At the age of almost two years old, I first lost my home. On Good Friday the farm house in which I was born burned to the ground, leaving nothing but ash mingled with the bones of the cattle who didn't manage to escape. The following years I lived with my family in a trailer while the new house was being constructed. Two years later this was completed and we moved into the new house as the trailer was removed.
This house I lived in until 2003, until my father wanted to divorce my mother so that he could marry the woman he had been cheating with for months. He also managed to pester my mother out of the house, leaving me and my younger brother with the choice of whom we wanted to stay with. Both of us went with our mother, moving into a small house in the nearby city.
While living at this house, I for the first time felt what it means to lose one's home. Within months, my father and his new wife had redecorated and changed the house in which I had been raised so that I could no longer recognise it. My father also disowned me and my younger brother, so that there was no way back for us any more. He might as well have burned the place to the ground.
After this we moved to the other side of the country, then I moved to Canada for a short while, ended up back in the Netherlands, basically couch surfing because I had no place of my own, until ultimately ending up trying to commit suicide. After that failed attempt I stayed at my mother's place for a while, before getting a job and apartment.
Sharing this apartment with a less than emotionally stable person, I suffered months of physical and verbal abuse until I was force to basically run out of the door. When I returned a few months later, all of my belongings were gone, and nobody could do anything.
This led to me living for a while again at my mother's place until I finally moved to Germany, where the first apartment was uninhabitable and the second (current) one sees me currently dealing with an eviction case.
I first started dealing with my intersex condition back in 2005, shortly after moving to the other side of the Netherlands. Not having a body and a home have been central themes for those more than twelve years. Yet I would definitely say that not having a home is the worst, by far.
Even though I do not know exactly what my body is and why I'm having chronic pains, I'm still not fully crippled. I can still work, visit places and have fun with my hobbies. Without a home all of that is at risk. With the constant terror of a pending eviction any motivation or hope on a better life gets drained. There's no quiet, safe place to retire to, as it's a constant concern.
Not having a home definitely causes me far more stress than not having a body. Physical pains can be ignored and despite all of the issues it gives me, my body is still in relatively okay health. Psychological pain cannot be ignored. As minor progress got made over the years on my intersex case, much of the uncertainty got removed. With two weeks I'm seeing a neurologist for the numbness and pains in the limbs on the right side of my body. Physically things will get better, probably.
Yet none of that helps me with getting a home. Even though I have done nothing wrong, depending on how the opposing side plays it, I could still face eviction. As I noticed over the past months, whenever I force myself to find a new apartment or better, it causes an incredible amount of stress and even minor setbacks or irregularities are likely to trigger a suicidal depression. Two weekends spent crying, clawing at my body, thinking of plunging sharp knives into my abdomen or cutting my wrists, etc. is more than enough.
Anyone who feels that I should just 'suck it up' and go through all of that again and maybe truly end up trying to commit suicide again can go get a can of gasoline, pour it over themselves and light a match. Maybe then they'll be able to sympathise with the psychological pain searching for a new home puts me through.
The funny thing is that even though I'd be perfectly fine with being put to death right now instead of facing this drawn out eviction case, I'd still want to continue living and work on becoming happy. I guess I'm just tired of always fighting. Kill me. Let me live. I don't care. Just don't make me suffer any longer.
Maya
4 comments:
Sometimes having a hobby can divert thoughts and lead to new ways of thinking.
Have you ever considered playing Ingress? Ingress has a very large open community that seems to have a large capacity for accepting people as they are.
The reason I mention this is my wife plays Ingress and it seems to help her mental state as well as get her out with people and walking.
I hope things work out for you, both in your body and in your shelter.
Long note, first of 3 parts, in order to post: Maya, I empathize with you. I almost died in '96 when I also became blind and lost my power of speech (which I both regained), almost died again in '05, and have been through a lot of things that you have. We've been through serious things, and I too know what the loss of home and family can do. I know what it is to want to stand unhindered, to receive a respite from overt hardships. I have believed that there was a greater joy and purpose than the temporal, a cause to live that was beyond all that. It is TOO easy to get one's vision locked onto the magnifying glass of life's difficulties, and hard to step back for lifesaving perspective. But we need wise perspective. We can't afford the fall into the magnifying glass. Estrogen in one's body in youthful amounts affects one's emotions. From what little I know, you didn't experience that before, but now, it seems, you are. Estrogen makes the biological experiences and emotions topsy-turvy, especially until one gets accustomed to handling it. Even then, it isn't stable, because it shifts constantly through the month. Guys have a stable endocrine chemistry that allows them to enjoy an ongoing status-quo of body, that we as women just don't have. Granted, after menopause, it does get far easier, more like before puberty, but between puberty and menopause, it can be a wild ride, the first few years very hard, with one's mom saying often, "You'll feel better in a week" and sure enough, she was right. ~ to be continued in parts 2 and 3. Thanks.
Part 2 of 3, continued: I can only guess that in your case, you had become accustomed to the lovely stability of being a guy, hormonally steadfast in it, albeit some appearance-anomalies, and then at some point, a sudden new life experience of what you reflect to be a feminine puberty, and perhaps without a female mentor to help you adjust to it. The first few years after feminine puberty, it is common for young women to have a very hard time with it, to go into crying jags, to battle What Feels Like "depression" every month, because the hormones are all over the map. They're not crazy or weaklings, they're just biological creatures who are going through great hormonal fluctuations, and scientifically told, hormones make a big impact on emotions; it is all Very convincing to the mind. It is a very real experience, and most guys would not be able to find their way through it, much as we had difficulty at age 13, when most young women come of age. I have thought of you, imagining what it would experientially be like for a guy to suddenly find himself with such hormonal flow. It would be very emotionally confusing to say the least. This I do know, we can't afford to be rash and make emotional assessments based on hormonal impact. We must only make decisions with a clear head, by wisdom, not by emotions. Emotions are a horrid, unstable way to live, in terms of following their dictates. This is one reason why I don't eat Soy, because Soy is estrogenic, and disrupts our endocrine system, throwing the hormone balance off, often resulting in mood reactions and upset. So if you ever eat that, I'd stop, reading all ingredient labels when grocery shopping. ~ To be continued, Thanks.
Part 3 of 3: continued:
It helps greatly for a woman to find a spiritual framework in structuring her thoughts, in light of her monthly fluctuations, a framework that gives primary influence for stability to provide a solid, unchanging constant, and to hold the chemistry and biology in secondary position. Men might be able to live by their bodies, but a woman must live by wisdom, or she'll be off-balance, with the endocrine activity throwing her for loops all the time. I recommend the Psalms heavily, the book of Proverbs too, very helpful for both wisdom and heart, comfort to the emotions, soothing. To let wisdom guide our hearts and minds is vital, for the biology is just too unstable, and can't be relied upon.
I strongly recommend cutting your nails short for wisdom reasons, and Purposefully Choosing thoughts that are helpful and productive, while stubbornly refusing destructive thoughts. Daily humor is important, Laughing, as is beauty, flowers and trees, and hugs from a stable roommate like a loyal dog or a rabbit. Caring for a little one like that, gets our minds off us and onto another, moving our endocrine field into a positive function. It also gives us a creature to play and laugh with, to enjoy, and to love. I recommend watching YT videos of your favorite small animal that makes you smile and laugh. The great thing about dogs is that they get us out for walks in the sunshine and change of scenery for exercise and good perspective. Being indoors too much can bury the perspective. One must build their own stable life-structure, which when anticipating a move is challenging, but nonetheless, we must structure in as much positive as we can today, because delay of positives is costly. One of the things we feel most in challenging times is lack of power, control. Building one's inner life-structure, like I've described here, really helps rebuild one's sense of control and power over one's perspective. We can't control the world or all our circumstances, but we can structure our routines, our activities, how we think, the thoughts we will allow, and how we react to stimuli, and the positive things we build into our lives for the good. This becomes very essential, otherwise the things beyond our control will rule us. I understand more of what you've described than I can share here. Rest assured that you are in my thoughts and prayers, and that I send heart-hugs, desiring for you wisdom. Much Love, Cherish :)
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