For Those Just Joining Us...

*taps the microphone*

"Test... 1... 2... 3... works~"

Welcome to the first post on this particular blog. What's so special about this blog, you may be wondering? Well, it's mine of course ;)

Before I begin the real post, I'd like to note that the contents of this blog may be experienced as shocking or offensive to some. Those who do not want to hear detailed descriptions about the human anatomy and medical issues would best be advised to not read on. For everyone else, please try to enjoy and learn as much as possible ^-^

Very well, time to introduce myself, I guess. For those who haven't listened to my whining and such the past years on IRC, here's the 'short' version:

I was mistaken for, and raised as a boy because my intersexuality (female with incomplete female and mostly complete male sexual organs in my case) wasn't recognized after birth. After my fifth year I began to withdraw into myself, mostly due to my giftedness and general discomfort with my environment. For the next 19 years I would avoid any social interactions, live without friends and reject any physical contact with another human being. Before puberty my emotional development pretty much grinded to a halt.

When I finally snapped out of my withdrawal in early 2005 the first thing I had to come to terms with was my body. No longer could I pretend it was a child's body. Basically I had to figure out what it really was. Looking back at my own behaviour, I decided that at least mentally I was female, and since I had always been told that I was male, my body had to be male. So I had to be transsexual then. The coming weeks I'd do research on the internet and finally learn to look at my own body, which is when I started noticing some oddities. Namely my body didn't look that male-like at all. That was when I started suspecting that I was intersexual. Further research (literature and on my own body) confirmed this.

With this information I went to the 'gender team' in Amsterdam, which specializes in treating transsexuals, but which supposedly treated intersexual people as well. I was optimistic that I'd be welcomed there with open arms and receive all the care I needed. What followed was nothing short of a horror scenario. To start things off with, after the initial intake appointment they had me wait 6 months (they promised 4 months) before I decided to call them. Clearly forgotten that I even existed, they scheduled an appointment with one of their psychologists.

This psychologist seemed very understanding at first. When I told her about my thoughts and suspicions she scheduled an appointment with a gynaecologist. The moment I was alone with this man I knew that things wouldn't turn out right. He wanted me to show exactly where I could feel something resembling a vagina underneath the skin. Me being terrified had pretty much frozen up at that point already. With all my muscles in my body contracted it was of course impossible to check out the area in question. Ultimately he concluded that I had mistaken my anus for a vagina or something equally insane and that he couldn't find any evidence that I was anything but a generic male.

The follow-up appointment with the psychologist descended into a drama, with lots of shouting, crying and me getting kicked out. The next 6-7 months I'd spend fighting with another psychologist not connected to the gender team before I returned to Amsterdam again for another try. This was in january of 2007. The first appointment with the psychologist (not the same woman) went rather well, with me feeling positive that this time it'd actually work out. The second appointment, however, involved her retreating on all her promises she made the first time and forcing me to comply with their protocol, which I knew wasn't going to work for me. I was pretty much done with fighting these people at that point. For the first time since I began looking for help in 2005 I finally snapped. In a fit of anger I threw my belongings on the floor and left the room to calm down and collect my thoughts.

They called my mother, who had come with me, into the room where I had been minutes ago for a talk. Later I heard that they were worried that I might be suffering from anger attacks and even abusing my own mother by hitting her and such. They even suggested that I might have to be sent to an institution for treatment. Later, with my mom still in the room, I was called inside as well. There I finally told the psychologist how horrible I felt about the way I was being treated and that they were literally trying to kill me, just so that they could stick to their precious protocol, meanwhile ignoring that they had been trying to brainwash me into believing that I was just a transsexual boy, even though that was clearly nonsense by that time.

In the end I left the room on my own accord after telling the psychologist that she didn't care about me at all. I canceled all outstanding appointments and left that hospital for the last time. That was the very first time that I had felt strong enough to stand up for myself. I've seldomly felt so good in my life. It was like I was walking on clouds. Less than a month after that I had started on the hormone treatment to get a normal female hormone balance. Sure, what I was doing was not according to the rules, and I was taking medicines which could kill or cripple me without prescription, but I didn't care. For the first time since early 2005 I felt that I was in control and free to do what I knew what was good for me.

The past months I've made some impressive progress. I've begun to develop socially, showed my pictures to people I knew via the internet, finally got the confirmation that way that I wasn't ugly, or worse, looked like a boy. Got a boyfriend, had my first sexual experiences (with another girl, my boyfriend still lives an ocean away from me :( ), and generally learned to look at myself as a grown woman instead of a child. I've also learned that my body is indeed that of a regular female, just with some weird stuff going on down there. I can get both female and male orgasms, for example. It'll still take me a while to figure this all out :P

This doesn't mean that things are fine, though, even though they keep improving. I've still got quite a few social and sexual traumas. The past month I've started to recall memories of about a year ago, when I was sexually abused by a belgian boy who I had met via the internet (where else?) and who said he could help me. I still can't trust males for this reason, and nearly go insane at the thought of a man having sex with a woman. It just hits too close to home or so. I'm also jealous of other women, because they don't have to go through what I'm dealing with, and never have to worry about their own body, or so it feels.

At the moment I'm working on migrating to Canada, so that I can meet up with my boyfriend there, build up our company (software development, R&D), and receive the medical care I sought here in The Netherlands in vain. It's still far from certain that I'll have secured the funds to be in Canada before XMas this year, however, which is another thing for me to worry about. That's also why I started this blog: so that I could spill my thoughts and let the rest of the world carry some of the weight of my troubles.

Anyway, I'll leave it at this for now. It's time for me to go to bed right after I post this text which is much longer than I had originally envisioned :P

Until the next time,


Maya