Hope versus happiness

The concept of 'hope' is usually postulated as something positive, as a driving, positive emotion or feeling that keeps one going in times of adversity. Yet, as I have on many occasions found, 'hope' is generally the prelude to disappointment, setbacks or worse. I would classify it as a primarily negative feeling, as it explicitly makes clear that things aren't right or fine, with one banking on a chance that things will somehow turn out okay.

Hope and happiness are also mutually exclusive as a consequence. If one feels hope, one is not and cannot feel happiness, at least not in any sense that conveys permanence and doesn't feel like daydreaming. Happiness implies permanence, stability and a sense of being at peace. Hope implies uncertainty, nervousness and the possibility of accepting bad news, an upheaval in one's living situation, or worse.


I find myself pondering these thoughts as I have somehow found myself back in the medical system after previously having settled on leaving the diagnosing of my intersex condition's characteristics as an unfinished project. Whether or not my current symptoms have anything to do with said condition I do not know. That's rather the point of this upcoming exercise, after all.

At my current GP's office it has quickly become clear that these symptoms of weight gain, a distended abdomen with apparent fluid inside it, along with bowel obstruction and persistent pain and discomfort in the perineum require a quick and thorough diagnosis. Which is why I have been referred to a larger hospital that has the resources and capability to handle such a case. Next week is the first appointment and the presumably first series of tests.

It's hard for me to pin down what my thoughts on this all are. On one hand I'm relieved of course that something is happening, and what's happening inside my abdomen will be diagnosed. On the other hand I'm both struggling with my too many memories of medical systems over the years, as well as a range of emotions including uncertainty and hints of fear. One never knows what will be found, after all.


What's different this time around is that I'm not at the hospital to have an intersex condition diagnosed, but for worrying medical symptoms which could have any number of underlying causes. It's in one way reassuring, because it means that it is not connected to those years of unpleasant medical experiences, yet it is very much the opposite of reassuring in the sense that something is decidedly wrong with my body, just that it hasn't been determined yet what is wrong and how to fix it.

Thus hope remains.

Depending how things go these coming weeks, it could all turn out fine, in which case I'd feel a lot happier. This is what I hope for, obviously. But hope doesn't come with guarantees. Reality is not concerned with what my wishes, hopes or dreams are. I only get to accept whatever comes my way. Whatever that may be. After over a decade of 'just taking it', it's not something that comes easily to me any more.


Between the relief of my body finally making its way through the final stages of puberty, and these worrying symptoms, I'm not sure what to think or feel. Is there a correlation? Is it a sign of something positive that just needs some surgical tweaking? One's thoughts just keep spinning in a circle. Hoping. Feeling uncertain. Trying to ignore it.

All I can do is hope and wait until next week's appointment. Meanwhile continue as normal. In so far as possible.


Admittedly it would be pretty cool if part of these symptoms are me growing that mature uterus and ovaries. First case in the medical literature, for sure.


Maya

Identity unknown

Everything changes. I feel myself dragged along with the changes.

A home. Work. Fading stress.

New questions. Restless feelings and emotions.


Every day trying to convince myself to do the work that needs doing, yet feeling ever more unsettled by feelings of hopelessness and despair.

What's the meaning of the work I do? Of the projects I do in my spare time? Though it feels okay while I can push myself into doing some writing and programming, it's hard to see it all go anywhere. To see a future.

I cannot even see myself any more. Or maybe I never really did. This body of mine sometimes feels like that of a stranger. Other times I can just feel helpless rage and incredible sadness when I consider this body. When I consider being intersex and the many years of doctors and psychologists forcing the identity of a transsexual male on me instead of listening to me and performing medical tests, I just want to scream and cry.

The traumas and confusion of the past decades blur together even as I can still see the good memories during those years through my tears.


Every day I can feel that something isn't right inside my body as it goes through its monthly cycle. The constant distension that keeps worsening along with weight gain. The pain and discomfort in the lower abdomen and perineum that only subsides briefly after each cycle.

I should go to a doctor with it. Just like I have been trying for the past years. Last year started off with me getting exploratory surgery to investigate these pains, but like with every examination attempt but the proper surgery in 2011, nothing ever results from it. I cannot motivate myself any more to consider going to a doctor at this point, as it'd only add to the pain and trauma.

I have had a few people contact me who told me that they're intersex. They invariably ask for advice and help. Yet what can I offer there? Just tales of trauma and disappointment. Of decades wasted on ignorant, arrogant doctors and kin, and a lifetime of regrets for having wasted so many years on what turned out to be fruitless? I failed to find help. I can do nothing more about this intersex thing except hope that it doesn't cause real medical problems beyond chronic pain at some point.

Life would have been so much better if I wasn't born intersex. If intersex didn't exist. If it all just went up and vanished. Just like all of this other gender and sexuality and related nonsense. All it means to me is pain and suffering. I hate all of it. I wish I could just rip it out of my body. Become just a human being and leave the suffering behind that come with those disgusting things.


In some parallel universe I guess there was a me who did write that autobiography, didn't waste years on the useless medical system and who is doing pretty darn well. As for the me in this universe, I guess that person will be struggling month after month to keep up the energy to make enough to pay the rent and food, while still dreaming of a future in which everything will be better, without struggling and worries about health and such.

It's nice to be able to lie to oneself to not lose all hope.


Maya

Keeping a brave face

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

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

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


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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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


Maya



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

To let oneself be carried off by the current

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

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

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

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


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

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

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


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


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


Maya

Hanging around while feeling unneeded

It is normal for any human being to want to feel wanted, needed and possibly even loved. To remove or blunt that desire means to strip a person of their empathy, of any shred of love for themselves and ultimately the will to live.


For the past decades I have struggled with being 'different' in a variety of ways. First there was me being gifted, and a purely visual-spatial thinker. This was what first got me isolated during primary school and severely bullied and beaten up on a number of occasions. My only friends during my school period were the other outcasts and misfits.

Then there was the intersex thing. To discover that I never was a male. That my body wasn't at all what I had been told what it was supposed to be. To society I merely changed from a male into a female role, but underneath my skin things are infinitely more complex. Organs, or at least functional tissues, have kicked into action and forced my body to become definitely more feminine along with repairing old scars and the like. Yet I will never be a woman. Once a hermaphrodite, always a hermaphrodite.


Thirteen years. That's the current count for how long I have been trying to figure out what this body of mine is about, and more recently why I'm suffering chronic pain, abdominal distension, etc. Last month I finally figured out that what has been causing a lot of pain and discomfort since I was 11 years old are fissures, at least in the rectum judging by the blood. Possibly in the vagina as well. What causes those constant fissures, however?

The most reasonable theory which I have so far discussed with my GP is that there's a build-up of fluids inside the vagina and/or around that area, which causes the rectal wall to bulge inwards, at which point regular toilet visits would shred this wall, causing constant fissures. Those fissures and discomfort experienced each month also only occur on the side between the rectal and vaginal walls.

As for the actual cause behind all of this, and possible outcomes, there are many possibilities. Everything from rectal wall spasms to ovarian cancer and lots of secondary causes. The coming months I hope to learn more.


Yet it's been thirteen years. Thirteen years during which everything rapidly became clear to me what had to be done and examined. It still feels as if doctors are only just catching up on the need to actually examine a hermaphroditic body for possible complications due to the irregular formation of certain tissues and organs on account of having two distinct sets of DNA try to steer the same mechanisms.

It feels as if the only reason why I'm being taken more seriously now is because all of those issues which I was worried about for over a decade already are now finally beginning to appear. Finally something which they can understand and act upon, maybe. It's too easy to feel bitter at this.

Apparently certain types of cancer are more prevalent among hermaphrodites, specifically those of the reproductive organs. Sepsis is also much more common, for when fluids get trapped and become infected. I have read up on this and tried to convince doctors of the urgency to determine which organs I have in my abdomen for this reason. Instead all I got was one side telling me that I had a normal male body, and the other side that I have a hermaphroditic body. Attempts to focus on the latter did not pay off.

What might save or still end up killing me is time. Simply wait long enough until things start going wrong and you can present concrete symptoms to doctors. From numbness and pain in one's limbs to abdominal distension (from 70 to 82 cm), the aforementioned fissures accompanied with bright red blood and the sensation of a lot of fluid being trapped underneath the skin in the vaginal area. They have their work cut out for them.

Yet nobody still cares about me being intersex.


I guess that the gifted thing keeps haunting me. I was always the one to question everything. The child who preferred to hang out with adults instead of with those their own age. The one who couldn't stop learning, questioning and dreaming. I cannot just 'be'. For me 'Hell' is a life lived without meaning.

You know what lies at the end of every single 'why'?' question? Nothing. Because the universe just is. There's no reason for its existence, just like there is no reason for our own existence. We exist because along a line of ancestors there were always those who had to mate and produce offspring. Why? Because.

Yet the universe is not without meaning. Through its existence it produces stars, galaxies and much, much more. Life is the same. A life lived well produces its own meaning. I guess this is the primary reason why I feel as if I'm being suffocated when I consider a reduction of being able to live. To do a menial, meaningless job working on something which in the end nobody really cares about, for example.

In some ways I am a thrill-seeker, I guess. Just not by risking my own life and health, but by seeking new intellectual challenges. By challenging certainties in science and technology. To me that is what gives life meaning. Any other existence is too terrifying for me to consider.

This, too, makes me a poor fit for society.


What more is there that makes me truly unfit to function in society and prevents me from feeling like I belong or am needed anywhere? Nobody needs my traumatic experiences recounted to them, I'm sure. What happened to me when I was five years old is my own problem. It's my responsibility to make sure it doesn't interfere with me pretending to be a Normal Human.

Many things which are 'different' about me are mostly just quaint, though, I guess. From being ambidextrous, to being a super-taster and so on. They just make me 'slightly odd', I reckon.


I guess that in the end the question with which I am left  is a simple: where to from here?


Without a job or anything else to keep me tied down to this country of Germany, I am free to go and work and live anywhere in the world. Assuming someone needs me. Something exciting. Something hard and challenging. Something that can keep my interest.

The simple trick is to find the right employer.

Or just go into academics and forget about the 'real' world :)


Maya

I must find that exceptionally challenging and rewarding job

I must. That's pretty much the summary of everything that is going on for me at this point.

For the chronic pains for which I must find medical help. For the worrying appearance of blood in my stool accompanied by the sensation of something rupturing inside my abdomen, for which I must also seek medical help. For the flaring up of my post-traumatic stress disorder and dissociative identity disorder-like symptoms as a result of the increasing stress I also must find more help and support.

For having been laid off from my job I must find a new job. For being jobless I will have to deal with the job centre starting next month and have to apply to at least so many jobs each month, or lose the welfare money. For being jobless I must find a job within a year or face deportation back to the Netherlands.

For fixing the apartment and eviction situation I must at least find a new place, for which I must first find a job. To rent or buy a new place, I must have a job.


All of this leaves me jobless, with chronic pain and psychological disorders which prevent me from functioning 'normally'.


I must fix it somehow. By myself. Even if it's impossible. Again I feel angry at myself for having wasted so many years on my intersex condition and backwards doctors without a shred of sympathy. I should have ignored it. Made a much more successful career. Then died in my 30s from sepsis anyway. Bugger.

It often doesn't feel as if there's any point to me fighting for myself any longer. It's just the same pattern every time. Few steps forward, then get kicked back to a worse position than before.


I realise that I could just settle for working a menial job at a dull company, but in that case I would have made it at my current employer as well, writing JavaScript or Java code until my brain started dribbling out of my ears from sheer boredom. I know that this won't ever work.

Ideally I would get a job in a more R&D position involving low-level software and hardware development. Working on interesting new technologies which will make the lives of everyone better. Something that can actually hold my attention. I already had to thank for a potential job offer this week because it'd just involve writing casual games (albeit in C++) all the time. I could do it, but would get distracted over time. That's what I learned about how my mind works.


My curse always seems to have been that I could never be 'just like others'. Not with my biological sex (hermaphroditic intersex), not with being just left- or right-handed (ambidextrous), not with my perception of taste (super-taster), or the way that I learn (100% visual-spatial learner, gifted & auto-didactic). None of this is my fault, all of this I was simply born with. Yet to then fit in regular society? Forget it. Been there, tried it, failed miserably, tried again and again until I finally learned that lesson.

I don't think that I would be happy in any other job than one which would challenge me intellectually and which appreciates me for being different. I guess I must keep looking... but I also hope that such a company is also looking for someone like me, and may stumble over my profile somewhere.

Can't hurt to hope, just to have that hope crushed, I guess.


Here's to that never-ending source of hope.


Maya

Wanting happiness for all, yet not even coming close

Today was the inspection in the eviction case at the apartment. Maybe it was mostly the sneering and character assassination attempts by the lawyer of the landlady, but the impact of the experience was quite literally soul-draining.

Even though the heating system did exactly what was expected of it - ticking loudly and happily when turned on - the water wasn't as brown as it could have been because I had flushed the system a few days ago because I wanted to take a shower. Ultimately I had to give up on that attempt and shower at the office instead. It's amazing how much better a shower works if it's not done with rusty water.

The court had somehow mangled the part about the windows having gaps, instead focusing on the gaps in the structure above the windows, which got sealed last year. As a result that complaint is not being taken further at this point, and instead the waiting is now for an independent laboratory to be contacted, who will sample the water at the apartment and determine its toxicity to human life. This will likely not not take place until well into next year.


It's disappointing that it will take longer yet again, with every chance that this experience will end up costing me many thousands of Euros, on top of what I have already had to spend on lawyer and other costs. On the other side, I could have accepted a settlement and been forced to move to another place, only to lose my job shortly after and likely relocate again. Then there's the issue of my PTSD and other traumas which I'm still working through.

On one point I was at least absolutely correct: as I have talked about with my therapist and others on various occasions, this whole eviction thing is essentially the same as what happened to me as a child, when adults decided to take advantage of me. Here, too, am I left to obey whatever the court and lawyers demand from me. I can only hope that they won't hurt me too much.

After this morning's experience I was left feeling extremely depressed, feeling as if life had lost all its meaning. That I would soon lose everything again. End up homeless and without possessions or money on the streets.

It's hard to fight back against this darkness. I still do not understand why such horrible stuff keeps happening to me. From doctors lying to me, to adults abusing me, to facing one lawsuit after another for things which I have not done or cannot possibly be considered responsible for. It feels as though I am cursed. This makes it often very hard to see a way forward.


There's this future that I can picture, which gives me hope. In this future I got hired by the branch of this international company here in the city at which I applied. I would live in a house in the countryside, and travel by car to my job, but also doing a lot of home office and gladly take up vacation days simply because I like being... home.

It's a possible future, one which sadly also relies on others. Soon I may not just find myself without a job, but also without a place to live. Worse, I may may not be able to find a way out of this darkness, as all those horrible things just keep happening to me, along with the chronic pain in my abdomen and right side. The darkness feeds on pain and misery, worsening both in the process.


I want others to be happy. I want to be happy myself. Yet what I see is I'm not happy and neither are many others around me. Not even this landlady, or her lawyer. They're carriers of misery. Unhappy human beings who just bring more misery to others, whether they deserved it or not.

For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to work on inventions and technologies that would make others happy. Because that makes me happy. Because of all the discoveries I would make and the things that I would learn along the way.

That this is being made impossible because I'm simply not capable of finding a place in life where I would feel at ease and motivated enough to do those things is perhaps the most unfair thing of all. I'm so sick of dealing with miserable people all the time. Life isn't hard. People make life hard. People can make life easy.


Maya

A biological woman who can find no gynaecologist to help her

Years ago I thought that I would never need a gynaecologist. That was back when I still assumed that I did not have ovaries and such, figuring that I had the luxury of stable hormone levels courtesy of hormone therapy. In that regard I was not much different from a transgender person. My assumption was that I would have to take those hormones for the rest of my life.

Then 2015 started off and with it my body began to undergo physical changes. From the appearance of linea nigra on my abdomen to increasing monthly pains and more. That's when I learned that I do in fact have ovaries. Since that time I have found myself increasingly struggling with the negative symptoms that these changes brought with them.

The past days I found myself waking up basically to pain. As the monthly cycle kicks in anew, the pain in the middle of my abdomen - just below the navel - can be felt, adding to the pain in the right side of my body that doesn't seem to go away any more. My right hip and side are a constant source of pain. I haven't been able to sleep on my right side without liberal application of painkillers for months now. My right leg feels numb, and all the time my right ankle and feet feel as if they are actually broken or injured.


As at this point I have given up on the ridiculous thought that there might actually be a medical specialist with a clue about intersex, let alone who is interested in anything more than eradicating intersex from the face of the earth through forced surgery. That just leaves me with trying to find a gynaecologist willing to take me on as a patient.

Since my problems seem to be caused by the female parts of my anatomy, that would seem like a reasonable course of action. Yet after years of trying it seems that it's irrelevant that I'm essentially biologically female. Me being in increasingly more pain seems to be of no real concern either. I seem to be facing the prospect of more severe abdominal pain and the gradual loss of sensation and increase of pain in at least my right leg and arm. My last attempt last week to contact a gynaecologist also ended with me getting rebuffed but offered 'good luck'. I'm sure that'll help.


What am I to do? Is there anything that I can do?


I'm regularly maxing out the daily allowed amounts of ibuprofen and diclofenac painkillers, just so that I can get through the day, and even then I often find myself flinching in sudden flashes of pain, or only realise how bad the pain still is when I allow myself to relax a bit and I notice how incredibly worn out I am of tolerating the constant pain.

At this point I cannot even afford to do anything but fight this pain with painkillers, as my physical health is basically irrelevant next to the current issues of finding a new job, finding and moving into a new place, and also dealing with the eviction case. This week the latter continues with an official inspection. Next week I have an appointment at the Dutch embassy in Bern to have my passport renewed. Neither of which allow me to be sick.


Thus with my current schedule I can but ignore the pain and pray that nothing disastrous is going to happen that will make it impossible for me to walk and otherwise attend to those priorities. I would be eternally grateful if someone could help me out with finding that gynaecologist who isn't afraid of a more unusual case like mine, but I'm not very hopeful there.

It's one of those areas where society makes it abundantly clear that I'm not a proper woman and also not really a proper human. It feels like society tolerates me more than anything, just like how I tolerate these physical pains because I have no other choice.


I wish things could be different.


Maya

The countless branches of the future

Today I signed the form that terminates my current employment contract effective end of this year. Tomorrow I'll be registering as officially looking for a job, to ensure that I'll receive a monthly amount in the case that I haven't found alternate employment by the beginning of next year. How things will go from here is something that's basically up to however is judging my job application at those businesses where I applied at.

One company at which I applied and which is also based here in the city would be a natural fit, as they are looking for a senior C++ developer, with experience in automotive technology, both of which applies to me. Ideally I'd be invited to a job interview there, ace it, and get a job offer. That'd immediately end most of my current uncertainty and allow me to breathe a sigh of relief that my income is secure, I dodged months of bureaucracy at the jobs office, and I'd be working at a company of which I know that it's good for its employees.

In an alternate reality, I would fail the job interview, or not even receive an invitation. Ditto for the other companies where I applied at. The search for a new job would drag on, even as the deadline for welfare would draw closer. Moving to a new place would be the least of my concerns. This is the future where I would become increasingly more unhappy and depressed. Even with intensive psychotherapy this would be my definition of 'hell'.

There are many more futures imaginable, and it's impossible to tell what will happen these coming weeks and months. It's also pointless, as things will happen the way they happen, and all you can do is do your best every single day.

Of course there's a lot weighing in my favour, including my current resume (as found on my personal site) and my general level of experience. That gives me at least some comfort. But no certainty. That will have to come from others. All I can do is wait.


And regardless of what happens next, there will forever be the memories of my old employer. The offices I worked out, and some of the great people who I'll sorely miss. The memories of games we played together, whether billiard, Playstation 2 or GameCube games. The save files still stored on those systems for games which I'll never finish there. Projects which I was involved in for improving the office which now suddenly have lost all relevance to me.

I hope that soon I can make new awesome memories at a new company.


Maya

Just a terrified child

Just a few days until the eviction hearing. I'd be a liar if I said that it hadn't been the thing that's been most on my mind for the past months. I'd be an even worse liar if I insisted that it doesn't make me feel depressed, suicidal and want to cry and curl up in absolute misery.

I don't know what this 'adult' thing is that others keep talking about. At times like these I realise that it has nothing to do with me. I'm just a child, who just wants to play all day: learning more languages, playing games, soldering and programming projects and exploring the universe. Everything that is fun.

I don't know what these Adults want from me, with their Adult things. They're just big, scary, looming dark figures who keep yelling at me, demanding that I do things, or not do things, yet I never really understand why it's all such a big deal to them. They should learn to have fun instead.

Hopefully they'll leave me alone again soon.

There's still so much fun to be had.


Maya

Absolute terror and looking for an escape

Last Monday I was sitting at the a table in the local hackerspace, just having fetched and consumed dinner along with a couple of others. Suddenly I felt a tingling sensation in my right leg which rapidly got worse. Within minutes the leg had gone fully numb except for occasional surges of pain in the appendage. For the next hours I had to wait and hope that I'd get the sensation back in the leg before I could cycle home.

Last night I got woken up because my right arm was tingling and hurting. After a couple of minutes the pain lessened and I was able to fall asleep again. For the past days I can feel a numbness and mild discomfort in both my right leg and arm. To say that this is disconcerting would be an understatement.


For the past twelve years, it's been made very clear to me that do not know what I am talking about. All pains I merely imagine. Everything that I think my body is, is false.

It hasn't just been with medical things, either. Working my last job in the Netherlands was unpleasant and traumatising, along with the horror that was sharing an apartment with someone who did absolutely not have my well-being in mind and which ultimately led to me losing all of my belongings. It's not been easy to keep believing that things could get better.

Meanwhile I have a good job at a great employer, yet to get there hasn't been easy, either. Medically some progress has been made, but it looks like I still have many years - if not decades - ahead of me to get anything like a resolution. Anything beyond this... just no. Forget it.


Whenever I try to think of my future, or merely try thinking of heading to the run-down apartment I currently live in, my mind practically blanks out in fear. When thinking of contacting a real-estate agent to get started on finding that house to buy, there's about 1-3% of my mind which feels up to it, with the rest again blanking out in complete terror.

Most of my days are filled with the struggle against that general sensation of terror, accompanied by brief or longer periods where I find myself thinking about suicide.


When people then tell me to think about how great it would be to have a house of my own, and that I should look at real-estate websites for homes for sale, they are completely missing the point. Such things are guaranteed to make me feel that terror because of all the uncertainties and crushing disappointments which come naturally with such things. It's a sensation which I can resist for a short while (minutes, maybe), but beyond that it will invoke a suicidal depression because of it having drained my energy and with it the resistance against such thoughts.

In short, I can't do this.


I can maybe work up the energy to contact a real-estate agent and pray that this will suffice. I would also have to get a loan together, which would also be very emotionally taxing, but very likely less so than dealing with landlords and kin. Being confronted with my actual monetary worth (or lack thereof), is depressing, but at least I wouldn't be judged by anyone as a person.

Yet none of this will be easy. I'm not sure anyone here comes even close to understanding any of this. How would I even be able to explain any of this to someone else? Between being intersex, gifted, hyper-sensitive, ambidextrous and severely traumatised, I don't really feel like I am inhabiting the same universe as others. It would definitely explain why others keep expecting me to be able to do all the things which they can do.


I have a traumatic disorder. I cannot function in daily life the way others easily can. My traumatic experiences colour the world around me in a bleak and horrifying way most of the time. I cannot bring myself to trust people. Not yet. Not at this point. Not after everything that they have done to me. It frustrates me so incredibly that people will listen to me talk about all of this, then smile, nod and just tell me 'good luck', as if none of what I experienced and suffered was relevant, or real.

The chronic pains I suffer are real. The traumatic disorders are real. I can choose to ignore both, but doing so will not help me in any way. Other people ignoring both is not helpful, or right. Both have to be acknowledged and handled appropriately. Anything else will just increase my suffering.


Maybe I'm just misunderstanding this all, though. After all these years of not knowing what my body is, or who or what I am, and having multiple psychologists and kin judge me as being delusional, it could be me who is the problem.

I just want an escape out of this literal madness that I still find myself trapped in. Something has to make sense at some point. Probably. I hope so.


I have no clue who or what I am. Whether up is up or actually down. Maybe left is right and right left. The sky is blood-red, not blue. Everything can be true. It's all relative. Maybe everyone is wrong. Maybe this is all just in my mind. Maybe this is what it feels like to go crazy. Just an endless nightmare.


Maya

To combine feeling both happy and suicidal

The worst feeling in the world is that of feeling hope.

My expectation for the coming weeks is that the new surgeon will not work out either and I'll be no closer to a medical resolution for my intersex condition than I was twelve years ago, and that the court will rule not in my favour in the eviction case against me, forcing me to move into another place - any place - within a month or two.

The hope of course is that the new surgeon will work out and I will finally get that resolution for my intersex condition after twelve years, and that the court will reject the eviction demand, allowing me to find that house without the added stress of an eviction deadline.

Balancing expectation and hope against each other when they're so far removed from each other is practically torture, also because if either or both of these expectations turns out to be true, it risks triggering the suicidal urges. These past weeks I'm struggling with depression, and through bouts of suicidal thoughts. At moments like earlier today I find myself questioning the wisdom of cooking dinner while upset and crying, as I have to keep myself from really considering plunging a sharp knife into my body.


I'm managing to stay stable so far because I mostly manage to ignore what's about to happen, and otherwise try to delude myself into believing that things will turn out fine. There are also the other things in my life which do make me happy, particularly at work.

This week at work I spent working on an embedded hardware (IoT) project, developing the software for it and working out the integration of the hardware. I also disassembled the Commodore 64 we have at the office and installed some heatsinks on its main chips (SID, PLA, CPU) so that they don't run so hot any more. I'm also working on a variety of other electronics projects.

These are all happy things, which help me to hang on to sanity as everything else in my life seems to be in a rather dreadful state. As I said in an earlier blog post, I would love to just destroy that part of myself: the part which has to struggle to find a home, the part which has an intersex body. The parts which are suffering so incredibly much.


Survival through ignoring reality and using happiness as a drug to escape harsh reality. I guess that's what it comes down to, still. According to the lawyer of the apartment's owner it's however all nonsense that I have PTSD, or that I am intersex and facing surgery this year. Maybe that's true. Maybe I really did not try to find a better place to live. Didn't try to find that home. Maybe I am crazy, like some Dutch psychologists told me.

I'm pretty sure at this point that I'm not crazy. That I'm a good person and do not deserve any of this which is happening to me. Also that I truly only wish the best for everyone. Yet I'm not sure that is enough. Maybe it's where I went wrong. Maybe this world is all about being mean, vicious and taking advantage of others. Maybe that's what I'm doing wrong.

Yet I'd rather be dead than turn into such a... person. My worst fear is that in the end those are my only two options. I'd much rather find that house outside of the city to move into, and get the surgery as hoped. Away from other people and finally back in my body.


I guess I'm pretty much just rambling at this point. I haven't slept properly in weeks and had countless, barely remembered nightmares. Even the stress during the day from worrying about all that I can expect is taking its toll on me. I pretty much hate having emotions and feelings at this point. I hate that people have so much power to hurt me and gleefully do so regardless of whether I have done anything to deserve it.

I only want to find that safe place, where people will finally leave me alone. Where I can do things which are actually interesting and useful. Not just survive in a dysfunctional human society.


Maya

Would you like to die?

Ever since I attempted to commit suicide in early 2011 and failed, that's the question which I have learned to ask myself to assess my state of mind. Sometimes the response to this question is a definite sense of revulsion, sometimes one of indifference. Sometimes of painful longing. Sometimes mixed.

Today I can feel the heavy feeling again, this sensation of weariness and exhaustion far beyond what the average person will ever feel in their entire life, or what can be captured using mere words. It's a weariness that's simply a weariness of life, when even one's primal sense of survival can no longer be felt. It's the acceptance of death when one is still physically healthy.


It's not a feeling I care for in the slightest. Six years ago I was able to find a way out through an overdose, or so I thought. This year I'm hoping to find a way out by finding a home and by closing the medical chapter on my body after a few decades of suffering. I hope that this attempt will be more successful than me trying to take my own life.

I guess the worst feeling that accompanies this quiet longing for the cessation of one's existence is that of being a failure, of having failed as a human being, as an individual and something even more fundamental.

It's not that one wants to die. It's merely the acceptance that for some people even merely existing is simply no longer an option.


Yes, I would want to cease existing right now. No, I do not want to die. I just want the pain of existing to cease.


Then I would want to resume doing all the fun things in life. All the things which do not hurt.


To continue living in a world where people do not hurt each other.


The world which I failed to find.


Maya

Next month's fight to win a body and home, or lose it all

Rare are the days that I do not find myself upset and crying, or close to fainting due to hyperventilating despite my best attempts to counteract it. Today's occasion was courtesy of learning the court date for the legal case against me by the apartment owner. I think that's what it's about, because I could not make out half of what the letter said due to it being in a type of German which I cannot comprehend at this stage of my German language skills. I hope my lawyer has more luck with it.

What's typical is that this date has been set exactly the day before I am supposed to travel to the other side of Germany for the appointment with my new surgeon. Now I have two things to slowly live towards for the coming weeks, dreading every second and losing too much sleep over it. I'm not that hopeful considering how I found myself sobbing for an hour straight earlier, preceded by feelings of dissociation, and accompanied by hyperventilating with me losing sensation in my extremities despite trying to force myself to breathe slowly and deeply.

Maybe it'll go fine. I didn't do anything bad. I followed the law when it came to this apartment and reduced the rent as mutually agreed upon. It should go fine. Yet my experience with justice systems (or just the Dutch one, I guess) has been a negative one. Why should I expect justice to be served instead of just getting punished for being the weaker side again?

Similarly with the surgeon appointment. Yes, I am intersex, my body is essentially that of a woman, yet after twelve years of dealing with ignorant/evil/blind physicians and kin, I do not make assumptions any more. I could appear in front of them naked as a hermaphrodite with both sides fully developed and fertile and they'd still manage to somehow doublethink me into a little box labelled 'male' or 'transsexual'.


Long story short, if I was religious I'd be praying fervently for the coming weeks for things to finally go my way and to see some kind of reward for trying to be a gentle, caring, law-abiding person.

Not that this is easy when you see how despotic tyrants are rewarded every day for their behaviour. Some are even made president, or get to bring a country to a ruinous brink by destroying its economy. This against a background of talk in the EU and other countries about a universal base income. Such plans give me the warm fuzzies.

I dream of a society where no one has to fight to simply have a home and healthy food. A society where people can just be who and what they are without having to judge others.

Individuals who are screeching happily about the destruction of unions, nations and groups of people are pretty much the root of evil in societies. They show how insignificant their thoughts are by being limited to thinking in such basic concepts, painting entire parts of society with the same brush. The damage such a collapse would cause can hardly be estimated, especially not in the cost of human lives in the short and long term.


I crave for a world which is happier and more carefree. Where children can grow up playing on the green grass in the warm sunshine, safe in the knowledge that once they grow up they will never have to worry about becoming homeless, going bankrupt or being forced to commit suicide because they can no longer pay their bills, or worse.

At this point in my life I can almost begin to believe again that I am an actual person of flesh and blood. That this world around me is real and not just an illusion dreamed up by my mind. Occasionally it almost feels like I'm an adult human in a real world. Those flashes are wonderful, but also terrifying. I don't like this world adults have created.

It's a dark world of property, taxes, lawsuits, pollution, debt, hatred, discrimination, intolerance, ignorance and worse. It's not a world I care one bit for. I think we should all strive to be simply children again: innocent, curious and inquisitive, but also honest to the bone. I know that's all I'll ever strive to be, or remain.


Despite everything that's terrible for me and the world at this point, things can become better. It's hard for me to believe. It may never come to pass. Yet the potential is there. Like with everything in life it simply requires a little cooperation and kindness.


Maya

Emotion Sickness

Today I first saw the new place the local hackerspace will be moving into next month. It left me with mixed feelings. I have known the current rooms for nearly four years now, ever since I first visited Karlsruhe for work in early 2013. It's a very comfortable and quiet attic area, with a lot of good memories for me and many others.

There's the hope that the new place will be equally as good if not better, but looking at the construction area that's the new place it's hard to imagine. One's mind keeps comparing the two and part of oneself insists that it'll be the end of something good. That it's a mistake. It's a very similar feeling to what I go through when I look at a new place to live in.

For me this hackerspace is somewhat of a home, much like the office where I work at. They're places where I feel at home, where I like to be.


I do not like the negativity around seeking a new place and a new home. I do not like hearing people talk about lawyers, taxes and regulations. I want life to be simple and fun. I want people to be happy and joyful. I want people to be nice and friendly with each other.

I am so sick of the darkness and bleakness in the world. I do not wish to be reminded of death and mortality. I want to feel that life is worth living, yet there's so much which reminds me that it's pretty much all futile anyway. Just a futile struggle to find that home that does not exist. To find a place where one is happy only to have mortality take it all away again.

I want to feel like I am doing all of this for a reason, but I don't know what reason that may be.


All that I feel is this incredible pain inside as I convince myself to continue for just a little bit longer until it feels okay again. Until the next time that the world feels distorted and bleak again.


I hope that I can make it through this year somewhat okay, yet at times like these I very much doubt I will.


*physically hurts self again in order to just feel something*


Maya

The fine line between trauma and simple laziness

How does one deal with something which is intangible yet part of oneself or another person?

This is the question which has plagued anyone affected with mental health issues, who were forced into poverty through forces beyond their control, or otherwise suffer because of the spectre of normalcy.

It's very easy to end up in a situation in one's life where one cannot proceed any further without help from others. Yet to ask help is still a taboo in today's society. Everyone is expected to fight for themselves, and if you cannot keep up it's your own darn fault. Homeless? Just get a job already and rent a place. Jobless? Plenty of jobs around. Feeling depressed? Just cheer up. Feeling suicidal? There's still so much to live for, so stop being silly.

One perception is that people who cannot extract themselves from such a hopeless situation are simply lazy, unmotivated or worse.

I mean, just look at how easy it is to get a job: apply at twenty places, get rejected at 19, get the lowest-paying job out of the lot in the end. Or to find a new place to live in: spend a year or two looking at dozens of places, run into unscrupulous owners, dodgy real-estate agents, hidden fees and defects and see ever place you really wanted go to someone else instead.

And that's for people without mental health issues.


I was and still am incredibly lucky that I came across my current employer who saw the potential in me and supported me far beyond what they were legally required to do. They allowed me get my professional career back on track and gave me a safe space in which I could develop myself as a person and software developer.

Could I have managed something on my own otherwise? I went through about a dozen job interviews in a few months time back in the Netherlands, before landing a job as a backend developer. It wasn't something I wanted to do, and the environment was horribly restrictive. Yet I had to because I needed the money. It was a demotivating experience which left me so traumatised that during the first year that I worked in Germany for my current employer I felt the same sense of terror and forced respect as I had for my bosses at my previous job.

I don't think I would have made it without this help.


Now that I am dealing with the current crisis surrounding my current apartment, having to get a lawyer again and dealing with another potential legal case, I can only feel dread as I think about this place, and the need to find a new place. Not that I didn't try to find alternative places to live the past years among too much time spend on medical issues. They all were given to other people, though, or the owner could not be trusted.

And that's when I hit the limit of compromising.

Last weekend, after looking at yet another place, I fell apart emotionally and mentally in a way which I had never experienced before. This was the point for me when I realised that not only had others basically not grasped what it means to search for a new home for a person with my level of severe traumatic experiences, neither had I.

Talking about it with my psychotherapist a few days ago, the term it came down to was 'compromise'. How my life has been just an endless series of compromises, renewed hope and crushed expectations for year after year after year, in a seemingly endless repetition. As I wrote before, there's no real difference between a doctor and landlord. Both are people you need, people who preside over your happiness and joy in life and who can crush both without a care in the world.


I cannot deal mentally, emotionally or even physically any more with the stress of finding medical help for my intersex condition. I am completely reliant on the help of others at this point, in particular my psychotherapist, my endocrinologist and gynaecologist.

Finding a new home taps into the same drained energy reserves. Finding a new home is something which has many traumatic memories for me, including eviction, suicide, domestic violence and abuse, etc. To look for a new place is to open myself to reliving those traumas, suffering new ones and worst of all slipping into suicidal depressions like last weekend.

I really wish that I could put better into words what I am trying to say here, but words fail me.


My point is basically that even if you cannot see it on the outside of a person, they can still be injured inside. You'd not force a person with a broken leg to walk. Similarly you wouldn't force someone with severe mental trauma to repeat the same experience again. It just won't end well.


What I have to come to terms with is that I need a new home, but I cannot look for it myself, or risk harming myself horribly due to the emotional destabilisation that would cause. This means that I have to rely 100% on others.

I wish I was just being lazy. I could use a horribly dull and boring life. It would be awesome.


Maya

Isn't letting me do this by my own irresponsible?

After spending the past hours in bed, trying to sleep and failing courtesy of the migraine and thoughts churning through my head, I finally got to a state where I felt calm and pain-free enough to get out of bed and assess the damage.

In hindsight forcing myself to try and cook dinner despite the migraine and feeling clearly aggravated wasn't the best of ideas, judging by the first ever damage to the kitchen counter. I vaguely recall me slamming something heavy into it, like a cutting board for whatever godforsaken reason. I also seem to have bruises all over my body again. Physical pain to deal with emotional pain, I guess.

I'm not sure whether to ascribe such moments to PTSD or the Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) with which I have also been diagnosed. That I can still vaguely recall what my body did, but without recollection of the reasoning behind it is mostly confusing and worrying.

I am guessing that this sudden breakdown was due to the pent-up stress of the past weeks, with today's viewing of what's supposed to be my ticket out of this current run-down apartment as what was supposed to be a turning point. Maybe my expectations and hopes were simply too high.

Not that there was anything really wrong with the new place... just some poorly thought out choices with a very small kitchen in a large (95 square meter) apartment, which led to there being no place for a microwave, as well as a bathroom with no place for a regular sized washing machine. Annoying, but manageable.

Having to answer questions today about my work, current apartment, financial status, justifying going for such a large apartment (anything smaller is impossible to get, pretty much), and so on was probably the last trigger, resulting in the total breakdown once I got home.


All of it does make me wonder in how far I am capable of managing my own life at this point when what are annoying but manageable things come on my path. Maybe it's been those decades of figuring out and dealing with the abuse I suffered for my intersex condition which caused just too much trauma. Maybe that's what's making it almost impossible for me to deal with any of this, and only at the cost of further traumatising myself.

I wish more than anything that someone would come along and handle this for me. Just to shield me from the worst. Get me to a place where I can feel safe and secure, without having to worry about whether I made the right choice. I hope that I can hand off the legal issues with my current place to the support organisation with whom I signed up and talked with this week.

Beyond that... I have to carefully consider what's more important at this point: moving at any cost, or taking my mental health as priority.


Maya

Existing vs living vs happiness

This week a lot of things happened. I contacted another surgeon after a friend told me about him and his skills with reconstructive surgeries. After an initial hopeful response from the surgeon himself, I then made an appointment with the clinic, only to be told that the first spot is in July of next year. That's months after I have an appointment with this first surgeon. This was very disappointing.

I also got offered a new apartment I might possibly want to rent, courtesy of my employers as the apartment owner is a former employee. It's larger and more expensive again than my current place, but after viewing it today it's newly renovated and has a built-in kitchen (a rarity in Germany).

It's more room than I need, and I would love to spend less on rent, but finding something else in this city of Karlsruhe is basically impossible within a reasonable timespan. Especially now that I have the owner of my current apartment breathing down my neck. Even though I have done nothing wrong, legally, I'm still forced to leave.

Yesterday I talked with my lawyer about this situation of the building owner wanting to have me evicted and pay full rent over the past three years despite never having fixed all of the issues initially reported or those reported later. Essentially the best way is to protect myself and my possessions by cancelling the rental contract myself and move out. After that there's just the legal wrangling about those back payments which could still cost me many thousands of Euros.

Moving thus is inevitable, and urgent.

After returning home earlier, I found myself collapsing emotionally along with a severe migraine, presumably from the stress involved. Worries about making the wrong choices, about throwing my money away. Stresses about having to justify my decisions, choices and current status in society. Years of dealing with unscrupulous landlords, doctors, psychologists and kin have pretty much fully traumatised me in that respect. Why expect anything better?

I also know that this new apartment isn't where I want to be living for the next ten years, even if I could. It's just another temporary place for a number of years. Basically it doesn't change that I'll keep looking for where I want to settle and live. Where I can be happy.

I'm not sure I'll ever feel happy or relaxed. When I'm at work I feel reasonably happy and relaxed, as well as when I'm at the local hackerspace, but dealing with everything else outside it is pretty much just a confirmation of the hostility of human society. I prefer to forget that I have a body, that it needs a place to live, eat and sleep. That I do not control my own life or body.

I guess I'll see where life steers me next.


Maya

Being good just makes you into a punching bag

After yesterday's highly unpleasant lawyer letter, threatening me with eviction and the forced payment of large sums of money, I sent a response back, highlighting that the building owner has not seen fit to fix the outstanding issues in the apartment. The response I got from the lawyer was brief: the owner believes that everything has been fixed, has the bills from repairmen to show for it, and that I should be paying up and moving out as soon as possible.

Only problem with that is that there never was any feedback from me, or communication from the owner's side about the issues being fixed and the reduction in rent being discontinued. This leads to the stance where I can easily point out the remaining issues in the place (rusty water, poor insulation, noisy heating system, lack of sound insulation with neighbours), and where the owner insists there are no more issues, or as her representative put it: "It's an old building, those things are normal."

Long story short, I have to get that lawyer ASAP, who will hopefully make short work of this matter. I have also registered with an organisation for those who rent their apartment, house, etc. and contacted them. Hopefully they'll be able to advise me as well.

Meanwhile I have applied for the first new apartment. If I get it, I'd be able to move next month. From the description it sounds pretty decent. It's a 1970s building, but fully renovated (my current place just had the windows renewed, poorly). It's even a little bit larger than my current place and should be very comfortable. Keeping my fingers crossed there.

Of course I'm still looking for new apartments/houses to rent in or near Karlsruhe. Same search parameters still apply: roughly 80 square meters, quiet, and some place for my bicycle as well as cable connection (for internet).  Please let me know if you know of anything there that's with a reputable owner.


Moving on, this whole thing definitely brings back a whole lot of unpleasant memories and thoughts. Once again I'm being accused of being something which I am not, through no fault of my own. I'm again left wondering what it is that people have against me, and then the nagging doubt of whether it isn't actually me after all who is the problem. Maybe I'm just thinking that I can manage this 'adult' thing but I'm in reality screwing up everything.

I spent over a decade 'debating' with physicians and psychologists whether I was just a feminine-looking boy, a male to female transsexual, intersex, crazy, delusional (actual phrase used by a psychologist), or just obsessed with proving that I was right. If it's often simply impossible to prove that your own, physical body is what it is and not what they say it is, then how does one deal with more abstract matters?

When years of such psychological (and physical) abuse finally took their toll and I blacked out in what was likely a dissociative identity disorder-related episode, I was blamed for the damage to a number of objects in that waiting room, even though I never wilfully chose to damage them, or was even aware of it. Yet how does one prove DID, or PTSD? You cannot measure it (except with fMRI scans, probably), or see it, only say with a reasonable degree of certainty that the person who claims to have PTSD, or DID blackouts, is telling the truth.


In essence, I got blamed for over a decade for everything bad that was inflicted on me, from the attitude of doctors and psychologists. My attitude was wrong, the German medical conclusions were mistaken, I was just being obsessed with the thing, I should admit the doctors were right and live my life as the guy I am. And so on. The disciplinary case I brought against the Amsterdam VUmc gender team was dismissed because they had 'done nothing wrong' in their assessment of me, this even after the first surgery in Germany and my legal gender change on the basis of being a hermaphrodite.

What have I really done wrong? I always stuck to the rules, followed the advice of professionals unless my own research made me question it. By the end of 2007 I was dealing with two completely conflicting medical conclusions, between me being a regular guy, or a hermaphrodite. Who wouldn't want to get the real answer there? Could anyone live with such uncertainty? Is it wrong to keep asking questions?


A while ago I had a collection agency after me because I supposedly hadn't paid Ikea for a delivery. That turned out to be fully Ikea's fault because they had never communicated to me that the automated withdrawal from my bank account had failed, because the delivery guy hadn't written down my information properly. Instead they sent me a bill and follow-up requests for money without further explanation, never responding to my emails to support. There the collection agency admitted this, Ikea admitted this, and I just had to pay the original amount. Their fault, their mea culpa, everything was fine in the end.

I'm hoping that something like that will happen here too. I am not aware of me having done anything wrong and from the (professional) advice I have received so far it does indeed appear that the fault lies solidly with the building's owner. Of course, my experience of being right and getting proven right is somewhat sketchy based on those previous experiences. The fear which keeps eating away at me is that despite being right, I'll still have to pay a lot of money, get evicted and have this marked on some permanent file, making it a nightmare to ever rent again.


Being the 'good guy' has to be pretty much symbolic with 'taking everything the less scrupulous throw at one', while only smiling and staying polite during the process. When one sees what others can get away with, it does make one wonder whether it truly pays to be good and whether the 'dark side' isn't really way more fun.

On the other hand, I think I'd make for a terrible villain.


Maya

Ultimately others decide what my body is

Yesterday's appointment with my psychotherapist was more or less as expected. After I worked myself out of the severe depression of two weeks ago, I expected to get help arranging matters with the surgeon, which I did. Today the psychotherapist called the clinic again and an assistant called me. Unfortunately she called on my mobile phone, which I had left at home. No voice mail was left, so I'm not entirely sure how this will continue come Monday. Hopefully I'll have an appointment with the surgeon next month.

While talking through some issues, I once again realised the horrible truth that no matter what might be the factual reality of what my body is, ultimately it's all down to the opinion of a physician which determines what it can be. No matter that a surgeon cut me open and documented their findings. Another doctor is free to dispute those findings. I can find another doctor, who can also dispute those findings. And again. And so on.

This basically summarises the six hellish years I spent in the Netherlands after I found out about my intersex condition. Nearly three years during which I just had my own suspicions and the research I had performed using my own body and medical literature. Then the MRI-based evidence from Germany concluding that I'm a hermaphrodite. Then over six years of Dutch physicians doing their utmost to ignore and discredit this evidence.

Now I'm back at the same point. It doesn't matter that just over five years ago to this day I was lying cut open on a surgery table with a surgeon documenting the presence of female genitals. This new surgeon can still dismiss those findings and proclaim that nothing unusual was found on the MRI scan images. That I'm just a feminine-looking guy. A guy with perfect female dress sizes, natural female hormone levels and a regular, monthly period since the age of eleven.

Nothing matters. It's all up to the whims of others what I'll end up being, end up feeling and how I'll be living, or not.

I hope it all works out this time.


Maya