Years ago, my school organised a trip to the local film theatre, where my fellow students and myself would be watching a quirky Italian film called 'La Vita รจ Bella' [1]. Set at the beginning of World War II in Italy, it follows a young Italian couple and their young child. As the father is Jewish, he and his son are arrested and sent to a concentration camp. His wife - despite not being Jewish - decides to join him as well instead of staying behind.
The point where my classmates and I agreed the film took it too far was when the father began to pretend to his son that they weren't in a concentration camp, but actually there to be play a complicated game. While this could have been a heart-breaking collection of scenes, the way it was handled - with an absolutely disrespectful sense of humour - it completely ruined the mood of the film.
The jarring and forced attempts at brightening the mood with off-key humour became so grating that the most joyful moment of the film was when the father got discovered while sneaking around, and executed. After that the film reverted back to a far more fitting mood, and felt right again. Afterwards, we all felt that it was a shame that they had felt it necessary to force in those 'humorous' scenes.
That film raises the question of how far one can take hiding reality from a person, even if it's done with the best of intentions. As someone who suffers from severe post-traumatic stress disorder, my general outlook on life is rather bleak. Surviving and still living through more traumas tends to do that to a person. Regardless, it is standard procedure to tell someone like me that 'life isn't so bad', and 'just cheer up'. Or the worst one of all: 'things will get better'.
While some types of depression are due to the neurotransmitter balance in the brain having gone off-centre, many of those affected will be so due to external factors. When one has become fully aware of the situation which one is in, the very act of survival may lead to one becoming depressed. As the situation drags on, and survival appears to be all that is left, one's outlook on life becomes one of indifference, fatalism and worse. As one sees others live plain, boring lives, it makes one wonder what the point of being alive even is.
I do not think that my own problem is my outlook on life, or anything really to do with myself. Most likely I'm just really unlucky, with having been born intersex and gifted, suffering sexual and psychological abuse both as a child and again as an adult. Struggling through thirteen years of trying to find medical help for my intersex condition. Dealing with worsening chronic pain.
Then losing my job and facing an eviction, so that I'm losing both a place to live and my body itself. The situation seems hopeless.
As I then look around this world, I can see that Germany itself is a complete mess, both politically and socially. I don't really care to keep living here in this country. Yet where to move? So many countries with massive problems. Nowhere to just work a fun job and have a proper, quiet home. I'm still supposed to pretend that things aren't this bad, of course.
Germany has been an intense disappointment after the hope I felt when I first moved here, without real medical help, acceptance, yet with plenty of divisive and wrongful politics, people living on each other's lip and no real interest in changing things. The Netherlands I cannot move back to after all that doctors and psychologists did to me there. I won't find medical help or acceptance there either.
Within a matter of weeks I'll hear what the outcome of the eviction case against me will be. I expect having to pay lots of money in addition to what I have already paid so far, and be forced to leave the place with a couple of months. I don't care what others tell me to believe, I have years of experience to fall back on, and they tell me that I'll always get the raw end of any deal.
My therapist still expects that we can work on some old traumas and have me feel better. I'm not even sure I can trust anyone. I want to, of course.
I have a few friends whom I trust and where I hope that one day I can work up the energy to invest more time in them. Always 'later'. Survival comes first. Meeting people online can be a positive experience, though I have scared plenty of people away as they tried to befriend me and help me. I try not to be bitter, but I cannot help myself. Not with everything that is going on.
Am I supposed to bop myself upside the head and tell myself that I'm just being a silly ol' goose? That all I had to do all this time was smile and feel cheerful and optimistic. That life is all about your attitude towards it.
I actually remember feeling like that, about a decade ago, when I still had the hope that things would somehow work out. Yet things just worked out for the worst over and over. Every reprieve I seemed to get just led to another dead-end. I cannot bring myself to smile any more. Not at life at least. There are small moments which reminds me of the good times that were. Yet they will never come back.
I don't know where I'm headed with my life. I am too tired to try and steer it any more. I'm okay if it hurtles off the road and into a ravine or whatever. I did my best. I even tried to pretend that life wasn't so bad for a while. And I almost believed it. Yet life doesn't work like that. Life is ugly and deadly. Unless you were born in a lucky way, possibly even in a rich family. Then you really have to try to screw it up.
I'm expected to smile and lie at the jobs office this week again. Promise the world, even though I know that I am incapable of doing anything more than what I'm currently doing, and got no real interest in just another job.
I don't know what I'm doing, or where I'm going.
Life isn't beautiful.
I cannot pretend otherwise.
Maya
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_Is_Beautiful
Monday, 19 March 2018
Monday, 5 March 2018
The worst part about dying is when you still want to live
After last month's surgery I found myself struggling with thoughts regarding the futility of what I'm trying to do, with getting answers about and a resolution to my intersex condition. This along with the sense of emptiness after the last hope of getting an easy resolution got squashed. Nothing about my body is easy to explain or understand. Nothing seems to match up with standard physiology.
I spent so many hours just staring aimlessly at the ceiling while lying in bed, or looking at people around me, feeling even more distance between them and myself as ever before. The sensation was of losing myself even further. Naturally the gynaecologist saw fit to dismiss me as well when I next saw him, without so many as a referral or helpful advice.
Then, as I found ways to deal with this somewhat - along with the new chronic pain symptoms - I got an update from my lawyer for the eviction case against me. This in the form of a big pack of paper containing the summary of evidence in the case, which the court will use to decide on a ruling. First I thought it was the actual ruling already, then noticed what it was about. The request from my lawyer was to look through it and send in suggestions and corrections before the deadline in less than two weeks.
I cannot do that. I cannot open the document and read through it. I physically cannot do this. Merely holding this document had my heart pounding and me feeling like I was going to be sick. For the rest of that day I felt absolutely terrible. The past days little changed. The feeling was one of impending doom. The certainty that the game was up, and these past years of relative peace and quiet were about to come to an end, with forceful eviction and again the loss of all my belongings and money. Just like before.
Then, today I didn't feel as bad about it any more. I seem to have mostly stopped worrying. I still cannot look at the legal document, but the panicked feeling and feelings of terror have mostly subsided, to be replaced with something like acceptance.
Yet what it reminds me of is the similar sense of dread and terror the days before I was forced to leave a room which I was renting in 2010. These were the days leading up to my suicide attempt. Yet I wasn't feeling those panicked sensations when I decided to kill myself. Instead this decision was made when I calmed down. Stopped clinging onto the hope that somehow I could get out of the situation which I was in.
Stopped clinging onto the idea of continuing to live.
What is interesting is that if I ask myself right now whether I would be okay with dying right now, I could totally accept it. I don't really care either way any more. What happens will happen. I'm powerless to stop it anyway. My dreams and aspirations are useless. I can accept this now.
In some ways that's a tell-tale sign of an impending suicide: when someone goes from being depressed to suddenly seeming much happier and cheerful. That's the point where they have accepted that things won't get better, and that it is okay to let go of life. Of existing. Where one has made peace with one's inescapable circumstances. In some ways it's a really positive thing. To end life on a high note.
I have lost my body. Again. I will soon lose even more. Again. No matter what I do or try, I'll always slide back and have all my efforts nullified.
But that's okay. I don't care either way. I can accept this now.
I would like to stop fighting. I want my body to stop being a battlefield. I don't want to keep searching for a home that doesn't exist. I don't care if I'm giving up and surrendering. At least I'll be at peace.
Maya
I spent so many hours just staring aimlessly at the ceiling while lying in bed, or looking at people around me, feeling even more distance between them and myself as ever before. The sensation was of losing myself even further. Naturally the gynaecologist saw fit to dismiss me as well when I next saw him, without so many as a referral or helpful advice.
Then, as I found ways to deal with this somewhat - along with the new chronic pain symptoms - I got an update from my lawyer for the eviction case against me. This in the form of a big pack of paper containing the summary of evidence in the case, which the court will use to decide on a ruling. First I thought it was the actual ruling already, then noticed what it was about. The request from my lawyer was to look through it and send in suggestions and corrections before the deadline in less than two weeks.
I cannot do that. I cannot open the document and read through it. I physically cannot do this. Merely holding this document had my heart pounding and me feeling like I was going to be sick. For the rest of that day I felt absolutely terrible. The past days little changed. The feeling was one of impending doom. The certainty that the game was up, and these past years of relative peace and quiet were about to come to an end, with forceful eviction and again the loss of all my belongings and money. Just like before.
Then, today I didn't feel as bad about it any more. I seem to have mostly stopped worrying. I still cannot look at the legal document, but the panicked feeling and feelings of terror have mostly subsided, to be replaced with something like acceptance.
Yet what it reminds me of is the similar sense of dread and terror the days before I was forced to leave a room which I was renting in 2010. These were the days leading up to my suicide attempt. Yet I wasn't feeling those panicked sensations when I decided to kill myself. Instead this decision was made when I calmed down. Stopped clinging onto the hope that somehow I could get out of the situation which I was in.
Stopped clinging onto the idea of continuing to live.
What is interesting is that if I ask myself right now whether I would be okay with dying right now, I could totally accept it. I don't really care either way any more. What happens will happen. I'm powerless to stop it anyway. My dreams and aspirations are useless. I can accept this now.
In some ways that's a tell-tale sign of an impending suicide: when someone goes from being depressed to suddenly seeming much happier and cheerful. That's the point where they have accepted that things won't get better, and that it is okay to let go of life. Of existing. Where one has made peace with one's inescapable circumstances. In some ways it's a really positive thing. To end life on a high note.
I have lost my body. Again. I will soon lose even more. Again. No matter what I do or try, I'll always slide back and have all my efforts nullified.
But that's okay. I don't care either way. I can accept this now.
I would like to stop fighting. I want my body to stop being a battlefield. I don't want to keep searching for a home that doesn't exist. I don't care if I'm giving up and surrendering. At least I'll be at peace.
Maya
Thursday, 1 March 2018
Where to go from here
When I first started this blog, I did not moderate comments on my posts. Before long, spam and later hateful messages forced me to start moderating each posted comment to filter out such junk messages before they'd be made public.
Such hateful comments on my blog and elsewhere used to hurt me quite a bit. The focus of these stalkers and kin appeared to be to make me feel as miserable as possible, usually by feeding the fears and doubts I was harbouring. Expressing those fears openly on my blog made this quite easy, naturally.
Yet when I got another one of such comments in the moderation queue this morning after a bit of a quiet period, it was interesting to note how little it evoked in terms of feelings. This was the comment, by some anonymous poster:
"When the docs themselves didn't find any female reproduction organs in your body, it means that you're just hallucinating about being an intersexual. And whole world already swayed and believed into your story without actually see a proof of your intersexuality. So stop making up story and doing something stupid to your body, before you share an ultimate proof we can't deny that you're an actual intersex."
Even ignoring the horrendous grammar and botched last sentence, the intention of this comment was clear: to hurt and confuse, to make me question everything that I am and so on. Yet instead it merely made me shake my head at how little such pitiful people understand of the situation. Too little to even properly hurt me.
The surgery back in 2011 and the biopsy performed on the removed testicles already showed that I never was a male, with virtually no testosterone and complete male infertility (no sperm-producing cells). My phenotype is also that of a female, including the shape of my pelvis and so on. This surgery also confirmed the presence of a closed-off vagina, which was the reason why I got my official sex changed so easily.
Last month's surgery further added to this that I do not have a developed uterus or ovaries, something which was already known from MRI scans and ultrasounds. It did not examine the vaginal area and nearby, which is where I am currently still experiencing severe chronic pain. What this surgery basically told me is that like I thought quite a few years ago already is that I was essentially born with just a penis and a vagina, but little else.
I also got the results this week of the cycle monitoring, for which I had blood drawn over a month, to see how my estradiol values fluctuate. The interesting thing here is that although the values are pretty low for a female (~18 - 31 pmol/L, relative to normal minimum range of ~98 - 176 pmol/L), it was with these natural values that my body exhibited the extreme PMS symptoms and formation of linea nigra when I was still taking estradiol as part of hormone therapy. This would indicate that my body is far more sensitive to estradiol than a regular woman.
I remember quite well how at the second gender team in the Netherlands which I visited I got prescribed hormones, with the estradiol in the form of these plastic patches. The dose for this was set by a doctor from this gender team, using the normal values for a male to female transgender person. Right after I started using those patches I began to suffer from intense motion sickness, severe aura-based migraines and so on. Likely this dose was many times higher than what I had determined worked for me using oral estradiol pills and regular blood tests.
I got this last batch of info at the gynaecologist this week, and now have photos of my insides to add to my collection. Unfortunately the gynaecologist does not want to look at the issues in the vaginal area, and did not wish to refer me to anyone else, insisting that it's not a gynaecological issue.
I am now yet again without any medical assistance and despite having learned a bit more about my body, the chronic pain and other symptoms are not letting up. As I type this, the inside of my upper left leg along with the groin area is super-sensitive, even painful to the touch. First on last week Wednesday did I suddenly feel something twist and shift in my lower left abdomen, causing intense pain.
Things seem to have settled a bit more now, but as my body works its way through its usual monthly cycle, there is again the sensation of fluids gathering in the vaginal area, accompanied by sharp pains, itching and general discomfort.
Honestly, I would love for all of this to be just an illusion. Sadly, reality isn't that kind to me. I would have picked being a regular male or female over being a hermaphrodite if it means being in this much pain and discomfort all the time, with doctors trying to be rid of one as quickly as possible.
What will I do next? I don't know. The most effective approach does not appear to be to seek out medical help, but to wait for something to go catastrophically wrong with my body. That way doctors are obligated to help, since they won't do anything out of the kindness of their heart, or because it is the right thing to do. Liability insurance is expensive, after all.
Maya
Such hateful comments on my blog and elsewhere used to hurt me quite a bit. The focus of these stalkers and kin appeared to be to make me feel as miserable as possible, usually by feeding the fears and doubts I was harbouring. Expressing those fears openly on my blog made this quite easy, naturally.
Yet when I got another one of such comments in the moderation queue this morning after a bit of a quiet period, it was interesting to note how little it evoked in terms of feelings. This was the comment, by some anonymous poster:
"When the docs themselves didn't find any female reproduction organs in your body, it means that you're just hallucinating about being an intersexual. And whole world already swayed and believed into your story without actually see a proof of your intersexuality. So stop making up story and doing something stupid to your body, before you share an ultimate proof we can't deny that you're an actual intersex."
Even ignoring the horrendous grammar and botched last sentence, the intention of this comment was clear: to hurt and confuse, to make me question everything that I am and so on. Yet instead it merely made me shake my head at how little such pitiful people understand of the situation. Too little to even properly hurt me.
The surgery back in 2011 and the biopsy performed on the removed testicles already showed that I never was a male, with virtually no testosterone and complete male infertility (no sperm-producing cells). My phenotype is also that of a female, including the shape of my pelvis and so on. This surgery also confirmed the presence of a closed-off vagina, which was the reason why I got my official sex changed so easily.
Last month's surgery further added to this that I do not have a developed uterus or ovaries, something which was already known from MRI scans and ultrasounds. It did not examine the vaginal area and nearby, which is where I am currently still experiencing severe chronic pain. What this surgery basically told me is that like I thought quite a few years ago already is that I was essentially born with just a penis and a vagina, but little else.
I also got the results this week of the cycle monitoring, for which I had blood drawn over a month, to see how my estradiol values fluctuate. The interesting thing here is that although the values are pretty low for a female (~18 - 31 pmol/L, relative to normal minimum range of ~98 - 176 pmol/L), it was with these natural values that my body exhibited the extreme PMS symptoms and formation of linea nigra when I was still taking estradiol as part of hormone therapy. This would indicate that my body is far more sensitive to estradiol than a regular woman.
I remember quite well how at the second gender team in the Netherlands which I visited I got prescribed hormones, with the estradiol in the form of these plastic patches. The dose for this was set by a doctor from this gender team, using the normal values for a male to female transgender person. Right after I started using those patches I began to suffer from intense motion sickness, severe aura-based migraines and so on. Likely this dose was many times higher than what I had determined worked for me using oral estradiol pills and regular blood tests.
I got this last batch of info at the gynaecologist this week, and now have photos of my insides to add to my collection. Unfortunately the gynaecologist does not want to look at the issues in the vaginal area, and did not wish to refer me to anyone else, insisting that it's not a gynaecological issue.
I am now yet again without any medical assistance and despite having learned a bit more about my body, the chronic pain and other symptoms are not letting up. As I type this, the inside of my upper left leg along with the groin area is super-sensitive, even painful to the touch. First on last week Wednesday did I suddenly feel something twist and shift in my lower left abdomen, causing intense pain.
Things seem to have settled a bit more now, but as my body works its way through its usual monthly cycle, there is again the sensation of fluids gathering in the vaginal area, accompanied by sharp pains, itching and general discomfort.
Honestly, I would love for all of this to be just an illusion. Sadly, reality isn't that kind to me. I would have picked being a regular male or female over being a hermaphrodite if it means being in this much pain and discomfort all the time, with doctors trying to be rid of one as quickly as possible.
What will I do next? I don't know. The most effective approach does not appear to be to seek out medical help, but to wait for something to go catastrophically wrong with my body. That way doctors are obligated to help, since they won't do anything out of the kindness of their heart, or because it is the right thing to do. Liability insurance is expensive, after all.
Maya
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