Giving the despair about not qualifying for medical help a place

I recently wrote about my trip to a local German hospital [1] and the outright refusal to have the abdominal symptoms examined on account of my intersex condition, or 'rare disease', as it's apparently designated in Germany. A few days later I also recorded this video about it:

Briefly, at this point the symptoms include the swollen abdomen as its most prominent feature, accompanied by constant discomfort to pulsating pain, the latter mostly when lying in bed. The source of the pain appears to be centralised in the area where the uterus would be, just below the navel. Previously, gently pushing on this area would cause strong discomfort and the feeling of my breathing stopping for a moment. Currently the same action causes sharp waves of nauseating pain throughout my abdomen. In addition, there's constant discomfort to pain in the perineum as well.

Understandably, dealing with chronic pain like this is costing a lot of energy. The uncertainty about the underlying cause(s) and what it may develop into take most of the energy that is still left after that, and further ruins my sleep. Are these symptoms benign? Are they indicative of something horrible, like cancer? I can only speculate without medical data to clarify things.

At this point I still have my GP who is willing to help me, and I'm fairly confident that I can at least get an ultrasound with about a month. That's still a month to bridge in low-power mode, however, so it better get some results at least.

Just another month of trying to give hope [2] a place. What if it doesn't produce any results indicative of something wrong?


Life would be so much easier if I hadn't been born with an intersex, chimera body. Then I would have received medical help ages ago already.

Life would have been easier if I had given into the lie of being transsexual and had my genitals chopped up. I just wouldn't have been able to live with myself in that case.


What's more important, being able to live with yourself, or being able to live with society?


Maya


[1] https://mayaposch.blogspot.com/2020/02/so-i-got-denied-medical-care-because-of.html
[2] https://mayaposch.blogspot.com/2020/02/hope-versus-happiness.html

So I got denied medical care because of my intersex body

Previously I talked about hope, and how I have come to see it as something primarily negative. In that sense it seems somewhat ironic that after all the convincing that others and myself did that yesterday's appointment at the hospital would be different, it appears that this negative view got validated once more.

I had to wait two and a half hours before the doctor saw me, after originally having been told that it'd take about one and a half hour after I had some blood drawn and sent to the lab for testing. At that point I wasn't really that fresh any more, but nevertheless tried. I summarised the symptoms for the doctors, showed the reports so far, from anything from the abdominal scans, the spinal and brain scans, the endoscopic examination and the abdominal exploratory surgery in 2018. I got berated on not having everything in chronological order and no reports for all of the MRI scans.

The abdominal distension, gathering of fluids in the abdomen and weight gain got brushed aside, with me being referred to the gynaecological department for 'potential endometriosis', with the doctor talking to me like I had never heard of endometriosis and never asking me any questions. Then there is the persistent pain in the perineum that is highly reminiscent of vulvodynia[1], with symptoms gradually worsening since I was 11, with the past three or four years ramping up the pain, to it being continuous for the last few months.

Maybe because I mentioned it hurting like hell every time I go to the toilet, the doctor just focused on that aspect, insisted on poking up my bum to confirm that yes, it hurts like hell when you press on the perineum. I got referred to the proctologist, to basically repeat the same research of 2018 once again. Checking for fissures and such, after this had been discounted already. That appointment would be in well over a month from now, likely the prelude to an appointment weeks later when I'd have the endoscope shoved inside me again.


As for the actual symptoms, the abdominal distension, weight gain and fluid in abdomen in particular, when pushing the doctor on this, his response was that they 'have no experience with rare diseases like intersex, so they cannot help me'. Meanwhile the ultrasound machine was ready to be used behind me. A quick ultrasound scan would have taken literally minutes. Instead I felt treated like my abdomen was some freakish no-go zone.

It would take me a few hours for the comment about intersex being a 'disease' ('seltene Krankheit') to sink into my exhausted brain. It's the kind of language that has been popular since the beginning of last century [2], only then it was used by National Socialists and kin who liked their racial purity theories. Eventually during yesterday I would go from feeling rather numb to bursting out crying as reality began to hit me. Last night I slept poorly as a result, with the effects of re-traumatisation hitting hard.


So then, instead of having the actual symptoms addressed, I'd get pacified with 'something', that would involve humiliating and invasive examinations, while not doing anything about the actual symptoms with which I came to the hospital. Even though my GP also agrees that endometriosis is an option, she and I are more worried about the monthly fluids that would be gathering in my abdomen - to hopefully get reabsorbed - since my female reproductive organs got jumbled during development. Endometriosis treatments would not address this.

In the end then, there is no medical help for me. Not even for diagnosing something that isn't necessarily even related to my intersex condition. I very likely got fluid in my abdomen and bowel obstruction. Every person has an abdominal cavity with some organs in it. Every person has intestines. Presence or absence or configuration of reproductive organs should not be a consideration in this kind of basic diagnosis involving the abdomen as a whole, and the state of one's intestines. Yet apparently being intersex immediately disqualifies one for any kind diagnosis there.


This is the end of me trying to find medical help, then. While these symptoms that I have will very likely keep persisting, it's futile for me to try and find help with it. Because the moment it's discovered that I do not have a standard male or female body, I'm instantly disqualified. I guess the best I can hope for with this diseased body of mine is that the dentist will still want to check my teeth.

Will these symptoms worsen? Maybe. Am I risking my life and health by leaving it untreated? Maybe, what choice do I have? Clearly I was born in the wrong body for society, ergo I was on my own to begin with.


Maya


[1] https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/vulvodynia/symptoms-causes/syc-20353423
[2] https://mayaposch.blogspot.com/2020/01/surviving-auschwitz-on-sins-of-being.html

To finally wake up from a life-long nightmare

Those moments of hyper-awareness. When I am aware of this body of mine. Of what it is. Of what it is changing into. Of it growing into an adult woman's body. Of me being fully unprepared of dealing with this.

I was never prepared to grow up with an intersex body like this. For all of my life I have just been pretending it was either a male or a female body, even when the former was a lie, and the latter only a half-truth.

I can feel it now. My body. I can see the slender, feminine hands. I can feel my body respond exactly like a woman's body would. I'm a woman. Yet I'm also not. I can feel years of memories, of traumatic experiences fighting back against this notion. I can feel the pain of having to pretend that my body is that of a woman, even though I know that's not what I am. Even as it keeps transforming.

A puberty that takes decades, instead of a mere part of one. Nothing of this makes any sense. Yet it is the truth that I must accept. Somehow.


Even as I go through this, I must find ways to make money. Because I'm an adult. Because otherwise I'll likely die. I also must make myself see a doctor again. Because of the ascites. Because of the nausea and feeling sick. Because my body is transforming and changing in ways that may harm or kill me. Yet I cannot convince myself.


This is my body. This body is me. I can feel it so strongly. Soft and feminine. All of the masculine features I was told I had a lie.


Nobody around me can help me understand this body. I feel like a child in an adult's body. It's too soon, too early for me to be forced to grow up like this. Why did my body suddenly have to grow up like this? Why is everyone expecting me to be an adult?


On one hand this body of mine. This female body that's finally growing out of its teenage phase. On the other those fifteen... no, twenty-odd years of what surely must have been a nightmare, of me being trapped in a child's body, with adults telling me to grow up, to accept that I had to be a male, a teenage guy, no, a transsexual guy. The horrendous nightmare of endless physical examinations, of one medical judgement after another. Condemning me to be a guy. To be transsexual. To be something which I know I never was. Something which I now know that I could never have been.

My mind is tearing itself apart as it tries to make sense of what cannot possibly exist in reality. Of what cannot be held to be all of the truth in one's mind.


I'm an adult woman now. Yet I'm also a hermaphrodite. An adult hermaphrodite woman who was lied to for decades by doctors. By psychologists. By anyone who was supposed to have a clue about human physiology. About intersex. About stlarning transsexuality.

This must be what it feels like to finally wake up from a nightmare. One that has lasted for one's entire life.


Yet what to do next? I woke up to find myself alone, in a dark, cold room. In a world where my real identity doesn't exist and will likely not ever be acknowledged. Where I'm starting from scratch, it feels like. Outside it's dark and quiet. I must have a plan to deal with this outside world. Somehow I must find a way to exist in this world.


Can you help me?


Maya

Even the worst situation can get worse

When I got forced out of the apartment which I had lived in for four years, I figured that it'd just be a temporary setback. I'd quickly get set up as a freelancer, and with the help of friends I'd find a new house or apartment to live in.

None of that happened, of course.

While the freelancing thing is something that's slowly coming along, this had its own share of setbacks. Worse, however, was the attempt to find a new place. Three months later and many dozens of houses and apartments later we've seen so many terrible places, came across a number of fresh slumlord locations, had the place given to someone else before we had a chance to look at it, or the person or agency behind the ad simply never bothered to respond.

Now on Friday my belongings will be put into storage and I'll be trying to find somewhere to sleep. There had been the hope that this place in the Alsace that we looked at on last Friday would have worked out, with the documents being sent to the agency and them saying that they'd put the rental contract together. Today they went back on their words and now they'll 'contact us about the place' in the coming days.


With everything that could have been firmly burned to the ground this way it makes me wonder whether it's a healthy idea to try and hang around in this part of Germany. Or Germany at all for that matter. It really does not get any better since I first moved here in 2013.

To be honest I do not know what the right choice is. There are some people and things here in Karlsruhe which I would not gladly lose, but not having a home any more and just drifting from shelter to couch and to shelter is not the kind of life that I'm envisioning for myself.

When to give up, when to keep trying? I don't know.


After the mounting stress of the past weeks I went back to something which I figured I had left behind me after trying out many years ago. Despite all that may be bad about alcohol, it does have this pleasant numbing effect that makes it work better than any anti-depressants and similar medication that I know of. It's not a solution, but it might just provide that little bit of buffer to keep me sane.


What will happen tomorrow, Friday, during the weekend or afterwards? I don't have the faintest clue. I'm almost afraid to try anything any more, as things just seem to fall apart. Then there's that part of me which has long noted that my struggling over the past fifteen or twenty years has been pretty much futile. That since those adults decided to lay their filthy hands on my 5-year old body, my fate has been pretty much sealed.

I'm not sure how I'm dealing with homelessness and the continuing hope that things may soon improve. It's been promised to me for decades now that things would get better. I'm honestly still waiting.


I also still think that most people would be much happier if I simply ceased to exist. Including myself.


Maya

Life is that game where nobody tells you the rules and everybody laughs at you

As I already alluded to on Twitter over the past days, things are going somewhat sideways, currently (still?). When I rented this one apartment for two months, it was in the expectation that I would be able to find something new and permanent during those months. A house in the Alsace, naturally. Because I had been told that this would be easy and thus I trusted it would be.

That notion I quickly got disabused from, downgrading my expectations to 'just an apartment will be more than fine', but with landlords and real-estate agents either not bothering to return a response, or just telling me that the place had already been given to someone else, time began to run out quickly.

Now I'm supposed to be out of this current apartment by early next week, and I do not have an alternative lined up. Worst case it's going to be putting my stuff in storage and me roughing it on the streets. This week I'm still trying to find alternatives together with a friend, but it's going to be tough to impossible.


Worst of all has to be the constant accusations, whether spoken outright or not, that I have simply done things wrong. That I didn't put in enough effort (alongside establishing myself as a freelancer), and simply should have been more proactive (despite dealing with severe PTSD).

It all makes me feel so very sad that I didn't just get hired at one of those many places where I interviewed at last year. That I could be living in California, Spain, Sweden, Scotland or somewhere else, and would never have gone through any of this.

Clearly because I did something wrong.


Is it truly so amazing that someone in my position is struggling to feel a shred of positivity when it comes to being alive? When nothing seems to work out, and all you can get are snide, hurtful remarks from people. People who consider you to just looking for an 'easy way' when you ask them for help.

The general attitude I have encountered over the past fifteen years no matter which kind of life struggles it comes to is that people just don't care. They don't care about you being homeless. They don't care about you being in pain. They don't care about you being unable to find medical help. They don't care about you living in poverty. They. Don't. Care.

For people who live the easier lives it's hard to imagine just what it feels like to have everything from one's own body to one's living situation constantly go sideways, without any explanation given. Just that one should 'try harder'. Basically don't make any mistakes in life, or the wolves will eat you.


I'm desperately trying to stay optimistic and hopeful that somehow that this will work out, but the weight of pretty much half my life so far spent trying to survive is weighing heavily on me. If I keep screwing up this badly, and things will not get any better as a result, then maybe it's time to just quit trying, no?


Maya

Keeping a brave face

Sometimes I wonder whether it's truly possible at all to take one setback after another and come out unscathed at the other end. There seems to be plenty of gushing advice from people around one about how one should 'just keep it up' and 'things will soon improve'. Others will gleefully inform you that you aren't doing enough and you're sure to fail horribly if you insist on continuing on this course.

Do I know what the right course in life is? Of course I do not. And so does nobody else. We all got our own experiences and expectations to deal with, and are basing presumptions and dreams on those. People like me just happen to have more experiences and far fewer expectations than the average person.

From having one's innocence and trust in adults crushed as a young child, to a seemingly endless torture session by psychologists and doctors - who kept trying to force this whole horrific 'you're transgender' thing on me - to losing one's home and finding oneself moving from place to place, all the time worrying about finances and a place to sleep.


At this point I'm ignoring the very likely medical issue of ascites [1] and whatever underlying cause may be responsible, because doctors have ruined practically every chance that I can ever trust them again, and because it's something that's simply less urgent than not becoming homeless and running out of money.

As a freelancer I'm still struggling to establish myself, not helped by me not doing any freelancing for half a decade and struggling with severe depression and associated PTSD, all the while worrying whether I'll be able to find a new apartment or house or anything to move into before I have to leave the temporary accommodation which I'm staying at until the second week of next month.


Then getting told that one should 'try harder' to find a new place, even as one works 15+ hour days to try and get some income going. That's not helping. It's just another reminder of the setbacks I have had to endure almost constantly for years now.

Just another thing which won't work out. And another one. Another glimmer of hope that got brutally crushed. Another lead that led to nowhere. A sudden change that should have brought a great improvement, but just turned into another hell. Yet another legal case which drags on for years, without any fault of my own. Having my belongings stolen. Having money stolen with credit card fraud.

And still no prospect of anything improving any time soon. Honestly, why do I even keep trying? Isn't half my life of bashing my head against this same brick wall sufficient? It's not like it's suddenly going to topple over. Why can't I just admit that my life just never was going to work out? That I screwed it up beyond repair, or that the deck was always going to be stacked against me?


Of course, that's just whining. I should just 'man up', grow a pair, find hidden sources of immense physical and mental energy, ignore the medical problems and the chronic sleep-deprivation on account of only being able to sleep six hours or less each night.

Just keep smiling and do all the things, even as ignoring yourself is causing irreparable damage. There shall be no rest, no respite. No time to think of one's health or work on getting some rest and proper sleep. There will be time for those luxuries once I have spent the next few weeks working 15+ hours a day, looked at 1-2 apartments a day, scored a dozen new customers and solved world hunger.

Because to be human is to be weak. To show weakness means that the tribe will turn on you.

To expect empathy and respite from the endless hell that is society is the kind of naivity that will get one killed.


On the bright side, being homeless isn't nearly as bad now that it's almost Summer. Should be comfortable sleeping underneath a bridge somewhere.


Maya



[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascites

That uncertain future

So where I'm at now is that the old apartment has been handed back to the slumlord, with just the final bills and such to be settled. This means that other than some potential financial fallout the direct and immediate threat from that place should be over with.

That leaves me with the two other, more immediate issues. One is to get that financial stability, as I saw myself pushed into becoming freelancer after a year of unsuccessful job interviews. Not that being a freelancer is that horrible, mind you. It seems that at this point I'm mostly doing the writing of articles for websites such as Hackaday and soon Hackster.io, which provides me with some income.

In addition to this, there's also the pressing issue of finding a place to live. I still got about a month until I have to leave the current apartment where I'm temporarily staying. At this point I have abandoned the thought of renting a house in the Alsace region of France as the possibility of that working out was painted too optimistically. Now it's back to looking for apartments in that same region. Hopefully that will work out better.

What will be next for me? I'm not sure. I'll just have to keep trying and see what happens.


Maya

This year's keywords are: freelance, France, Patreon

Starting tomorrow, I'll start moving my belongings to a temporary apartment as the search for a house in the Alsace region in France continues, as I wrote about in my previous blog entry. Getting all of the logistics organised for this move is still an ongoing process, even as the process of packing up at the old apartment is winding down.

My hope is that by the next weekend, everything will be at the new place, so that during the last week of this month I can finally end another less fun chapter in my life. Hopefully I'll be finally free of the old apartment and its slumlord after five years of struggling to find a new place, dealing with an eviction despite no debts or other reasons, etc.

There's still a lot of work to be done to get me over to the new place, with any bit of help appreciated, but this should be the first big improvement in my life in a long, long time.


Also tomorrow I'll be looking at this house in the Alsace for which I have a chance of being allowed to rent it. If that works out, then in a matter of weeks I'll be moving again, hopefully for the final time for a long time.

With living in a small French village also comes having to get a car, meaning that I'm comparing various used cars at this point, with plug-in hybrids looking especially attractive due to the low running and maintenance costs. This means that for the coming time I'll be spending quite a bit of money to set myself up.

This month is also the first month that I'm officially a freelancer. I'm still trying to find my way, of course, but there are many options open to me. Hopefully by next month I'll have that stable income in addition to a nice, quiet working environment.

I have set up a Patreon account [1] for those who want to support my efforts with finally finishing my autobiography, as well as maybe supporting a career as a writer. Feel free to have a look there and maybe toss a few bucks per month my way if you feel so inclined :)

Another thing I have been meaning to set up for a few years now, but haven't found the time yet, is a YouTube channel for Nyantronics [2], with a focus on electronics, software and science. Both Nyantronics projects, but also for general education, tear downs and all of the usual things.

Feel free to support me on Patreon, or donate to me directly. Or help out with these two moves the coming weeks and I'll make sure that there's free pizza for everyone :)


Maya


[1] https://www.patreon.com/MayaPosch
[2] http://www.nyantronics.com

Help with moving to France and going freelance

Sometimes one's life suddenly seems to find its course back again, even if issues remain. So it was for me that in the course of doing another batch of job interviews I got asked by one company whether I might be okay with working as a contractor for them. At the mentioning of this it was as if something clicked inside my head.

It's not as if I haven't worked as a contractor or freelancer before. For most of my professional career I have worked either for customers as freelancer, or on my own projects and products. The part that really appeals to me about freelancing is the freedom and responsibility towards oneself instead of towards a collection of bosses and other management types.

Thus I found myself at the tax accountant's office last week to get things sorted with the tax office with regards to my registration as freelancer. As of March 1st I will officially work as a freelancer. This of course means getting a lot of things in order, beyond just the business side of things. This of course also means getting my housing situation sorted.


Thanks to my new lawyer I fortunately managed to avoid getting forcefully evicted earlier this month. The court ruled decidedly in my favor. Now I have at least until the end of next month to find an alternate place.  This is both positive and negative, as finding anything short-term that is even remotely decent is not easy in a city like Karlsruhe.

A few weeks ago I thus decided that I would be moving just across the border from here, in the region of France known as the Alsace. Finding a place to rent there is decidedly easier and comes with a host of other benefits for freelancers with a home office, such as a much more quiet environment to work in.

This is however the point where things get a bit too exciting, as I only have about two weeks left to find something. If not a house in the Alsace, then an emergency solution somewhere else until said house can be found. The more help I can get with this, the better.

If you live in or have any contacts in or near the Alsace who might be able to help, then that would be wonderful. The current regions and ZIP codes I'm looking in at the moment are:

• 67630 Scheibenhard
• 67630 Lauterbourg
• 67470 Munchhausen
• 67470 Schaffhouse-près-Seltz
• 67470 Seltz
• 67630 Neewiller-près-Lauterbourg
• 67470 Wintzenbach
• 67470 Mothern
• 67630 Niederlauterbach

Naturally the more quiet and more roomy the better. This means that a house would be ideal. Having proper internet access has to be a requirement due to my work, of course, so that slightly limits the options again. I'm planning on buying a car so that I'm not limited to public transport availability.

Feel free to contact me via the contact form on my personal website or Twitter if you have any questions or information.


Maya

The future I want

Figuring out what life means to oneself is a big task, one which most people never really get around to finishing. One can just follow the well-trodden path in front of one, feeling okay about the whole deal. To then vanish without much of a trace, never having affected the world much.

For me such a thing has never worked. To me the world has always been filled with possibilities, infinite things to learn and endless ways to improve everything for everyone. All it takes is a little bit of elbow grease and a big imagination.

That's kind of how I ended up starting this new project this year, called the Internet of Plants [1]. Originally just a cute little project to automatically water single plants, it has since drawn in a number of people beyond myself, with the scope expanding to high-density indoor farming, using LED lighting and automated irrigation as well as hydroponics.

This project is now on the verge of setting up its first small-scale growing operation, using about five square meters of shelf space with the goal to grow everything from lettuce and herbs to strawberries, passion fruit and more. Long-term we want to look at reducing costs sufficiently to make it possible to economically grow staple foods like rice.

The reasoning behind this is that if high-density indoor farming were to become cheap enough, it'd mean that food production could move close to where people live, valuable farm land could be freed up and returned to nature, even as food transportation, insecticide and herbicide all become rare sights, with massive benefits to the environment.

With each indoor farming operation being a completely isolated and sterile environment, there would be no run-off of fertiliser and the like into the environment, and crops could be grown anywhere, any time, with minimal loss and other compromises.


What excites me about this project is that it is both very taxing on those working on it - combining fundamental R&D, biology, physics, engineering, electronics and many more disciplines into a single project - yet the potential pay-offs are likely to be massive.

Over the coming years we could slowly begin to change the world economy, resolve many causes of food scarcity and related issues, while providing the technology and documentation for it as a fully open project. Truly, it's not meant to make a buck off anyone, only to make the world a better place. Not just for ourselves, or me alone, but for everyone.

To protect the environment, give countless people a better, healthier life and ensure that humanity's future on this planet for the coming centuries has been ensured, while putting a stop to countless destructive practices, such as the environmental destruction of habitats for the creation of farmland.

To me, this is the kind of project that truly excites me. Something that has meaning far beyond me, a hackerspace, a company or the next board meeting. This is what I want to do with my life. These are the kind of projects that I want to work on, together with other like-minded individuals.


The sad thing there is that as the preceding blog posts over the past years have made abundantly clear, I cannot see a clear path to this future. Many times I have thought that I was close to a break-through that would get me out of my current predicament and get me that quiet, peaceful life in which I can focus on making this future a reality. Instead I am still forced to fight for my life, fearful of slumlords and yet another knock on the door from police officers or others to either misguidedly 'help' me or inflict more suffering.

I cannot really think of any future this way. Not when my mind is frozen in fear just thinking about what horrors tomorrow might bring. I could have gotten any of those jobs this year and things would have been different, but for some reason I didn't. Maybe it's that I am intersex or that I have PTSD that makes companies afraid of hiring me. Maybe it's just that my way of thinking is too different and unsuitable for just focusing on developing the next iPhone or cloud-based webservice, soon to be forgotten or never even relevant to most of the world's population.


Hopefully I can still find the path forward from here to that future. I think it would be cool, and I hope others agree with me on this. Though my one success this year was to get hired by Hackaday to write articles for them [2], it's sadly not the kind of job that easily pays all of the bills each month.

Perhaps such kind of (remote) jobs are the things that suit me best: jobs which require a lot of independence, responsibility and ability to wing things successfully. I just haven't figured out yet how to turn this realisation into a path forward.

As always, help is more than welcome.


Maya


[1] http://www.nyantronics.com/iop.php
[2] https://hackaday.com/author/mayaposch/

Mental healthcare: madness within and without

A major part of me is still this five-year old child, lying curled up in that dark room, sobbing to themselves as the harsh, loud voices of those adults resonate in their ears. As the sensation of their hands groping, grasping and pulling on their body doesn't seem to want to fade.

It'll always be my fault. I'll always feel that I am the problem, that I just have to make things more difficult than they should be. How could I deny such an obvious fact?


Childhood abuse trauma is still special kind of madness. Left unacknowledged and untreated, it comes to define one's very existence as a child, as a teenager and finally as an adult. It means feeling unable to establish an emotional connection with others, as well as a general inability to rely upon and trust others.

It means struggling with a lack of self-esteem and of being overly critical of oneself. Of feeling that those adults back then were right to blame it on us, on somehow being responsible for the horrors that they inflicted upon us.

In my own situation, I wasn't aware of what had happened to be for the longest time. Not consciously, at least. It was always there, affecting my behaviour and life from right after those childhood events until the memories began flooding back, decades later.

It's horrible to see how much those events have changed me as a person, and affected my life. From turning that happy, carefree child into this withdrawn, quiet child who wouldn't even let their own mother touch or hug them, to the young adult and finally adult who simply could not get over what had happened. Who would remain stuck in that dark room, crying and feeling too terrified to move, let alone leave that room.


The events that happened after the initial traumatic events served to feed and reinforce it. From getting bullied during most of my time at school, to later having doctors and psychologists try to make me believe that I had to be transgender, or simply crazy, dismissing my intersex condition as an infantile fantasy.

Finally living together with an abusive flatmate for months with things totally spinning out of control at the end and losing all of my money and possessions. Months of being told how everything was my fault, how I wasn't doing enough and was weak and incompetent.

Then years of dealing with slumlords after moving to Germany, having them play the 'justice' system like a fiddle to make my life hell and drive me ever closer to either accepting homelessness or seeking to commit suicide once more. Of course everything is always my fault. It's pointless for me to hope for a better life, as me being alive makes things by definition worse. Such happy thought processes.


That last situation leading to me ending up at the psychiatric hospital for a few days recently. Not that this was the first encounter with mental healthcare, of course. I had seen plenty of this back in the Netherlands already, and had just stopped seeing my regular psychotherapist after one and a half years of weekly appointments, on account of this therapist constantly retriggering severe post-traumatic stress disorder triggers without seemingly understanding what was happening.

I'll be the first to admit that there's this madness inside my head that I keep struggling with, every day, with the darkness trying to claim my every thought and action. Some days there's too much darkness, because of other people's actions. Not because I want to feel like that.

Being at this closed, high-priority psychiatric ward was... a different kind of madness. While there, I was stripped of my identity, of any freedom and choice, while limited to this one, shared room and shared facilities. Shared with others who were struggling with their own madness and darkness.

There was the bossy woman, who seemed to be living some kind of fantasy, the tall guy who seemed to be mostly trapped inside his own head, always talking to himself and sometimes screaming for hours during the night. The girl with whom I shared the room had this massive burn on her left hand. It seemed like she could no longer use that hand, and was completely withdrawn into herself.

There were others. Each different. Each making me want to get away from that place. To return to the outside world, with the people whom I felt are more like me. Who show me the brighter parts of life. Not these shambling wrecks of human beings, who through no fault of their own are kept inside what is essentially a prison, where they are surrounded by the madness of others. Slowly forgetting what it is like outside, in society.


I am glad that I am no longer in that psychiatric hospital. For now. I hope I won't ever have to return there. But there are people here, outside the hospital's walls, who bring darkness. Who make one feel that life is about suffering and loss. That life maybe is too hard, that one cannot do it. That's it all too much, too painful.

I want to get away from this darkness. To get away from this current slumlord, to get that job, follow my dreams and ambitions, make more friends and hang out with the friends I have. To feel alive and happy.


Yet I fear that all there will be for me is the darkness of that silent room, with five-year old me lying on the floor. Alone, sobbing. Right before I give up for good.

I wish I could see the light.


Maya

To let oneself be carried off by the current

Working long hours, rushing to make deadlines and still not feeling like one is getting anywhere. Going through job interview after job interview only to get rejected. Dealing with the crippling psychological impact of a looming eviction and the prospect of abandoning everything once more and resorting to the charity of others. That's my day to day life for months now.

Somewhere in the background is still the constant pains and discomfort of my body, even as it keeps going through physical changes, from the gradually vanishing scars and subtle changes to my face and skin in general, to the general development of female secondary characteristics. None of it explained, none of it making sense, no clue as to what will happen in the end. Is this just a normal puberty?

I can feel my sense of self, my ego, vanishing in the midst of this. My body is in flux, nothing around me in my environment is fixed or certain. I know what person I think I am, and what I want my future to look like, but all paths have been closed off, with no way forward. There's just waiting.

It feels so pointless to keep struggling, to wish for a better future. Even after so many years I have come little closer to my goals, or found a home.


Two weeks ago I found myself taken to the local psychiatric clinic by the police because my social worker was worried about me after a few remarks in an email I sent to her. I ended up staying two nights there, because they were afraid that I might hurt myself, or worse. I was let out during the day of the second day there, however, with the promise to return by dinner time. I was let out again on the third day, with the recommendation to visit a psychiatrist at their walk-in clinic.

Honestly, I do not want to hurt myself, or even end my own life, but this sense of pointlessness and futility is making me feel ever more disjointed from this body and my perception of reality. Thus I feel torn between the fun and interesting things in my life, the future I want to work towards to, and the strong desire to just give up and let all of those who wish me to vanish get their desire.

This body feels like a hindrance. I don't want to have to think about where to house it, how to feed and clothe it. How to deal with its changes and pains. Its mortality. I cannot comprehend human society. It all feels so wrong and distant, like a tune that's ever so slightly off-key.


There's still my third book to finish, a job to find, a home to find and move to. An eviction to avoid and chronic stress, PTSD and worrying abdominal pains to ignore. The question of whether this is possible at all doesn't apply, nor whether I still have the energy to continue. There's no choice, no freedom, no pity or empathy. Just the choice between continuing this struggle and giving up.


I'm still struggling and hoping, but it's so hard.


Maya

To struggle for survival

What I want my life to look like in the short to medium term: to live somewhere quiet, work a day job to make money, write books and work on my software and hardware projects in my spare time. Finally get those robotics, AI, asynchronous CPU architecture and similar projects into a usable state. Have my autobiography published and hopefully change forever life for all intersex people around the world for the better.

Instead, where I am now: being thrown out of my current apartment despite having paid all my bills and not caused trouble. Not having a job despite many months of applying and flying all over the world for on-site interviews. Struggling to finish my current reference book within the deadlines as the full-time job search and dealing with depression and bouts of suicidal thoughts make it almost impossible to be productive.

Each day my situation feels more hopeless. The hope for an easy resolution to my situation has died months ago. With each new rejection after a job application or simply a lack of response it becomes ever more clear that my existence is optional and in no way required or essential.

But to survive is not about feeling comfortable. It's about still dragging yourself forward through the mud and freezing rain even after you have broken both legs, had an arm crushed, running a fever and almost delirious from the pain. All in the hope that things will get better if you keep going. For how long? Until you collapse and die.


While trying to find a job and with it the relocation help I seek, I am ignoring the worsening physical pains and warning signals by my body. At this point endometriosis seems almost certain, with peritonitis (inflammation of the lining of the abdominal wall) providing a clear explanation for the generalised abdominal pain and extreme abdominal swelling at the end of each monthly cycle. This in addition to the extreme and localised pain in the perineum around the same time, which would also be triggered by the blood and/or other fluids that get released.

Of course I have tried to find help for this during the past years, but without luck. And now the symptoms just keep getting worse, possibly also due to the stress that I'm under as a result of my current situation.


What will happen next? I do not know. I may get lucky and my wish for a more quiet, predictable life may come true next week after yet another on-site job interview. Or not, and I can keep struggling to somehow find that way out of this Hell. Yet I am terrified of this dark side, this voice that keeps pushing me to admit defeat, to give up and terminate this impossible existence.

Am I meant to exist? Hermaphroditic intersex people like myself are very rare, because most times embryos merge like that, a miscarriage results.

I don't even know what I am. Who I am. I'm still in the process of trying to make sense of this body of mine. Of what has happened so far. To somehow deal with the trauma of the past years, even as I try to move forward.


What's fair?

This is survival. There's nothing fair about surviving. It's when everything has gone wrong to the point where one's existence has practically been lost already.

I want to survive this. I want to move on, to move forward, but the deck is stacked against me. With the incredible physical and psychological pain combined, this makes it seem all too tempting to give up. That's my fear.

Like seven years ago, when I also found myself in a similar situation, I didn't know what to do and everything was hurting. That was when I remembered the two boxes of sleeping tablets which I had in my room. They were the only real way forward which I could see. I was so happy that I had found a solution. Something which I could do, instead of just letting things happen to me.

I slept really well after I realised this. The next morning I got up all cheerful and feeling extremely calm and at peace with everything. The pain and agony that I had been feeling inside for what seemed like years had all vanished. There was no hesitation as I took all of the tablets out of their packaging and swallowed all of them with some water.


I still feel that things should have ended there. Me having been born still feels like a mistake. Me not dying seven years ago feels like a mistake.


Yet I still want to live. I just want... no, what I need to live is for all of this pain to be taken away by others. The pain of being unwanted and unneeded, of being the cause of problems and just a collection of unfulfilled promises and regrets. For people to trust me, instead of seeking to betray and discard me. To accept that I have a traumatic past, but that things will be fine once I'm in safety.

If not, then there is no stack of sleeping tablets available to me. Yet the temptation remains. I don't know what may happen if this dark, traumatised part takes me over again. The point where I will have lost the fight to exist in society, in this life and also the fight against the traumas from my past.


Even as I prepare for yet another attempt next week to make this future I want work out, I notice how much my attitude has shifted over the past months. From feeling hopeful and quite certain that things will work out, to pessimistic and downcast in addition to feeling exhausted as I struggle to care about the fact that I am still alive. And still surviving.


Maya

Let's talk inclusivity in the tech industry

This year has been a weird one. After leaving my previous job at the end of last year I have undergone a number of medical procedures:

• 3rd MRI scan at the neurologist for the cyclic weakness and pain in my right leg and arm.
• appointments at the proctologist and gastroenterologist for the abdominal bloating and pains.
• cycle monitoring and laproscopy surgery at the gynaecologist to gather data on my intersex condition.

Even after nearly fourteen years, I still know very little about my body, and finding specialists who got a clue and/or show interest is so hard that I envy those who are merely seeking for needles in haystacks. Currently I'm suffering more and more frequently from nausea during each cycle, though the sciatica (pain and weakness in my right leg) seems to have mostly gone away, indicating that things are changing.

After my body suddenly started undergoing its first proper puberty in 2015, with a dramatic increase in female secondary characteristics, it's been a confusing and harrowing time for me. I do not understand what is happening with my body, and how far it will keep developing like this, or whether there'll be any consequences of such a delayed puberty.

I know that my natural female hormone levels are pretty low for a woman, but adding additional hormones result in the symptoms of estrogen overdosing, so this is apparently the level my body is now comfortable with. I have also noticed old scars changing, wrinkles fading and of course the fat distribution in my body shifting around again, as if the hormone therapy I used to be on did just about almost nothing. Nothing about this makes any sense, and there's nothing in the literature that may help me with this. My best and only help so far seems to be one of those cycle tracking apps, allowing me to at least gather some data on the symptoms while giving me at least some useful hints and tips.


Oh, did I mention that I'm looking for a new job?

It's been eight months now since I started my search for a new job, and collected a few dozen rejection notes in that time. I'm supposed to have a new job by next month according to the lease extension I got for my current apartment, or I'm looking for a new place to stay. Worst case I'd be forced to return to the Netherlands without a job and no place to stay. After the 11 years of horror that I went through there, that's the last thing I want or can deal with.

I'm frantically working to catch up on the deadlines for my upcoming book on embedded C++ development, which I started on earlier this year. Fortunately my second book on C++ multithreading that came out last year is selling well. Combining writing a book with the job hunt and dealing with my medical condition is hard.


So, inclusivity.

It's a big word, which has been thrown around a lot the past years. Basically it means that everybody gets an equal opportunity, regardless of their circumstances. Sounds great, doesn't it?

Naturally, no employer who has rejected an application of mine has said why they did so, or gave any specific reasons. How would one even know whether one got rejected due to one's medical condition, circumstances of birth, or having opted to pursue medical help over a career?

I could be totally wrong about this, but at the same time I cannot exclude the possibility that after doing my best for months now to get hired, and having literally flown around the world for a multitude of on-site interviews, that in the end the primary reason why I do not get hired is because I'm an intersex individual. Someone who is open about it online, even.

Since I have no guarantee that this is not the case, and my professional experience should at least give me a fair shot at a job, it's sadly becoming a question which I and others are beginning to ask more frequently now.

Am I not getting a job because I am open about being an intersex person? Is the very fact that I'm intersex a factor in getting rejected from job applications?


It could just be that I have wasted all those years on not pursuing a career which is coming back to haunt me now, since employers do not like gaps in one's education-to-jobs timeline, but 'maybe' and 'possibly' aren't of much comfort here. With zero feedback from any job interview as a rule, one is left grasping in the dark for clues.

I like to think - and others confirm this - that I'm a highly dedicated person with a keen interest in science and technology, who is friendly and helpful, and more than willing to learn new skills for a project or job, while always being ready for a challenge.


It's hard to not feel like this is where inclusivity in the tech industry falls flat. Someone like me is different, yes. I have taken a course through life unlike what most people will ever experience in their entire life. Yet this should make me a unique asset to a team. Not a liability. Yet that's what it feels like.

Like I'm back in primary school, getting bullied and excluded for being 'different'. Ditto for my later school experiences and so on. Ironically those experiences taught me the value of communicating with others, even if it had to be initiated with one's fists. Some of those bullies actually became my friends later on. Yet back then I didn't know I was intersex, nor did anyone else. Being gifted was already enough of a struggle to deal with.

I got through all of those years. I got through the past thirteen years mostly unscathed, even when it seemed as if my body, doctors, psychologists and the rest of the world were all against me. There was always someone there who offered me that one chance to move on, which I accepted even if it meant more big changes and massive effort on my side.


I just wish someone would give me that chance now.


Maya

Thus we go on

All of us are living, breathing, human beings, with complex feelings and emotions. All that we differ in, is in how much we accept these, and with it ourselves.

When I got bullied and beaten up during almost every year that I spent at school, I never blamed or felt hate for those who hurt me. I bore it as one does everything in life which one cannot change. If anything, I felt sorry for those who are so conflicted and damaged inside, that they can no longer feel their own feelings.

When I got told over and over by doctors, psychologists and others that what I was observing about my body being intersex was merely in my head, I felt frustrated at how they just didn't want to see what was in front of their eyes. I felt sorry that they had become ensnared by their ignorance and obsession with falsehoods.


All of us are living, breathing, human beings, with complex feelings and emotions. We are capable of inflicting enormous damage upon others by closing ourselves off from these.

One bears the effects of the flaws of others, even as one does their best to help them see their flaws, so that they can work on repairing them. One never blames others. Just oneself for not grasping the exact nature of the flaws of others and being unable to help them.

Even as I prepared to take my own life in early 2011 I didn't blame anyone. In the end I was taking my own life so that I could live up to my own inadequacies. Those I would be leaving behind would understand and accept that I was now in a better place.


All of us are living, breathing, human beings, with complex feelings and emotions. We can bring unimaginable joy to those around us by realising their emotions and feelings, and acting upon those.

When my suicide attempt failed, my mother was there to give me a new chance at life, even as almost everybody else dropped me like I was poison. Slowly I recovered and things began to look up, with concrete gains in figuring out my intersex condition, and ultimately me getting started on my career as a software developer.


All of us are living, breathing, human beings. We can destroy others without so much as a single caring thought.

I do not feel hate or animosity towards the owner of the apartment or the court which saw fit to remove me by force if necessary over their lack of communication about when an earlier agreed-up rent reduction would stop. That would be like trying to argue with an avalanche or pyroclastic flow, or any other force of nature.

I feel that I have failed in some way again, by being somehow inadequate. For having missed something obvious and failing to act on something which anyone else would have picked up on. I know with great certainty that I am the problem. Somehow.

Every rejection during now half a year of applying for a new job simply reinforces this notion. The world is fine. Other people are fine. I just missed something obvious and as much as I try to figure out what this thing about myself is that I should be changing, I do not understand.


All of us are living, breathing, human beings, with complex feelings and emotions. We can choose to end our lives at will.

I fear that it has taken me too long to figure what I did wrong. I fear that it is now too late.

Too late to keep living. I simply wasn't good enough. Not fast enough. Not smart enough. Not lucky enough.


Even as I have found myself once again begging to have people give me another chance, I am beginning to find it exceedingly hard to keep up this charade that somehow I'll turn into a real person.


I don't feel real.


Maya

Glimpses of a normal life

This whole intersex/medical thing is something which is like an annoying mosquito: even if you want it to just go away, it keeps coming back. Ignoring it will just let it get you in a different, nastier way. Me trying to ignore the chronic pain for a bit didn't work out so well. Since a few days it's back to the burning right side, numb and painful right leg and arm, along with the terrible abdominal pains, distended abdomen and lack of appetite.

Current suspicion is something like imperforate hymen [1] resulting in something like peritonitis [2], which would explain the distension of the abdomen and pains, along with the rest of the symptoms.

Even though I have been experiencing such pains for many years now, there has been very little interest from doctors. After the laparoscopy, two months ago, and the prompt dismissal by the gynaecologist of my problems being gynaecological in nature, there only really seems one plausible option for me to proceed, namely undergoing an examination by a proctologist.

To this end I have made an appointment for such an examination, scheduled for the end of next month. This will mostly focus on examining where the occasional bright red blood comes from, and whether signs of an anal fissure can be seen. If issues are found, then some kind of treatment will follow. It's unlikely that this will in any way detect the reasons for the abdominal bloating and pain, let alone fix it.


Despite the chronic pain and the way it drains me off the will to continue living, I have to keep believing that there is a way out of this situation.


Medically I can basically just wait for something to go wrong. If it is in fact peritonitis, then sepsis is a possible complication. Until then I am forced to continue with things as if nothing is wrong.

Currently this entails waiting for the results in the eviction case, which will likely see me being forced to find a new place to live along with a draining of my financial resources, seeking a new job and doing job interviews, writing a new reference book for Packt on embedded C++ development, along with stumbling ahead with my autobiography.

I so desperately want to believe that things can and will get better. That I will find a place to live where I am actually happy to be, that I'll find a job or occupation that will make me feel useful and appreciated.

That there'll be an end to this endless, merciless pain in my abdomen that makes my life into a literal living hell.


Along the way I keep meeting others who think that I will make it, who support me and want the best for me. It's tough for me to think about how I feel about life and existence in general. After more than thirteen years of doctors and psychologists treating me like trash, of suffering all types of physical, psychological and sexual abuses, along with incarnation and attempting suicide, I feel that I have tried just about anything that I can think of to make my life better, yet with me only getting punished for my efforts.

I also hate feeling like a victim.

I'm a victim of many uncaring, vile people. True. Yet there are other people out there. People who are so incredibly positive and supportive. People whose optimism I fear that I cannot live up to. Like this one person whom I met on Quora a while ago, and who has been doing his utmost to cheer me up, even going to the trouble of getting me better Japanese dictionaries than the ones I had, so that I have more fun doing translation work and generally using Japanese. To make my life that little bit brighter and more joyful.

There's also my best friend, who has been there for me during almost the entirety of those thirteen years. Despite his own problems, he always tries to be there for me, to cheer me up and make me see the brighter side of life. I'm not sure I could have made it this far without him and other essential people in my life, such as my mother.


I feel that I have to get out of this dark shadow of my medical issues and the horrors of living in German run-down apartments owned by vile landlords. That's all that is keeping me down and so unhappy. There is a way out of this. I just don't know how to reach it yet.

Just need to survive a little bit longer, I hope.


Maya


[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperforate_hymen
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peritonitis

Depression and the expectation of pretending life isn't so bad

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 è 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

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

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

Post-surgery: the never-ending nightmare and a brief respite

I was lying in my hospital bed on Friday, slowly recovering from having been fully put under for the laparoscopy procedure when the gynaecologist and a host of other doctors came drifting into the room. Even though I hadn't expected to hear much else, to hear that they had not seen anything resembling formed ovaries or a uterus in my abdomen was still a sobering message. All that they had done was remove a number of locations where tissues had become stuck together, which might have caused at least part of the pain I was experiencing.

Unfortunately they had decided to not open the perinal side to check upon the vagina, as the skin had already become quite scarred from the first surgery in that area. Still, the gynaecologist - who had performed the surgery - found it necessary to say that he had not seen a vagina with the laparoscopy, even though it would be stuck snugly below the bladder, unreachable from the top of the lower abdomen where I am now left with the three incisions. Also the remark that it looked 'like one would expect to see by a male', or something to that extent. I was still quite dazed at that point, so I hope I just misunderstood something.

The gynaecologist had mentioned previously that he hadn't expected to find anything special, same as that he didn't expect to see anything special with the currently still on-going cycle monitoring of my hormone levels during one month. Next week the last blood will be drawn for that test, with the full results supposed to be available in two weeks time, when I have the next gynaecologist appointment. Which will likely be the last appointment, with probably just a simple dismissal and a 'nothing special found'.

In how far do I trust and believe this gynaecologist? In so far as me not having fully formed ovaries and a uterus is something which I will believe, as neither MRI scans or ultrasounds have shown anything like that so far. As far as the presence of a vagina, that has been confirmed by the first surgeon who operated on me, so I'll put that down to them aborting a full examination.  To hear the gynaecologist say that they found 'no female genitals' thus seems rather poorly formulated.

I guess I will see what happens in two weeks time. I would love to be proven wrong, but so far it appears that all that I'm going through at this point is another repetition of me losing a little bit more of my humanity, without getting any kind of useful answers in return. It becomes so hard to keep a grasp on reality, especially when I experience one thing, and doctors keep insisting  that my interpretation of reality is wrong. Like this gynaecologist essentially already insisting that I cannot be experiencing a monthly cycle before even have received the full results of the blood tests. It almost feels as if a certain reality is being forced upon me.

It's been like that for the past thirteen years, basically. And doctors have constantly proven other doctors to be wrong, and the reality which I'm experiencing incredibly more correct. Yet reality is nothing next to the opinion of specialists.


The one good thing which happened to me the past days was me meeting this woman and her father at the same hospital on Thursday during the pre-surgery work. She was also there to have a laparoscopy, in order to remove a cyst from an ovary. As it turned out, we lived pretty close to each other, so her father offered me a ride to the hospital on Friday, which I gladly accepted.

After our surgeries, this woman and I shared the same room as we recovered over the next two days. None of it was fun, but by being able to share our experiences, I think it became somewhat easier for us both. Being able to care for someone else at the same time as that I was recovering was a good thing, distracting me from my own issues. This woman also had a number of friends and family members come visit, with most of the chatting done in Spanish, which I found very interesting as well.

Through these visits, and by talking a lot with this woman and her father, I felt like I could slowly become immersed in this other world. A world of people who care so much about each other, who are doing their best to get through life, even leaving their country of birth - much as what I did - and making the best of things as they get alone. It made me feel happy that I could be a part of this, even if it was just for a few short days.


Now that I'm out of the hospital, it's back to the same old grind. Yet something has changed. It's hard to describe it, really. Maybe it's because the hopes I had before the surgery got dashed, yet without the leeway provided by the ambiguity of an MRI scan. With the images that were made of the laparoscopy, there is a lot which I cannot question about what is slowly forming into nan undeniable truth.

What maybe has changed is the realisation that after first having any possibility of me having a functional male side dashed in 2011 with the biopsy of the testicles that were removed, finding them to be essentially undeveloped, now something similar has happened for the possibility of a functional female side. Though I do appear to have something generating normal levels of female hormones, and I still have some kind of vagina, I do not have and will not ever have ovaries or a uterus. I'm nothing like a male or female. I'm something... else. Something... empty.

As if with every new revelation like this, I'm becoming something more agender, more asexual. Something of which I less understand what it is, or could be.

Together with this there is the fear that if there's indeed a monthly cycle, and uterine tissue that responds to it, then I essentially have what one could call the worst kind of endometriosis one could imagine. Something that just fills up the abdomen without nothing to guide it. Together with a closed-off vagina, that's pretty much a recipe for disaster. At this point it's just an unsubstantiated fear, however.

I wish I had a doctor who understood these fears, doing their best to investigate and alleviate such fears to get an outcome that made me somehow at peace with things. Not this constant battling and doubting of those who are supposed to be providing me with this help. I don't know what to believe, or who to trust any more.

Not just doctors, but people in general. The past days the contrast between me and this woman with whom I shared a few days of our lives couldn't have been more stark. I felt so weak and fearful, with her taking the initiative on a number of occasions, to ask something of the nurses and the like. Things which would have made me freeze up in terror just thinking of doing something wrong or improper.

I guess I felt somewhat jealous, as well. The idea of having a regular female body and just a common issue like a cyst. Not a host of questions, worries and maybe another batch of big surgeries. If I'm lucky.


Maybe I'm just too tired of trying to make sense of things any more at this point. It's gone far beyond merely trying to live my life, finding a job and a place to live. This goes to the very fundamentals of who and what I am. How I fit in with the whole. Once I thought I was just a male, which delusion got destroyed, to be replaced with the thought that I might be more female. Even though I will always look more like a woman, I guess I have to find a way to deal with this emptiness I feel inside now.

I need to figure this out. I need to make sense of this. I need help with this. Not people trying to force things on me. People who wish to help me feel better. Regain some of what I have lost.


The past days I have felt myself struggling with my emotions more and more strongly. Since returning to this apartment that I'm currently inhabiting and what somewhat feels like my old life, it's become even harder. I cannot seem to focus on anything but this emotional and psychological struggle now. It may destroy me if I fail to figure this out. What happens at the appointment in two weeks may make things much better, or much worse.

I don't think that anyone who wishes to help me can do so. I don't believe that anyone who can help me wishes to do so.

I cannot tell what may happen next. I will just have to live through this hell one day at a time. Trying to keep my sanity intact. Trying to stay myself. Whatever the heck that may be.


Is there hope for me? I'm doing my best, but I'm falling apart. Worse than before. Unable to define myself, unable to provide answers to questions, I remain stuck dealing with the same issues. Issues which I cannot resolve on my own. Issues which may require that my body first breaks down further before I get the required help and answers. By which time it may already be too late for the easy and best solutions.


I don't know. I don't know anything. I cannot deal with this. I don't know how I can keep living like this. I don't know whether I'm truly alive at this point. Do I even exist? Am I crazy? Maybe that's the only reasonable answer.


Maya