8-23-11

I went back to the Gulf Bend Center for my diagnostic/financial evaluation.  

Good news: I make so little money that my max monthly payment would be $0.  

Bad news: the guy I talked to didn’t seem to have any knowledge of trans* stuff.  Despite not knowing anything about trans* stuff, he wanted to talk about my “changing” identity.  

I feel like I may not have expressed myself well enough.  I am functional in day to day life.  But I want to be more than just functional.  I want to feel like I am not just marking time.  I want to feel like I have a future to work toward and not just be living for no reason.  I don’t know if I got this across to him.

The guy has to pass his notes on to his supervisor who will decide if they can/will help me.  I just have this sinking feeling that I’m going to get passed over.  That because I have a job I do good at, have gone to college and done well, have never tried to kill myself, and have not had to go to the ER because of a panic attack he is going to decide I don’t “really” help.  If I didn’t need help I wouldn’t have sought it out.

For more than ten years I have lived with feeling like something was wrong with me.  But I told myself as long as I can hide it, as long as it doesn’t interfere with work or family, then I didn’t need help.  And that has worked for the most part.  It isn’t working anymore.

Part of me feels like revealing my transgender status was a mistake.  That I should have just said I was depressed and didn’t know why and just BS my way through it all.  It’s better to get some help than no help, right?

I’m totally stressing out over this.  I’m not even sure it would be worth it if they did decide to provide counseling.

8-17-11 I'm getting help

So, the other day(Monday) I was feeling really bad(depressed, hopeless, wrong, failing) and I started thinking, like I have at times, that I would rather (stop being, sleep forever, not exist) than feel as bad as I was feeling.  Then I started making plans.  I started to plan how I would get my affairs(money, possessions, cat) in order before killing myself.  This really scared me.

I realized what I was doing and focused on, well, not thinking about killing myself.

I've felt like I would rather die than keep existing before but I've kept this feeling in check.  I know that killing myself is not the answer.  One of the pillars of my personal moral code is to cause as little harm to others as possible.  Killing myself would cause massive harm to those that love, like or even just knew me.  It is not an option I am willing to take.  Except for a brief period of time I was willing.

I went today to the Gulf Bend Center to start getting help.  I have to go back for a diagnostic assessment.  It has been hard to make myself seek help but Monday I realized not getting help was not really an option.

It was hard once I got there to say I needed help.  Even harder was explaining how I've been feeling.  I told the woman I saw about being depressed on and off for about ten years but that it had been getting worse recently.  I had to mention my sister's death which started some water works going.  The woman I talked to asked if there was anything that might have caused my depression.  I wanted to tell her that I'm transgender.  I couldn't say it.  I knew I wanted to be honest but didn't feel like I could trust her.  I knew that I could trust her but I didn't feel it, if that makes any sense.  I had to write it down and show it to her.  She reassured me that she wasn't there to judge me or anything bad.

So recap:  I'm getting help for my depression/anxiety.

Parents might be more accepting than I thought

So, today my parents helped me move the stuff I had put in storage a while back when I didn’t have a place to keep it in.

I told my parents I was transgender three years ago when I finally began to feel that I could accept myself after years of self-doubt.  I’m still working on truly accepting myself but I’m getting there.  

When I told my parents, my mom was more accepting of me while my dad seemed to not want to listen to what I was saying.  He may not have liked what I was saying but he didn’t reject me either.  And we haven’t really talked about it since.

Things haven’t been strained or awkward mostly because I haven’t made much progress in transitioning.  I don’t bring it up and neither do they.  It’s almost like I never came out to them.  There have been a few times that I have heard my mom say she or her when talking about me but it’s always been isolated events.

Today something strange and wonderful happened.  Today my mom AND my dad used she and her when talking about me.  They weren’t perfect about it but I heard more she and hers from them that I heard he and hims.

My dad said to my aunt, “We got her stuff out of storage,” when she asked what we had been doing today.  There was a little hesitation but he didn’t correct himself.  

Part of me wants to think that they’ve decided to support me but don’t know how to come out and say so and this is how they’re doing it.  That part feels like crying with joy.

Part of me wonders if maybe they just slipped up.  That I’m reading to much into a few slips of the tongue.

I hope the first part is right.

Gilly