Self-sabotage, terror and the futility of dreaming

 There are times when you have to be brutally honest with yourself. As much as modern day life is about quick solutions, when it concerns something that has deeply sunk its roots into your very being, finding a suitable solution and implementing will take time. Any such solution begins with the recognition, identification and analysis of the actual problem. This is an aspect which is essential with any kind of long-term trauma, such as that experienced with abuse during one's childhood and/or youth, fighting or surviving in a war zone, and so on.

With how one's personality is formed from the amalgamation of successive experiences, each of which are influenced by preceding experiences, the earlier and more severe a traumatic experience was, the more severe its cumulative impact is likely to be if not quickly identified and treated.


When the term 'post-traumatic stress disorder' is mentioned, it sounds relatively cuddly and adorable. Even when for too many it means forever being stuck with this demon inside your head that feasts on any positive emotions. As some have described it, it feels like you're dead inside, aren't living in the same reality as everybody else and have become detached from everything, including yourself. Old hobbies from before the traumatic events don't feel enjoyable, subjects and entertainment you could relate to previously no longer make sense to you. And that's before the triggers and re-traumatising events that feel designed only to torture you.

Reading through the tales by survivors of war, abuse, as well as the stories of war veterans hammers these constant themes home. Simple things like feeling joy, or performing basic tasks in standard, civilian life have gone from straightforward to impossible challenges.


What am I complaining about here?

I don't remember much if anything of what happened to me as a five-year old child that made me reject everyone overnight, including my own mother. What happened that was so severe that I'd reject physical touch and the company of others? All I have to go by are some fragmented, unreliable bits of memory and the memories of others. Yet even so, that is where it appears the fear began. Instead of trusting others and continuing to seek out companionship, I withdrew into distrust and fear.

Should something have been done about that back then? Possibly. My mother, herself sadly personally acquainted with childhood abuse, never felt that a therapist or similar would be beneficial, and I guess my father didn't care enough. Thus I grew up safely on the family farm, even as the spectre of adulthood and its challenges crept closer.

Between my father cheating on my mother, their divorce, the repeated moving from place to place, first with my mother and brother, then by myself, I guess it fed into the whole internal fear and distrust about others. Of being left alone, of being abused by others, of not being able to trust others. Even as people helped me out along the way, I can see how I never managed to engage sufficiently to maintain social bonds.

As the years of trying to get medical answers about my intersex body dragged on and on, it too fed into this early trauma-based narrative. With conflicting conclusions and reports by medical professionals, and extreme, often conflicting views expressed by psychologists and psychiatrists along the way, it led me to a new narrative. That I do not know and therefore cannot trust myself. Not my body, not my own mind. I was wrong before about what it is, what I am, what is going on. Why would I ever put my trust into anything again?


The horrible thing about losing faith in yourself like that is probably that you end up in a situation where you either try to extract promises out of yourself - only to see them being broken - or to force yourself to do things that really need doing, the strain of which neither conducive to your mental health or energy levels. Until at some point you just break down, I guess. Getting out of this feedback loop, even if you're aware of it, is hard as it goes essentially against everything that your own mind is telling you.

There are a lot of things which I know I should do. There are many things which I know I could do. There are the things which I know I'm capable of, and yet between the terror I feel inside and the mental exhaustion it just makes me afraid that any illusions I hold of a better future are just that.


Despite acknowledging the problem I'm struggling with, I can find no clear-cut answer. Over the years I have done the whole thing with psychologists, psychotherapists, SSRI anti-depressants, EMDR therapy and what not, but I think what I'm missing there is that it doesn't really address the root of the problem. This is the problem that apparently began when I was a child, and which has seemingly only been worsened over the decades.

What I reckon would be immensely helpful would be the establishing of stability and safety. In a previous blog post a while back I mentioned that I'm looking for a job. Something that would provide me with more financial stability and certainty than the freelancing gig that I have been attempting the past years can offer. By reducing daily stress levels, it should become easier to address other issues.

Yet what I find causes me problems here is that it costs me an incredible amount of energy to wrestle through one impersonal job interview process after another, especially after going through dozens of them back in 2018/2019. As fun as it was to see more of the world with the on-site interviews, dealing with rejection after rejection did not help matters. Cue this process worsening the problem that I'm trying to address with this solution.

If I'm truly an experienced senior software developer, why am I still struggling? Cue imposter syndrome and the loss of more faith.
And even if I landed a job, would I be able to retain it? Cue more fear and deadly fatalism.


I guess at this point I'm trying to revert the long process of self-sabotage that comes courtesy of the positive feedback loop that is inherent in dealing with the cancerous growth of such doubts and questioning of oneself. Even though I cannot revert my past decisions to waste half my life on finding answers to impenetrable medical questions, or undo what someone apparently did to five-year old me, what I can do is to think of what is best for me, in the present. Even if that includes admitting that I cannot do this by myself, and exposing myself to the risk of trusting others.

Even if that somehow works out, there is still a lot more work to be done about myself and many more layers of old experiences to dig through for analysis. Yet with a bit of progress every day there can be a hope for an actual future. One day I hope to go through life not feeling afraid of everything, but feeling relaxed and safe. To be rid of this near-constant, instinctive fear that seems to fill me practically every waking moment while draining all traces of mental energy to cope with even daily life.

After all, what is there really to be terrified of in life? I'd like to find out.


Maya

The trauma of proving a negative: the transgender delusion

 I think it is fair to say that one's identity is a crucial part of one's overall well-being. To know what your body is, to know your own mind, and to understand one's place in the larger whole. When any of these elements are incomplete or missing, one's mental health suffers.

When I think of myself in the period between me finishing HS and my parents divorcing followed by the repeated moving to new homes, it'd seem reasonable to see this as the time when I first began to firmly lose touch with these aspects of my identity. With new, unfamiliar surroundings, no sense of direction when it came to education or a career, I eventually began to also lose any sense of what my body was about.

This was the time when I began to question a lot of things which I had held as self-evident about my body. Which included my sex. Partially using online research and partially using intuition, I ultimately figured that I had to be intersex. This was based on my assigned sex of male, along with the requisite male genitals yet a lack of secondary male characteristics, and what I identified as female secondary characteristics. The latter including the shape of the pelvis and some breast growth during early puberty.


Looking back on this period now, I can see how this discovery gave me a lifeline in a period when it felt that my whole existence had been cut loose and was just drifting around aimlessly. I would figure out what was going on with my body, and build up my life starting from there. With the knowledge of what I was, it should be straightforward to figure out my position in society and my identity.

Many times I have written about this already on my blog. The dismissive attitude by the Amsterdam gender team whom I contacted about this. The hostile attitude from Dutch GPs, along with a massive lack of knowledge by these experts about what intersex is and how to diagnose it. The Groningen gender team whose radiologist tried to convince me that what could be seen on the MRI scans wasn't a blind vagina, but just some air either outside or inside the large intestines. The refusal by the same radiologist to contact his German colleagues who had diagnosed my intersex condition a few years earlier.


I have lost count of how many times a doctor, psychologist or psychiatrist has tried to convince me that I could only be transgender, because obviously my body was that of a male. The first & second MRI-based diagnosis at private German clinics which showed and confirmed the presence of female genitalia along with a normal feminine skeleton were dismissed and disregarded by every subsequent visit to Dutch and German hospitals. Except one.

There was the orchiectomy procedure which I required to have my legal gender changed from male to female in the Netherlands was only possible in a country like Germany, where it can be an elective surgery if there are reasonable grounds. Since I suffered significantly from having the physical appearance of a woman, but the official identity of a man, this provided the grounds, and I was able to find a German surgeon willing to prepare the procedure.

In addition to the orchiectomy, this surgeon also performed an exploratory surgery in the perineum, confirming in the process the presence of the vagina. This provided the necessary documentation to have my official gender changed in the Netherlands using a never-before used law for intersex births. Finally, I also got the biopsy report for the testicles that were removed, showing them to be underdeveloped and non-functional.


In hindsight, I'm not sure how much good much of this did me. Yes, it is undeniably a good thing that I had those non-functional testicles removed, as they were not providing any useful service and were a potential cancer risk due to their aborted development. I'm also grateful that I got my official gender changed to 'female', just so that I do not have to keep explaining to people why my appearance and listed gender do not match up.

Yet despite all of the evidence I have gathered over the years like this, it does not feel like it really matters. Even though my body has since that surgery continued a female puberty and it's undeniably 100%-female-except-for-the-genitals - i.e. that of a hermaphroditic intersex person - there is still so much that I do not know or understand about my body.


Meanwhile, the weight of being told over and over by people who are supposed to be intelligent, educated specialists doesn't seem to be lessening. While I got over the worst of the uncertainty, such as that experienced when I stood in front of a mirror and tried to pin down whether I could 'pass' as a woman, the whole issue feels unfinished and the mental injuries I suffered raw and bleeding.

For so many years I was essentially trying to prove to these doctors that I was not transgender and could not be transgender. That me taking female hormones until a few years ago was only to fix a hormonal imbalance I felt existed in my body. The low levels of both testosterone and estradiol should have supported that notion, but instead I was told by the first gender team that their tests showed my testosterone levels to be at normal male levels. Something which was physically impossible due to the underdeveloped testicles.


How does one process this? How can one give this a place, and put it into the past? To this day, my body is the very representation of the struggle over those many years. And even though I know my body to be a hermaphroditic intersex person, it feels that this knowledge has further divorced me from society, instead of bringing me closer as I had hoped.

Maybe it's just the bitterness and disappointment that inevitably came with those traumatic and other negative experiences. To have lost most if not all faith in doctors, psychologists and kin. To feel that society does not care about or acknowledge intersex individuals. To feel like a square block in a society of round pegs and spheres. Being different and a minority (true hermaphrodite) within a minority (intersex) does not give one that feeling that it helps with settling on that identity.


Perhaps a major part of the problem is not with me, but with society. Instead of seeking to define oneself using properties which are genuinely individualistic, the average person's identity seems patched together using existing concepts within that society. Yet within that society it more or less works. Pick a template, tweak it a bit and off you go as a newly minted member of that society.

At this point I think I am coming closer to understanding how this all works, and how I can figure out both my own identity, as well as a way to make it work with society without compromising on my own identity, but it's definitely not the 'as seen on TV' simplicity. Like the documentaries which I have seen about e.g. transgender people where all their worries are taken away by having their genitals and secondary characteristics of their sex removed, or BIID patients who get their legs or an arm removed. Just tweak the body and it's all fine.

I'm pretty sure at this point that none of that is how it works at all in reality.


Maya

A true love story, or: on relationships and childhood abuse

When I look back on my childhood, there is one memory that increasingly haunts me. In it, child me is sitting on a couch, and my mother comes up to me and tries to hug me, only for me to shake her off. When I talked about this topic with my mother a few years back, she told me that I had started doing this all of a sudden when I was about five years old. Before that I loved nothing more than to be hugged and hug back, being the kind of child who would run into a room with strangers and end up hugging them. Until I suddenly turned inwards and began to reject all forms of physical contact.

It's only now beginning to dawn on me that my mother never stopped trying to break through this shell of rejection that had formed around me. Never stopping to hope that one day I would respond again to motherly love, even if she did not know what had happened to me to have caused this change in my behaviour.


In that regard it is interesting to look at what else happened between then and now, to try and understand a bit more of past 'me' based on those events. What kind of contacts I had, what relationships with others I built up, and so on. There a pattern forms of me being essentially taken in by various people like an abandoned puppy, some doing it out of pity and compassion, while for others there appear to have been... other expectations.

The low point there was undoubtedly the eight month period where while I was recovering at my mother's place after my failed suicide attempt, this one woman contacted me after seeing me in one of my media appearances on the topic of intersex. I guess I must have felt pretty lonely at the time, so when she asked for help with fixing some issues with her laptop, I agreed. She ended up visiting me, with a laptop that had some minor issues from what I recall, but nothing serious.

For some reason it ended up getting pretty late by the time she was supposedly leaving, and she insisted that her parents would not let her inside the house when it was that late, and she had forgotten her keys. This led to her staying the night, sleeping in my room. The next morning, she left, but would inundate me with messages, and call me at night, to hold entire monologues that lasted until the battery in my phone ran out. She also told me that I loved her. I guess part of me must have believed that, or was just happy to get some kind of attention.

I was searching for a new job at the time, and somehow she'd end up accompanying me to job interviews, even trying to convince the interviewer that she should also be present during those interviews. When I found a job (one I did attend just by myself, fortunately), I had to find a place to rent that was somewhat close to the office. Unfortunately due to Dutch rental practices, even my decent salary wasn't enough to rent more than a hole. Understandably, there was a lot of competition for such apartments, which meant that I spent a month or so travelling over two hours each day to and from my work with public transport.

Then this woman suggested that she could put her income from social security on top of my salary, so that we could rent something better. Together. Part of me figured that it'd be cool to help her out. We would be flatmates, was the idea. Sharing the apartment, but each with their own room.


I still cannot really write in too much detail about what happened afterwards, as it's too much to cover, and very upsetting. Summarised, she told me that she wanted to date me, that we were now each other's girlfriend. I guess this made me feel happy, as now I was more 'normal'. More like other people.

The real-estate broker who showed us around showed two places, one with two bedrooms, the other with one bedroom. We ended up with the latter. I remember thinking that I still wanted my own room, but with the choice for that place, it was settled. I spent the last of my savings on getting carpet laid in the apartment (another quirk of Dutch rental properties: you can expect a kitchen, but nothing on the bare concrete floors) and getting not only my stuff, but also her stuff moved to the apartment. This was also when I met her parents. I had been told to pretend that I was just 'a friend' who was helping her move to her own place. Her parents warned me for her, telling me to be wary of her, and showing me all the medications that she was taking for mental issues. Initially when we arrived with the moving truck, her parents refused to let her in, insisting that she should first talk with her, that they had a right to know what was going on.


The next months are a nightmarish blur. I'd get up during week days at 6 AM, go to work, return just in time to cook dinner, to then try to do something for myself and relax. She was glued to the television. Pretty much every waking moment, based on the power bill. When pushed, she'd tell me that she was afraid to go outside, that her family would figure out where she lived and would do something to her. When she had to go somewhere, she'd force me to accompany her. I used up most of my few vacation days at work to take time off for her on these trips. Other than groceries, I paid for everything else.

She'd force me to stay up well after midnight each working day to watch late-night TV. This led to me getting four, maybe five hours of sleep during the week each night. At work I was having enormous trouble trying to stay awake, with me dozing off in the midst of work when it became physically painful to keep my eyes open. That was the time when I first began to suffer sciatic pains in my right leg, with the painful sensations and numbness that would last for hours. When taking more days off for hospital visits, I began to discover another psychotic side to the woman I shared a flat with.

She hated doctors, hated psychologists. She got very upset and angry every time I had to go to a hospital appointment. She'd berate me, and yell at me, tell me that she would take care of me instead. I just had to trust her. Similarly, every time I talked about other people, she'd get angry, telling me in a loud voice that those people were all stupid and dumb. I remember when talking about me playing soccer as a teenager, she got angry and began a half-hour long tirade about how soccer is the most stupid sport ever and that everyone who plays soccer is a complete idiot and moron. If I dared to interrupt her, she'd get even more upset.


She'd always be around. Always knew where I was. Often, when I took a shower she'd be standing there, watching me. She trusted me in a sense, when she showed me her medical file, and the reports from psychiatrists which had led to her being marked as being completely unfit for any kind of work based on her severe mental issues. She was adamant that those conclusions were wrong, that there was nothing wrong with her, but everything with the world around her. She'd tell me about this older guy with whom she had had a relationship, telling me how he had just used her and how she'd take revenge, showing me invoices for wardrobes and other things she supposedly had been forced to buy for this guy.

This world collapsed when I had found a new job, working for a German company who had asked me to drop by for a week to get acquainted. My new boss then contacted me, telling me how he had been contacted by this woman, that she had insisted that she absolutely had to accompany me to Germany. He had refused, obviously. After this point her ire turned towards me. How could I let this happen, how could I not call up my boss and tell him firmly that he should pay for her to come along as well.

That last night involved hours of yelling and screaming from her at me. I couldn't interject, I couldn't do anything but cover my ears, walk away while she followed me. What could I do? Walk out of the apartment? I ended up barricading myself in the bedroom while she tried to push her way in, yelling that she would help me, that I was obviously unwell, that she would fix this.

Then she left. Moments later I heard her talking to my mother via the phone, telling my mother that I wasn't doing well, but that she would take care of me. This was the point where my mother felt all her misgivings come true. After somehow getting the phone to be handed to me, my mother told me that I should pack anything I really needed and leave the apartment ASAP. She'd come pick me up as soon as she could drove over from half-way across the country. And that she did. Over an hour later I was safely inside my mother's car, enjoying the peace and quiet.


Months later, I tried to get my belongings back, but the woman had changed the lock on the apartment and was apparently living there with some guy. The moment the door opened after we rung the doorbell, she took one look at us and immediately attacked my mother, raking her face with her nails. The moving company guys who were with us told us later that they had never seen anything like this before. That was the day when I lost almost everything. No money, no belongings but what I had taken from the apartment and what my mother had kept.

In hindsight my mother was absolutely right when she told me at the beginning that she didn't trust this woman. There never was 'love', or a relationship. A relationship is built upon mutual trust and understanding. Here there was none. I do not wish to express any conclusions or definite statements about these months of agony, but I do feel that I learned a fair bit about this person which struggled through those months.


If I had to change anything, or rather if I could change anything, I would have gone back to my child self and changed whatever led me to reject true, unconditional love back then. It's very hard to see oneself struggling through life without such connections with even one's own family. Maybe processing the horrors of the intervening years and giving everything a place will help me there in some way.

It still galls me that I cannot remember exactly what happened to me as a child which led me to change my behaviour so dramatically. I got a few fragments from which I can deduce a lot, but without knowing the exact circumstances, it's hard to do much with it. Yet even if I do not have that information yet, I am grateful for the love I always got from some people close to me, even if I didn't realise it until now.


My apologies if this blog post reads as more of an unhinged rant. It's been very tough to write, and there is probably a lot I didn't cover, or not well. Nobody said that dealing with trauma is easy, I guess. Consider this another small step forward in that process.


Maya

The torn thread between child and adult self

 You look at yourself in the mirror. You see a woman who is not a woman. Hermaphrodite. That was the word. Intersex. Neither male nor female. Yet a body that looks female but for some minor details.

Flashes of what could be memories or fragments of nightmares. Cold doctor's offices, soul-less hospital wards and uncaring, emotionless eyes and voices. A feeling of being cast aside and called terrible things that hurt so much.

Memories of a child you. Mostly unaware of existing trauma. Still living a life that is mostly care-free and happy. Scenes of happy family life. You want to reach out, touch the memory, connect to it. But you cannot.

The child is male. You are not. The child never was male? What happened between then and now? Are you the child, now, today?


A flood of memories. Fragmented. Shattered. Incomplete. Just so many loose threads shattered in the winds of time. Memories of terrible things that happened to you. Terrible things that you did. No cause or reason. Each piece of thread, each memory seemingly disconnected from the others.

Looking at yourself in the mirror now, you can look at your hands, flex them. Feel that they are really there. That they are truly a part of you. That this is all real. Everything before was a dream? A nightmare?

Most of it likely really happened. Maybe all of it. As well as the bits of thread that are now lost forever. The emotional agony when you reconnect the pieces of thread, try to trace back the path to childhood. Feeling the pain inflicted on you and by you for the first time. Is this what one wants to remember?

You do not remember being this person, this... thing that inhabits these thread fragments between that memory of the child and the you today. You do not want to be that person. That person frightens you, disgusts and revolts you. Even as you pity it as you would a wild animal that is trying to survive in a world completely foreign to it.


Others do not see the torn thread. Others see your self as an unbroken thread from birth to your final days. Yet you look at yourself in the mirror, and that is not what you see. Your body changing over time in ways that should have been impossible. The harsh response from society at each change and discovery.

You look in frustration at this mirror image which seems to taunt you with your lack of understanding, of knowledge and acceptance. You feel sickened by the realisation of what lies between the child you and adult you. What does life offer you?


You feel anger at this past self, at the world that let things get out of hand so far. But it's futile to be angry at the past. There is only the now and the future that still has to be made.

You can look at the past, force yourself to mend these pieces of thread. Ignoring the pain and suffering that this brings. Or you can let the thread between child and adult mend itself, over time, fed by the energy from a new, unbroken thread that spans into the future.


Looking at your hands again, feeling that strong connection with reality, you realise that you can live your life looking forwards or backwards.

Maybe it's not necessary to piece together this entire thread between child and adult right now and there. Maybe you'll never know exactly why your body turned out like this, or the myriad of ways in which it differs from males and females, but maybe that doesn't matter.

What matters is that you have a future. A future you can shape instead of letting others shape it for you this time around. A future with a healthy body.

All you really want is to see yourself smile in the mirror and feel the smile inside.


Maya

On seeking escape and safety; emotional numbness; self-delusion

 The concept of 'self' is fascinating. Not just because of the importance that is given to it, but also due to how it ties into how it affects how one experiences the world. One's 'self' is not a static thing. It grows and changes, just like one's personality, ultimately forming one's ego. Basically how one experiences and responds to the world around them.

This also means that one's experiencing of the reality around oneself doesn't necessarily have to match up with the facts. One of the amazing things about the human brain is its ability to predict the future, not only with the outcome of physical actions, but also in a social sense. This ability to run a simulated version of reality is also one of the major weaknesses, as this 'simulation' can grow stronger than reality and real sensory inputs.

When one talks about emotional numbness in response to traumatic events, this is essentially when this simulation ability reroutes real inputs and thoughts related to said events. Effectively one 'shuts out' the undesirable impulses and thoughts. Short-term this is an amazingly useful ability, that allows one to get through moments of trauma and adversity. Long-term one can loose one's self completely and one's connection with reality along with it.


I first noticed this strongly more than a decade ago, when I found suddenly that while watching a show on television, I suddenly could no longer 'feel' the characters on-screen, while this previously had not been an issue. This was in a period when my physical and mental health were degrading rapidly after moving houses a few times amidst traumatic circumstances. Physically I looked like a ghost, with clumps of hair falling out and overall poor health, while psychologically I had essentially lost all contact with the world.

Mostly thanks to my mother's care during that time did I make somewhat of a recovery, and began to notice that only did my health improve, I also regained my sense of smell, which had vanished without me even having noticed it. This made it clear to me just how far this 'psychological numbness' can go. Not only does it numb one's emotions, it literally numbs one's senses along with it, even if there is no physical cause for the loss of smell, touch, taste and hearing.

Although I am still making a recovery in that regard, it delights me every time when I notice that I can smell more, feel more, empathise more and basically feel more alive. The awareness of one's own body, of it existing in this reality. Not as some abstract entity defined by something as nonsensical as a social role or gender preference, but as a real, flesh-and-blood, breathing, living human being. I am my self, and not something others have made up.


In that regard, I think it's pretty terrible to think back to when I was still feeling so lost in that regard. Even when I wasn't in any immediate threat over the past years, I still knew on a fundamental level that I had lost my sense of self, of belonging and safety. Unable to deal with changes as a result, and fundamentally incapable of seeing a way out of my situation on multiple occasions, I felt trapped. Where does one even go to? Where can one go to? Where is safe? What is safety?

So many times that I just left the place where I was staying at that point in time, to walk outside for hours. Often during the winter, wearing too little clothing. Returning eventually, often with the first signs of hypothermia. Because I knew that I could walk out of the door, but I had nowhere to go. No matter how bad things got. I was always trapped.

I think that's what ultimately drove me to honestly consider taking my own life. In a sense it offered me the escape and safety which I was craving for at that point in time. Having run all the simulations and crunched all the numbers, it was the only option that I felt was still open to me. I'm pretty sure that it was because of my mother once again taking care of me and allowing me to heal and recover in a safe environment that I am still writing this today.

And not just my mother. Others were also there at crucial times, to provide that support and taking off some of the load when things felt like they were escalating out of control again. I feel that I literally owe my life to every single one of those people. Which is where it is frustrating to me to still deal with so much of this emotional numbness today, along with the lack of social skills on account having lived so socially withdrawn since I was five years old. How do you undo decades of emotional trauma and lack of development in a matter of months?

Feeling so socially awkward is one of the worst feelings I know today, even more so when I know that reading a social situation wrong can have severe negative repercussions. Maybe it's that I missed out on learning all of that, but I do not think that all this guessing involved in social situations is very fun or enjoyable, especially when I spend 99% of that time questioning everything I say or do. Guess it says a lot that at any party worthy of such description I'd prefer to just find one or more people to talk about technological, scientific or geo-political topics, rather than be forced to 'have fun'.

There's also the awkwardness when someone seeks to surprise you, with a gift, or similar. Like this time when I got a cryptic note from a friend, telling me that there was something for me in this one location, I think. That led me to finding this packaged up bundle, which I awkwardly opened after doing everything I could to make sure that it was something that I should be unwrapping. Inside the package I found a backpack filled with supplies and everything needed to 'make an escape', according to the note inside. Just a bag you can grab whenever you need to get away from things and can walk out of the door without without a second thought.

That was a gift that confused me in many ways. To my knowledge we had never talked about such a thing, and I was unpleasantly reminded of all those times when I was walking for the sake of walking, to get away from all those troubles that would ultimately drive me to the ultimate act of desperation. Because back then I knew that there was no escape, and no getting away from things.

But maybe I was too weak? Too cowardly? I do not know.


All I know is that to me 'feeling safe' is the most important thing of all, whether it is inside one's own mind, at the place where one lives, or whenever one is travelling. Being in control is an important factor there, I think. The knowledge that you are in control of your mind, your body, your immediate surroundings and that your travel preparations were sufficient and everything is going swimmingly. That you can stop focusing on those aspects and instead focus on the things in life that truly matter, whether it are friends, family, hobbies, pets or any other pursuits.

I feel that I'm slowly regaining this sense of control, enjoying the way it changes what I see in the mirror, how I see and experience the world and how it's enabling me to focus more on those things in life that matter, instead of the tediousness of surviving one day at a time.


Of course, all of this is just the version of reality that is playing in my head now, so maybe I'll look back on what I just wrote here in a few years the same way that I now cringe at blog posts I wrote a few years back.

What does it mean when you feel that you don't like this past version of yourself much?


Maya

School as a source of cruelty and humiliation

 There's a lot of unpleasantness one can deal with through simple emotional numbness as a coping mechanism. Problem is generally the aftermath, when the limitations of that numbness become clear. It seems that often, one of the consequences is that the emotional trauma is still there and still doing damage, but one cannot place why one feels a particular way, because the numbness has blocked direct access to the memories.

Much of therapy appears to be focused on easing those blockages, to regain access to those memories so that one can give those disturbing feelings and thoughts a place. For me it appears that my mind has decided to unblock a lot of memories regarding my time at school.


The most amazing thing about bullying and cruelty towards others is probably that there was no real reason. Finding myself submerged in those old memories of primary and high school again it hits me just how cruel and unrelenting the bullying and other actions were. It wasn't just that I didn't get picked during PE classes when teams had to be formed even though I wasn't clumsy or bad at sports. It was mostly things like having dozens of students seek me out to stand around me whether between classes or during breaks, to hurl insults at me.

There were also the moments when I was attacked, such as getting punched in the gut, or that time when this fellow student at primary school saw fit to spit into my face right before classes resumed. I didn't tell the teachers about either. In the latter case I used some dirt to mostly scrub off the disgusting smelling saliva before heading back to the classroom while pretending nothing happened. Ignoring bullying was supposed to be the best strategy to deal with it, after all.

The teachers and parents of the students involved all knew that something was going on, of course. It's hard to keep such large scale bullying a secret, especially when it gets so large that when I cycled back home one time there was this whole group of students on bicycles trying to block the road. I never bothered to ask anyone what they would have done if I hadn't slipped past them.

All of this took up most of my primary school time, although the last few years got a bit more quiet after I had apparently beaten up the main bully (which I do not recall at all). Him and I became friends for years afterwards. I guess it is true what they say about some people turning their loneliness or dissatisfaction with their life into bullying others.

I guess I did take that lesson to heart, so that when I found myself getting bullied again in HS, I singled out this one fellow student during PE class and slapped him in the face, then apologised to him when the teacher pulled us aside. Remembering the feelings at the time, I felt no hate or anything to those bullies, only anger at constantly being made fun of and humiliated.


As someone who is sensitive to stress-induced migraines, I found that the bullying was causing me to start getting those migraines with aura, to the tune of at least once a week during the second year. I think that puberty made my susceptibility to migraines a lot worse, with them really ramping up around that time until they mostly stopped some years ago. Combining migraines, bullying and the constant feeling of being an outcast did not serve to make me feel like I enjoyed school in any sense. It was required to attend school, but I was always happy again to be back home, where it was safe.

The last few years of HS were less stressful, however. Even though I lost fellow outcast friends when they went to other schools, I eventually ended up with this small group of friends who accepted each other without question. It was with them that I did nerdy things, such as playing Magic the Gathering card games in the cafeteria during breaks. And those times were great.


I'm glad to have so many of these memories related to that period covering my childhood and teenage years coming back now. It gives me a better perspective on the past which formed the person I am today. Even though it shows me mostly scenes of a period in my life that I do not like to remember, it makes me understand more things about myself which didn't make sense before with just the memories of other traumatic parts of my life, such as the child abuse trauma or medical system trauma.

I still do not really get why I got bullied so much, to the point of physical violence against me. Maybe it was just something about my attitude or whatever. Maybe it doesn't really matter. All that matters is that I got those memories back now so that I can direct my energy at processing them and giving them a place, instead of getting frustrated at the parts of my mind that do not make sense.


Maya

PTSD, personal responsibility and being able to live with yourself

 Reading back my recent post on 'the selfishness of PTSD' [1], I cannot help but feel that I blundered in writing it. Even though it was sincere, it was also heavily biased, more written from my own desires and emotions at the time than objective truth. Reading what I wrote again, it reads as if I am making excuses. That the actions of someone who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder are never their fault. I vehemently disagree with that notion.

For a while now I have been considering writing about being able to live with yourself when you can remember things you did in the past, even if they were likely because of the consequences of the traumatic experiences. I can remember countless social situations where I just had to get away, because I didn't feel comfortable or felt unsafe, leaving me to later consider the impressions this must have left on others. Then the times when me misunderstanding something resulted in someone else getting upset or felt hurt. Then being incapable of fixing this or apologising properly.

Worst of all are the times when I hurt others, or reacted in a way that was decidedly aggressive or even violent. Even if it involved me blacking out and beating up that one bully during primary school, that's still not something which I am proud of. If there's the risk of losing myself to those impulses, that doesn't mean that I, or for that matter anyone else with PTSD, shouldn't have the obligation to do our utmost to apply at least some level of control.

As the Canadian Veterans Affairs says on their site:

Try not to use your PTSD or your war experiences as an excuse for hurting yourself or others. There is no excuse for being violent, aggressive, or otherwise mistreating other human beings. It is important that you take responsibility for your own behaviour. [2]

As I have mentioned previously in earlier posts, during depressive moods especially I often feel that I am worthless. Usually I can see all my failures over the years, the times where my actions hurt myself or others in some way. And the crushing feeling of how sorry I am that I'm such a terrible person. It's not okay that I hurt myself either, whether it is through words, thoughts or physical actions that inflict pain or damage.

It's easy to use the excuse that I have had to deal with the effects of PTSD practically without professional help, but that's not an acceptable excuse. All one can do is do better, or stop trying and give up. Yet all without ending up hurting oneself in the process. Or others. PTSD recovery should be about safety and getting away from the trauma. PTSD recovery can only happen when one feels that the traumatic events are behind one. Being hurt by others is bad. Hurting oneself is bad. Hurting or lashing out at others is worse.


From a blog post by someone who suffered PTSD due to a traumatic religious background [3], the following:

Living through trauma can make us feel like we don’t have control. We certainly didn’t have control of our lives during the traumatic event or events. It’s important for trauma survivors to understand we do have control of how we react. Thinking that we have no control over our emotional reactions is part of our traumatic wound. We may not be able to control whether or not our heart starts racing after being triggered, but we absolutely do have control over how we respond to someone who has said or done something triggering. We aren’t puppets being controlled by the past.

Here the phrase "Thinking that we have no control over our emotional reactions is part of our traumatic wound." jumps out at me, as this is exactly the point where past and present start mingling together. Often childhood trauma seem to take the shape of an almost subconscious desire to replicate the trauma over and over in the present. This is the part where one has to break with the past, and with it the trauma.

This same sentiment is echoed by an article over at Providence by Marc LiVecche [4]. It starts off with describing how Sarah Palin used PTSD in 2016 as an excuse for her son's recent arrest during which he was charged with domestic violence against his girlfriend. It's beyond the pale that a PTSD diagnosis would absolve anyone from any personal responsibility. Even a PTSD sufferer still understands the difference between right and wrong and that hurting another, innocent person is wrong in every applicable sense of the word.


Finally, there has been a lot of research on PTSD the past decades. Anthony Charuvastra, et al. [5] explore the unique nature of human-generated traumatic events (e.g. abuse and neglect), examining the effect of childhood abuse in particular, the long-term neurological and social impact and possible treatment methods.

From such research we can learn that while yes, the physiological and neurological impact is often permanent and severe, it does not turn a childhood abuse victim in a 'puppet of the past'. We are still our own person, even if we have seen and gone through more than anyone should ever have to deal with.

In a similar vein, I do not, or at least should not feel attacked or uncomfortable when someone rightfully points out flaws in my reasoning or behaviour. As long as it is done in a manner that is respectful (between fellow human beings) and with the intention to help, not hurt. Because hurting others or oneself is never cool or okay.

Which should really be the motto for humanity as a whole, I guess.


Maya



[1] https://mayaposch.blogspot.com/2020/11/the-selfishness-of-post-traumatic.html
[2] https://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/health-support/mental-health-and-wellness/understanding-mental-health/ptsd-warstress
[3] https://www.patheos.com/blogs/waystationinthewilderness/2019/06/1404/
[4] https://providencemag.com/2016/01/490/
[5] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2722782/

The selfishness of post-traumatic stress disorder

 After having spent some time over the past weeks chatting with perfectly friendly strangers as they came to pick up some items that I was selling via EBay, it rather hit me how much I enjoyed those contacts. In that regard it's even more frustrating that I always seem to end up by myself, whether holed up in my room as a child or teenager with books and my computer instead of hanging out with friends and classmates, or holed up in some apartment, often in front of a computer instead of hanging out with friends or family.

Pandemic aside, I think that the answer really goes back to the childhood trauma. As my mother put it, I changed practically overnight from a happy, carefree child who wanted nothing more than to be friends with everyone to a frightened child who refused to be touched or embraced by even their own mother. When you only become aware of those changes many years later and have to trace things back at that point, it's a tough job, which takes time. Time during which you are occupied a lot with yourself a lot.

Not just with digging through your own past and memories, but also trying to make sense of what it is that you are feeling and why you are responding in certain ways. Why did that one thing which I just got asked about upset me so much? Why did I suddenly start crying? Why am I feeling angry? Why does it feel right now like hurting myself is even remotely acceptable? Why do I feel worthless? Why do I feel ready to just give up on life?

Those outbursts of rage, of helplessness and intense regret and sadness are not only upsetting to oneself, but even more to one's environment, who are spared the emotional turmoil, flashbacks and intense feelings that associate such moments. When reading the story of a woman who tried to build up a relationship with a war veteran with PTSD [1], there's a lot of such moments in there. That said, the final point in that story ('It's OK to walk away') does make sense from the perspective of the caretaker, as they too have to protect themselves. On the other hand, it is also very cruel towards the person with PTSD.


As a victim of PTSD, it is not that you choose to behave in such a way. The level of awareness of one's own behaviour differs, of course, and there's a certain leeway in how far you can control your behaviour. In the end, however, the effect of PTSD if the patient is left without appropriate help or assistance is more akin to a person who is drowning. In their panic and fear, they do not realise that they are wildly flailing around, injuring and possibly killing their would-be rescuers along with themselves. Nobody is at fault, which is the real tragedy.

This article by Juli Fraga [2] focuses on loneliness with PTSD and why it's both a natural consequence and very wrong. The main thing being that becoming stuck in loneliness can reinforce the traumas. Left alone with one's feelings, dealing only with the day-to-day things of modern society (many of which are fairly hostile or can be interpreted as such), this would further promote the feeling that the outside world is unsafe, and thus also that trusting others is unsafe. If you're alone, nobody can hurt you, basically. Even though it is yourself that you have to fear the most of in that case.

Similarly, it shouldn't be up to just one other person to 'rescue' you. As said earlier in the 'drowning person' comparison, and described in the Health Line article [1], that tends to be a recipe for disaster. Speaking as someone who has also been at the other side in such a relationship (flatmate with diagnosed psychological disorder), getting the heck out of that situation is really the only way to salvage one's sanity and health. I barely got out of that situation, losing only all of my possessions when things turned a bit too... psychotic.


All of that said, I think that I am aware of most of my emotional and psychological outbursts and issues. There is obviously still a lot that I need to learn, especially since I kind of stopped that learning process back as a child for obvious reasons, but I want to understand and better myself. I enjoy dealing with the emotional fluctuations caused by my PTSD about as much as others around me do, which is to say it makes them want to run away and never return.

For me, however, I cannot abandon myself. This is the only 'me' that I have got, and it's the 'me' I have got to work with, even if it feels like a broken, shattered vessel, filled with regrets and haunted by ghosts of the past. I just have to make it work somehow. As Juli Fraga's article points out, something that can already help is to write down what you are feeling and experiencing. That would make this blog part of my PTSD therapy, I guess?

When I notice how others respond to me when they first meet me, I feel like there is definitely hope. That I can become master of these traumas instead of vice versa. Just have to rebuild that self-esteem, tweak that self-image, take a deep breath before the boiling, trauma-fed emotions get the better of me. Sounds easy.

What are you afraid of?


Maya


[1] https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/lessons-partner-with-ptsd
[2] https://www.rewire.org/loneliness-trauma-side-effect/

Getting back into that 'career' thing after recovering from PTSD

 This is not an easy post for me to write. Even as I am grateful for the progress that I'm making in recovering from decades of trauma and the associated post-traumatic stress disorder, it's hard not to find myself painfully aware of how the world around me has seemingly moved ahead without me. Instead of neatly and mostly happily bouncing my way through the education system and ending up in some job from which I'd work my way up to a bright career, I more or less fell off the grid as I fell into depression, followed by a string of traumatic events which put my continued existence strongly in question.

To make a long story short, I seem to have managed to make it out of the other side more or less in one piece, courtesy of primarily the efforts of people who I am very grateful for not giving up on me. Yet as the darkness of depression recedes and my PTSD no longer controls me, it's equally painfully obvious that the reason why people rush into a career is so that they can acquire that which most crucially sustains life itself: money.

I'm grateful that I have found some freelance work mostly writing articles for sites and publications, but diversification seems like a good thing. For example something to do with my experience as a senior-level software developer. Call it an artefact of my cosy relationship with computers while growing up, but software development in particular is something which is practically an integral part of my being, much like the ability to read and write. Basically, that means that I like it a lot.


I was supposed to have landed a software development contract for a big international company at the beginning of this year, but as the pandemic did its thing, that lead dried up, like so many others. Finding new leads and following up on them is still something that I have to work on, just like the whole 'networking' thing. It's no use if you might be a great fit for a lot of remote software jobs out there, but neither side is aware of the other.

In that regard I guess that my string of published books on mostly C++ and embedded development is a good kind of advertisement, along with the projects which I have published on my GitHub account [1]. Yet it's still a struggle to generate and handle leads, even if others do their best to find a few for me. I guess it's mostly due to the vestiges of PTSD that still trouble me, slowing me down and making even simple tasks more demanding than they would be for anyone without such a psychological burden.

Some of these projects which I started have gathered a lot of feedback already, especially NymphCast [2], even as the amount of work there is still astounding, especially for what is still a definite hobby project. While I did recently go back to fix a regression with playback and add a host of new features, it did impress on me again the need to balance hobbies with work. Hobbies are for relaxation and fun learning, while work is what you do first and foremost for money to survive.

While I have seen some open source projects grow to the point where they can have an actual business plan, or keep growing through the power of donations, aiming for such a thing seems roughly as practical and realistic as trying to become rich by inventing the Next Big Thing and patenting it.

What seems more realistic at this point is the development of my Nodate embedded framework project [3], as I can directly use it as the foundation of articles on embedded development. That level of synergy is extremely helpful.


In summary, at this point I'm still scraping by as a freelancer, doing odd jobs, but I would definitely like something bigger and more permanent. I think it would be helpful for my recovery by having something steady and predictable. I think that what I have put out in public in terms of publications and projects should leave a favourable impression. Enough that I should have more self-confidence, perhaps.

Time to chase more leads like an overly excited kitten chasing yarn and see what comes up at the end of them, I guess :)


Maya


[1] https://github.com/MayaPosch
[2] https://github.com/MayaPosch/NymphCast
[3] https://github.com/MayaPosch/Nodate

Childhood abuse and the eternal expectation of compassionless punishment

 A few days ago, I was suddenly reminded of a dream which I have had a few times by now over the past decades. Each time it is essentially the same dream: I find myself at what seems like a party or gathering, with people sitting around a number of round tables, busy chatting, drinking and amusing themselves. Meanwhile I wander between those tables, feeling invisible as I at the same time deal with the knowledge that I'm a condemned person. That tomorrow my execution will take place and that this is my last day alive. Invisible. Ignored. Irrelevant.

Until I was reminded of those dreams again, I had not been able to place them, or make sense why I would have that same dream over and over. Then it hit me that I could connect my feelings and experiences in those dreams with the feelings that often crop up when I'm dealing with strong negative emotions, usually as part of a negative or stressful event. Feelings of feeling worthless, defective, disgusting, revolting, deserving of punishment and so much worse.

Seeing those two things side by side and seeing how they fit together also allowed me to connect them with the details of the traumas which I have suffered over the past years, starting with the presumed childhood abuse at around age five which seems to have started all of this. Although part of me still struggles to accept that I truly did suffer childhood abuse, the circumstantial evidence is just too overwhelming. That just leaves the frustration that I cannot remember many details of what exactly happened to me, or who was involved.


While reading up on the topic of childhood abuse and the far-ranging emotional, neurological and social consequences that this has on the lives of victims, I came across a lengthy but excellent article by Beverly Engel over at Psychology Today [1]. Reading it allowed me put a few more things together. Most of all the visualisation I had of child me still being stuck in the dark room that I can remember, with the child crying and feeling so horrible about everything that had happened before being abandoned by one of the adults responsible in that room.

I described previously how it felt to me like I had found a way to this room with the traumatised child inside it [2][3] and had managed to open the door, leaving the previously dark and cold room instead empty and sunny. This to me seems like a first step towards healing and self-compassion. Instead of leaving the traumatised child part of myself alone in that room, I instead allowed it to become a part of myself again, ending that fragmentation.

As Beverly Engel describes, often the problem with childhood abuse is debilitating shame and guilt. Whatever happened as a child established those patterns, leading to subsequent behaviour that devalues one's own existence, one's body and one's place in society. Due to being unable to feel like anything one does is good enough, combined with any praise feeling far less genuine than the opposite leads to a constant sensation of being invisible or unwanted.


Looking back, I can see how easy it was for me to discard any compassion expressed by others towards me. I was waiting for actions that would show me that those words of compassion were genuine. Amidst cruel and compassionless acts from people like psychologists, doctors, landlords and many others, it only reinforced the feeling of being led to my eventual execution day. Ergo those dreams.

What I also felt in those dreams was a feeling of sadness, but at the same time a sensation of relief that it was almost finally over. That I could be free of... the guilt and shame, I would say. Very similar in a way to those moments between me deciding to take my own life in early 2011 and executing the plan. Reading Beverly Engel's writings and articles by others I can now see those lines running from five year old me to today. As lines of fate or perhaps more accurately doom.


The obvious therapy to heal from childhood abuse is thus compassion. Compassion from others, but also compassion from oneself. I feel that I have taken the first steps with the latter, which should also improve the way that I respond to compassion shown by others towards me. The difficulty for me being that I have to reprogram parts of my brain which have been running the same trauma-born responses for decades now. For me to really feel a connection with others and not merely as an unwanted guest wandering unwanted through a crowd. How do you fix the way one's brain perceives social interactions?

In that respect, it's good for me to practice self-compassion and to be... nice to myself instead of acting like an abusive adult would towards a terrified child. Being non-judgemental is one of the points of self-compassion which are also mentioned. All so that one day I can feel like I'm an actual human being who also has every right to exist and mingle with others, while living their life in this universe.


Maya


[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/the-compassion-chronicles/201501/healing-the-shame-childhood-abuse-through-self-compassion
[2] https://mayaposch.blogspot.com/2019/12/to-finally-wake-up-from-life-long.html
[3] https://mayaposch.blogspot.com/2019/12/freeing-child-overcoming-childhood.html

PTSD; Binarism; A reality to believe in

All too often life seems to be composed out of a collection of inevitabilities. Society being one of those things, and one's course through them. If one is lucky, one ends up on a boring path. With a standard issue healthy body, standard genetics, standard intelligence and growing up in a standard environment with standard friends, family, education and job prospects. This is a simple life, albeit without many personal challenges and opportunities to grow.

When I look back on my life so far, I really do think it'd be easier and briefer to list the things which were 'standard' for me, because everything else just had to be 'different' for some reason. I guess my appearance is pretty standard. Assuming I keep my clothes on, or at least a swimsuit. Just a normal looking Caucasian woman.


Obviously all of the physical, mental and sexual abuses that occurred since I was a young child are not 'standard issue'. Nor is me being a chimera, a hermaphrodite and intersex. Growing up in a world that worships binarism, growing up believing that one belongs to one part of this binary system, only to find out that one's curious puberty was the result of said chimaeric body, with the female side of the hybrid female/male stem cell lines ultimately asserting itself much stronger.

That's my reality. One of chimaeric bodies. Of the unique nature of the individual mind. The sickening awareness of how indoctrinated people in society are. Their delusions about binarism, with a binary gender, binary sex, of individuals belonging only to one side. That one's body down to one's very brain has to follow one of either pattern. With it the complete annihilation of my existence.


Their reality is not my reality.


They call it post-traumatic stress disorder. What it does is reshape your brain itself. Reform it forever. Change your view of the world so that you'll never feel safe or comfortable again. Try as you might, you're basically an alien trying to integrate into human society. You'll never get all of the nuances, even when your brain doesn't freak out over some perceived threat and starts dragging your mind back into reliving the past with flashbacks which feel more real than reality itself.


The reality I want to believe in is one where it is possible to feel safe. Where every person is treated and regarded as an individual. Not classified by their reproductive organs or convictions about their state in the Binarist system.

Where a person like myself can actually get medical help. Help that's still needed, as the recurrent traumas remind me of. To have it acknowledged that I'm a chimera, that I'm a hermaphrodite, that I do in fact have 'male' and 'female' reproductive organs. Those are things that have happened and which are more or less in my past now. But beyond this? I had to go through so many different channels to just get those things investigated and acknowledged.

In many ways I feel like an FGM victim. Although my vagina wasn't mutilated by doctors, I was born without even the small hole that'd allow fluids to drain. Instead my abdomen had to become a sanitary pad, while I apparently am denied even the option of intercourse, painful as it may be. Trying to get the reconstructive surgery to have anything done here at all has led to nothing for over a decade and counting. Instead I'm reminded over and over by doctors that I do not belong in their reality. I'm just a disorder, a freak, a rare disease. Something that isn't their problem.


What is my reality?


Having my mind regularly torn apart by another PTSD episode? Struggling to make ends meet every month? Dream of finishing my autobiography one day and this solving all my problems? Keep telling myself that life is worth living? Drift away from my body into a less painful version of reality?


Recently, in an online group I was hanging out in, a guy told about us about this one tenant who had lived in a flat his parents owned. When he and his mother went to check up on a tenant who was behind on her rent, they found out that she had committed suicide. Weeks earlier. He'd never forget the sight and smells in the bathroom where she had OD'ed on some pills. She was only in her early twenties.

We found ourselves wondering about what her life must have been like for things to end in such a gruesome fashion. It was a poor area of the city, so likely to do with poverty, crime and drug use. People who find themselves captured by a reality that's too bleak to face sober, until one day they either escape from it, or have the bleakness forever capture their heart.


Reality. Dreams. Wishing. Trauma. Pain. Life. Longing.


Much like butterflies we all wish to fly around freely. But some of us are captured. Trapped under glass. Pinned to bits of cork with cruel needles through our bodies. Prey for hungry predators.

Unless you're on the boring path, who is going to tell you how to play the game?


Maya

Violent truth; An intersexed freak; A hidden self

Sometimes one gets hit with a sudden moment of clarity when one least expects it. Usually this is probably because there's no real way to predict that would trigger those moments. I have been aware of me regaining a lot of old memories (good and bad) and going through flashbacks the past weeks. More eroding of mental barriers that kept traumas and other assorted bad stuff at bay, basically.

In hindsight it probably was only a matter of time before a big 'reveal' event would happen like the one which I had earlier, and which is the reason why I'm typing this just after midnight instead of being sound asleep after going through all the trouble of preparing for bed earlier.


Going to bed is one those things which are both pleasant and unpleasant to me. Resting is good, because being sleep-deprived is a terrible thing. Yet it also means the confrontation with my body in the dressing mirror. How will I feel about my body today? Will I be able to trick myself into thinking that I look okay and that I can happily go to bed? Or will it be another trigger in the cascade where as I lie in bed the thoughts begin to churn and churn until I'm all tensed up again and can no longer fall asleep?

Perhaps ironically, tonight was one of those times when things seemed to go well in that respect. Feeling a bit restless, maybe, due to all the work that still needs doing the next day. But generally feeling okay and ready to rest. Having a lot of big thoughts on this new anime series from 2014 which I started watching called Sword Art Online and some scenes from it which left major impressions.

Another thing that can happen while in bed with the lights off and feeling comfortable is that of fantasising about things of a sensual nature. While for most people this is probably a fairly straight-forward process, I'm still learning to deprogram the preconceptions I have of what my body looks like, what it's supposed to do and how it should respond. The trick then is to try and abandon those preconceptions and just listen to what one's body tells one. Everything should happen naturally from there onwards.


Of course, along with the preconceptions, more mental barriers must have crumbled and after having satisfied the flesh, I was flooded with the most unhappy and upset feelings and sensations. I could feel and see just how I had shielded myself from this truth that my body so readily told me. What my body truly is like, and with it how this duality of my body is something unforgivable.

Feeling how my body responds when left to its own sensual devices, and how natural it all feels to have what others would perceive as a hybrid body of sorts. Yet there is the top part that is all female, but there's something that doesn't belong there. Freak. Unforgivable. A violent dismissal.

Then the other thing that would match the upper part of the body in a binary world. I can feel it's there, inside of me. Responding. Existing. Yet it's covered with skin on the outside so it might as well not be there. Freak. Failure. Unforgivable.


When the heights of euphoria are followed by intense regrets, pain, agony and thoughts, feelings and memories which I wish didn't exist. Just like my body, in that case. The horrific realisation that my body is unforgivable. That I shall never receive the blessing. That I have still cordoned off this part of my mind where my body truly is mine and normal in my own eyes. Something which seems so obvious, yet which isn't.

To experience my body in such a normal fashion, and then remember how my body got dismissed by everyone including medical professionals. To feel the shame and humiliation of having my body dismissed. To feel the never-healing wounds inside my mind. To realise how I have tried to ignore my own body just so that I could 'move on' with my life.


Only you cannot 'move on' and past your own body. It'll be there until the day you leave this mortal coil. You either confront and accept it, or you can live in outright refusal of the truth. For me accepting the truth means dropping those preconceptions about my body, and accept the agony and humiliation of society's refusal to accept my body and me along with it.

I can only be myself. That's all who and what I'll ever be. No matter what society thinks, demands, threatens or begs from me. I'm all that is on offer.

That's why I had to refuse offers from medical professionals to mutilate my body into something which it is not through genital mutilation. That's why I will still have to keep hoping that perhaps one day I can get the reconstructive surgery for the perineum. Because doing so means accepting my body.

Because it is the right thing to do.


Maya

Pained despair, forced smiles, bleak happiness

Happiness is merely a state of mind. This becomes especially and painfully obvious when one deals with the effects of a traumatic disorder like PTSD. When people talk about 'depression', they often refer to feeling a tad down. Not the crushing sensation generated by some part of your brain that makes you feel like everything around you is muted. From colours to sounds, to your own feelings, dreams and desires.

The expectation is that you interact... normally with others. You don't burden others with the things which you hear whispered from the depths of this dark Abyss that fractures your mind. This is okay. Everything is normal. Just smile, nod, share pleasantries and the moment you're alone again curl up and surrender to the pain and bleakness.


In some ways it's an attractive kind of bleakness. A happy kind of bleakness. For it tells you that it's okay to not care, to not worry. To just accept all the horrors in this world and to lose everything over and over while suffering punishment after punishment. Because that's just what this world is like. And that is okay. Everything is fine.

Once you have found happiness in this bleakness, you can stop caring. About dreams, about a future, about friends, about family, about anything. Because inside the bleak happiness, nothing matters. Nothing can matter. There is just this disgusting, decaying universe and the inevitable end of the universe and everything inside it. Caring is a waste of time and effort.

None of that is true, of course. And you know. At least during the moments that the bleakness doesn't pull you back under into the mists. Every day you fight to stay ahead of the bleakness, to appreciate the simple beauty in life, like the brightness of a beautiful Summer's day, or the flying insects buzzing about in the garden, doing their happy little things with happy little flowers.


But everyone carries their own darkness with them. And you cannot help but notice it. See how it corrupts everything that is good in this universe. Watch how it destroys lives and forces darkness into innocent souls, until they too have this seed of darkness growing inside their minds, where it can grow and blossom like a sickening flower.

That is possibly the most horrible thing about suffering from PTSD. One doesn't just deal with the horrors inside one's own mind, but also has become sensitised to seeing it everywhere else. To believe in the innate goodness of people. To trust that things will work out. To have faith in justice and fairness. None of that is possible any more. Because one has definitively crossed over that line.


What part of reality is truly what we think it is? How does one begin to live in a society which is confused about everything even more than oneself? Is the disorder part of PTSD solely in the mind of the person affected, or is it shared by the rest of society?


I want to feel happy. I want to feel carefree. Because the alternative is to hurt and feel pain. But I want it to be genuine. I want to feel happy and carefree because I have real reasons to feel that way. Not through lies, deception and/or brain state altering chemicals. Yet it feels like something which society has to allow for, too.

Where does PTSD stop and the healthy tissue of society begin?


Maya

When sex-positivity is a negative thing

During the 1960s, the so-called 'sex-positive movement' [1] began, offering a counter to the prevalent culture of the preceding decades in which sexuality was regarded as something that should not be brought into the public view. As quoted from sexologist Carol Queen on the Wikipedia entry for the movement: "'Sex-positive' respects each of our unique sexual profiles, even as we acknowledge that some of us have been damaged by a culture that tries to eradicate sexual difference and possibility."

It is of course generally wonderful that people are left free to express themselves and develop in the way that works best for them. To not have to hide aspects of themselves, or to feel forced to behave in ways that are considered to be socially acceptable, when it is not what makes them happy. A big example of that is the freedom to develop intimate relationships with others without having to perform the socially acceptable matching of appropriate genitals and social status.


The second part of Carol Queen's quote in the same article however touches on the issues with sex-positivity: "It’s the cultural philosophy that understands sexuality as a potentially positive force in one’s life, and it can, of course, be contrasted with sex-negativity, which sees sex as problematic, disruptive, dangerous. Sex-positivity allows for and in fact celebrates sexual diversity, differing desires and relationships structures, and individual choices based on consent."

The keywords here are 'potentially positive'. This is the part that gets easily overlooked by those who most loudly clamour in favour of the sex-positive movement into the mainstream. The primary issue and reason why sexuality isn't something positive for everyone is all too often caused by sexuality. Perhaps ironically, sex-positivity can be the thing that is disruptive and dangerous, if not outright traumatic.


It is one thing to celebrate sexuality and one's preferences there, but it is all too easy to forget that in the real world actions also affect others. Just because someone's sexuality leads them to prefer under-age boys or girls, or leads to them not respecting personal boundaries in the case of assault and rape in what is often a display of dominance and control, this does not mean that any of this is good, or deserves to be celebrated. Even if it is how their sexuality expresses itself.

Such acts of trauma consequently leads to traumatised individuals for whom sexuality and even physical contact have taken on a distinctly negative slant, often reinforced by successive further negative experiences with sexuality and with putting one's trust into others. Because ultimately sexuality is not about genitals, or even physical intimacy, but about feeling comfortable and safe enough to express certain desires.


It can also be said that the focus on sexuality diminishes the individual instead of enriching them. Whereas Humanism is about individualism and the role of the individual in a society, the sex-positive movement redirects attention away from the person encoded in the neurons of the brain, and back down to whatever sexual features their body have and what they do with them, while reinforcing social pressures about sexuality being something that shall and must be part of one's life.

To those who suffered traumas or for whom the concept of sexuality simply holds no appeal, the public display of or references to sexuality can be something that's undesirable, or even re-traumatising. I have seen examples of the lack of understanding here in a variety of forms, such as in posts on Twitter which included a couple of photos of homosexual couples kissing and an accompanying text that effectively concluded that anyone who dislikes that Twitter post or unfollows the person posting or retweeting it must be homophobic.

I do not like seeing people kiss or hold hands. I know many others who do not care for this either. It does not matter whether the people doing the kissing or hand-holding are hetero-, bi-, tri- or homosexual, the core of the problem is the display of sexuality. Some of us do not care to see it because we consider sexuality something private for a couple and get annoyed when people start kissing and fondling in front of them. For others it acts as a trigger for traumatic experiences, bringing back painful memories or even provoking full-blown Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder episodes.


The reasons for my negative attitude towards sexuality are legion, but I do not feel that it is something that necessarily needs 'fixing'. In fact, I feel that in many regards those views that I hold are the more mature ones, as they are born from experience instead of starry-eyed ideals. When I walked through the Red Light district in Amsterdam and saw the prostitutes behind glass in their sterile, tiled rooms, I did not see it as a symbol of the liberation of sexuality, as some have referred to it. Instead I saw and felt just the sadness and loneliness of the tragedy of what others have described as 'masturbating together'.

To be held captive by one's carnal desires and the associated sexuality, to be blind and ignorant to the wider picture, and to put the desires of the flesh above exploring the incomparable beauty of another person's mind as all of us work in communion on a better world for all. To me that is the true tragedy and crime against humanity on view here.


Maya


[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex-positive_movement

Self-motivation while adrift on an ocean

The fun thing about being adrift in the middle of an ocean are the many options that are visible, with each direction offering new and thrilling adventures and outcomes. The not so fun thing is that one's vessel has no propulsion and thus one is left to awkwardly paddle around with some scrap wood that one found in the bottom of the boat. It doesn't really matter what one direction one picks, as the wind and ocean currents will determine what direction one heads into anyway.

Sometimes that's the feeling I get with my life. I can see all the beautiful vistas that I could have reached, but there's always that combination of unfortunate circumstances, lack of motivation and crippling depression from post-traumatic stress disorder that end up clobbering any attempt at improving my life. It's pretty futile to get frustrated with ocean currents and the current wind direction.


When I try and take a look at exactly why the propulsion of my vessel is not functioning, I can obviously tell that the effects of youth trauma and subsequent traumas have done most of the damage. How do you work up self-motivation when your sense of self-esteem is constantly being attacked and drained by past and present reminders of one's failures and of being a worthless excuse of a human being. Combined with too many expectations from others heaped on top of that as well, perhaps, on account of always being the 'smart kid', due to a preference for reading, learning languages and the sciences, and so on.

When you end up sabotaging everything you try to do, because a lack of self-confidence makes you falter. When even small successes look meaningless next to the many failures and things promised and yet left unfinished... at some point you'll just find yourself adrift.


Of course there are many things which I can do. Or could do. I'm not dumb. I can learn what needs learning. I can make what needs making. Or I could, if I can figure out this lump of darkness that's inside of me, like a black hole. When you find yourself trying to motivate yourself to do something important for an entire day, but you just cannot bring yourself to do it, because... it doesn't feel right yet. That's just another failure that makes it again easier to fail the next time you try something.

And yet if you force yourself to do what needs doing, tearing through this resistance, it does not feel right either. It feels as if you're hurting yourself in the process by not understanding the source of this resistance. This bleakness and lack of purpose. Because that's ultimately what is is about.


The thing with depression born from trauma is that it isn't something that is easily addressed or treated. Sure, you can try to nuke it with medication, like anti-depressants, but the effect there is limited. It's after all caused by unprocessed trauma, which causes the brain to constantly injure itself as it goes through each subsequent retraumatisation and flashback event. The only proper long-term therapy there is to address the trauma.

Over the course of this year, I have managed to reintegrate the child personality which represented the childhood trauma back into my psyche, allowing me to finally make progress with examining and dealing with the trauma. This while also using it to understand and learn to deal with the subsequent traumatisation events, including bullying, physical violence, psychological and sexual abuse.

Blaming oneself is a horrible thing. Yet the assignment of blame yelled at me when I was a young child has been seared into my brain. It seems to have sensitised me to the acceptance of blame, no matter whether it was true or not. Slowly the sense of control got wrestled away from me. Over what was true or not. The ability to trust in others. The erasure of the physical, medical facts about my body. The erasure of my identity and my sense of self.

By the time I tried to commit suicide, I had come to accept that there was nowhere that I could go, nowhere that would accept me. Nothing that I could do or change. That's why the decision to take my own life had such a positive impact on me, because it was the first time in a very long time that I was fully in control of my life and myself.


That things had escalated that far was rather tragic.


During the years following that failed suicide attempt, I have tried to rebuild my life. Not surprisingly, I fell into the same traps as before, finding myself robbed of control by the medical and legal systems, and once again suffering psychological and physical abuse by those who sought to take advantage of my overly compliant attitude on account of having no self-esteem.

So what changed about that recently? Most of all getting to know a few friends who helped me through a number of harrowing situations. Without them I do not think that I would be typing this right now. Yet it's only a good start. Regaining control is hard. Dealing with trauma is harder. And I have to do both.


The coming time this means working on myself, figuring out more about these traumas and how to disarm parts of them. Regaining self-esteem as I work on my career. As a freelancer you do need to have some self-esteem, after all. Yet I would not at all mind a few more helping hands here, as I try to find more freelance work, or perhaps something more permanent.

The thing about being adrift after all is that you're pretty flexible about solid options that appear. One would be mad to refuse a new engine, or a tow by another vessel, simply because you have set your sights on transforming your vessel into a gold-plated and diamond-encrusted yacht through the power of wishful thinking.

I feel that part of regaining self-esteem is to learn to accept that others may see something of worth in me, much as I can see the worth in others. This also means that both giving and accepting help are essential parts of overcoming trauma.


Maya

Be brave

The feeling of loss. Of having lost something that was, or something that never will be. The feeling of one's mind succumbing to the intense feeling of grief, leaving no place for other feelings or thoughts to exist any more.

Sometimes one comes across a story, or a piece of music that will trigger something deep inside. Some kernel of grief, that when triggered will violently blossom into this blood-red tree that cries tears of crimson as it tears through your mind.

Quite recently one such story was that of the video game 'Gris'. It's a story about loss. About accepting it. About learning to deal with the fear and anger and pain and grief, and the countless other conflicting emotions and feelings that turn the world into a meaningless black-and-white caricature of pointlessness.

While listening to the soundtrack to 'Gris', it's easy to re-experience those intense feelings of the story's main character, but also that what it provokes inside of my own mind. The confrontation with the grief and pain in one's life, which one tries to keep hidden. Even if it will ultimately destroy oneself. You have to find it, understand it. Deal with it. Return colour to the world.


It's often hard to admit to sources of grief. One does not want to be seen as weak, or societal prejudices may lead one to believe that certain feelings and traumas are invalid.

Lately, while I'm working on my autobiography I find that I am finally beginning to put things together in my mind. All the good things. All the not so good things. All the bad things. All the things that I wish had never happened to me. All the things that I regret. To inspect and feel every single fracture in the mirror's reflection. To pick up and put back the shards that had fallen out of the mirror. To suck on the cuts in my fingers from picking up those shards.


So much of our lives happen because things around us happen, and before we know it, we get swept up, along and away, to be changed forever. Some experience an easy ride, while others end up in rapids or find themselves smashed against rocks.

I'm still trying to figure out what happened to me. Was I truly abused as a young child? It doesn't feel like something one can make up like that, not when the grief, pain and anger seem to originate at that point. Not when others around me noticed the dramatic shift in young me's behaviour as I withdrew into myself. Maybe I am afraid that if I accept this abuse as a fact, that it will make me lose the last bits of what I had always thought to be a rather okay childhood. I don't want to submit my life to be just an endless struggle against early childhood trauma. To lose the parts that were good and fine, just like that.

Yet at the same time, it seems like a necessary step to accept this. To acknowledge the grief. To acknowledge the pain and anger. To accept the gaps in the mirror and the wounds in my psyche that have never really healed. To accept that I was, that I am, that part of me will always be that scared, hurt child who is terrified of adults and of doing anything wrong because then someone will yell at me and it will feel so bad.


How does one accept that one's life started with trauma and has been lived in the shade of it for so long?

How can one pretend to be a functioning adult while dealing with psyche-shattering introspections?

How does one add the other, later traumas to this picture?


I do not know. The world around me doesn't really seem to care whether I make it or not. All I can do is make my way through level after level of this game, as I try to avoid the monsters and the darkness. To gather courage and bravely keep working my way up towards the stars.


Maya

The difference between being a victim and feeling like one

When one first becomes a victim of trauma as a child, it's hard to remember a life 'before'. Thus one doesn't know how much the trauma has changed one's course in life. We are after all the product of our memories and experiences, which consequently form our expectations and goals in life. It is through the contact with others that we may learn that we have in fact undergone a traumatic transformation. All too often this is due to behaviour on the side of the traumatised person that can be termed 'dysfunctional', as it is counter-productive for them and can cause major social and career issues. The way we seek out and respond to social interactions is after all determined by our personality, which is that which our memories and experiences formed.

Being a victim is easy. After all, there are no special requirements. There can be some expectations of one, such as providing sufficient resistance ('putting up a fight'), or by showing the appropriate restraint and acceptable social behaviour on one's side prior to the traumatic event(s). For childhood trauma it's even easier. After all, isn't the very definition of a child a person who is dependent on adults for their very livelihood, which by definition requires an almost naive level of trust?


By becoming aware of the trauma which one has suffered and the impact it has had on one's life, one is offered a choice. Either one can choose to ignore it and continue as before, or one can form a new personality role: that of the therapist/loving parent. While the former choice is very likely to end poorly, the latter choice is not without issues either. It requires one to slowly abandon the feeling of being a victim and to build up a personality which is not inextricably linked with the role of being a victim.

Are you a victim or a person?

In the therapist/loving parent role, one tries to understand one's own actions (the traumatised child's) and feelings in the context of the trauma that had been suffered. Exploring this trauma in a controlled, safe setting is paramount to better learn and understand it. Together, the traumatised child and therapist/loving parent can experience these memories and associated feelings, with the latter able to add a new level of context and comprehension to just what has happened, and why it should be left in the past.

The traumatised child's behavioural patterns are unmistakable in one's daily thoughts, feelings and actions. The original single or repeated act of violence may have disrupted the child's world so much that all they could do was to patch over these memories with equally strong emotions, seeking coping mechanisms to deal with the psychological and mental stresses that this causes. A simple feeling of discomfort over time grows into a feeling of continuous apprehension and fear. The act of being physically touched may end up evoking strong feelings of revulsion.


If there is one thing which I have learned over the past decades, it is that it is extremely easy to not be aware of being a victim, and also very easy to live that victim role to the fullest extent. Not questioning one's own dysfunctional behaviour, nor being aware of anything that may have happened in the past.

I mean, sure, the roughly fifteen years that I spent dealing with the ignorance and unwillingness of the medical system were by no means fun, to the point where for my psychotherapist at the time it was sufficient to chalk it up as the cause for the PTSD with which he diagnosed me. Yet there was more than just that. The more time passed, the more it became obvious that my struggles in the medical system was more about re-traumatising and re-victimisation. I could after all remember dysfunctional behaviour from my side years before my mishaps with doctors.

Small details kept bugging me, such as my mother asking at one point whether anyone had abused me when I was a young child, to her recalling how my personality had dramatically changed when I was about five years old, with me no longer accepting any kind of physical contact, caressing or embracing. It all made for an eerie possibility, which allowed me to finally place the continuous feeling of intense sadness and apprehension. This lead to the resurgence of fragments of memories and sensations. All of unspeakable, traumatic things.

The intervening years between that original trauma and today have not been kind to me, either. From being bullied at school for years, to my parents divorcing, to my struggles as an intersex person in the medical system, to repeatedly suffering physical, psychological and sexual abuse, to having my money and belongings stolen, I had every reason to feel like a victim. Because I am one.


Yet the thing which therapist me has been able to convince traumatised child me of is that one can never live a normal, happy life if one cannot let go of the feeling of being a victim. This letting go involves drawing a line between 'then' and 'now'. The trauma of the past has to be seen as a contamination that if left unchecked will corrupt one's life for now and forever. Since this happens by the generating of new, corrupted memories through one's actions and responses, one must make sure that all of these actions and responses are untainted by the trauma(s).

Feeling apprehensive about something when you know it's harmless? Just do it. Work towards those small leaps of faith (or fate), where one trusts reason over emotions and feelings. Listen to the anxious voice in the back of your mind telling you that you can still get out of something, that you can still dodge those actions, those responsibilities, those opportunities. You can look at all the seemingly easy excuses the part of your brain corrupted by trauma offers you.

And then ignore all of it.

Because if you give into the trauma, if you accept feeling like a victim, accept being re-traumatised over and over, the trauma will have transformed you from a person into a victim. By living your life as a victim through the lens of the trauma, you give up everything that could have been.


Not living my life through the traumas of the past is very tough. Usually you'd let your subconscious mind wander around, dragging up bits and pieces that form feelings and semi-coherent thoughts that your conscious mind can then take and put into words and actions. Yet the same subconscious mind is the very same that has been the most corrupted by the trauma, and thus it is unreliable. Every single thing that my conscious mind gets handed by my subconscious mind has to be checked, re-checked and validated for being free of the taint of trauma.

Anything that feels defeatist, or helpless, or needlessly negative, or otherwise 'smells' wrong is discarded and replaced with a conscious thought as my conscious mind has to steer my feelings to remain untainted as well. It's a constant struggle to remain on top, yet it is a necessary one.


Theoretically, by remaining on top of this process, one can finally draw that line between 'then' and 'now', with it becoming easier as the last tainted memories are pushed away into the past by new, untainted memories and experiences.

Even if the feeling of trauma remains palpable, the most important thing is that one will have done their utmost to live life as a person, instead of a victim. Because to live one's live as a victim is to have lived no life at all.


Maya