All too often it feels to me as if having psychological and mental traumas and problems does not count in 'the real world'. As if none of it is actually real, or relevant. It makes me feel both frustrated and like a big crybaby when I have to do something others have no problems with, but which to me feels as fun as volunteering to be gang-raped.
It's for such reasons that it heartens me to get some kind of acknowledgement that I am not just imagining all of this and don't just try to guilt-trip other people into doing things for me. Still, when I read the official diagnosis my psychotherapist sent to my lawyer for the upcoming eviction court case, it's at the same time also horribly depressing.
Severe depression with latent suicidal tendencies. Post-traumatic disorder with flashbacks, nightmares and other severe symptoms. Also an intersex condition, which is of course linked into all of the previous. The hope of a reconstructive surgery after over a decade of working towards finding proper medical help and ending a quest which has taken up most of my life so far.
During my psychotherapy sessions I still have the same problems with really saying what I feel and think, the same as in daily life. I'm not supposed to make people aware of the fact that I'm not like them, that I have suffered traumas. That I have seen, lived through and barely survived things most people will never experience. No worries, I'm just a normal human, just like everybody else. Just look at my plastic smile :)
With the latest session I managed to finally channel some of the real, raw feelings that keep churning inside of my psyche. Primarily the disbelief, frustration and anger I feel at what happened back in 2005 and continued afterwards, when the gender team at the VUmc hospital in Amsterdam claimed that my blood contained normal male levels of testosterone, with their gynaecologist insisting that he had found no traces of me being intersex, and finally the head of the team - part of an international group of so-called intersex experts who drew up some protocols on handling intersex cases - concluding that I could not possibly be intersex.
It took just over a year after that last conclusion to get the German MRI results proving that I'm a hermaphrodite. The biopsy in 2011 proved that I could not ever have had normal male testosterone levels on account of having undeveloped testicles. Despite this the insistence by mostly Dutch doctors and psychologists that I was merely confused, crazy, delusional and/or transsexual.
I still cannot understand what they wanted from me. What they still want from me. To give into their fantasies and delusions and pretend to be transsexual? To follow their demands? To agree to be locked into a comfy, white, padded room? To die? Just what? I will never understand why they did what they did, and it hurts me so much. It made me realise just how little I mean, or my opinion. That truth is irrelevant and that there's no point in persisting.
Losing a place to live and facing homelessness was then the final trigger which made me decide to commit suicide. I'm still trying to come to terms with not succeeding at what seemed and at times still seems like the perfect solution. Being at a point where a hateful landlady tries to make me homeless at the same time when I'm struggling to stay hopeful about an impending surgeon appointment puts me practically in the exact same place where I was back then when I was on the verge of committing suicide.
It's hard to say what it'll take. The surgeon appointment being disappointing. A lack of cooperation. The court case working out poorly and me having to settle for whatever alternative place I can find on short notice, or something else negative. It's not that I want to die, or that I savour the thought of committing suicide. It terrifies me. Yet at the same time I know all too well that when such negative things happen, the pain will get so bad that I cannot simply suffer through it, or so it feels.
That last time I had access to sleeping pills, which in hindsight were a great choice as committing suicide with those is pretty hard and are unlikely to cause permanent damage. Without access to those I might opt for something more dramatic, like a knife. If I succeed, it'll be horribly painful and messy. If not, I might end up crippled in some fashion, which would feed my depression and latent suicidal tendencies even further.
At this point I'm more or less stable, in the same sense that one can balance oneself on a tightrope positioned over a canyon. That's not to say that this is a good or healthy place to be. I'd want nothing more than to continue on to the other side of said canyon, to solid ground and safety, yet whether that works out is down to what other people will decide over the coming weeks and months.
It's also depressing to consider that all which triggered this mess was me being born intersex and asking questions.
Well done, world. Well done.
Maya
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