A 'safe space', as in a place to which one can retreat at any point and where one can feel fully safe and protected, is something which I have concerned myself with a lot the past years. For decades, one could say, starting with when I first got bullied during primary school.
At first I could still go home and it would be fine. On the family farm I was in my domain and everything was all right. Then things got more difficult as I didn't feel like continuing my studies after finishing High School, feeling a distinct disinterest towards further schooling, but having no distinct plans for the future. While my mom supported my desire to take a while off and explore things on my own for a while, it reduced my safe space to just my room.
After my parents divorced and at first my mom and younger brother, then later just me, proceeded to move to a new place almost every year. My safe space got reduced to mostly just the internet. After all that is happened the past decades, I'm not sure there is a safe space left, however.
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a permanent physical, neurological change to the brain, whereby the ability to properly recognize and regulate dangerous situations has been compromised. It is characterised by frequent and very realistic flashbacks which to the affected person means that they will often have trouble distinguishing reality from traumatic events in their past which caused the PTSD to form.
If there's still such a thing as a 'safe space' for me, it has to be the intellectual part of my brain. Not the emotional part. That one has betrayed me long since already and cannot be trusted any more. It explains why at this point only intellectual pursuits and subjects are 'safe' for me and why the range of triggers for my PTSD is so broad.
I want to expand my safe space again. I want to feel safe inside my own brain again, as well as inside my own body. I want to have a room in which I can feel safe again. I want to feel safe from events in my past and the horrible memories they have left me with. I want to feel safe from the horrible things other humans may wish to inflict on me in the near to long-term future.
For that is the thing which I regret the most: that the biggest threat to me are humans. That the physical condition I was born with as well as my giftedness were used as excuses to torment, harass, abuse, rape, molest and brainwash me is irrelevant in all of this. Most of all I do not feel safe around or in anything related to people. I have a major trust issue there.
Yet I likely will have to trust some people to overcome this and reach a safe space again. Life is about big spoonfuls of irony, if nothing else...
Maya
Saturday, 24 October 2015
Thursday, 22 October 2015
Intersex awareness day, or: mocking intersex people
In five days from now there'll be 'Intersex Awareness Day', or so some outlets have proclaimed proudly. In me as an intersex person this proclamation mostly evokes a sense of helpless outrage and frustration. Nothing about it is even remotely fair.
For over ten years I have fought to get acknowledgement of and (medical) help with my intersex condition. All it got me is one side in the medical community agreeing that I am indeed intersex, the other side disagreeing completely and stating that I am just intersex, and none of the medical help I need.
I have contacted specialists across the globe, have tried big medical centers and expensive specialists from anywhere in Europe, the US, Canada, Australia and elsewhere. All to no avail. This year my body is increasingly succumbing to the effects of medical negligence as hormonal imbalances wreck my last remnants of sanity through near-constant pain, nerve issues, migraines and so on.
And I know I am not alone. Through my contacts over the years with other intersex individuals as well as so-called 'intersex organisations' (OII, ILGA, and others), I know that there are only intersex victims of brutal medical and psychological abuse. Intersex organisations are just a front for this abuse, offering no help of any type of intersex individuals.
The 'treatment plan' for intersex individuals as created by WPATH is still to treat intersex as a disorder whereby (forced) genital surgery and such to 'fix' the victim into one of the perfect binary genders is the only way this person can be happy. Meanwhile doctors, psychologists and even some brainwashed intersex people are moving towards fully accepting intersex as a physical and psychological disorder, by abandoning the term 'intersex' and calling it 'Disorder of Sex Development' instead.
The physical and psychological abuse and terror I have experienced over the past ten plus years and the resulting post-traumatic stress disorder have reduced my life to a state where I'm not sure where I can, let alone wish to, continue living. Being intersex is clearly a curse, with every intersex individual - whether a newborn, infant, child or adult - being fair game for medical and psychological experiments. It's not like we are really human after all.
But sure, do that awareness day thing and keep pretending that nobody, intersex organisations and physicians most of all, do not care in the slightest about intersex individuals. It's not like we intersex people have feelings or care about being mocked.
Is it really necessary to mock us like this? Why hold such events which make the victims of the Western approach to 'fixing' intersex individuals feel like slitting their own wrists over the induced agony?! What did we do to deserve such abuse? Why not help us instead? Just... go away...
Maya
For over ten years I have fought to get acknowledgement of and (medical) help with my intersex condition. All it got me is one side in the medical community agreeing that I am indeed intersex, the other side disagreeing completely and stating that I am just intersex, and none of the medical help I need.
I have contacted specialists across the globe, have tried big medical centers and expensive specialists from anywhere in Europe, the US, Canada, Australia and elsewhere. All to no avail. This year my body is increasingly succumbing to the effects of medical negligence as hormonal imbalances wreck my last remnants of sanity through near-constant pain, nerve issues, migraines and so on.
And I know I am not alone. Through my contacts over the years with other intersex individuals as well as so-called 'intersex organisations' (OII, ILGA, and others), I know that there are only intersex victims of brutal medical and psychological abuse. Intersex organisations are just a front for this abuse, offering no help of any type of intersex individuals.
The 'treatment plan' for intersex individuals as created by WPATH is still to treat intersex as a disorder whereby (forced) genital surgery and such to 'fix' the victim into one of the perfect binary genders is the only way this person can be happy. Meanwhile doctors, psychologists and even some brainwashed intersex people are moving towards fully accepting intersex as a physical and psychological disorder, by abandoning the term 'intersex' and calling it 'Disorder of Sex Development' instead.
The physical and psychological abuse and terror I have experienced over the past ten plus years and the resulting post-traumatic stress disorder have reduced my life to a state where I'm not sure where I can, let alone wish to, continue living. Being intersex is clearly a curse, with every intersex individual - whether a newborn, infant, child or adult - being fair game for medical and psychological experiments. It's not like we are really human after all.
But sure, do that awareness day thing and keep pretending that nobody, intersex organisations and physicians most of all, do not care in the slightest about intersex individuals. It's not like we intersex people have feelings or care about being mocked.
Is it really necessary to mock us like this? Why hold such events which make the victims of the Western approach to 'fixing' intersex individuals feel like slitting their own wrists over the induced agony?! What did we do to deserve such abuse? Why not help us instead? Just... go away...
Maya
Thursday, 15 October 2015
Dutch justice: when punishing is not punishing
Today I received a message from my last remaining Dutch lawyer that the High Court will be deciding in the last remaining legal case I have currently running in the Netherlands. Early next month I'll know whether I'll receive punishment or not in this case against me. This despite the ruling that I will not receive any form of punishment remaining unchanged in any case.
Sounds confusing? That's because it is. It all started back in early 2011 when I had just moved back in at my mom's place after my suicide attempt earlier that year. That suicide attempt followed about six years of psychological and physical abuse by Dutch physicians, involving constant brainwashing attempts, trying to make me believe that I had to be transsexual, regardless of the German evidence and regardless of my own experiences with my body, not to mention my own thoughts and wishes.
Pushed to the edge, I ultimately decided to take my own life, end the pain and suffering. Unfortunately that failed and I found myself back at square one [1]. After a few months of recovering under my mom's care, I tried to re-establish medical contacts, starting with a local family doctor. Unfortunately the first family doctor saw fit to reject me as a patient due to my intersex condition not fitting well with her Christian conviction.
I had the misfortune this time of living in the Dutch Bible Belt at this point, ergo the second family doctor was just as Christian, only this one did accept me as a patient. They soon became less cooperative, however, delaying help, not keeping up their promises. As I began to suffer psychologically from this behaviour and mentioned it to them, they simply ignored it.
After months of this I suffered my first black-out while I was with my mother at the doctor's office. When the receptionist dismissed them not keeping up a promise yet again with a dismissive gesture, something snapped inside of me. I remember only bits and pieces of what happened next, but my mother and the police report have filled in the gaps [2].
Apparently I went into a rage, smashing a vase or two, ripped a few banners off the walls and smashed a glass case holding a model. The police arrived shortly after, ignoring my mother and I as I was sitting there with hands torn up by glass, bleeding all over the place. Sitting there alone, I then sprung up, tore a glass display case to the ground and walked outside.
There I got consequently beaten up by the police, who kicked me to the ground, smashing my right knee hard enough on the stones to bruise the bone. They put cuffs on my wrists, so tight that they tore into my skin and caused me incredible amounts of pain. This part I remember most distinctly, from being dragged by unfriendly people, having my head bashed into a car door, people sitting on me, stripping me forcefully, being pushed into another car, more head-bashing, yelling and pain tearing into my wrists.
Then finally I was lying virtually naked in an empty cell and began to fully come to my senses. The enormity of all that had happened then hit me. I had never lost my temper. Never once in my life. Especially not so bad that I had one into a complete black-out rage. I had always taken my pain and frustration out of myself, through self-mutilation and ultimately that suicide attempt.
In the end I spent one night in that cell. Definitely by far the worst night of my life. I barely slept more than a few minutes, staying up all night tearing the sole roll of toilet paper into tiny shreds to give me something to do, while watching the programs on the small television screen built into the wall. The next day it took many hours of uncertainty and waiting before I was released. The guards refused to give me my medication (hormones) as well.
Only after getting released did I learn that my mother had visited the place where I was locked up, with a bag of goodies including books and other comforts. They had told her that they'd give it to me, but they never did. Before I was allowed to leave the place they had me clean up my cell as well, using my bare hands.
That was not the end of things, however. That was when the Dutch state started prosecuting me, for vandalism and initially also threatening with bodily harm, a claim by the family doctor but soon withdrawn when they couldn't substantiate it. This case has lasted for over four years now and costed me a lot of time and lawyer fees.
So far the charges of threatening with bodily harm got dropped, the doctor got all damages covered by the insurance and two judges so far have ruled that I am not to receive punishment, due to the circumstances. Specifically the intense psychological stress I was placed under due to being intersex and receiving no medical help whatsoever, but instead quite the opposite.
Only sticking point is that the big display case which also got pulled over contained some items not owned by the medical center this doctor belonged to, but instead to a local artist who had left expensive and fully uninsured objects there in a public space. Two judges so far have ruled that I have to reimburse this artist.
Interestingly enough, this used to be a legal practice in the Netherlands, until early 2014: then the law changed and enforcing a monetary punishment was no longer a valid option when the judge decided to not formally punish the person being prosecuted. I'm currently on my last appeal trying to get this ruling undone.
My lawyer has put almost everything on this changed law in this last appeal. The prosecutor has commented that while, yes, it's the law, one shouldn't take the law quite so, you know, literally. Pointing out some vaguely related cases, he insisted that the judge should use highly creative interpreting when applying this law.
There are two possible outcomes with this upcoming ruling. One sees this monetary punishment dismissed and I can say farewell to a legal case which has haunted me for years, not to mention reminds me constantly of such unpleasant events.
The other outcome sees me forced to pay many thousands of Euros, since these uninsured pieces of 'art' were apparently worth that much, plus the collected interest after these years. To that I can only say that back in 2013 I lost all of my money and possessions due to other, also very unfortunate circumstances. I had the luck that I got a well-paying job soon after, but rebuilding a life from scratch is expensive.
I see very little use in paying for the stupidity of an artist to not insure their displayed pieces, especially when the judge has already ruled that I was not responsible for my actions and have suffered enough already by what I have gone through before the event happened.
That then doesn't really fit with punishing me by coughing up what amounts to a significant part of my still meagre savings. That's not justice, that's just saying that you won't punish and then punishing anyway.
I'm not sure what I'll do if this ruling does not end up in my favour. I know this may sound small and selfish, but I may consider accepting donations if the judge wants me to bleed after all. I feel that I have accepted enough punishment already, just looking at everything that transpired directly after the event, not to mention my slow physical recovery afterwards including the resulting nerve damage from the beatings.
Just a few more weeks and I'll know, I guess. After that I can at least wave the Netherlands a not very fond farewell...
Maya
[1] http://mayaposch.blogspot.de/2011/01/joy-in-life.html
[2] http://mayaposch.blogspot.de/2011/05/taking-nightmare-notch-further.html
Sounds confusing? That's because it is. It all started back in early 2011 when I had just moved back in at my mom's place after my suicide attempt earlier that year. That suicide attempt followed about six years of psychological and physical abuse by Dutch physicians, involving constant brainwashing attempts, trying to make me believe that I had to be transsexual, regardless of the German evidence and regardless of my own experiences with my body, not to mention my own thoughts and wishes.
Pushed to the edge, I ultimately decided to take my own life, end the pain and suffering. Unfortunately that failed and I found myself back at square one [1]. After a few months of recovering under my mom's care, I tried to re-establish medical contacts, starting with a local family doctor. Unfortunately the first family doctor saw fit to reject me as a patient due to my intersex condition not fitting well with her Christian conviction.
I had the misfortune this time of living in the Dutch Bible Belt at this point, ergo the second family doctor was just as Christian, only this one did accept me as a patient. They soon became less cooperative, however, delaying help, not keeping up their promises. As I began to suffer psychologically from this behaviour and mentioned it to them, they simply ignored it.
After months of this I suffered my first black-out while I was with my mother at the doctor's office. When the receptionist dismissed them not keeping up a promise yet again with a dismissive gesture, something snapped inside of me. I remember only bits and pieces of what happened next, but my mother and the police report have filled in the gaps [2].
Apparently I went into a rage, smashing a vase or two, ripped a few banners off the walls and smashed a glass case holding a model. The police arrived shortly after, ignoring my mother and I as I was sitting there with hands torn up by glass, bleeding all over the place. Sitting there alone, I then sprung up, tore a glass display case to the ground and walked outside.
There I got consequently beaten up by the police, who kicked me to the ground, smashing my right knee hard enough on the stones to bruise the bone. They put cuffs on my wrists, so tight that they tore into my skin and caused me incredible amounts of pain. This part I remember most distinctly, from being dragged by unfriendly people, having my head bashed into a car door, people sitting on me, stripping me forcefully, being pushed into another car, more head-bashing, yelling and pain tearing into my wrists.
Then finally I was lying virtually naked in an empty cell and began to fully come to my senses. The enormity of all that had happened then hit me. I had never lost my temper. Never once in my life. Especially not so bad that I had one into a complete black-out rage. I had always taken my pain and frustration out of myself, through self-mutilation and ultimately that suicide attempt.
In the end I spent one night in that cell. Definitely by far the worst night of my life. I barely slept more than a few minutes, staying up all night tearing the sole roll of toilet paper into tiny shreds to give me something to do, while watching the programs on the small television screen built into the wall. The next day it took many hours of uncertainty and waiting before I was released. The guards refused to give me my medication (hormones) as well.
Only after getting released did I learn that my mother had visited the place where I was locked up, with a bag of goodies including books and other comforts. They had told her that they'd give it to me, but they never did. Before I was allowed to leave the place they had me clean up my cell as well, using my bare hands.
That was not the end of things, however. That was when the Dutch state started prosecuting me, for vandalism and initially also threatening with bodily harm, a claim by the family doctor but soon withdrawn when they couldn't substantiate it. This case has lasted for over four years now and costed me a lot of time and lawyer fees.
So far the charges of threatening with bodily harm got dropped, the doctor got all damages covered by the insurance and two judges so far have ruled that I am not to receive punishment, due to the circumstances. Specifically the intense psychological stress I was placed under due to being intersex and receiving no medical help whatsoever, but instead quite the opposite.
Only sticking point is that the big display case which also got pulled over contained some items not owned by the medical center this doctor belonged to, but instead to a local artist who had left expensive and fully uninsured objects there in a public space. Two judges so far have ruled that I have to reimburse this artist.
Interestingly enough, this used to be a legal practice in the Netherlands, until early 2014: then the law changed and enforcing a monetary punishment was no longer a valid option when the judge decided to not formally punish the person being prosecuted. I'm currently on my last appeal trying to get this ruling undone.
My lawyer has put almost everything on this changed law in this last appeal. The prosecutor has commented that while, yes, it's the law, one shouldn't take the law quite so, you know, literally. Pointing out some vaguely related cases, he insisted that the judge should use highly creative interpreting when applying this law.
There are two possible outcomes with this upcoming ruling. One sees this monetary punishment dismissed and I can say farewell to a legal case which has haunted me for years, not to mention reminds me constantly of such unpleasant events.
The other outcome sees me forced to pay many thousands of Euros, since these uninsured pieces of 'art' were apparently worth that much, plus the collected interest after these years. To that I can only say that back in 2013 I lost all of my money and possessions due to other, also very unfortunate circumstances. I had the luck that I got a well-paying job soon after, but rebuilding a life from scratch is expensive.
I see very little use in paying for the stupidity of an artist to not insure their displayed pieces, especially when the judge has already ruled that I was not responsible for my actions and have suffered enough already by what I have gone through before the event happened.
That then doesn't really fit with punishing me by coughing up what amounts to a significant part of my still meagre savings. That's not justice, that's just saying that you won't punish and then punishing anyway.
I'm not sure what I'll do if this ruling does not end up in my favour. I know this may sound small and selfish, but I may consider accepting donations if the judge wants me to bleed after all. I feel that I have accepted enough punishment already, just looking at everything that transpired directly after the event, not to mention my slow physical recovery afterwards including the resulting nerve damage from the beatings.
Just a few more weeks and I'll know, I guess. After that I can at least wave the Netherlands a not very fond farewell...
Maya
[1] http://mayaposch.blogspot.de/2011/01/joy-in-life.html
[2] http://mayaposch.blogspot.de/2011/05/taking-nightmare-notch-further.html
Wednesday, 14 October 2015
On health issues, depression and daily life
It's surprisingly hard to keep up a professional façade when you notice that most of the sensation in your right leg slowly drains away during the day at the office. Near the end of the day you're just lugging along something more closely resembling a wooden leg, except for the stabbing pains in the hip.
For me this is an almost monthly event, often occurring after my body decides it's time to start menstruating. This first starts what feels like major inflammation in the vaginal area as the fluids cannot exit the body. I noticed this a couple of days ago when I was lying crying on my bed for a while as the pain was just so bad.
This nerve irritation, swelling or whatever it is then seems to work its way mostly into the right side of my body, with my right leg going numb during a couple of days. When I touch the leg's skin I can feel part of the normal sensation, but numb and accompanied by a tingling sensation. The pain sensation is nearly fully gone during those times when the leg is very numb.
All of these issues are monthly since over twenty years ago, increasing gradually in intensity over those years until reaching a crescendo this year. I could be overdosing on oestrogen right now thanks to my Hormone Replacement Therapy not taking into account an increase in oestrogen produced by my body, as the linea nigra - the vertical line on my lower abdomen - seems to suggest.
Next month I'm seeing a gynaecologist. In December I'm seeing an endocrinologist about it. I should feel hopeless, I guess, but after more than a decade of seeing specialist after specialist it's hard to feel anything but bitterness. Bitterness at being abandoned, at being rejected, cast away like some kind of failure, put away like a crazy person.
Every time some doctor or similar opens their ignorant faces and denies that I am intersex, but have to be transsexual, they are denying these struggles I have and still am going through on a monthly basis. They're denying my hormonal issues. They're denying the medical findings so far, including my absurd hormone levels as a teenager and undeveloped testicles. They're denying that I am the person who I know I am.
Suffice it to say that I'm not feeling very happy at this point. Chronically depressed with bouts of suicidal depression is more like it. Going through a day feeling like life might possibly be kinda okay is for me an exception achievement. Feeling like life is a goddarn chore and that I cannot wait to cast off this stupid, retarded body I was born into is far more common.
But really, why would I be happy after struggling with this body which between intersex, migraines, monthly pains and just being damn ugly has caused me enough grief already, and now seems to be gradually failing on me. Last weekend I spent mostly in bed, feeling like dying from the pain in my abdomen, as well as from the two-day migraine.
I'm not happy. I refuse to be happy, because it would be a lie. My life is a complete tragicomedy, with me as its unwilling victim. Knowing this doesn't give me any kind of pleasant, or raise in me the expectation that people will rush to my aid or that suddenly I will receive the medical care a hermaphrodite like yours truly absolutely must receive over their lifespan.
I have no expectations of life. There's just what I can do myself. Decades of brutal lessons have taught me that I can only trust myself. And I hate that feeling. I want to believe in happiness, in life, in others, in help, in sunshine and carefree days. Yet I cannot.
Struggling through daily life and observing others having dull, boring, uninteresting lives I feel pained. It's not jealousy, or something as basic as that. It's more like observing an alien species I have read about in books, but which is otherwise wholly unknown to me. Even if I know that I'm supposedly part of said species, there might as well be a meter-thick armoured glass between us.
There's just hate, bitterness, isolation and the enormity of living out my life in a hostile world where everything I do is wrong. Where me existing is wrong. Where me trying to participate in daily life has horrible consequences, whether external or internally via my post-traumatic stress disorder twisting my perception of the world around me into the perfect nightmare scenario.
Even if I do receive medical help this and next year, I do think it's better for me to just be alone, by myself. Maybe some day I will be able to trust people again. Maybe not. But I will not force myself.
And if I do not receive medical help again the coming months? I do not want to think about it. How much pain is too much? How far can one's psyche be pushed until it irreparably shatters along with one's motivations to keep breathing and living?
I just want to stop feeling pain. The pain of my body. The pain of my mind. The pain of my soul and psyche. The pain of nightmares haunting me in my restless sleep. Just make it stop... even if nobody helps me and I am left alone, by myself again, with just the one thing I can do.
I don't think I was ever ready for a life like this...
Maya
For me this is an almost monthly event, often occurring after my body decides it's time to start menstruating. This first starts what feels like major inflammation in the vaginal area as the fluids cannot exit the body. I noticed this a couple of days ago when I was lying crying on my bed for a while as the pain was just so bad.
This nerve irritation, swelling or whatever it is then seems to work its way mostly into the right side of my body, with my right leg going numb during a couple of days. When I touch the leg's skin I can feel part of the normal sensation, but numb and accompanied by a tingling sensation. The pain sensation is nearly fully gone during those times when the leg is very numb.
All of these issues are monthly since over twenty years ago, increasing gradually in intensity over those years until reaching a crescendo this year. I could be overdosing on oestrogen right now thanks to my Hormone Replacement Therapy not taking into account an increase in oestrogen produced by my body, as the linea nigra - the vertical line on my lower abdomen - seems to suggest.
Next month I'm seeing a gynaecologist. In December I'm seeing an endocrinologist about it. I should feel hopeless, I guess, but after more than a decade of seeing specialist after specialist it's hard to feel anything but bitterness. Bitterness at being abandoned, at being rejected, cast away like some kind of failure, put away like a crazy person.
Every time some doctor or similar opens their ignorant faces and denies that I am intersex, but have to be transsexual, they are denying these struggles I have and still am going through on a monthly basis. They're denying my hormonal issues. They're denying the medical findings so far, including my absurd hormone levels as a teenager and undeveloped testicles. They're denying that I am the person who I know I am.
Suffice it to say that I'm not feeling very happy at this point. Chronically depressed with bouts of suicidal depression is more like it. Going through a day feeling like life might possibly be kinda okay is for me an exception achievement. Feeling like life is a goddarn chore and that I cannot wait to cast off this stupid, retarded body I was born into is far more common.
But really, why would I be happy after struggling with this body which between intersex, migraines, monthly pains and just being damn ugly has caused me enough grief already, and now seems to be gradually failing on me. Last weekend I spent mostly in bed, feeling like dying from the pain in my abdomen, as well as from the two-day migraine.
I'm not happy. I refuse to be happy, because it would be a lie. My life is a complete tragicomedy, with me as its unwilling victim. Knowing this doesn't give me any kind of pleasant, or raise in me the expectation that people will rush to my aid or that suddenly I will receive the medical care a hermaphrodite like yours truly absolutely must receive over their lifespan.
I have no expectations of life. There's just what I can do myself. Decades of brutal lessons have taught me that I can only trust myself. And I hate that feeling. I want to believe in happiness, in life, in others, in help, in sunshine and carefree days. Yet I cannot.
Struggling through daily life and observing others having dull, boring, uninteresting lives I feel pained. It's not jealousy, or something as basic as that. It's more like observing an alien species I have read about in books, but which is otherwise wholly unknown to me. Even if I know that I'm supposedly part of said species, there might as well be a meter-thick armoured glass between us.
There's just hate, bitterness, isolation and the enormity of living out my life in a hostile world where everything I do is wrong. Where me existing is wrong. Where me trying to participate in daily life has horrible consequences, whether external or internally via my post-traumatic stress disorder twisting my perception of the world around me into the perfect nightmare scenario.
Even if I do receive medical help this and next year, I do think it's better for me to just be alone, by myself. Maybe some day I will be able to trust people again. Maybe not. But I will not force myself.
And if I do not receive medical help again the coming months? I do not want to think about it. How much pain is too much? How far can one's psyche be pushed until it irreparably shatters along with one's motivations to keep breathing and living?
I just want to stop feeling pain. The pain of my body. The pain of my mind. The pain of my soul and psyche. The pain of nightmares haunting me in my restless sleep. Just make it stop... even if nobody helps me and I am left alone, by myself again, with just the one thing I can do.
I don't think I was ever ready for a life like this...
Maya
Wednesday, 30 September 2015
My new Android game development book just got published
Two days ago, to be precise, saw the official publication of my new book on game development on Android with the AndEngine framework, creatively titled "Mastering AndEngine Game Development". It's available for purchase both at the Packt[1] and Amazon[2] store. This is my first book to be published with Packt Publishing, a large publisher of Open Source-related programming books and similar.
Some of those who follow me may remember me talking about working on this book for the last year and some. Admittedly it's been a long time to finish it up, not in the least because of the many others happening simultaneously to me personally and in my career. Yet it is all done and over with. No more chapter writing, no more revising. No more pleading with editors for just an extra day to finish up a chapter. It's all done with.
To be fair, it feels kind of empty. All of it has been part of my life for over a year and thus it has become part of my routine as well as my thoughts. To think about never having to do any of those things again... it's weird how much it makes you long back to that period.
I guess this should be just more motivation for me to work on my other activities and hobbies, like the countless projects I have left either unfinished, or haven't started on yet. Some projects I'd really like to spend more time on would include my NGS custom processor architecture project and the resulting design and production of a custom FPGA board for it. Also the file-revision system, YouTube electronics channel (NyanTronics), speech synthesis and artificial intelligence projects. That before I even get into the many game development projects I wish to embark on or continue with.
At least I won't get bored any time soon. The last project I need to work on soon is to find a more quiet place to move into. It's hard to focus on projects, let alone feel relaxed when you have the bloody heating system ticking up a storm and can track the upstairs neighbours literally step by step, including their activities in the kitchen, bathroom and toilet. Truly enjoyable and motivating, that.
But those are things which will hopefully work themselves out at some point, hopefully through some lucky contacts and such.
I am curious how many copies of this new book of mine (both dead-tree and digital) will be bought over the coming months and year(s). Maybe it'll motivate me to try my hand at writing more of such books, or maybe not. I may go back to writing my autobiography again at some point as well, but that would require both a willing publisher and me feeling like I can write it without writing myself into a suicidal depression through the fun of remembering everything leading up to a disappointing conclusion. In that regard writing technical reference books makes for a lot more fun.
Maya
[1] https://www.packtpub.com/game-development/mastering-andengine-game-development
[2] http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-AndEngine-Game-Development-Posch/dp/1783981148/
Some of those who follow me may remember me talking about working on this book for the last year and some. Admittedly it's been a long time to finish it up, not in the least because of the many others happening simultaneously to me personally and in my career. Yet it is all done and over with. No more chapter writing, no more revising. No more pleading with editors for just an extra day to finish up a chapter. It's all done with.
To be fair, it feels kind of empty. All of it has been part of my life for over a year and thus it has become part of my routine as well as my thoughts. To think about never having to do any of those things again... it's weird how much it makes you long back to that period.
I guess this should be just more motivation for me to work on my other activities and hobbies, like the countless projects I have left either unfinished, or haven't started on yet. Some projects I'd really like to spend more time on would include my NGS custom processor architecture project and the resulting design and production of a custom FPGA board for it. Also the file-revision system, YouTube electronics channel (NyanTronics), speech synthesis and artificial intelligence projects. That before I even get into the many game development projects I wish to embark on or continue with.
At least I won't get bored any time soon. The last project I need to work on soon is to find a more quiet place to move into. It's hard to focus on projects, let alone feel relaxed when you have the bloody heating system ticking up a storm and can track the upstairs neighbours literally step by step, including their activities in the kitchen, bathroom and toilet. Truly enjoyable and motivating, that.
But those are things which will hopefully work themselves out at some point, hopefully through some lucky contacts and such.
I am curious how many copies of this new book of mine (both dead-tree and digital) will be bought over the coming months and year(s). Maybe it'll motivate me to try my hand at writing more of such books, or maybe not. I may go back to writing my autobiography again at some point as well, but that would require both a willing publisher and me feeling like I can write it without writing myself into a suicidal depression through the fun of remembering everything leading up to a disappointing conclusion. In that regard writing technical reference books makes for a lot more fun.
Maya
[1] https://www.packtpub.com/game-development/mastering-andengine-game-development
[2] http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-AndEngine-Game-Development-Posch/dp/1783981148/
Tuesday, 29 September 2015
Measure of a human
A while ago a new video game was released by the creators of the game Amnesia: The Dark Descent as well as other games featuring similar types of psychological horror. This new game is called SOMA and retains the psychological part of the previous games, even if it tones down the 'horror' side of things a bit, instead choosing to focus on far more existential questions. Basically it's a pretty heavy game when you start thinking about the things it presents to you.
Without going too deep into spoilers (if you haven't played the game yet, this is your chance to stop reading), the essence of the game revolves around what constitutes a 'human'. That is, what is it that makes a human uniquely human and what defines us as an individual?
To the first question, we can easily deduce this: if you take an average human being and chop off its arms and legs, is it still human? Most decidedly yes. Remove the torso so that you're left with just a head. Is this still a human being? Most would still agree it is. We then remove the skull, the eyes and other tissues surrounding the brain. Is this brain human?
Looking at the pile of tissue we discarded so far, we have to grudgingly admit that none of those bits are truly the core of a human being, even if they are parts of a complete human being as we are familiar with them. Thus we focus back on the brain.
A brain by itself clearly isn't human, so we can conclude from this that what makes something 'human' is something contained by this brain's structures, which is to say the network created by its neurons and their interactions. The conclusion we are thus left with is that a 'human' isn't a physical thing, but is a concept created by a complex network of electrical impulses and biochemistry.
A human is software.
We exist by the grace of this collection of biological tissues which support this network, allowing it to grow and develop, to enrich itself as an entity as it explores its environment through the means provided by its physical body.
There is nothing which would keep us from developing compatible hardware which can host this system we refer to as a 'human'. That is the wondrous part about being a human, it's not something which is necessarily contained by its physical shape, but is instead something which can will itself into almost any shape to accomplish virtually any task or goal it sets itself.
The second question was what makes someone into an individual. What does it mean when we refer to ourselves, when we use words like 'I', 'me' and 'myself'? To be a unique entity, separate from other entities. I think that the most important thing to realise here is that a human being is not a static entity. Every day we change and we are not the same person at the end of a day as the person we woke up as.
Each experience, each event changes the sum of this network which constitutes a human being as new neurons are slot into place and existing neurons weaken or strengthen their connections with other neurons. Just by existing we change. What thus forms our 'self', our quintessential sense of being this one, unique individual? Research suggests that it is mostly just part of the grand illusion our own minds produce to shield us from realising too much of what is going on.
In this SOMA game, the concept is raised of copying a brain or similar. That is, to produce a copy of the person which up to that point was only inhabiting that particular body. Afterwards there exist the original body with the entity and a scan of said entity. This scan can then be copied onto compatible hardware and function there much like the original, depending on the body it was copied into.
Regardless of the approach chosen, there would at this point be a fork in this continuity formed by this single entity. Suddenly there are two entities, which at least for one brief moment are completely identical. What was unique suddenly isn't any more.
Then, with one or more copies of the original entity existing and each going their separate ways, each of them begin to gather different memories, different experiences and views on life. They are no longer the same. What this suggests is that the only thing which makes an individual unique is its collection of memories and experiences. That each entity is essentially an imprint, or an echo if you wish, of these recollections.
A human entity is thus in essence a software construction, capable of gathering, processing, analysing and subsequently expressing preferences and opinions based upon this input, which then determine its following decisions, which thus lead to new input which better fit its preferences.
Much of this is shared with less advanced entities as found in other animals. What makes a human entity hereby so unique is its ability to integrate all of the external and internal input and create a system of self-awareness and self-reflection, which is referred to as 'consciousness'. This ability is what drives them to sate this curious sensation of 'curiosity'.
It is also what gives humans their incredible drive to survive and push the boundaries of what would normally be possible. Part of this is enabled by possessing a body which allows them to manipulate their environment in many ways and to develop complex tools where they cannot do so themselves.
All of this leads us to conclude that there really isn't such a thing as an 'individual'. Every single human being is a constantly morphing entity. Our bodies are pretty unique, but as twins demonstrate, the distinction here falls flat, too. Uniqueness then is a temporary thing.
Maybe it's because of our apparently unchanging bodies that we crave the need to define our minds in a way that they seem static and unchanging as well. Maybe embracing the knowledge of what it truly means to be human can be a very liberating thing, indeed.
Maya
Without going too deep into spoilers (if you haven't played the game yet, this is your chance to stop reading), the essence of the game revolves around what constitutes a 'human'. That is, what is it that makes a human uniquely human and what defines us as an individual?
To the first question, we can easily deduce this: if you take an average human being and chop off its arms and legs, is it still human? Most decidedly yes. Remove the torso so that you're left with just a head. Is this still a human being? Most would still agree it is. We then remove the skull, the eyes and other tissues surrounding the brain. Is this brain human?
Looking at the pile of tissue we discarded so far, we have to grudgingly admit that none of those bits are truly the core of a human being, even if they are parts of a complete human being as we are familiar with them. Thus we focus back on the brain.
A brain by itself clearly isn't human, so we can conclude from this that what makes something 'human' is something contained by this brain's structures, which is to say the network created by its neurons and their interactions. The conclusion we are thus left with is that a 'human' isn't a physical thing, but is a concept created by a complex network of electrical impulses and biochemistry.
A human is software.
We exist by the grace of this collection of biological tissues which support this network, allowing it to grow and develop, to enrich itself as an entity as it explores its environment through the means provided by its physical body.
There is nothing which would keep us from developing compatible hardware which can host this system we refer to as a 'human'. That is the wondrous part about being a human, it's not something which is necessarily contained by its physical shape, but is instead something which can will itself into almost any shape to accomplish virtually any task or goal it sets itself.
The second question was what makes someone into an individual. What does it mean when we refer to ourselves, when we use words like 'I', 'me' and 'myself'? To be a unique entity, separate from other entities. I think that the most important thing to realise here is that a human being is not a static entity. Every day we change and we are not the same person at the end of a day as the person we woke up as.
Each experience, each event changes the sum of this network which constitutes a human being as new neurons are slot into place and existing neurons weaken or strengthen their connections with other neurons. Just by existing we change. What thus forms our 'self', our quintessential sense of being this one, unique individual? Research suggests that it is mostly just part of the grand illusion our own minds produce to shield us from realising too much of what is going on.
In this SOMA game, the concept is raised of copying a brain or similar. That is, to produce a copy of the person which up to that point was only inhabiting that particular body. Afterwards there exist the original body with the entity and a scan of said entity. This scan can then be copied onto compatible hardware and function there much like the original, depending on the body it was copied into.
Regardless of the approach chosen, there would at this point be a fork in this continuity formed by this single entity. Suddenly there are two entities, which at least for one brief moment are completely identical. What was unique suddenly isn't any more.
Then, with one or more copies of the original entity existing and each going their separate ways, each of them begin to gather different memories, different experiences and views on life. They are no longer the same. What this suggests is that the only thing which makes an individual unique is its collection of memories and experiences. That each entity is essentially an imprint, or an echo if you wish, of these recollections.
A human entity is thus in essence a software construction, capable of gathering, processing, analysing and subsequently expressing preferences and opinions based upon this input, which then determine its following decisions, which thus lead to new input which better fit its preferences.
Much of this is shared with less advanced entities as found in other animals. What makes a human entity hereby so unique is its ability to integrate all of the external and internal input and create a system of self-awareness and self-reflection, which is referred to as 'consciousness'. This ability is what drives them to sate this curious sensation of 'curiosity'.
It is also what gives humans their incredible drive to survive and push the boundaries of what would normally be possible. Part of this is enabled by possessing a body which allows them to manipulate their environment in many ways and to develop complex tools where they cannot do so themselves.
All of this leads us to conclude that there really isn't such a thing as an 'individual'. Every single human being is a constantly morphing entity. Our bodies are pretty unique, but as twins demonstrate, the distinction here falls flat, too. Uniqueness then is a temporary thing.
Maybe it's because of our apparently unchanging bodies that we crave the need to define our minds in a way that they seem static and unchanging as well. Maybe embracing the knowledge of what it truly means to be human can be a very liberating thing, indeed.
Maya
Sunday, 27 September 2015
Liar, you always lie
"An hour wasted just because he wanted attention."
Those were the words my father spoke to my siblings and mother when I was eleven years old. That morning I had awoken with the most awful cramping in my abdomen, which had left me convinced that I was dying. I remember having to literally crawl to the toilet at some point because the pain was so bad that I could not stand or walk any more.
It must have taken about an hour before my parents had found me like that and readied me downstairs to get me to the local doctor. By the time we arrived at the doctor and had waited the obligatory tens of minutes, the pain had already subsided and I could not explain what had happened to either the doctor or my parents.
My father deemed me to be a mere liar who just wanted to get attention. My siblings teased me about it. My mother wasn't pleased.
Every time afterwards that I felt similar pains or even any other pains, I'd do my utmost to ignore it and just wrestle through it. The only thing people did not question me on were the frequent fainting spells, which started around that time as well. Apparently proper fainting isn't easy to do, though nobody seemed interested in learning just why I might be fainting so much. It must have been lack of oxygen, said most people.
When I wasn't an obvious liar, I was just a weird kid with an over-active imagination. I suffered the required amounts of severe bullying during both primary and high school. Only my frequent - weekly during one year - bouts of migraines were taken seriously. I had to stand up for myself and beat up the bullies responsible because nobody else would interfere on my behalf.
Years after I quit school, I finally discovered about my intersex condition, even if I did not put that event at eleven years next to it as a possibly related event.
How does it feel to be ridiculed, called a liar, crazy and delusional for only being honest about how one feels and experiences one's body, for a decade straight?
The most recent incident with this one doctor calling me a liar for pretending to be intersex brought a lot of that back to the surface. It made me realise just in how far doctors - not just in the Netherlands - have called me a liar or otherwise rejected me as speaking falsehoods over the past decade and counting. I honestly do not think doctors are real people at this point.
Dissociation is the sensation of feeling one's own experiences becoming more and more removed from the reality being presented that it is as if you do not truly exist any more as a physical entity. It's one's mind trying to make sense of completely conflicting input.
In this situation I have physicians and psychologists on one side calling me a liar, delusional and more regarding me being intersex. They make up fancy, non-existing terms like autoparagynaecophilia to further underline just how delusional I am, insisting that I must just be transsexual and not quite mentally 'there'.
On the other side there is my body being quite clear about what is and isn't real. I can ignore my body, but the symptoms will still be there. I can pretend the pains and discomfort aren't real, but both will still be there, as they have over the past two decades. I can pretend my body is that of a male, but I cannot deceive my environment, dress sizes or biology.
I am beginning to question whether physicians and psychologists truly exist, whether they aren't merely evil spirits which force themselves into my dreams, twisting them into dark, horrifying nightmares in which my very being and self are torn apart amidst their horrid cackling.
How can one sustain the possibility of the existence of two such completely disparate realities at the same time? How can two opposing truths both be the singular truth?
Maybe (most) physicians and psychologists are in fact lying and deceiving, or just being extremely ignorant and harmful in the process. Maybe this person I am is just a liar, so good at lying, that she doesn't realise herself any more that she has been deceiving herself for two decades and counting.
Do I trust my body? Do I trust doctors?
Who is lying? Is everyone a liar?
Maya
Those were the words my father spoke to my siblings and mother when I was eleven years old. That morning I had awoken with the most awful cramping in my abdomen, which had left me convinced that I was dying. I remember having to literally crawl to the toilet at some point because the pain was so bad that I could not stand or walk any more.
It must have taken about an hour before my parents had found me like that and readied me downstairs to get me to the local doctor. By the time we arrived at the doctor and had waited the obligatory tens of minutes, the pain had already subsided and I could not explain what had happened to either the doctor or my parents.
My father deemed me to be a mere liar who just wanted to get attention. My siblings teased me about it. My mother wasn't pleased.
Every time afterwards that I felt similar pains or even any other pains, I'd do my utmost to ignore it and just wrestle through it. The only thing people did not question me on were the frequent fainting spells, which started around that time as well. Apparently proper fainting isn't easy to do, though nobody seemed interested in learning just why I might be fainting so much. It must have been lack of oxygen, said most people.
When I wasn't an obvious liar, I was just a weird kid with an over-active imagination. I suffered the required amounts of severe bullying during both primary and high school. Only my frequent - weekly during one year - bouts of migraines were taken seriously. I had to stand up for myself and beat up the bullies responsible because nobody else would interfere on my behalf.
Years after I quit school, I finally discovered about my intersex condition, even if I did not put that event at eleven years next to it as a possibly related event.
How does it feel to be ridiculed, called a liar, crazy and delusional for only being honest about how one feels and experiences one's body, for a decade straight?
The most recent incident with this one doctor calling me a liar for pretending to be intersex brought a lot of that back to the surface. It made me realise just in how far doctors - not just in the Netherlands - have called me a liar or otherwise rejected me as speaking falsehoods over the past decade and counting. I honestly do not think doctors are real people at this point.
Dissociation is the sensation of feeling one's own experiences becoming more and more removed from the reality being presented that it is as if you do not truly exist any more as a physical entity. It's one's mind trying to make sense of completely conflicting input.
In this situation I have physicians and psychologists on one side calling me a liar, delusional and more regarding me being intersex. They make up fancy, non-existing terms like autoparagynaecophilia to further underline just how delusional I am, insisting that I must just be transsexual and not quite mentally 'there'.
On the other side there is my body being quite clear about what is and isn't real. I can ignore my body, but the symptoms will still be there. I can pretend the pains and discomfort aren't real, but both will still be there, as they have over the past two decades. I can pretend my body is that of a male, but I cannot deceive my environment, dress sizes or biology.
I am beginning to question whether physicians and psychologists truly exist, whether they aren't merely evil spirits which force themselves into my dreams, twisting them into dark, horrifying nightmares in which my very being and self are torn apart amidst their horrid cackling.
How can one sustain the possibility of the existence of two such completely disparate realities at the same time? How can two opposing truths both be the singular truth?
Maybe (most) physicians and psychologists are in fact lying and deceiving, or just being extremely ignorant and harmful in the process. Maybe this person I am is just a liar, so good at lying, that she doesn't realise herself any more that she has been deceiving herself for two decades and counting.
Do I trust my body? Do I trust doctors?
Who is lying? Is everyone a liar?
Maya
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