Frustratingly Not Like Everyone Else

As I attempt to integrate back into regular society I'm met with a lot of frustrating realizations. My unusual body, for one, is making for sometimes awkward conversations with others, something I have written about before. Then there is the inability to squeeze the reality of my life into the confines of an 'every day person'. Between doing interviews for newspapers, magazines, radio and TV on a regular basis, writing my autobiography and handling a number of court cases related to my intersex condition, I already have a full-time job just there. Add to that the full-time job of managing my PTSD condition and arranging the last major parts of the highly unpleasant medical chapter of my life.

To then pretend that I'm just a regular 'nine to five' person with only a minor interest in activities beyond working and hanging out with friends and family is frustrating me. Worse, it makes for a disconnect between it and reality which is exceedingly stressful. My past and current reality is and will forever be an intrinsic part of who and what I am. I don't even want to change it, regardless of how often I have wished to just be 'normal'. My goal in life isn't just to be like everyone else. My experiences the past decade has given me a new mission and goal, involving the prevention of the kind of suffering I went through. I can not just live out my life ignoring this. There is no happiness that way.

I don't know what my future will look like. A big problem in advancing is money and having to rely on the help from others, which both are tedious and slow processes. It's not very puzzling that I generally do not feel like I even belong in this world. Beyond a few people I have met it doesn't seem like my life overlaps with that of virtually anyone on this planet. I'm a perfect stranger in a strange world.

By the end of this month I'll be visiting the Netherlands again for a hearing in Utrecht at the Human Rights College involving the intersex discrimination case against me by my former Dutch insurance company Univé. I still have to see about the logistics for this, as it's about a 6-hour trip from Karlsruhe to Utrecht one way. At least I'm making some progress on a medical level as I should have an introduction appointment with my new GP next week. I hope that she can help me speed up the communication with the surgeon. This, too, would mean a number of train journeys, hopefully surgery and a recovery period of a few weeks at least.

For me this all is reality. Anything else is secondary to it. Not because I want it to be, but because I have no choice in this matter. My life's course was set in stone already before I was even born. To be born intersex means living a tough, lonely life, fitting in nowhere and facing ridicule at every point. All I can do is to try and change this. Living a life like everyone else with a regular job, home, family and such is not part of this. Where I gain something, my PTSD makes it abundantly clear that none of it will last. None of it ever has.


Maya