Fitness~

I didn't sleep well at all last night and felt very tensed up the entire day, accomplishing relatively little due to feeling heavily distracted and tired.There are a few things I did accomplish, though.

First one was trying to find some activity to do outside my room, some sport or so. Ultimately I ended up deciding for joining up with a fitness/health center. I will take a look at one within walking distance from my home first, called 'Your Health'. Their site gives a good and positive impression. On my way home from the GP on Friday I'll visit it and look/ask around a bit.

My concern with it at this point are the costs. The monthly costs are 16 Euro, 15 Euro membership charge (once), assuming I get a yearly membership. Additional costs are clothing (got little suitable for practicing in, especially in the area of sweat pants or so) and shoes (indoor). I feel that the positive effects of joining this health center would be significant, physically, mentally and socially. I would not want it to financially ruin me, however.

I talked with my mother earlier today, and she offered to bear part of the costs, at least those for the shoes and clothing. If possible I would not want to use her money, though, as she isn't exactly rich either. I have considered asking for donations to cover at least part of the cost until I can fully pay for it myself, but so far I don't exactly feel that people are jumping at the chance to donate to me. Any comments on this idea are welcome, though.

Tomorrow I'll attempt to finish a client's project and do some work on Nyanko's first game. Wish me luck.

I also wrote a scientific paper today, the first draft at least :D


Maya

Tired...

Today I had my second appointment at the VUMC with doctor Gijs. Pieter accompanied me again, for which I am intensely grateful. Last night I hardly slept at all, merely dozed a bit through the night.

Once at the hospital I collapsed already in the waiting room, initially feeling like I was going to hyperventilate, then bursting out in tears right before doctor Gijs arrived. The conversation with doctor Gijs was akin to the previous time, with him trying to prepare me for the conclusion that there may be no medical explanation for my body, which would make me medically 'male', and significantly limit my options with surgery.

The fact that in Germany they saw something completely different on the MRI scan in two clinics during three reviews than the radiologists here in the Netherlands apparently doesn't warrant the need to contact those clinics to discuss this. I don't feel like I can trust anything concluded based on those MRI images. Dr Gijs will prepare an appointment with a radiologist who will walk me through his interpretation of the MRI images on the 20th next month.

I have asked for more tests, including a chimera test, something the VUMC claimed four years would be too expensive. It wasn't their first lie to me. Dr Gijs at least somewhat understood the trouble I have with trusting the VUMC. Near the end of the appointment he said that it could take a while in such a way that it triggered something nasty inside me. I suddenly got angry, yelled that four years was long enough already and left the room.

I sat down on a bench in the hallway outside the room and waited for Pieter. He told me to return to the room, which I did. Once inside we talked a bit more, but I don't remember too much of it any more, as I was crying nearly the whole time. I felt so miserable and intensely wanted to get rid of everything 'fake', anything that wasn't true, not really part of my body, to not even attempt to become more female than I am right now. I'm not sure how to explain the feeling. I felt so tired...

Once home I felt tired and depressed. I tried to sleep, but I felt too miserable and had a bad headache which prevented me from sleeping at all. I'm basically running on fumes at this point. Tomorrow I'll make an appointment with my GP, to update her on today's 'progress', as well as on the strange stabbing pains I keep experiencing in various limbs and my abdomen. I will also discuss my near-daily use of anti-acid pills for my stomach for the past months, and my sleeping pill usage. I'm taking so many pills now I feel like a junkie. Only thing missing are sedatives to keep me from harming myself.

I feel disgusted with my body. Today has reinforced in an extreme way that I am indeed a disgusting freak, with no place in society, or even a right to exist. I'm a gross, undefinable mistake. Life is and will always be a hell to me. I'm crazy for not having ended it sooner. Blame my rational side for still finding interesting things to do, I guess.

Hope? Don't be ridiculous...


Maya

Neither Dead Nor Alive...

There is this one universal truth which applies to virtually every case of suicide, namely that the person in question didn't want to die at all, he or she just didn't want to keep on living. This was true for my cousin and I still feel like I'm treading in her footsteps. As long as life doesn't feel worth it, due to continuing experiences, pain, or anything else unpleasant, the decision to keep living one more day, one more hour for no apparent gain becomes more and more difficult, until the day comes when one sees no other choice but to decline life. Not to accept death, but to accept that one will stop living. It may seem like an insignificant difference, but it's a major difference only those who have gone through their own personal hell can really understand.

Last Tuesday I talked about this with my GP as well, and she understood it. She asked more questions about my wishes and opinions and I felt like we really reached a new level of understanding, for which I am grateful. If only other doctors and psychologists would be as understanding. Next Monday I'll be going to the VUMC again, for what feels like another soul crushing experience in which everything will be denied to me and no options made available.

One thing my GP was surprised by was the rationality behind my desire to be acknowledged by doctors, namely to get my official identity changed and to get all treatments fully paid for by my insurance instead of me paying the thousands of Euros for it each year.

Something the GP and I agreed on as well was that without a clear conclusion on how my body is put together and such, surgery can not even be considered, which is another thing I keep feeling amazed about. At this point the VUMC keeps telling me that "there's nothing" and that they consider me to be male. They completely ignore that my body has never felt like that of a male and in terms of reproductive organs it's even more confusing. Yet apparently it's not important to give some kind of explanation. Instead I get told over and over again that I will probably never know the answers. In which case there can be no bloody surgery, no matter what type, either, and I'm wasting my time at those retarded hospitals with their stupid, moronic idiots.

Last night I experienced one of the worst emotional collapses ever. I barely slept afterwards and at this moment I still feel terrible. Something I have come to realize is that over the past years I have to come negatively associate so many things, including things related to sexuality and relationships. With nearly everything I hear, read or see triggering something nasty and painful inside life is everything but fun. More and more ofen I wonder why I keep deciding to live one more day, or one more hour.

The American friend who sent a letter to Oprah Winfrey a few weeks ago still hasn't received a reply, nor have I to my letter I sent last year. The national media here doesn't think I'm worthy of a reply either. It all reinforces the idea for me that I'm a fool for exposing myself to this pain-filled Hell called 'life' over and over again.

Just tell me what the f*** I am already...


Maya

Work

First of all, I finally updated the 'About Me' page on the main MayaPosch.com site. I added a list of facts as well, as a sort of FAQ. Hopefully it'll be more clear than the old version.

Secondly, to recap my mood and such the past weeks: about two weeks ago the continuous headache I already had began worsening, the past few days it seems to develop into a splitting headache during the day, incapacitating me, requiring me to take painkillers and try to sleep it off. It reminds me a bit of the year(s) at High-School when I had constant migraines (1+ times/week). Like then, there's no question that this is fully due to increased stress levels.

My mood during the day hovers between optimism, fatalism, depression, intense sadness and frustration, plus stoicism. I think it covers about the entire spectrum, including bouts of intense desire to commit suicide and despising oneself for being too chicken to just grab that knife or so. My only stable moods would be when I'm doing useful work.

The past weeks I have come to despise the compiler chain GCC with such an intense hatred, it could lead to manslaughter if it was alive. While working on a project for a German client (nicely behind schedule due to GCC's quirks), I managed to get the mixed C/C++ to compile on both the Microsoft Visual C++ compiler (MSVC) and MingW 3.4.x (using CodeBlocks as IDE). The 'extern "C"' statement is hereby a crucial key to making it work. The fun part starts with GCC (used 4.3.x) on Linux, which does not seem to recognize the 'extern' keyword and happily ignores it, instead throwing errors at me because it tries to compile the C code as though it was C++. My only recourse at this point seems to be to rewrite the C++ bits into C. I really dislike C-style strings :( Ah well, anything to be done with this project.

During the project I have come to loathe the Boost C++ extension libraries as well. I have tried to integrate the Filesystem, networking (ASIO) and some other libraries. The issues with it are due to the heavily embedded namespaces in some libraries like ASIO, poor documentation, and it being an absolute hell to compile. I spent a week attempting to make the filesystem library (two LIBs) link, only to have it demand time and time again an old, decripit version of one LIB while ignoring the LIB it should use. Disabling auto-link, recompiling Boost, plus hours of googling and trying solutions had no effect at all. Trevor couldn't get it to work either.

At this point I'm writing my own filesystem library, and employing Nyanko's existing standard library (SWL) for things like networking, threading and so on. I'll also use my own hybrid encryption method instead of OpenSSL for secure links within client-server frameworks, as OpenSSL is pretty much the pinnacle of a poor software project, with non-existent documentation, a backwards and non-intuitive API and the near-impossibility of the bloody source code ever compiling correctly. Its BIO I/O library I have the most experience with, and I must say that it has been an absolute horror to work with. Just astounding what kind of crap sometimes ends up in production systems. Leave poor closed-source, proprietary code alone for a change and see the horrors of open-source...

*coughs*

Anyway, one big project I'm working on at the moment is a hardware simulator, named Lilium, to be used with VHDL/Verilog and other hardware description languages, to simulate the design before it is loaded onto an FPGA or turned into an ASIC. It's a fairly involved project, but despite warnings from Pieter that it may be hard to pull off, I'm confident that I am capable of successfully completing the first prototype I'm working on. I hope that such demos will attract the attention of potential customers and/or investors. It would be a very welcome change.

Finally, I'll be going swimming again in an hour at the indoor pool at Almere-Stad (Almere-City) from 9 AM to 12 PM. Anyone is welcome ;)


Maya

Hope?

Yesterday was the appointment with doctor Gijs at the VUMC hospital. He turned out to be a psychologist. The appointment lasted around 1.5 hours. During it Pieter mostly talked for me as soon I was overwhelmed by emotions and later 'slipped away', i.e. I was aware of my surroundings, but couldn't respond to anything, something which happens to me during times of great stress.

Doctor Gijs basically claimed that he wanted to see this resolved as well, and he seemed to understand at least that I'm not a bloody, filthy transsexual... thing. He said he'd arrange a meeting with other members of the gender team, during which their interpretation of the MRI images would be clarified.

I can't forget, however, about the last letter I received from the VUMC, in which was claimed that the members of the gender team had discussed my case and concluded that there was no indication that I could possibly be intersexual. It feels like they have judged me already. I can feel not even a spark of hope inside, not after the appointment or the rest of yesterday, or today.

My dreams the past months still feature me as a feature- and faceless person. What irks me immensely is when a specialist says that 'there's nothing odd with my body' or that I'm 'biologically/medically a man'. Such statements go in against everything that _is_ wrong. My body isn't even pretending to be male, and never has. I want to know why, but those who can provide me with answers systematically deny that there is anything wrong at all. That's what frustrates me... if I ever bring harm to myself, it will be largely because the frustration due to that will grow too strong.

I'm a faceless, disgusting freak surrounded by people living their uneventful lives, further frustrating me by being what I can never become.

I'm so tired...


Maya

Current Happenings And Agenda~

Last night was a rather interesting experience, although I do not remember anything of it. I had taken a sleeping pill prior to going to bed. Pieter had shortly before that arrived from his D&D night and left with the dogs for their walk. I was reading in my book as I waited for him to return and so I could wish him goodnight. That was seemingly the last conscious thought I had that night as by the time Pieter returned home, he found me in a rather sleepish and gigglish state. He wished me goodnight and turned off the light. I have no memory of him even returning home, plus I noticed today that I had put my bookmark a few pages back from where I had left off. Yet Pieter told me today that I was still capable of responding to his questions and such when he checked up on me. Most interesting, albeit slightly disturbing :)

The past weeks are marked by a severe increase in stress levels, to the point where I suffer from a constant headache and sensation of nausea. Today was the first time in a while that I have taken a nap during the day, however. My state is alert, fully aware of my surroundings, yet intensily focused on my intellectual side. I have cut off communications which I deemed unnecessary and not relevant to my mental stability. Applications such as MSN Messenger (Live Messenger) have been uninstalled and all of my attempts to keep in touch with people who didn't seem responsive enough have ceased.

To those who are trying to contact me by text message on my mobile phone, I won't be responding so as to save the few credits I have still left on it. Use email instead.

A good friend in the US has written a letter on my behalf addressed to Oprah Winfrey, in the hope that she or someone connected to her will read it and feel called upon to provide some kind of help. I have tried this way before once already, without even a response, but we'll see how it goes this time.

Saturday my mother and my younger brother will visit, which will be the first time I have seen them since about a year. Sunday a friend of Pieter will visit. Monday I have the appointment at the VUMC.

To talk about hope or such things at this point is rather futile and irrelevant. I have no expectations, no desires, no dreams. I can still feel the remains of them stir inside me at times, but the primary sensation I am aware of is that of fatalism, mixed with silent despair. I find myself unable to cry, unable to emote anything I feel these days. It's as though I am becoming intensely aware of myself and my surroundings, yet I see myself as little more than an interesting construct, a machine, much as I desired to see myself years ago, when I was still withdrawn. Or perhaps I have become withdrawn again.

I desire no contact with others, as their stories and details about their lives stir something painful inside. I can find no compassion for people expressing love, in any form of shape. Desiring purely physical contact for the sake of doing so is something I consider to be something totally horrific and will upset me for hours. Even if there is more involved, the thought of it still sickens me. I consider this to be a part of my PTSD.

What of my future? I guess the only path that is open to me at this point considering my circumstances and my PTSD plus other assorted traumas is to live in a withdrawn fashion, only seeking contact with others for purely work-related business. At this moment it would be silly for me to consider things like dreams, happiness and such, as they are not available to me and I'm fairly certain they'll never be. As said before by doctor Linthorst at the AMC, I may just have to learn to live without ever knowing the answers to the questions I seek. Concretely this means living without solid identity, without self-image, without relations, without intimacy, without a defined place in society, and no refuge other than in intellectual pursuits.

I guess that it would have been better for me to have remained withdrawn and never try to find answers, as the only major things the past four years seem to have resulted in are things I do not understand or which I intensely regret, most of all my more intimate encounters with both guys and girls. I often wish that I could erase all those memories instead of having them haunting me and feeding my doubts and self-loathing.

The one thing which upsets me the most is the suggestion by especially medical specialists and psychologists that I have brought this all over myself, that if I hadn't confused myself into believing all these ramblings I have been telling them and all of you about my body and what I experience, that I could have lived happily on as a perfectly normal boy. They completely ignore that there never has been a moment in my life when I was 'happy', never a moment that I felt that my body was complete, that I understood what was going on, instead they believe that all of this was by my own choice, that I'm just making life difficult for myself.

I do not understand why I had to be born this way, or why people seem to perceive me in so many different ways, draw conclusions which clash with each other at every point. Why me? Why not someone else? Why didn't I get to live a normal life, unaware of a life filled with only uncertainty, pain, terribly memories and completely abandoned by the people who could help me? More and more often this all just seems like a bad joke, an experiment gone wrong. The points at which I feel that reality is slipping away as a specialist draws another conclusion are too many to number. I do not feel that I have a firm grasp on reality, or sanity anymore. Who cares about either when all they are is pure, undiluted pain and agony?

Please, just let me sleep and never wake me up again...


Maya