A Rant and Life Updates (June 13th 2018)

     So I have a few updates and thoughts from the past few days, some good and some not so good. All one hundred percent true and from my heart.

I'll start with the recent public suicides. I first want to say that I hate hearing about anyone taking their own life and I want to find any way and every possible way to stop as many suicides that can be stopped. Whether it's public figures or poor people or from the US or any other country, I want to find more ways to help people who are hurting as much and quick as possible.

Now with that said, I am very upset about something that has nothing to do with the specific people who took their lives recently and absolutely has a lot to do with our society (at least the society seen on social media)

For anyone who would ever read this, there are possibly dozens or more people you know personally who struggle with giving up, who send some small potentially life or death signs out into the world that go unnoticed, but one famous person kills them self and everyone posts status' and tweets like they care...until some other news comes up and makes them forget.

     I'm not blaming anyone for the actions but I am saying that every time we make it a priority to talk about a celebrity but never even offer our friends in our own circle the chance to be that important to us, we perpetuate and keep this societal trend going...and it sucks.

I can tell you from experience that when I'm hurting and considering giving up, when I'm at my worst, it really hurts to hear close friends post multiple long dedicated posts and pictures about how their lives are changed based on the loss of a person they didn't know in a real way but never offer their real friends that same attention.

This is not an attack on any one person or an attempt to hurt anyone's feelings, I want people to think more about how much of an impact they can have on people who they actually have an impact on. Masking someone important even in a little way can be huge to them, it's free and not hard to be a little extra nice randomly.

...OK, with that out of the way, here's my life update.


So I've been taking depression medicine, estrogen, migraine medicine and allergy medicine. Sounds like a ton, right? It is. But here's the crazy thing, they're all working!



For months, I've needed to take Excedrin migraine every single day at some point because I'd feel one coming on; I haven't had to do that in almost a week, maybe more by now. And that's including a few extra stressful days at work too, big tests passed there!

Allergies have been debilitating for me and while I've still barely been outside much lately, I have been affected about 10% as much as the last few years. That's a ton when my eyes have swelled shut multiple times last year alone.

Depression is a different animal but there is still big progress since starting medicine. I have noticed that it's been easier to feel better emotionally, I've still had a few bad thoughts and bad days but not even close to the way it's been all my life before.

And last but definitely not least, the estrogen. I have noticed a very little teeny tiny bit of breast growth. While it's going so far beyond slow I guess I have to look at the positive way: it is working.

     As far as my mental state, I've had a few days where I was ready to give up and in the last month I have considered suicide a few times but the progress is I've been able to talk myself out of those
thoughts by thinking about my future and by the hope that I have in possibilities that are ahead.

I've also got back in touch with a few friends I thought were not willing to even talk to me and that's been a load off my mind. My group of friends mean and meant the world to me so to think about losing them hurts more than just about anything.




     So to finish this update, I want to share my current goals for Wednesday June 13th 2018:
* Thanks to my Awesome Aunt Caren, I'm going to work on some hair removal coming up soon!

* I'm starting to clothes shop (donations much appreciated), mainly skirts for now. I'm going to start wearing skirts to work

* I need to exercise and work on getting my weight down.

* Bible reading and praying needs to be much mor eimportant to me than it has been

* Organizing my room since I just bought a couch last week and I now have actual stuff to organize.

* I'm coloring my hair (today) and I might try to style it somehow

* I have a few writing projects and video projects that I want to work on.  I'm beyond the first step in both so I'm hoping to make progress on them soon.

* I'm trying to find a way to save money for something really big I want to do next year. Can't say what it is yet, don't want to jinx it.

A Weekend I'll Never Forget

     So this has been quite the weekend. Emotions were flying and things were absolutely great and really annoying at times and gut busting funny at other times and really sad at times. Where should I start?

     Okay I'll start at the beginning, since you said so.
Thursday was painfully slow but I made it through work and I felt such a relief exhale as I left work, knowing I had FIVE days off after that.  Friday morning came and my friends Nick, Mike and I  went to eat before going to Monster Mania. It was great to spend some time around friends I haven't seen in a while and things seemed to work out for us as we got closer to time to go get our wrist bands for everything.

I kinda made the plan for when we'd get there and because I'm ridiculously early to things, I got us there a while early and we had to kill some time. We did and finally the time came that the event opened up.

     SO before going there, I split up with my group and met up with another friend, Lauren. And this is where things went from exciting to mind blowing. My friend, who has been a humongous support system and she's one of the few people who I truly see as family (in a way that doesn't hurt me), gave me directions to the office she works in and I went there.

Once there, she helped me do my makeup for the first time ever. It was such an emotional experience I could barely contain it all. I got dressed up and discovered that I apparently really like the color fuscia in the process.

          Years ago I bought a pair of high heels, they happened to be fuscia. Then a while later, I found a dress online that I liked and bought it...fuscia. the bra I used was guess what color and the lipstick was the same. None of that was intentional, I just happened to find these things and get them while I was able. I have very little by way of feminine clothes and I've been so afraid to walk into a store and buy things like underwear and dresses so I mostly have been buying stuff online.

Aaaaanyway, Laur helped me get ready and showed me some tips on makeup and I had to hold back tears when I was done. I was so excited and she did such a great job and I was actually going to walk around as Layla. It was so full of emotions before even getting there. We left and went to the hotel (where Monster Mania takes place) and I walked through the front door in my high heels, wearing a pink dress and looking unrecognizable.

     It felt so amazing to walk around as Layla in public, although I learned pretty quickly that the heels I own are too small. But it was worth the pain , as I felt so comfortable being treated the way I feel inside. Spoiler: overall two guys checked me out and that was proof that Lauren's makeup job was perfect. By the way, I'm not gay so I didn't want to be hit on by guys so don't think that has changed; it was only a good thing because my makeup looked real and good...and real good.

     The best part of my entrance was awesome, so I went there with two friends, Mike and Nick. Nick was waiting to pay for food but Mike walked toward me. I was sitting down, charging my phone and I looked right at him as he walked closer. He walked past me, like one foot foot away from me and didn't say anything. I thought he saw me and was ignoring me as a joke or something. I waited a minute or two and stood up, put my heels back on and walked toward where he was. I got close enough to almost be face to face and said, "Hey Mike."

He was in shock and then he said, "Is that you?!" His face was first in awe of realizing who I was and then just laughing. One of my good Friends, who came with me to go there and who knows me very well, didn't realize it was me EVEN when I was right in front of him. IT.WAS.AWESOME.

And after the shock and hilarity wore off, he told me he was proud of me and he supports me; that meant a lot to me.

     I passed by a good amount of friends who I know that didn't recognize me even though I was very close and again that was great proof that my makeup was well done. I loved that. After a while there was a VIP party and it was the most disappointing one I've ever been to. The only good thing was getting to hang out with all 3 of my groups at once for a little bit.

     We left early and I got to say hi to the IT kids (Chosen Jacob, Jaeden Lieberher, Wyatt Oleff, Sophia Lillis and Jeremy Ray Taylor) as they went in, we went back to the hotel and I got cleaned up and we had a blast hanging out; staying up till like 5am. 

Saturday: I don't want to get into the negative stuff because I have a very high respect level for Dave Hagan and the rest of the Monster Mania crew so I'm gonna leave it at this one day, things were not all great.  The one great part was getting to meet an actor who played a large role in my favorite movie of all time.

I got inside and went immediately to the table where Richard Refuse was supposed to be signing autographs and taking pictures with fans, he was on a lunch break and I happily waited there. He got back and was talking about some things that happened on the set of Jaws. JAWS! The very first movie I ever watched...EVER.
He offered me a coke, which I took humbly and then he looked at a staff member behind him and asked if there was a 7/11 nearby. He then told everyone in line that he's buying if anyone wanted anything from 7/11. I was blown away, making sure to keep the coke can he personally gave me.

     So I stepped up when he was ready and I got a laser disc of Jaws signed and then took a picture with him. It was awesome and he was very nice. Just as he was about to go to the next person, I got to tell him Jaws was the first movie I ever watched and it's been my favorite ever since. I thanked him and shook his hand. It was really great to get that chance.

     After all is said and done, I had a decent time and absolutely loved walking around feeling comfortable and less pressure then anywhere else. It was a weekend I'll never forget. It was Layla's first public appearance ever. I gotta send a special thanks to My friends, Lauren, Nick, Mike, my cousin Ryan, my cousin Sean and his fiancee Josie and everyone else who I met or interacted with this weekend. I am so happy I got this chance and can hardly wait to do something like that again soon. <3

The Suicide Journal's History

     So I started this diary to fully examine and express my deepest of inner thoughts, from my desires and needs to those thoughts that are hard to understand or scary to put out there. I believe I've come a long long since I first started writing in a notebook and I feel the need to do two things right now:

1. Reflect.

   When I first started this, I didn't understand so much about my thoughts or why I felt the way I did. I had suicidal thoughts that just overtook my mind daily, sometimes without even provocation. It made sense when I lost my uncle to feel sad and possibly think about dying but to think about killing myself for no reason was beyond alarming.

I had times where I contemplated ending myself when things weren't very bad, like if I pictured how things would play out if I jumped in front of a car and the thought became so strong that I had to convince myself not to...hard.

It's always been obvious that it hurt seeing good families and knowing I never had that but writing out all of my unfiltered and deepest thoughts has really helped me break down other things I didn't understand til I read it on paper.

July 25th 2012 was the first time I wrote down in a journal and the things I wrote down were just the worst things; so much worse than any horror film or scary story.
I talked about how I didn't understand why I thought I wanted to end myself and what was going on in my mind. Here are a few pictures of the original Suicide Journal pages.

2. Now?

     In the past few years, I've gone through some very serious changes and arcs that have shaped me for the worse and (hopefully) for the better nowadays.

-5 years ago, I lost my Uncle to suicide, something that forever changed who and how I am. A piece of me died that can't come back anymore than Uncle Mike can and I hurt in a way that can't be fixed at all. This was a giant arc for the worse, just like anyone else who has lost  a loved one knows. I'm different than I was the day before I got the call about him, that phone call made me a worse person and added bitterness that I still can't just walk away from.

-About 2 years ago, I asked one of my best friends to meet up with me. He's usually pretty busy and it was very very important that I talked to him, not on a friend level exactly. When I met up with him, I confessed (for a lack of a better word) that I've been living a lie. I explained what I am and that my plan was to end myself if I didn't come clean about being trans. He listened and while he has not even said he supports my decision, he was as loving and caring as a best friend could be. I expected that conversation to end in a friendship being over but instead I left knowing that he and his family are more Christ like than I even thought (and I lived with that family for years so I would know more than most the character of all of them).

From then on, I've been telling more and more friends and strangers about the real me and have been slowly becoming a better person who doesn't hate myself the way I have my whole life.  Not that I'm fixed now but that definitely started a change that needed to happen, a change which is leading to a mission and goals that I'm embracing more and more to this day.

My goal is to reach out to trans people and show them that God isn't the evil, hateful thing that a lot of them think He is. The real God that leads my friends is the God who loves all of us and knows what we're going through. There's a verse that says we are 'fearfully and wonderfully made' and being transgendered is not outside of that. God can use us and I believe He is using me more and more in a way that I've always felt completely useless.

I used to recite the lines to a Green Day song, "Are you feeling like a social tool without a use..." and that's how I felt for a very long time, like any positive talent or thing I did was essentially useless to anyone. Like I would try to help friends but I couldn't do or help in the way they needed; for example:

     I can take great pictures and can draw fairly well but I can't cut grass without my eyes swelling shut and can you guess what would help my friends a lot more than taking a photo?? I'll give you 8 guesses. Nope, not that...yeah, they needed their grass cut. And then another summer when my allergies were not so bad, they needed help working on their car or they needed money or something that I could just never offer. This kind of situation often left me feeling beyond worthless on a regular basis. Now I am not trying to ignore the times I was able to help, I did for the most part what I could when I could. This isn't about 'woe is me' this is about the feeling I was left with during those times I couldn't help.

When I started being more open about being who I truly am, something changed in me and I've been feeling more and more useful to those who feel desperately left out. I'm not trying to sound like anything better than I am, just that I don't feel useless. That is an amazing feeling!
To be continued

Have a Destiny or Go Home

     Do I know me? You'd think I would, right? Well a few years ago, I really thought I knew everything about me: my future, my plans, what I wanted and who I'd be around and what I'd be doing.

The funny thing about all that is if you go back a few years before that, I thought I had all those answers and they were all completely different. In fact, every few years going backwards I had a totally different set of answers I was sure about.
Going fart far back, I remember meeting a girl named Tiffany who I thought was my destiny. I was going to be a marine biologist and I was gonna live in Hawaii. Basically I was gonna be Adam Sandler from 50 first Dates, and this was when I was in 1st and 2nd grade (about the 1988-89 range) so I wasn't just copying from the 2004 romantic comedy.




     Then a few years later, I learned that I love Halloween makeup and horror movies and I was 100% sure that I was going to be the next great FX artist/makeup artist for Wes Craven. I did Halloween makeup for people a lot as a kid and started getting good enough at bruises to think I could have been famous...remember this was the mind of a 9 or 10 year old. Freddy Krueger never terrorized my nightmares but he sure made me want to create things that came from my crazy mind.

     Skip ahead a few years from then and I "knew" the girl I was gonna marry, "knew" my best friend Kevin and I would never stop hanging out, "knew" that I was gonna work for some kind of charity and make a great living at it and was going to live in Collingswood for the rest of my life. I had no doubt that I was right about my plan but it didn't even take a year for some of that to change. I became friends with a kid around the corner and we were inseparable for a while. Justin's family even

 kinda accepted me as one of their own for a little while. There was no way he and I were not going to be best friends for life (this was before acronyms...so yeah)

     Around 16, I wanted to run away and create a completely new life far from anyone I knew. I also wanted to have a sex change and live as a lesbian. At that time, it was mostly a fantasy because I thought I was as wrong as I could be to want the things I wanted. I hated myself and kept treating myself worse and worse. That may have been when I started mentally beating myself up, before that I was so focused on ignoring that part of myself that it didn't occur to me to hate myself. So I treated that like it was nothing more than a sexual desire and I "knew" that I couldn't ever tell anyone I secretly wanted to be known as feminine and pretty instead of manly and handsome. I "knew" that my life was going to be a lie and that I'd never be able to truly share my real self with anyone. More 100% truth that I would have fought with all my might if anyone questioned me. 

     Jump a bunch of years later and I was going to be a preacher and a photographer on the side. I "knew" I was going to marry a preacher's daughter and we had serious plans that couldn't possibly be broken. It was our destiny that we get married. We were half right, and that's the only thing that links us as a 'we'. She's married...to some guy somewhere.

          You see where this s going so I'll skip ahead to my current life. 

* On one hand, I believe that destiny is imaginary, I believe that all my plans fall through and I am finally being honest with people in my life about me. 

* On the other hand, I have trouble believing God cares about me. I used to think I was Ted Mosby...I was very wrong, I'm much more Toby Flenderson than I am Ted Mosby. I used to think I was going to find a career but now I struggle to keep a job, and not even in a 'I have some ailment that keeps me from doing the required work' kinda way,I'm talking about an "I can do it, I have the physical ability to do the work but my passion for doing anything is at an all time low' kinda thing. And I am currently a few weeks away from starting my transition, which is one of the only things I'm happy about in my life. 

     So to sum all the many words up, I believe in a lot less than I did before. But I'm still here, I'm still trying to try. And I still have a teeny tiny itty bitty hope that things can somehow end well for me.

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