Reflecting On All That Hurts

Last week I went to see my gynaecologist to address the increase in period-related pain after the new hormone therapy he put me on. One part of it was an obvious improvement by switching from an oral form of estradiol to a gel-based, transdermal one which would spare my liver. The other was to switch from the anti-conception pill to pure progesterone. While using this new combination I noticed that the period symptoms became more severe than I was used to, so I wanted to express my doubts about this approach. The gynaecologist then recommended scrapping taking the progesterone completely and see what happens.

For the past days it's been more or less agony city for me. It's easier to describe the part of my body where I don't experience pain or discomfort. My hips were the most obvious point where the pain started, as well as the lower abdomen and the burning pain in the vaginal region making it a pain to sit down or walk. It's now these regions, my knees, feet, lower back, sides and everything in between where it's severely hurting much of the time or where I'm experiencing extreme to mild discomfort.

Where I just want to throw up my arms in the air in surrender whilst cackling like a mad person is that at this point nobody knows why I'm experiencing these pains. They started for me at the usual age of around 11 years, though the first question every physician here asks me cannot be answered. Namely whether or not I experience bleeding during these monthly episodes. Since everything is closed from the outside all I can say is that 'something' is happening. Something which causes a lot of expansion in the lower abdomen and presses on the nerves running from the lower section of the spinal cord to the lower abdomen and legs. Yet nobody here seems in any particular rush to address this. When I talked about it with my gynaecologist and the two most recent surgeons the former just told me to try this new hormone therapy approach and the latter said that they'd wait the 1-2 months for these genetic results.

Is it really a surprise in this situation that I'd opt to just go ahead with the planned surgery in less than two months regardless of what further happens? Experiencing severe discomfort and pain every month while everybody is telling me that there shouldn't be any reason why I would experience it is nothing short of a nightmare. What if it is something serious? Since my internal physiology as far as any possible ovarian tissue and other female reproductive organs/tissues goes is about as far from the norm as it gets, there is no existing situation in the literature or similar cases to point to. Nobody knows what's happening or what may happen in the future. And it scares the hell out of me. It could be nothing. It could be lethal. It could be anything in between.

That's another situation where I can only fervently wish that I was born normal instead of with this freakish body every physician seems to want to just ignore while waiting for me to wander off and die instead of bothering them. If had been a normal female I would have no mysteries and no agony like this. Even with a very heavy period like some have it would at least be something known benign and one could focus on ways to deal with it. Since I don't know what is causing these horrible pains there is nothing I can do. I don't want to take every single possible generic painkiller in the hope that it will help either as there is no way that could be healthy for me.

The whole 'normal' thing I can not shake off either. Seeing quite normal people around me every single day is in many ways maddening and makes me feel frustrated and sad at the same time. Seeing people around me live regular lives with regular relationships and doing all the regular things and putting it next to my life of persecution, medical uncertainty and the struggle for self-definition while never truly having experienced a normal family, friendship or a relationship, it all makes me feel even more like I do not belong. What in heaven's name happened that I ended up like this? Was all it took being born like this into an intersex body which seems to be universally loathed by physicians? Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't been born into a horrible, intolerant country like the Netherlands, but who knows...

When it comes to the issue of relationships and the inevitable sexuality part I can honestly say that I would gladly not deal with it ever again in my life. Either get the 'perfect' relationship, or forget about it completely. I think that the latter is the most likely outcome. I can not stand relationships at this point anyway. Seeing couples in public or elsewhere keeps evoking the same feelings of sickness or longing, depending on whether it's a heterosexual or lesbian couple. Homosexual couples are fine for me and evoke no particular emotion. Lesbian couples I can feel a slight sense of longing, but also a sense of fatalism. Heterosexual couples only make me feel raging hatred.

Last Saturday when this guy in California shot to death a number of women I actually took the time to read the entire autobiography/manifesto he had published shortly before he went on his shooting spree, or Day of Revenge as he called it. The thing was that in his writings I could recognize a lot. Not the sense of entitlement, or the yearning for sexual contact, as if anything I feel pretty unworthy of anything and as far as the latter goes: been there, done that, only got the never-healing scars. What I did recognize was this feeling of loathing towards couples. Of feeling sickened at the thought of them having sex. The sense of wrongness. It's the same for me, only completely different. Yet it made me think.

I know it's all not real and that heterosexual relationships are not unnatural and men really aren't disgusting creatures who just want to assault and use women for their own pleasure and gratification. Yet that doesn't mean that the sight of a heterosexual couple holding hands doesn't make me feel sick to my stomach. I can not help hating and loathing them. I can not stop the thoughts of destroying them for daring to have filthy, gross, disgusting sexual acts. In this way my mind keeps torturing itself. I know that for me it's likely the PTSD which has distorted my sense of reality in this manner, because I know that I didn't think like this a number of years ago before I got raped and before the medical torture and brainwashing started.

As far as the physical pains go, I am still struggling to figure out for myself whether I can call them real or not. Having experienced psychosomatic pains on many occasions before due to excessive stress and combined with my low self-esteem/brainwashing part of my mind keeps questioning whether I'm not just making it all up. It may be one of the motivations behind this thought which keeps popping up in my mind to just let things play out and see how bad this physical pain goes. At this point it occasionally gets me to the point where I nearly collapse already, including early today while riding my bicycle. Only by suffering a major medical incident can I prove to myself and others that it's real and not faked.

As for addressing my concerns about these pains, I explained already that I have done so to multiple physicians, but that they just don't care. Clearly I'm not supposed to get medical help at this point. Maybe because I'm only making myself think that it's serious or even real.

Questioning oneself like this all the time really hurts, though.


Maya