A Still, Small, Quiet

     So I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about my future plans and the oddest thing keeps happening: I've been having an unreasonably hard time dealing with life and stress and pain and emotional abuse from my past that keeps coming back up.

     Now I know what you're thinking (if you either know me or have read anything I've ever written/typed before). You're thinking, "WELL DUH!" in you most sarcastic tone. I'd call you rude if I didn't completely agree but let's get past that and focus on this next part.

I have been watching How I Met Your Mother and decided kinda randomly to look for things Josh Radnor has done. He hasn't done much by way of acting but I found a TED Talks he did and a few interviews he did; the ones I watched were over an hour long and were very interesting. (Stay with me, this isn't a rabbit trail...trust me)

     So he did an interview with someone about meditation, something I have never put any thought into or cared about, and it turned out to be profoundly deep. It's on youtube and I highly recommend searchi9ng for it, but here's something that it imprinted on my mind for the last few days that connects with the direction my life has been going for a while now.

Radnor talked about what people think they need as a whole, most people think they need organization or to free up time or more power. All of those things have been granted to society through technology and that's awesome...except...none of that is what we truly need. We need quiet. We need to calmly listen to the universe and let it guide us.

     He went into much more detail about that, the conversation moved to healing and how we heal by moving on but never ACTUALLY heal. And those two thoughts had a very big impact on me because I thought about my absolute inability to even spend a moment in silence. Even one second without sound of some kind can be torture to me.

My first thought was, "I can't do that because..." and a barrage of reasons I am exempt from even trying to entertain a moment of silence ran through my head like a freight train; each car carrying a heavy excuse.

Some of them were valid like my history of silence consists of some of the most horrible memories and acts of violence or hatred. So every time I hear complete silence, I think of those moments or expect something to happen. So before any silence occurs, I turn on some old sit com (HIMYM much?) or pandora.com.

Some of those reasons were just excuses and didn't even make sense like because silence means I am losing. Losing what, you ask? I DUNNO! Seriously, there's a part of me that tells me I'm a loser somehow if I let myself feel something during silence. Makes zero sense...ze-ro.

     And I could go through a ton more but I'll spare your eyes and brains but the final outcome is that even the true or solid ones aren't right. They're reasons to basically stay where I am, to stay safe and hide my eyes from what needs to be seen...or I guess a better way of saying it is I'm covering a giant gash and letting it fester instead of taking care of it. The worst part is it's not physical so festering can fester SOOO much more without anyone knowing till I attempt suicide or have some outburst or something. Sometimes I get so good at ignoring it, I don't even know it's there...but it is.

So I have a goal for my immediate life:

     I want to find a way to truly accept silence. I want to be able to sit in a room with no sound (physically and emotionally) and be okay. Some people believe in the universe or God or something else; I believe and know God and it's absolutely becoming clear that God wants me to search for a truly soul healing joy. I know I'm being led to find a way to be actually happy and to stop hiding any and all injuries from myself.

     Here's where I get away from the sit com and celebrity part of my thoughts and get to real life applications: I'm considering yoga, meditation or some kind of source of actual dealing with my issues and healing from them. My transition, while slow, has been a huge part of me being honest and adding some things back to my life that I thought I lost for good. That's great and I am excited to see where that takes me in the future but this is an absolute necessary part of any growth as well.

I will face some very very tough times through this and I will need some friends and people to lean on at times; I can't do this alone...but I can do this. I'm also looking for what other people do or have done to soul cleanse or find a way to be okay even in silence.

     If you've experienced any of these thoughts or needs in your life, let me know. I want to hear where you are and learn from you as I hope to some day pass on my knowledge to someone else some day. Because as I live my life, I'm not just an "I" we're all connected and the only thing we can do is help each other.

July 20th 2018 A memory and Some Stray Thoughts

     So I have a few fond memories that have been running around in my mind and a few other thoughts to share. Hopefully future me understands the mess of words I make here.

I'll start with the memory:

     Last night, I watched the Lion King on my wall with my projector. It started out where I just found all the movies on my hard drive and put them on random; Lion King was the first up and as it started, it quickly became apparent that this movie needs to be watched in giant fashion. Once up on the wall, it brought back the memory of the first time I ever saw that movie.

     My biological father (boy, I just LOVE bringing that barely-human up) saw that I had made some money and announced in front of my sister that I would pay for her to see the new Disney movie that she was dying to see. At that moment, I wanted to stare him to death like Lily did in How I Met Your
Mother. My little sister was absolutely unstoppably happy at that thought and before I could even finish being manipulated we we at the movie theater...in line for tickets...being paid for by me...NOT by my choice.

     We went in and I was so angry but I tried my best to seem OK for my sister, I really did like it when we got along so I went in and we started watching it. In the dark, I was sitting there pouting as Jonathan Taylor Thomas made fun of Mr. Bean and then Simba sang about being king some day...you know the movie.

     So the scene where Scar tells Simba to run because he just killed his dad, (that's who I saw as my biological father then and now. An evil, cowardly creep who refuses to do anything even slightly honorable) that got me hooked and I saw little sister really loving being there.

     I really loved being able to share the moment of her seeing that movie for the first time with her. By the end, neither of our eyes were dry and we both loved it. Last night I re-lived watching it on a big screen and it  was kinda like watching it for the first time again in a way.

     Life update: July 20th 2018

I've been doing A LOT better in the department of depression and suicidal thoughts for months now.
I haven't had a single thought about death in long enough that I can't remember the actual last time. I don't have a frame of reference to go back to in my entire life to remember when I was at this point. Ever.

     I have learned not to treat anything like it has no power even when it's stronghold on my mind seems to release a little, that's when it seems to come back strong. I'm not going to treat this like a victory but I am going to try to take more steps and do things that depression held me from. I'm not fully sure I know what that is but I can think of a few things that I've mentally held myself back from. My hope is that I read this in the future and see this as at least one turning point toward better things.

          I truly must give thanks to God for where my life is going and the ability to not give up before. It wasn't my steength or faith in me that got me this far. I secondly give thanks and respect to the friends, both online and in person, that have helped me get to a point where I cansmile a real smile. I'm not a finished product but this is a great place to actually work from as opposed to where I could be right now.

Thanks for staying with me this far and I promise it'll be worth your time by the end.

Updates and Thoughts (May 5th 2018)

     So these last few weeks have been...interesting, let's say. It's Friday May 4th 2018 and since my mind has been on super mega hyper attention deficit lately, I'm going to share my thoughts in list form. These are in no order and may seem nonsensical or whatever so bear with me. And because this is going to be outside the norm, I'm going to share some of my artwork throughout this diary entry. Enjoy...

* Update:
     So I recently increased my dosage of estradiol and found out my testosterone level is at a genetic female's level, which is a good thing.  I may not need to taker any kind of testosterone blockers.

* I see so many people throughout my work day as a cashier/photo tech and I'm telling you it is SO EASY to change someone's day with the smallest gestures or words.

And that goes both ways; a small kind word can take someone from a bad day to seeing things get a little better and on the opposite side, ignoring someone or throwing an attitude at someone random can truly ruin their day.

I see it so much and rudeness physically drains me at times when my stress is higher or I'm already having a  rough day.

* I've recently began accepting that I'm going to lose a lot of close friends. It's not something that one day I can just say, "OK, welp that's over." and be done with it. These are friends I've had for a very long time who have invested a lot in me.

I'm working on understanding their choice to not associate with me because I've decided to transition and respecting that. The toughest thing isn't that I disagree with them (I do but that's not the hardest part), the most difficult thing is having inside jokes or going through something I would have talked to them about or wanting to tell them something and just not having that option.

It's been similar to a breakup in a way, I've been trying to keep busy and work through the pain of losing such close people to me in doses I can handle. Writing this actually was so hard that it took me days to complete sentences without having to stop.

I don't really have many tears these days, I've been through so much that it takes a lot to make me cry in life...although all it takes in the TV world is a character I like to die or move and I ball like a baby, go figure.

* I've got some new plans that I'm really truly excited about. I'm not going to share all of it just yet but I want to preserve the memory of this moment by sharing some things:

     -I am slowly turning my room into a studio with a projector and a dry erase board for different purposes. I set it up and watched How I Met Your Mother then One Piece to test it out...IT. WAS. AWESOME. And it's only gonna get cooler.

     -I'm working on a plan to write a small story/novel. I've had this mostly thought out idea in my head for years and I'm trying to put it on paper (so to speak) whether it's good or not is up to the words I choose but I at least am going to try to make it good.

     -I have some plans to film some things soon, something I haven't done in years and have been wanting to. My friend Nico and I are working on doing some shooting soon...EXCITING!

                ...that's all I'm willing to share with the world just yet. More will come over the next year.

* This one's not great and I wish I didn't have to type it but here it goes:

    Over the last two weeks, suicidal thoughts were very strong and very convincing. Clearly I'm not going to let that thought walk into my head and beat me but I cannot lie and say it's easy to just ignore thoughts like everyone would be better off if I was just never around ever again or that I keep hurting people around me.

     It is hard to deny that being trans has hurt a lot of my friends and those around me, I know the truth is I am not maliciously hurting them and I know that having a mental disorder or a gender identity disorder or having other physical disabilities isn't quite the same as 'hurting' someone but the cold hard truth is there are a group of people who are worse off because I am going through this and have decided to embrace my new life instead of trying to deny it or do something different.

     I'm trying...I promise.



* On a better note, I've been a little more able to handle a little more lately. It's a small step but it's a step in the right direction. I have trouble working days in a row, in fact a few months ago I could not work 3 days straight; I'd have trouble doing simple things like speaking clear sentences ort counting.

I've been working a little more before those kinds of malfunctions happen and I'v ebeen able to hold my temper better too, which is even more impressive because I'm now on an increased doseage of estrogen. Yay me.

     Well I could go on but I'll end this particular diary entry here. Thank you for reading. And as always...