Seeking A Way Out Where Every Path Leads To Death

"The so-called psychotically depressed person who tries to kill herself doesn't do so out of  hopelessness or any abstract conviction that life's assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire's flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It's not desiring the fall; it's terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling 'Don't!' and 'Hang on!', can understand the jump. Not really. You'd have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling." - David Foster Wallace [1]

For over ten years I have had to endure brainwashing by physicians and psychologists, eroding and distorting my sense of self into something ever so gruesome until I truly began to believe that I was mentally ill. I have been exposed to countless physical violations by the same physicians, as part of their attempts to brainwash me. I have been beaten up and tortured by police officers with lasting physical damage, without committing any crime. I have suffered rape and abuse by both men and women. There's almost nothing in daily life which doesn't at least in some way remind me of these events which also fill my dreams with torturous nightmares.

I don't even have to try remember and feel physicians penetrating and violating me, or see their self-assured faces as they would tell me that I am delusional and really do not have anything but a normal biologically male body. I can still feel the police officer sitting on top of me to subdue me, the bashing of my head against a car door and the sharp pain of the metal cuffs seemingly tearing into my wrists as I begged for them to loosen them. The intense sense of shame and violation as I got forcefully stripped off my clothes and thrown naked into a cell. This shifts into recollections of the many who have used me physically and sexually. Watching others hug or be intimate is too painful a reminder. Others rarely are allowed to touch me beyond shaking hands as it's too distressing for me.

That I moved to Germany was to escape the persecution and terrors I experienced in the Netherlands. Yet even here it doesn't seem like I'll get even a semblance of the help I require. Medically things are falling apart as I described in previous posts and unless the upcoming surgery is a success, this will be another wasted year. As for treatment for my post-traumatic stress disorder and other traumatic stress disorders I suffered over the past years, this too seems virtually impossible. Whether it's medically or psychologically I'm apparently too unique a case. There literally is no help for me out there due to being the first and only case.

As I'm slowly losing my sense of self again with the many recent confusing events and setbacks it rekindles the flames which keep me away from living a life. One cannot come close to a life when it's all on fire and even just coming closer hurts a lot. Thus one backs away, further and further. Yet there's only so far one can back away. Much like a victim trapped in a burning skyscraper, cut off from any escape route. While one fervently hopes that the flames do not come closer or will extinguish themselves, it becomes impossibly clear in one's mind that falling to a quick death is preferable over slowly burning to death.

I'm still in the 'fervently hoping' phase at this point, yet having tried to keep up hope for month after month, year after year, it's been chipping away at my resolve and patience one bit at a time until at this point there's precious little left of it. Don't get me wrong, I would like to have a life like everybody else. I have so many things I still want to do and enjoy. Yet the flames just keep getting in the way and burning me. It hurts too much. Apparently all due to having been born in a socially undesirable body and refusing to go along with whatever physicians wanted me to do. I can not win when the game is stacked against me.

In hoping for a miracle I would like to see clarity about my intersex condition and receive the reconstructive surgery. I would like to get support for my PTSD and DID traumatic disorders so that I can finally overcome the horrors of the past decade.

If no miracle occurs... the flames and open window are always there as a terrifyingly and normally unimaginable choice. As someone who wouldn't even want to jump out of a functioning airplane with a parachute, it's frightening to think that I could find myself in that situation again where one side I'd have the scorching heat and on the other the cool air and hundred meter drop.


Maya


[1] http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/200381-the-so-called-psychotically-depressed-person-who-tries-to-kill-herself