% of days that I don’t feel like this. The last time I kind of felt like this was when I took that long hard walk in Ladd’s Addition, but it didn’t last, it was just during the walk and directly afterwards that I felt so clear.
For some reason I was feeling good tonight that I put on Carrie and Lowell. “The Only Thing” just started and it’s so much closer to how I usually feel. “The only thing that keeps me from cutting my arm….” is often much closer to how I feel. I’ve never been a cutter. I self harm in other ways. I’ve even felt like a failure at harming myself, because I don’t “do it right.” I smack myself in the head or the face, sometimes hard, sometimes over and over. I bite myself. I pinch myself. I bash my head on the wall. I don’t do these things often, but when things get too hard it’s all there is left. My brain shuts down, or gets caught on one negative word or statement, “BAD BAD BAD”, “HATE HATE HATE” and doesn’t go away until I go through the cycle of a full meltdown.
That didn’t happen today.
Today I got up, played an hour of “Pokemon: Let’s Go Eevee” while I waited till I could eat. Then I made tea and bacon, realized I needed some carbs with the bacon and had a piece of chocolate (made toast for my child, forgot I actually had some GF bread around, because I usually don’t). I was getting ready to do some yoga when I got a text from a friend saying her son wanted to play with my son. My son had asked just a few minutes earlier if he could play with said friend, so I changed my plans and took him over. When I got home I had the phone call that I had been anxiously awaiting, they have a quote for insurance for me! Excellent!
I asked Ace if he wanted to go on a walk and he said yes so we went on a long slow walk that eventually had us up on Woodstock where we made a few quick stops before walking home. We bought tamales from a man on the street and they were amazingly good. When I got home I quickly cleaned the living room, still covered in confetti from New Years Eve, wanting to get it done before the kids came to my house. I picked up my son and his friend and made plans to hang out with the friend’s mom later that night. We got back to the house and I cleaned the kitchen and got a text from another friend saying he was in the neighborhood with his girlfriend and I told them to come on by.
I was able to clean the kitchen, make myself dinner, make dinner for my family, and eat, all before anyone showed up. I hung out and socialized, mostly successfully, and just enjoyed being around other people. At one point I caught myself making the conversation about myself, after I had asked my friend to tell me her story, I stopped, and didn’t beat myself up too much about it. Friends left and I rushed to get Mark to bed. He freaked out because his bunny was missing, and I calmly helped him find it.
Then I did some laundry and turned on some music, got some wine, and sat down to write. Something I’ve barely done over the past two months.
Today was just so beautifully normal, and I felt so wonderfully sane and happy.
I need days like this, and I’m not entirely sure how to get them. They come at a financial cost, which can weigh heavily on my mental health at times.
I’m debating if this is worthy or ok to post on my blog. Is it too real? That’s the only way I know how to write. It’s the only way WORTH writing.
I haven’t blogged in a long time because someone was hurt by one of my posts. Hurt is too strong a word, they were made slightly uncomfortable, and they brought it to me.
It was hard because it was over a post I was extremely proud of. I took it down. I haven’t had the strength to go back and look at it. I don’t know how to make the changes I need to to make everyone comfortable. I don’t know how to change the way I experience things for writing. I write things as I experienced them and that didn’t work, I made someone uncomfortable.
So I stopped writing.
I even stopped journaling.
I told everyone I was fine, it was fine. But I wasn’t fine. But I should be fine. People should be able to tell me those things without me breaking. But I’m already broken it doesn’t take much for those broken parts to fall apart again. This conflict on top of the financial problems, on top of the continued delays for the skatepark just really stopped me dead in my tracks.
Like I said at the top it’s been months, months since I’ve felt normal, since I’ve felt happy for almost an entire day. It’s a foreign feeling. Today I feel safe, connected, peaceful, loved, I feel all these things that I should feel most of the time. I don’t know when I will feel them again. It could be tomorrow and I want so badly for it to be tomorrow. If I felt this way even half of my days I would be a different person. I would be a more whole person, I would be able to do so much more for those around me.
But I don’t. Most days I am anxious. Most days I am tired. Most days I’m lonely. Most days I’m working. Most days I am struggling to feel anything at all.
But today wasn’t most days.
Mental Health Awareness Day
Today is Mental Health Awareness Day, barely, we still have a few minutes here on the west coast, so I’m technically correct.
I’ve struggled with mental health. I had a full on mental break down in August of 2015. I quit my job, and started seeing a therapist, who I still see, and who I will send this too. Shoutout to Melissa, she’s awesome.
In 2015 I was tender and scared. I was far too anxious to publicly blog about these struggles. I’ve come a long way.
This time was also when my public facebook page, at the time called The Unpreschooler, started being neglected. I was too anxious about comments to continue posting.
I wanted to post something for today because this is an issue so near to my heart. I’ve been anxious, I’ve been depressed, I’ve been suicidal.
In this blog are the things I wrote while I was in those states.
I don’t struggle the same ways I did in 2015-17. I’m much healthier now. There are things I wrote about then that I don’t believe anymore. Yet, these posts are still me and are still important and I finally feel safe enough and healthy enough to share them.
My secret blog is no longer secret. You can go read the entire thing at https://simplelifepdxblog.wordpress.com/
I suggest reading it in chronological order, you can jump through the months on the right hand menu.
Peace to you.
“On Growing Up”
Recently I cleaned out my closet. In that process I found some old journals. Some I had remembered, but one I had forgotten about it. It was from 2006-2007 and didn’t have a ton of entries, but enough to give me a good look inside my nineteen and twenty year old head. A head I’ve apparently lost touch with.
I have mythologized that period in my life to one where I “had it all together.” I was living alone at the time as my roommate had gotten married and moved out and Ace was off at college (and we were in rough patch in early ’06). I was very proud of myself at the time to have two jobs, being going to school, and have my own place with my own pets. I really did take on a lot pretty quick. I often look back on that time and wonder why I don’t have it so together now. Early in my marriage I would get upset with Ace and blame any and all disfunction on him. That was obviously the thing that had changed in my life.
Now that I’m reading this old journal its become clear to me that I struggled a lot in ’06 and ’07 as well. Its unfortunate to see how unnecessary some of that struggle was. I write a lot about my guilt around not praying enough and my “sin” which means making out with or fooling around with Ace.
My anger at the fact that I was indoctrinated to feel so horrible around that extremely normal, appropriate, safe, and consensual sexual behavior could be its own post.
My anger that my pastor emailed me to let me know he had a dream about me sinning and that he didn’t want me to turn away from God could also be its own post.
Today I’m going in another direction.
My therapist asked me the other day “What would 19 year old Allison think of 32 year old Allison?”
“Well she would be upset at the idea that I was going to hell.”
I was full on “fundie” at that point. I was about the deepest in it in 2006, right before bible college started opening me up to new ideas and theologies about God the next year.
I had a life plan that was totally different. Nineteen year old me was going to become ordained in the Assemblies of God. I was sure of it. I was going to grow our church’s Children’s Ministry and then eventually start a new church plant focused on family ministry.
I was going to get a big house in the suburbs and fill it with adopted children and have happy vanilla monogamous sex for the next several decades.
Frankly nineteen year old me would be utterly shocked at how much I’ve changed. Almost everything about my beliefs surrounding religion, politics, parenting, and health have drastically changed. I owe a lot of that to becoming more educated. It was a combination of what I learned in bible college and what Ace learned in bible college that helped me to start very slowly peeling away the layers of fundamentalism just shortly after this journal ended in mid 2007.
On top of that I’ve always loved learning and have continued to educate myself about any topic that seizes my interest. That habit has contributed significantly to my growth as an educated individual.
There are a few interesting things that stood out to me as similarities to my current self; my struggle at staying on task and building habits, struggling to stay organized and keep up with household tasks, being deeply emotional for no discernible reason, being deeply in love with Ace, being extremely passionate about what I view as my life’s mission, being confused about my relationships with friends, loving my parents but being frustrated with my relationship with them, and of course my tendency to process things via writing, both publicly and privately.
Deep under all the guilt and obsession that came with being a pentecostal fundamentalist evangelical Christian there is still me in there. I somehow survived my deep dive into what I would now classify as a cult mostly in tact.
Nineteen year old me wouldn’t think that though. She would think that who I am now has lost track of everything that really matters, that I had abandoned my God-given mission to share the gospel with the children of Illinois. She would be praying really hard for me. Or feeling guilty about not praying enough.
Luckily she’s not here anymore. I’m thirty-two now and still growing up. I’ll never be “grown up” becuase I’m never a static being. Who I am will constantly evolve and change based on what I experience and the way I interpret it . Who I am will change based on my physical location in the world and the people closest to me (both physically and relationally). You might even say that I’ve died and been resurrected as a more authentic version of myself.
I will never be “finished.” I will always be changing and I think thirty-two year old me will be happy with future me as long as I never stop growing up.