Stress, Stress, Stress

     Stress does NOT feel pretty. I know...OBVIOUS. I'm not trying to bring some deep thought to the forefront of the world. Stress has such a hold on me that I have no idea how to even try to solve that.

When I was younger, the time I was supposed to be learning how to deal with stress and grow mentally and learn what to do in tough situations was spent escaping  a terrible family life and mental abuse to say the least.

Instead of slowly taking on more responsibilities in my teen years, I was watching my close family members self destruct and trying to keep myself out of the line of fire at times. And I also watched my immediate relatives either cut me out of their lives or leave me hanging when I needed them most.

     The good that came from that is I learned a survival instinct that I have since needed and used. The bad thing is I missed out on a good amount of valuable growth in a variety of ways; one specific way affects me every single day and hit me particularly hard today (Saturday May 12th 2018).

Scenario: I was at work and it was busy. Now for most people that's not easy but dealable. For someone who hasn't had much experience learning how to deal with the stress of doing many things at once, it was unbearable. and I failed the day hard. I was on the register and can't even count how many times multiple things were going on at once and I messed up all the things.

From the start of my day, I wasn't ready for anything. My shift leader told me...at EIGHT AM, that the assistant manager wanted to talk to me. For anyone who doesn't have anxiety in their daily life, that is the equivalent of the phrase "We need to talk..." in a relationship.

It's seriously one of the hardest things to hear and go about my day after that. And to make that even worse is my shift lead told me that at 3pm, I needed  to talk to my assistant manager. That means between 8 am and 3pm, I needed to not look like my heart was going to explode from worry about what she wanted to talk to me about.

And to make things even WORSE, at 2:30 I found out my asst manager was gonna be late so I didn't even get to talk to her. I'm still trying to stay calm and I've been out of work for hours now. I have to wait till at least Monday to find out she wants to talk to me about...I may not make it till then. If I have a heart attack, y'all know why. (That's only MOSTLY sarcasm.)

     Okay now that I got that out of my system, I'm going to try to forget about all that for at least a day. On to some more personal thoughts and what's going on in my mind. Warning, this is going to get personal and possibly TMI for some.

Saxon Sharbino is half
 of my spirit animal

Blaire White is the
other half of my spirit animal

One of the most important things to my transition is passing. I know that's superficial or shallow or something but it's true. I want to feel and be pretty, I want to have breasts and a nicer body and be looked at as feminine without looking like a guy in a dress.

And right now, I'm in the not there yet stage which has me impatiently waiting for the hormones I'm taking to do something more than emotionally.

Shmutzies.com

     Other life events: So recently I got in touch with a few family members I haven't seen in a very long time and that was seriously amazing! Two aunts of mine visited me, we went to my favorite diner and then took a walk around a nearby trail park and caught up with each other. My aunt Caren, who makes awesome soap and other great stuff, has been an enormous supporter of my transition and my aunt Beth is such a cool person that I wish I got to know her better years ago. I had a blast with them and am looking forward to being able to say the word family and not having it be a negative thing. 

And a few people have inspired me to try to get a story idea I have had for a long time out of my head and onto paper, so to speak. I'm working on writing a story about a young girl who eavesdrops on some pretty interesting people. I'll share more of that in the future and I'm really excited to work on it. My cousin Ryan, my aunts and a few other close friends have helped inspire me. Thanks.

Last thing:
     Travel is in my future and I could not be more excited for that!! Next year will be a big year for me for a few reasons, I'll be a little bit closer to becoming Layla and will be much mor eopen about that, I'll be seeing some new things and places and working on the book. Get ready.

Eulogy of a Shadow

     So anyone who knows me knows I've dealt with suicide and death a lot in my life. It's kinda like a shadow that has followed me (I know death follows EVERYONE but not everyone feels it as much as some of us twisted special ones)

     Even as a kid, I was obsessed with death and at many point, I've wanted to die. Sometimes it was a just as a way out of a terrible situation, like when I was about 7 and my biological parents were fighting one night very loudly and I was sent to his room. I heard therm and just wanted that feeling to stop, that feeling of hearing people fighting over me. I hated so much that my existence was causing such a  scary argument and it made me want to do anything to stop it.

I thought two things:
     1. If I were to die then, right that night almost in front of them then they'd stop caring about screaming at each other. Might even bring some peace to people who were involved. I thought that would teach them a lesson too. I thought how bad they would feel if a little kid made them learn a lesson.
     1. I just wanted to get out of that situation. I hated hated hated feeling so uncomfortable. I knew nothing about what death was in the grand scheme of things but I knew I would have rather dealt with dying then continue feeling the pain of sadness caused by their fight. It was a soul killing sadness that has bled into my inner thoughts and has followed mr around like a creepy shadow.

     That was all just an intro to the point of this whole thing:
For so long I've wanted to kill me and aim all the sadness at ending myself...or at least I thought I wanted that. When I examine why I think and feel the way I do, I learn that the truth is I want to not feel that sadness or pain. The idea of dying is an escape from that and becomes the consolation prize that I convinced myself I wanted more than my true wish.

     So I thought today at work about what I truly want and two things happened that made me want to put my shadow to rest.

One was a man came to my register. I said my delivery line that I've been conditioned to say, "Hi, How are you today?" and his response was, "Well, my back hurts and my life kinda sucks..." he proceeded to tell me he has cancer because of agent orange, his wife passed away not too long ago, his son is mentally handicapped and he has back, leg and foot pain. The thing is he was smiling the whole time, not like a joyous "everything is awesome even though things aren't great" kinda smile, it was a painful smile. A smile that told more of his story than his story told, it was interesting to hear him complain because his eyes were almost devoid of emotions in a way that told me he has been through so much emotions that there wasn't much left.

And through all of that, he wasn't complaining the way most people do. Most people complain because they expected life to give them so much and it just didn't. He was telling a story of hardships without blaming life or God or others. Through the conversation, he told me his son keeps asking when Mom is coming home and the best thing he could say was, "We'll see mom again when we move and go to her." It was the best way he could explain her death to his son who will never understand...for lack of better words.

The other thing was a status on facebook that connects this man's story to my subconscious. Blaire White (a transgender political/current events youtuber, one of my favorite channels) posted:

     I had to repost it, because it's something I think I expect too much. I will probably either forget or think something bad is the end of the world soon but it at least gave me something to think about for today and has been on my mind.

I try to challenge myself to grow when these kinds of things occur; these bits of deep truth that should change our all of our lives. I know I'm more messed up than most but once in a while I see some truth or bit of wisdom that we should all think about and meditate on in some way. "Life becomes infinitely easier once you accept that it doesn't owe you anything." Very smart words.

I'm not one to give out words of wisdom but these are definitely words people these days should think about regularly. Thank you for reading.