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

Getting a career back on track

 There are those moments where you find yourself wondering what exactly it is that you're headed towards in your life. If the answer is 'not much', then that might explain some frustrations you're experiencing. Whether stuck in a dead-end job, or dealing with the fall-out from years of a tumultuous, traumatic life, the hardest but also most important step is to admit for yourself that you're not happy, and that you want things to change.

What does it take to be happy? If I were to consider my own life the past few years, it would have to be about regaining a measure of control, instead of being tossed around passively like a piece of driftwood. Merely promising myself that things would suddenly change for the better through a project like NymphCast [1], or by having my autobiography published. Pinning your hopes on such things doesn't make you regain control of your life.


Of course, I will readily admit the things which I have learned from the NymphCast project. It's been a great lesson in project management and development on embedded systems, getting to know the intricacies of aligned memory access with the NymphRPC project [2] on ARM processors while implementing a zero copy optimisation. Also small things like creating a lock-free ring buffer implementation [3].

Implementing service discovery in a more light-weight way than that offered by mDNS and kin in the form of NyanSD [4] taught me a lot about UDP broadcasting and provided NymphCast with a reliable, cross-platform way to discover NymphCast receivers, clients and media servers on the same network. Much like my experiences with the Nodate STM32 embedded C++ project [5], none of that was wasted time or effort, as it all gave me the opportunity to nurture my skills as a software developer.


When I left my previous job at the end of 2017, I literally travelled around the world for job interviews. I clearly was making a solid enough impression during the early (remote) tests. Where things would fall apart was always with the in-person interviews, and when I looked at some short videos I made of myself in late 2019, I understood why.

The glassy, distant look in my eyes. The impression of someone who isn't really quite present in the here and now. Having had a few years now to work on this aspect, I think I'm doing much better now in that regard. As evidenced by the videos on my YouTube channel of the past years where I read the short stories I have written, I'm gradually learning to open up more and come to terms with the fact that I do have an actual body. Same with the way that I interact with people.


Of course, the past few years also have been a major confrontation with the traumatic experiences that I have been pushing ahead of me for many years now, including those involving my existence as an intersex person and what this fact means to me. I'd be a terrible liar if I said that any of this was easy to deal with, or that I'm done dealing with all of it.

What I do know is that I'm doing much better than I did a few years ago, both physically and mentally. Also that I'm now at a point where I seriously have to seek the next steps in fixing up my life. This one involving my career.


Although as stated the projects which I have tinkered with the past few years have been and continue to be interesting and useful, in the end they are hobby projects. Great additions for my CV [6], of course, but you don't build a career and livelihood on top of a few hobby projects unless you're incredibly lucky.

So, as a result I'll be actively seeking out new (remote) jobs the coming time that will allow me to expand my career and horizons, continuing my progress the past few years. No doubt it'll be anything but easy, what with the entire world currently (still) being on fire, but one has to start somewhere :)


Maya



[1] https://github.com/MayaPosch/NymphCast
[2] https://github.com/MayaPosch/NymphRPC
[3] https://github.com/MayaPosch/LockFreeRingBuffer
[4] https://github.com/MayaPosch/NyanSD
[5] https://github.com/MayaPosch/Nodate
[6] http://www.mayaposch.com/cv.php

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

Vlog: What being a woman and intersex means to me

The five stages towards accepting one's body

Probably one of the most horrific things that has happened to me over the past years has been the struggle towards understanding and accepting my body. Not surprisingly, perhaps, in light of me being told since I was born that I was a boy, then a teenage boy, young adult male, male-to-female transsexual, oh wait, intersex, oh, totally transgender, no wait, MRI scan says you're a hermaphrodite. Nah, you're definitely male but you want to look like a woman. But you already have the body of a woman. Just the genitals, you know...

Countless years filled with staring at my image in mirrors, loathing, hating, loving, despairing. What should I see? I didn't know. What does my face, my body, any of it look like? Male? Female? Ugly? Pretty? Just regular? Just what?


You're just looking at a pile of mirror shards, with each shard reflecting a different 'me'. The person they told me that I was. The person others told me that I actually am. The inklings of a new 'me'. Maybe the real me is in there? Perhaps. How would you even be able to tell?


Even in all of that, there never was any doubt in my mind that my mind is me. That I feel like myself. What I went through in 2005 was to realise that I had been wearing a mask all those years. The mask that the lie of me having male physiology had created. Because my environment believed it. Because I had had no choice but to believe it. I mean, just look at those genitals.

Two years later I found out that I have even more genitals than just those 'male' ones. MRI scans are amazing, allowing one to take a gander inside one's own body. So now I really was a hermaphrodite. Likely a twin-in-one, because two embryos got a bit too cosy while in my mother's uterus. Pretty amazing. It gives me a good feeling to think about it like that. My body is pretty amazing in that regard.


But I must conform. I must choose between the binary sides. There's no other choice. Just imagine the peace it'd give after having that ugly male part removed. Only... it's still a part of me. It's still a part of my body. Why would I remove part of my body like that? Something that has actual uses, like being able to stand up peeing and not contracting urinary tract infections every other week? I'm not mad.

So... I'm keeping all of it. That's pretty cool, actually.


Maybe it's a bit like one of those Zen Buddhist Enlightenment trips. Or just the cheap version from The Matrix. There is no spoon.

There never was 'gender'. That was the great delusion. What I struggled against wasn't my mind fighting with my body about what my body should really look like. That was just society's horrific influence trying to poison my mind, turning it against me. Against my body. Make me sad and unhappy without me ever finding out that I was feeling sad because I had betrayed myself and my body along with it.

I'm not 'male' or 'female'. Outside of a purely biological sense those terms are completely meaningless. One cannot feel like a 'male' or 'female', because none of that has any meaning. What one can do is get used to one's own body. Learn to accept it. Love it. Understand it. Take care of it. It is all you truly have in this life, after all.


So much in society is about masks. Trying to take on different identities with clothing, make-up, body modifications including alterations to or removal of genitals, with tattoos and piercings. By adopting behaviours like smoking, using drugs or marijuana. They're all masks. None of that is real. None of it really changes anything. There is no spoon.

You're still 'you' inside. No matter what you do to your body.


There are many body configurations which I could have ended up with. I could have gone along with those friendly specialists and I'd have a nice 'transsexual' mark in my medical file, I'd have had GRS surgery and all that. And it would have backfired horribly. Because then my body would have continued its puberty regardless, and the horrible truth would have begun to dawn on me. That I didn't listen to my body. That the mutilation from this GRS can never be undone. That I'd forever have to live with this horror that I had inflicted upon myself.

To me, the biggest obstacle towards learning to accept my own body was to see the concept of 'gender' for the lie it is. That the brain is the same no matter which chromosomes one has. All we can be is ourselves, and the only reason why you grow up hating your body is because your environment tells you to.

Here the irony is probably that as a 'boy' I was bullied constantly throughout my school period, was never considered to be attractive and generally considered myself to be a failure in terms of looks. Dropping the mask, and suddenly I'm this very attractive woman who gets whistled at on the streets and gets a fair amount of attention from both men and women. If it didn't make me feel at least a little bit happy inside I would probably cry at this. I'm still only human, after all.

Society is also shallow like that.


As for me, I'm still getting used to this body of mine that I have only recently begun to realise truly exists. And it's a pretty cool body. It has a few flaws, but that adds to its character. I could never hate it, because it does its best. I'm lucky to have a body like this.

And it's all mine. Forever.


Maya

What remains after everything else has been lost

Looking back at the stories which have emotionally affected me the most over the years, I can now see the pattern that connects them. It's a pattern of loss. From anime series like Kanon, Saishuuheiki Kanojo, Noir, Death Parade, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Haibane Renmei, Hotaru no Haka ('Grave of the Fireflies'), Black Lagoon and Knights of Sidonia to a series like Star Trek Voyager, the overarching theme is that of loss, with the struggle to try and overcome it. Sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing.

So then why this strong emotional response with the experiencing and struggle against loss? It seems fairly obvious, I would say. From whatever was done to me when I was five years old and the loss of my childhood, to my struggles to regain a semblance of a normal life, even as I felt more parts of myself stripped away as I finished high school. Then the madness of dealing with the medical system in the context of trying to figure out my body's intersex condition. Which just led to everything I thought I knew about myself and my body questioned, thrown into controversy, with differing professional opinions essentially stripping away the last vestiges of self.


That's what it feels like to lose everything you are. Everything you think, feel, see or are is gone. There's only the absolute uncertainty and the loss of self that comes with it. Even now that I think I am on the way to recovery, reintegrating memories and confronting decades of traumas, there are countless moments when everything just falls apart again around me. Reintegrating the body with a fractured psyche isn't an easy task.

Yet there's something that I have never lost. Even as I took the decision to end my life - now years ago - only me having succeeded at that attempt could have snuffed out this inner flame that is the most essential core of my being. I can visualise it as this bright, yellow flame that pulsates softly with the beating of my heart. Sometimes it's a bit dimmer. Sometimes it moves uncertainly, as if there's a breeze threatening to extinguish it, but it's always been there.

I can close my eyes and slip inside myself, to that perfect darkness, with only this flame inside. To observe it, and with it myself. To observe my own state of being in an objective manner. To reach that point of perfect focus.


It is interesting that seemingly only through such negative experiences can one seem to truly reach this part of oneself, and with it change the way one sees the world. I remember all too well that when I first watched Star Trek Voyager during the 90s when it aired in the Netherlands, I was basically still a child, and I found too many episodes of the series to be rather boring, not getting a lot of it. Watching it a few years ago again, it was a completely different experience. Suddenly I could see and experience the profound sense of loss, frustration, hope and desperate struggle for survival, with almost every episode being this dark descent into despair and madness.

Then this profound sense of loss as Voyager made it back to Earth after all those years of struggling, and feeling this renewed sense of loss as now this family that had formed on the ship over the years would now be ripped apart.


I only started watching anime series after 2000, at which point I already appeared to have developed this sensitivity to loss. It has guided my preferences ever since, with each of those aforementioned series moving through a similar pattern. Some ending on a happy note, others hopeful, others bittersweet, others surrendering to the inevitable.

Now it seems that I can move forward, figuring out the sources of loss, and how to deal with it. Not that this is easy in any way. Much like how the main character in Knights of Sidonia can never truly forgive himself, or forget this one person whom he treasured most, it's more about giving such a strong sense of loss a place, framing the memories attached to it, and reminiscing about it when it's appropriate, without it controlling or even destroying one's life.

This is also where the story in Knights of Sidonia is so tough and recognisable to me, as it is not a clean loss, but something that keeps coming back, haunting one over and over, never allowing it to settle in a comfortable spot in one's memories, but growing new claws every time and rending new bloody gashes in one's psyche. Over and over. Then taking one's own hands and having one strangle the person you loved the most in front of your very eyes.


It's not an easy loss to cope with. It's why maybe the only way that I can fully deal with the losses which I have suffered is by actually getting the medical help needed to fully diagnose and treat my intersex condition, to fully reintegrate that part of me, and to allow me to give those traumas and associated sense of loss a place, instead of having every confrontation with doctors and kin being this new episode of those memories growing new fangs and claws, prior to them tearing into my flesh once again.

In order to heal, one must be given the opportunity to do so. To create this opportunity requires others to make this possible. This is hard in a society where most people are lost flames, unaware of their inner self, unable to reflect and understand the concept of loss. Unable to fully comprehend the unbridled joy that comes with something given freely, with a pure heart. A bright flame.


Maya

Vlog: Finding my self again

Who do you want to be when you grow up?

Identity is an interesting concept. We like to think of ourselves as individuals, as singular entities with identities (personalities) that are unique and unchangeable. This means that as a child, we only get asked what we would want to be when we grow up. Which mostly just means what kind of job you'd be most interested in. This changes over time as our personalities develop and change.

In the end one's identity is composed out of the memories one has collected over the years, combined with one's experiences. Having presumably learned from one's mistakes and successes, and having made note of what worked for others, one will have changed one's behaviour to become more efficient and presumably happier.

Yet the question that rarely gets asked of children is who they want to be when they grow up. What kind of person, do they favour kindness and empathy over a colder, more business-like approach to others? Some of this is in obviously covered in the kind of job they profess interest for, but I imagine it would be enlightening to address this more directly. Not just for children either.

Even as a child I'd be wrestling with lots of questions about life, and found a willing person to bounce such thoughts off in my mum. She had gone through plenty of less pleasant experiences in her life, starting off with physical abuse in her childhood years, and essentially surviving through a less than welcoming family. Those are the types of experiences which force one already as a child to take a few steps back and really look at people.


As for what person I wanted to be when I grow up, I always felt strongly that being fair to others was essential, and to demand in return that they would treat me and others fairly as well. This meaning that you'd not steal, lie, discriminate or otherwise act in a negative way towards others. Mostly because it does not make sense to act negatively towards others. In the end it just creates this self-perpetuating system of negativity and hatred that will hurt countless people.

Even the experience of getting sexually abused as a young child does not seem to have affected that conviction. Yes, it is necessary to accept and understand that oneself was not to blame for what happened, but to realise that it was the person or persons who did this to you deserve all the blame. That does not mean that you should hate those people, however. To carry hatred in one's heart only affects oneself.

I have always found a lot of inspiration in the saying that 'the best way to take revenge is by living a good life'. That to me summarises the breaking of the chain of negativity. By countering something negative with something positive, you both end up living a much better life by spending that energy on something productive, and the person responsible for the negativity that made you suffer is put off-balance by not getting the expected response, as well as having to watch you ignore them and living that good life.


In the end it's about light, air and joy. A self-perpetuating cycle of happiness, honesty and progress towards a better future for all. It's all about the person one wishes one to become, both as a child and as an adult. We can be that change.

Be optimistic, do give that compliment you thought would be awkward to say, don't be afraid to make a fool of yourself by helping out that person at the busy train station who is wrestling with a suitcase, dare to smile at a child and drop the mask of adulthood. It are the small things that make the world move.


Maya

Don't call me a liar

The past months have given me ample time to think and reflect on things, including the specific reasons why the eviction case I'm dealing with upsets me so much. It being baseless and an aggressive attack to shut down tenant's rights is pretty bad already, but there's something more. Something far more fundamental. Something about me being a liar.

What's the central theme about the past twelve years that I have struggled to find recognition and help for my intersex condition? Being called a liar. About making up being intersex, having female genitals. Lying about having a period and monthly pains. Lying about worsening chronic pains. Even as the physical evidence kept mounting, the accusations kept coming.

The eviction case is similar: I have identified a problem to the best of my abilities, followed all the rules and then get assaulted regardless, called a liar and a thief, and have my integrity as a person cast into doubt again.

Clearly following the rules is meaningless. Being a nice person only helps others.

The only truth which matters is the one which those who are more powerful can force upon those who are weaker.

Ergo, I'm a liar and deserve all the misery which comes my way.


Maya

Too terrified to feel anything

Two days ago I was led to believe that I could maybe rent this apartment in the city, providing an easy way out of my current situation of living in a run-down apartment from which the owner actively tries to evict me. On Monday I received the notification from the local court that it's now an official legal case against me.

Today I learned that getting this new apartment is anything but a certainty, as it'll have to be decided by a real-estate agent, making it impossible for the current tenant to just put me forward as the next tenant. Naturally this was rather disappointing.

The sensation I feel throughout all of this is one of terror. When pushing myself to figure things out and find a solution the terror is accompanied by nausea, ultimately resulting in a migraine, an intense feeling of dissociation and strong depressive (suicidal) thoughts.

There's nothing about any of this which invites me to feel anything. It's better to not feel anything. To not care. Nothing good comes from allowing my emotional side to have a say in anything. All I must focus on is survival, for which emotions and feelings are a liability.

After more than a decade of moving around the world, not having a home or place to settle down, of dealing with physical, psychological and sexual abuse, domestic violence and losing all my money and possessions, of losing any sense of self and interest in my own body, it's now all reaching a point where I feel as if I can no longer compensate any more.

I'm used to suppressing anything bad in my life, of looking on the bright side. That's how I got through the past decades. I'd always ignore anything bad which happened to me. From getting bullied in primary school through high school, from having my very existence and sanity questioned by doctors and psychologists, to the questioning of whether there is a place for me in this world.

At this point I'm left to wonder whether I have any true friends left who can help me. Whether anyone will, or even can help me. Rationally I know it all won't be that bad, with me not having done anything wrong with my current apartment, making an actual eviction very unlikely, but that's the rational side of the story.

After more than a decade of feeling like an outcast, of feeling actively hated, of having stalkers haunt my every move, of having to justify my existence against 'specialists, and so on, I just keep expecting the next bad thing to suddenly reach me.

Maybe it's a sudden letter in my mailbox, or an email, or a phone call. Who knows. I spend every day fighting off waves of irrational terror, trying to reason myself through it by assuring myself that things aren't that bleak and reminding myself of what I think will be the more likely course of events.

It's all just an assumption and best guess, of course. Rarely does anything for which I hope also occur. Dealing with severe disappointments and crawling out of very deep emotional throughs is basically all that I have done these past years.

Not that I want to, of course. Lately the memory block seems to be dissolving somewhat, causing me to more and more strongly and clearly remember things of my teenage years and youth, even as I can feel that many memories are still blocked.

Among those memories are many of a youth which, despite the problems back then, was quite peaceful and happy. Mostly thanks to my mother who allowed me to do things my way, even when my dad was far less understanding.

Compared to those memories this world I live in today seems rather hostile and hateful in comparison. I don't want any of this. I want a world in which everybody is happy and nobody has an ugly thing to say about anyone else.

Maybe it's because I have seen so many horrible and disgusting things over the past decades that I am so tired of seeing the same terrible acts and negativity repeated over and over again. It just seems that humanity makes life unnecessarily hostile for itself.

When people cannot find a place to live. Cannot find a job, or proper healthcare. When they are not respected or tolerated as a person, or never taught to respect themselves. All of those are terrible things. I am painfully aware that it's not just me who is dealing with such things, and that saddens me even more.

If so many others are also suffering despite doing their utmost to improve their situation, then what point is there to me trying to improve mine? Is there anything which I can do? Is there a way that I can ever feel happy, or just optimistic again?

I do not want to believe that this world, this society is just a collection of desperately unhappy individuals with plastic smiles, who are ruled over by rich, uncaring and ultimately also unhappy people. Yet that's what I am seeing: humanity as a tragicomedy.

Maybe this year will be when I can regain at least something of what I felt as a child and teenager. Maybe it's lost forever.

Regardless of what happens, the innocence and naive optimism which I felt back then will not ever return. That in itself is perhaps the real tragedy here.


Maya

One more year down

It's hard to believe for me that yet another year has passed. I feel as if it was just recently that I was sitting in the endocrinologist's office, discussing the prospects of surgery for my intersex condition and how to find the right surgeon. That was well over a year ago, though.

Lots of other things happened in between then and now as well, of course. Most noticeable the legal struggle between me and the owner of the apartment which I currently rent. Here I learned again that you don't have to do anything wrong in society to get punished harshly and potentially lose everything.

Early this year I had to pay the big punishment for having the nerve to have my PTSD triggered when other people are being inconsiderate jerks. It wasn't like I could have done anything to prevent the resulting blackout episode or what happened while I was not in control of my mind or body. I should just have listened to those nice doctors at the Amsterdam VUmc gender team and other hospitals when they said that I was just a confused boy who wanted to become a pretty girl.


I leave this year while feeling primarily bitterness because it feels as if in the end everything has to be my fault and I cannot expect safety or security because I deserve punishment, merely because I exist. Such nerve from my side.

This year is also the first year since 2007 that I am not taking any medication, hormones or otherwise. Just my vitamins. My body produces all the (female) hormones which I need now without external help, which makes me somewhat happy. It's great not having to worry about taking those estradiol pills or rubbing the gel on your skin every night. I won't miss having an estradiol overdose either. Regular PMS is bad enough as-is.


Next year the medical circus will continue, starting with a surgeon appointment in February. Hopefully the desired reconstructive surgery will be possible and I won't have to take too long for it to be performed. If this works out, I can have far more easily examined why I have these incredibly painful periods, with severe bloating at the start and horrid pains and discomfort at the end. Maybe by just having the female side opened things will function more normally.

Maybe it's endometriosis as feared, though, and I'm basically screwed as far as fixing the pain goes. Lots of questions still remain there. I still have the faint hope that if I have the surgery that I'll be able to recover in a comfortable house, not in this run-down apartment with its unreasonable owner. After a recent emotional breakdown while searching for a new place it's clear that I physically cannot do that any more.

In many ways I'm so reliant on others. For medical help. For finding a new place. For finding my way through life in a myriad of ways. I don't like it, because of the horrible experiences I have had with people over the past decades. I much prefer to be self-reliant, but this year that seems to have come to an end as well.


Maybe 2017 will turn out fine. Maybe not. It appears that I'm wholly dependent on others for my future at this point. That's not really progress, I guess. It's pretty much inevitable that this would happen after more than a decade of chronic stress and years of chronic physical pain, however.

I pray that a year from now I'll be laughing at how these fears were all for naught, and talk about the impending release of my autobiography. With as bonus feature the happy ending of 2017.

Here's to hoping.


Maya

Entertainment isn't what it used to be

As a child I grew up with the best sources of entertainment the 1980s and early 1990s could offer, as well as the extensive collection of mostly music from my parents dating back to the 1960s. This meant vinyl, compact cassette tapes and VHS tapes. To play video games on the Commodore 64 we had cassette tapes as well, and a single game on a cartridge.

With our first PC we moved on to 3.5" floppy disks, and gaming was done on a Super Nintendo (SNES) with cartridges. Like moving from vinyl to cassettes, loading programs from a floppy instead of painstakingly waiting for the counter on the tape drive to reach the right count made things a lot easier. Ditto for just shoving a cartridge into a SNES, turning it on and starting playing.

Moving to audio CDs made things even easier for listening to music, removing all the fun details of vinyls (dust, skipping audio, flipping records, etc.) and cassettes (sticky rollers, switching between side A and B, audio quality, etc.) and making it almost boring to listen to music.


Move forward a few more years into the early 2000s, and the VHS tapes have been replaced with DVDs. Audio is still largely CDs, but MP3s and other digital formats are beginning to take its lunch money. As PCs and the internet become faster, so too does the exchanging of music, movies and games via sharing networks increase, regardless of its legal status. There's just something to be said for having access to virtually all popular and many rare pieces of content for virtually free.

Not having a significant source of income over the past years I admittedly didn't do a lot of content buying, so I only experienced the next batch of changes in media formats from the sidelines, including the demise of HD-DVD and the rise of Blu-Ray. This experience void ended when I decided to purchase my very first Blu-Ray movie, receiving it earlier this week. That's when things went south.


My experience over the past decades has been that new formats make life easier, removing issues like degrading audio quality with playback, stuck and broken tape, flipping sides, rewinding after playback or arcane knowledge of C64 BASIC just in order to load content from a floppy disk. DVDs had the questionable encryption thing (CSS), but after it was revealed that it was extremely easy to crack people soon forgot that DVDs even featured encryption.

This in contrast with Blu-Ray movies. Its version of CSS (AACS) has not been cracked yet. This means that without the proper decryption keys the bits on the disc are useless. Worse, to get those decryption keys you need to have an official license from the BluRay organisation ($$), or pay someone who has made a Blu-Ray player (hardware or software-based) which can retrieve the appropriate keys.

All of this led to me putting my new Blu-Ray movie into the Blu-Ray player of my PC and then spending nearly an hour finding out that neither Windows Media Player, nor MPC-HC, nor VLC (even with libaacs and current key database) could decrypt this particular disc. Without shelling out more money (more than the movie disc had cost me), it was clear that I wasn't going to be able to watch this movie.

Except for one detail which led to me watching the movie after all: browsing to a certain popular site, searching for the movie title, clicking two links and waiting a number of minutes until the movie had finished downloading. Open it in MPC-HC and then I was watching the movie, same quality as if I was watching it from the disc which was lying uselessly on my desk.

I'm not sure I see the point of buying movies on Blu-Ray discs when I'm at the mercy of those holding the decryption keys. I'm not sure I see the point of paying a monthly fee for a streaming service either, when they're unlikely to have the content I want to see or listen to, not to mention not always having internet available.

All I want is to buy content on physical media which is not burdened by encryption and which I actually own, not merely license or have access to as long as I pay the monthly fee. This is sadly similar to what happened to video games.


Back in 1998 I bought Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for the Nintendo 64. It cost me a smack of money, along with the console itself, but I knew that after plunking down all of that money, the game console was mine, and the game cartridge which I was holding was the entire game, for now and all eternity.

Now that I'm mostly buying games from online services like Steam and Good Old Games (GOG), the concept of 'ownership' is a bit more nebulous. I know that for the cartridge games I buy for my Nintendo 3DS portable console I can simply claim that they are 'mine', but if any of those online services were to vanish tomorrow, what would you be left with? With GOG you at least have the lack of encryption meaning that you can just copy the game installer to a safe place, but with Steam?

Then there's the point of games with online features, or which are fully online-based. They turn into useless bits as soon as the company maintaining the servers turns them off. Even something as widely popular as World of Warcraft, but also for online multiplayer features, downloadable content and so on. If someone were to want to play a SNES game twenty years from now, the game cartridge should still just work in 2036 and functioning hardware can be found or assembled as well.

Some days I depress myself with the thought of just how many of today's games will be unplayable ten, or even five years from now. In a time when even buying a game disc for a Playstation 4 or XBone doesn't guarantee that the title will work without massive patches (downloaded from a server which won't exist any more in ten years), it's questionable in how far it makes sense to even buy game discs any more.


Others have said this before, and I find that I can merely agree with them; if we aren't careful, we may end up with an entertainment 'dark ages', with movies and music locked behind unbreakable encryption and games too fragmented or too reliant on long since vanished online services to be even worth a look any more.

All of this is a fairly depressing thought, regardless of whether one feels that most of this content is truly worth saving. It means that we're moving backwards in some ways, not forwards.


Maya

Puberty 2: Puberty Harder

Puberty: hormone levels cannot decide whether they want to be male or female levels, end up as neither. Some breast growth, fuzz which with some imagination could be called 'facial hair'. Pelvis expands into a female form, development of feminine hips and waist. Voice cracks a bit. First menstruation at age 11, without being aware of what it is.

Really confusing puberty, really. Outcome very confusing, too. Definitely not recommended.


Puberty 2: testicles have been removed in 2011, so testosterone levels drop from ~25% male levels to regular female levels. Last year the ovaries suddenly decide to produce regular female levels of estradiol (oestrogen precursor). Hormone therapy resulted in an overdose of estradiol as a result. Stopping with hormone therapy fixed the OD symptoms (including linea nigra and hyper-PMS). Hormonally I am now a regular female, without any hormone therapy or the like.

Other changes include resumed breast growth by a full cup size (so far), and a general sense of well-being in my body. Psychologically it feels as if my body is sorting itself out at long last and this time my emotional side is along for the ride as well.


On one hand it's really confusing to literally go through puberty again while one is supposedly a proper adult already. On the other hand it's very cool to observe one's body - which one has become familiar with over decades - finally take on a shape which fits with the rest of it. Before it felt as if my body was an uncomfortable mess of many only partially worked out ideas.

It's hard to define exactly why a certain body works so well and evokes such a sensation of it being 'correct', yet this underlies exactly why people do or do not feel comfortable with their body. It's something which goes far, far deeper than a simple binary choice, such as one's biological sex. The thriving market for cosmetic surgery proves this point.

People chase ideals, without really understanding why. I am no stranger to this. Back when I thought that I was a boy, I wanted to be a tough guy, someone like Rambo, but with smarts. I'd imagine myself with a six-pack, full body-builder body. Definitely set some high standards for myself there. Then of course lots of things happened for years, with my parents divorcing and me moving across the country a few times.

During this time I realised that the external image of who and what I was, with which I had been provided over the years, was completely wrong. I discovered that I was intersex, not a guy. I found that I do not have a male body at all, but one which matches up perfectly with the average female body, aside from the visible genitals.

After this, over a decade of fighting with physicians and psychologists followed, almost all of whom were convinced that I was just confused, a transsexual boy or - if I was lucky - afflicted with this horrible disorder called 'intersex' for which immediate corrective surgery was prescribed (after going through the years of transsexual protocol successfully regardless, somehow).

In that environment I had little opportunity to form a coherent image of myself. Of my body or of myself as a person. It was akin to going through a regular puberty while living in a broken home, with frequent yelling between one's parents, violence and abuse towards oneself, as well as possibly worse things. All you can think of is pure survival, not about which is your favourite colour or whether you're more in love with that person or maybe that other one, or what you'll become when you are an adult.


I guess I mostly made it out of said broken home at this point. Along with last year's sudden start of a second puberty it has given me an opportunity to redo so much of what went horribly wrong that first time. This time my body takes on a shape which I can understand and feel more than just comfortable with. This time I have medical help and care for my intersex condition. Only negative point is having a cruel and abusive landlady who does her utmost to make my life hell.

As I have sadly noticed, it's nearly impossible to fix that last point. The adult world is one where one is expected to face abuse almost constantly, unless one can work oneself up into a position of wealth and power where the taking of such abuse is no longer necessary. I have noticed and fought against this constantly for the past twelve years, with the medical healthcare systems. To find that I will have to do all of the same again but now in order to find a place to live is disheartening to say the least.

Those doctors and psychologists who abused, harassed and brainwashed me over the years were absolute bastards, even if they were convinced that they were doing the right thing. It's okay for me to be angry at them, I think. I find it harder to sympathise with landlords, though. I cannot see how they feel that what they're doing is right for the person renting the property or seeking to do so. This makes the assumption that their behaviour is often borderline or full-blown psychopathic or sadistic much easier to make than with said doctors and psychologists.

I do find the many parallels I can draw here based on my experiences to be both fascinating and horribly frightening, though.


In the end I guess I can honestly say that I am happy and overjoyed that my body is giving me this second chance, also with the positive effect it has on my psyche. I just wish that I can finally leave the 'broken home' part of my life for good, by leaving the harassment and abuse from others fully behind me.

Maybe soon?


Maya

Children aren't that important, anyway

For the first two decades of my life, I - and those around me - assumed that I was just another guy who'd grow up to likely find a nice girl to get married and start a family with. Puberty did however confuse me more than it should have, when I began to grow breasts and had male clothing fit extremely poorly, among other hints that something was off.

When I discovered that I was intersex - now over eleven years ago - thoughts about my future vanished to be replaced by more immediate concerns and questions regarding who and what I actually was. Now, throughout those years I have learned that all I had all those years ago was the illusion of choice. Not only was I never a guy to begin with, but with only partially developed reproductive organs on either side there never was any question of me being fertile at any point in my life.

It isn't that I feel some kind of incredible yearning or pain at this point for not being able to procreate, but more that it's just another one of those reminders that merely by being born intersex so many choices were taken from me. Sometimes it feels like it just isn't fair.

Then again, when is life ever fair?

By having the nerve to be born both intersex and highly gifted, I had to waste over a decade of my life on meaningless, antiquated medical biases and outdated social systems, not to mention circumvent an 'education system' that's more of a hazard than an asset to those who aren't perfectly standard. In that regard the medical and education systems can shake each other's hands as they're both equally outdated and dangerous.

Yet enough of that. I never had a choice in this particular situation even though I was once led to believe that I did. That hurts. Through my own experiences trying to find help for my intersex condition I can somewhat understand the lengths some couples go through to obtain a child of their own, even if both situations are hardly the same. Yet the drive to 'fix' something is similar.

I will never have children of my own. I'm fine with that. I am likely to remain single. I'm fine with that. I may never get that reconstructive surgery. I'm fine with that. None of those things are essential or required in any way to be or become happy. Happiness is an internal thing, only accomplished when one has found, identified and resolved all that bothers one inside one's own mind. Letting go of things which are not relevant is part of that.


Life is too short to worry about the inconsequential.


Maya

LGBTI traumas: born in the wrong country

A country where homosexual football players are publicly humiliated on prime TV. Where violence against homosexual, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual individuals is commonplace. Where the mental healthcare system has no regard for those who do not fit into into the strict sex and gender binaries. A country founded on the principles of regressive, Calvinistic fundamentalist Christianity.

This is the country in which I grew up and lived for almost three decades. Nearly half of it was spent fighting against the medical and mental healthcare systems, as well as uncooperative politicians. Throughout those years I faced outright refusal by doctors and psychologists to acknowledge my intersex condition. Worse, they did their best to make me get back into the gender and sex binary by trying to make me believe that I was transsexual. Other doctors refused to treat me due to being intersex, or called the cops on me. Getting beaten up and humiliated by cops is the stuff of nightmares.

This country is the Netherlands. Of all the things I regret in life it has to be having been born into this particular country.

I do not regret being born intersex. I do not regret being lesbian. I do not regret being gifted. There's nothing wrong with my body, or with me as a person. In many ways I lucked out in the lottery of life with how I got started. However, all of it just could not overcome being born into the wrong country.


I wrote before about how grateful I am that the EU exists, that I could just get a job in Germany, move over and register in my new home country. Thanks to that I finally found the right doctors and other help for my intersex condition. Later this year I will learn what my options are for reconstructive surgery, to fix the closed-off vagina I was born with.

Leaving the Netherlands was the best thing I did in my life so far. I only regret I couldn't have been born in Germany or another country with a similar liberal attitude towards life.

Maybe I just suffered from country dysphoria without realising it for the longest time.

It should all be fine now.


Maya

Domestic violence and a real home

This morning, while waiting with my bicycle at a traffic light, I saw this young woman crossing the street in front of me. Even though she was attractive enough, I nevertheless felt extremely uncomfortable, as she reminded me too much of this one person who once made my life a living hell.

About four years ago I was just in the process of finding a job in the Netherlands when I encountered this rather odd girl. Long story short, I agreed to help out with her laptop at first, then she managed to worm herself more and more into my life, asking for help with her parents and sister. She'd accompany me to some job and media interviews. It was frankly quite bizarre.

Then, despite the warnings from my mother, I agreed to rent an apartment together near the new work I had found. While the original idea was to each have separate bedrooms, for reasons I cannot distinctly remember any more - but likely born out of inconvenient compromises and wishful thoughts - suddenly we were in a 'relationship' and sharing the same bed.

Maybe it just wasn't that I wasn't occupied with any critical thoughts regarding what was happening that I missed or dismissed the obvious first signs of manipulation and physical violence, but after a few months my days consisted out of getting up early to head to work, get home late to cook, do the dishes and go to bed far too late. During this time I'd often find myself struggling to stay awake at work.

Sleep-deprivation was one thing, but the endless arguments were something else. Everything I said was wrong. Everything other said or did was wrong. There are no words to describe the incredible amount of negativity and paranoia I had to deal with over the about eight months that I stayed in that apartment with that woman.

I'm pretty sure that it was a combination of things slowly getting worse combined with my boundless optimism and naivety at the time, thinking that I could change people. Instead my life turned into a real-life version of The Shining.

Often when I'd be taking a shower, I'd turn around and she'd be just standing there in the door, staring at me. Not saying anything, only looking at me. Then when at other times she did talk it was only to deconstruct everything about me, and change me. It was like some evil spirit had taken over my life, invaded my body and mind, with me only able to watch on as it lurched inevitably towards disaster.

And that wasn't even the worst of it. The absolute worst part of it was the sex.

There's absolutely nothing more base, more disgusting and repulsive than sex. Almost all of my experiences with sexuality have been negative, with what I experienced during those months topping the list. I'm not even sure why it happened. Just that it happened a lot. Too often. It was unpleasant, uncomfortable, even painful, both psychologically and physically. I just got used.

Near the end things became more and more violence in a physical manner. As I began to show some signs of independence, even considering taking up this job offer in Germany, she began to threaten me. At some point I remember lying wrapped into a blanket against the inside of the bedroom door, barricading it, while the woman was talking with my mother on the phone, assuring her I was fine, that I was just having psychological problems, but that she would take care of me.

If only that was the truth. The reality had been her yelling at me and calling me names for what may have been an hour straight, continuing even as I was lying curled up on the floor, covering my ears with my hands. Thus I ended up barricading myself, nursing a bloody lip and other injuries.

Then my mother requested to speak with me, after which I was given the phone. I was so thoroughly brainwashed and broken at that point that I actually assured my mother that I would be fine. That I would manage somehow. Yet of course my mother understood that this was all a complete lie, instead convincing me to pack up some belongings while she would drive with the car to my place to pick me up and take me to her own place.

Moving forward again, the manipulations by this woman didn't stop. She'd try to convince people around me that I was the evil manipulator and attempt to worm her way back into my life. In the end I gave up on trying the apartment back, heading there with a moving company to just rescue my belongings. Naturally, once we got at the apartment, we found that she had (illegally) changed the lock.

Eventually she opened the door, to first attack me and my mother. With the police joining the fray, I was able to enter the place and discover that it had been stripped clean. None of my belongings were left. I had lost virtually everything I had ever owned.


For more than a year after this, she would still be harassing me, breaking into email accounts and pestering journalists and others. She can at least be proud of having been the most persistent and most aggressive and violent of my stalkers so far.


At the risk of making this woman feel even better about herself, I must admit that the effects of this domestic abuse will probably take a very long time to subside. Last time I spent some time together with a woman, even sleeping in the same room, I'd have vivid nightmares involving this perpetrator of the worst domestic abuse I have been a victim of at this point.

How can I learn to trust people again after such an experience? How can I possibly date women again when such instinctive, paranoid fears linger in the back of one's mind? How can I ever live in an apartment again without jumping at every sound of footsteps, a running faucet or with the sudden feeling of absolute, terrible certainty that she's standing there again.

Just watching. Staring, soundlessly.


At this point I would probably welcome living, isolated, in some mountains or forests somewhere. Away from people and from the unwelcome memories they too often trigger for me. Somewhere quiet, with just the sounds of nature. A place whose tranquillity can calm the blood-tinged seas of my memories and maybe allow me to brave the ravages of society once more.


Maya

Why the EU is awesome for LGBTI people

For years now there's been a lot of grandstanding by political and other parties in the Netherlands as well as other European countries about how great it would be if they could just leave the EU, lock down their borders and do everything themselves again.

The simple truth is that if the Netherlands were to leave the EU, I would post-haste seek to obtain German citizenship, rescinding my Dutch nationality if need be. To me the EU has been, and still is one of the few bright points in the harsh reality that comes with not being part of the imaginary sex and gender binary. If anything the Netherlands is complicit in making me realise the benefits of this Union.

From gaining easy access to the healthcare systems in other EU countries with full coverage, to easy migration between member countries, to a single currency. There are many reasons why the existence of the EU has made life for me as an intersex EU citizen much easier than it would have been otherwise.

From being able to hop borders to get an MRI scan (illegal in the Netherlands), to getting surgery (also illegal in the Netherlands). From getting a job offer and permanently migrating in a matter of months, to only having to go through a simple registration in my new country. It's hard to say which of these things made my life the easiest.

Maybe the biggest positive point is that courtesy of the EU, EU citizens are free to escape the grasp of conservative or regressive societies, such as in Poland, Greece and the Netherlands. Finding a job elsewhere is easy. Renting or even buying a place in another member country is easy. I'm hardly the only one who has escaped the Netherlands, for example, to find a better life in Germany or elsewhere.

Of those whose stories I know, some were raised in the Netherlands, then found out that they were transsexual and - after a few years of unpleasantness at the same Amsterdam hospital which I went to - decided to abandon the Netherlands and find a more humane and respectful life in Germany.

That to me is what the European Union represents: freedom. The freedom to choose, to decide one's own fate instead of being forced to submit to whichever culture one has been born into. It's an idea which literally takes away borders and shows a tantalising glimpse into a future where all of us can respectfully live together, regardless of any and all characteristics of our bodies and minds.

At this point in time such an ideal has not been accomplished, as evidenced by the struggle for basic human rights for some groups within European countries. Yet at the same time it also gives people like me hope. Hope that some day everything will be different, and the borders between people will be gone, too.


Maya

That empty pillow

I remember well that moment, now a few years ago, when you asked me to become your girlfriend. I also remember in painful detail my refusal. Regardless of my motivations and no matter that I still feel that it was the right decision for both of us, it still hurts inside.

For some reason when I moved into my new place and had to buy a bed - together with all other furniture, I decided to get a queen-sized bed. A regular twin-sized bed would have sufficed, but something made me buy the larger bed, along with everything else to get two matching sides.

Now, I often find myself looking at this empty side of the bed, staring at the empty pillow and imagining a reality in which this setup didn't seem like some twisted way to torture myself. Then again, having only a twin-sized bed taking up a fraction of the bedroom might have just the same effect.

In the end I just have to admit that the problem appears to be inside of me. A desire to be loved, and to love back, but no way to express this or expectations of it ever becoming a reality. Above all an inability to love myself.

Maybe some day I'll learn to know myself and discover that I'm actually a really cool person to hang out with. Or maybe it'll turn into the worst date of my life. Worse than all those times I was taken on a date without being aware of it in my horrible nativity until the sudden attempt to kiss me.

I hope I'll be gentle.


Maya


P.S.: this short story I wrote last year, called 'In Between - A love story' might be of interest, too: https://www.scribd.com/doc/246517504/In-Between-A-Love-Story

2015 retrospective: Why worry?

"Why worry, there should be laughter after the pain
There should be sunshine after rain
These things have always been the same
So why worry now"
(Dire Straits - Why Worry)

Looking back on the year 2015 and what it has meant to me, I can see that it is a year of great changes and hopefully the beginning of the end of decade-long problems.

After first offering me financial security and then a way out of the Netherlands, my currently employer offered me a permanent contract at the beginning of the year, removing many worries and motivating me. This marks the first time that I have had such certainty in life that I can support myself without having to rely on others.

I found a lot of joy and entertainment in the project I found myself working on throughout the year for my job, gaining a lot of confidence in my own skills and hopefully gaining some respect and understanding from my bosses and colleagues as well.

This year I also found out that I am incredibly lucky, after getting hit by a car without it being my fault, and surviving the accident with nary a scratch, just multiple weeks of intense muscle pain and some lingering issues and scars as a more permanent reminder. I haven't heard anyone remark about weird twitches or changes in my personality recently, so I am pretty confident that I didn't get bumped on the head too severely, either.

After starting working on a book on Android-based gaming development in 2014, I managed to finally complete it nearly a year later, making my editors at Packt Publishing feel very relieved, I imagine. It was a bit of a harrowing experience, to be honest, having to focus on writing a pretty complex and technical book against the background of my medical and connected psychological issues, as well as uncertainties about my job prospects until that got settled.

In September of 2015 I did however get it all finished along with the editing, reviewing and last-minute changes and it went on sale soon after. If you search for my name and/or the title of the book ('Mastering AndEngine Game Development') it's easy to find at the Packt store as well as at Amazon. I sent my mother a copy as well, just so that she can have a copy of the book her daughter wrote. It feels pretty darn good to be finally done with this first book. Here's to the next ones :)

Soon after finishing that book, I also got rapid updates on the final chapter in the four-year old lawsuit against me in the Netherlands, for the vandalism committed by me when I suffered a black-out due to the psychological weight of many years of physical and psychological uncertainty and outright torture as well as a suicide attempt finally breaking me. While the judges all declared that I could not be held responsible for my actions due to these circumstances, they did however force me to pay the nearly 4,000 Euro in damages for some uninsured art works which got damaged as well.

So in effect they did hold me responsible after all, they just won't throw me into jail unless I fail to cough up this amount in time. I will get the formal statement forcing me to pay early next year, after which my options are to pay up within a month, or go to jail after all. On the bright side, this is the last time that I'll ever have to deal with the Netherlands ever again.

I set up a crowd-funding campaign [1] for this payment in the hope that may some others might want to share the psychological burden with me, and also so that I won't have to burn through my meagre savings for something which is ultimately a shining example of injustice. So far this crowd-funding campaign has reached 33% of the total amount I will have to pay, but with no activity during the past two weeks.

The unpleasant thing about crowd-funding campaigns like this is that it basically asks the public to judge you and your proposal on merit. While to me it's a major issue which has made me feel terrible over the past years, and has contributed significantly to my psychological traumas and feelings of resentment towards the Netherlands, it's hard to convey such a feeling of importance to others, who may feel that it's just a cheap trick by me dodge the responsibility for something I did.

Yes, that means agreeing with those who feel I purposefully and wilfully destroyed other people's property and try to blame it on some imaginary 'black-out'. The thought that people truly think about me and this campaign like that hurts. It basically touches upon me feeling cursed with having a healthy and attractive looking body, as it is incredibly hard to get any kind of sympathy when outwards everything appears to be fine. I hope that more people can put aside their biases and look at the facts.

On a more positive note, despite having had little luck during 2015 with getting any help for my intersex condition and associated medical issues, with doctors putting me away as 'just a transsexual', or worse (all fans of calling intersex 'DSD' can go keel over for all I care...), it seems that at the end of 2015 my luck has turned.

After two appointments with a new endocrinologist I'm being taken seriously, along with my hermaphroditic intersex condition, with the first hormone level tests already showing interesting results, and the prospect of answers and even reconstructive surgery for my female side rapidly becoming a very real prospect for the new year.

It's been over twenty years since I first began to wonder about what in the world my body was doing and changing into when I got my first period and began to grow breasts despite being told I was a boy. Now it appears that those decades of confusion, trauma and frustration may finally come to a close next year. It's almost too much to take in such a wondrous idea, and yet my traumatised mind is rapidly running out of arguments to dismiss the current events as merely the quiet period before another traumatising rejection of help.

Why worry, indeed? How hard it may be to believe when you're in the midst of the chaos, noise and death, at some point things seem to indeed get better. Go figure.


Maya


[1] https://www.gofundme.com/zufd2yh8