So where do I start? Does it even matter where I start? Not really. So here goes. This post is just going to be a sash-thought-shit rant crap post so whatever.
Today I triggered an old but still very familiar "emotional response" in my stupid, squishy, organic neural processing clump in my skull. It's something I've encountered many times before, mostly in my later teenage years and early 20s. Now I'm nearly 31, it's happened less often but that is largely down to the improved coping mechanisms I've developed, rather than the issue "going away", so to speak. And I have a LOT of coping mechanisms, believe me.
So maybe I should actually state what the issue is - Gender dysphoria. Or, well, it involves gender. It's definitely Dysphoria, though; the absolute opposite of euphoria, a total feeling of hopelessness and melancholy. Even as I type this, my face is slumped into a frown and I can't even feel any sense of positivity or self-worth. The central feeling revolves around my brain, creating physical feelings such as the "Butterfly feeling" in my belly, shaking, etc. This central feeling is hopelessness.
The hopelessness is very real. It's knowing that you're afflicted with a problem that has no solution, no way around, no "light at the end of the tunnel", so to speak. Absolutely none. The feeling will always haunt you until the day you die and there is nothing, absolutely nothing, you can do about it. Well, nothing to solve it, but there are sure ways to stop it. If you know what I mean.
I'm talking about my body. Being who, what, I am. A male, in this life, this person, sitting here in bed typing this. A "longing" to be someone I'm not, in situations I'm not, many of which I struggle to understand the reasoning behind, but I've had this feeling for long enough - I've studied it long enough - to come to a basic conclusion.
I wish I was someone else, but who? Do I wish I was female? or is this dysphoria hiding behind a façade of Gender Dysphoria because of the social situations I mostly encountered (online, male, gaming communities) creating a sort of "special status" for females? Is it the wish to BE female innately, or to be unique, different from my self that I loathe for different reasons, that I can't identify? I don't know.
As I look deeper into this feeling, I start to see some trends develop. Self-awareness is important in tracing the sources of emotions back to their origins, often nested behind red-herrings and false positives. Hidden, psychological back-doors in emotions that lead to other emotions, not visible on the surface. That's one thing I've learned a lot over the years of being a hermit, having so much time to think about my own thought processes.
As I get deeper, I uncover genuine discomfort/dysphoric feelings deriving from male attributes such as facial hair, and my genitalia/body structure. This discomfort certainly seems to reinforce the idea that my gender identity isn't male, but it doesn't confirm that I'm female, either. Well, identity-wise; I'll always be a male biologically. No escaping that fact.
This is the part where it gets convoluted and, well, quite messed up. But since I'm having a trend lately of completely lacking any form of self-control (don't ask, metaphorically), I'll just spew it all down here because typing this does seem to be offering some comfort - likely due to the distraction.
There's a very distinct and very strange, somewhat disturbing nuance attached to all my fantasies about being female. Something I've historically not been too comfortable admitting even to myself, let alone on my blog. But since no one actually reads this, I'll just type it here anyway.
The fantasies achieve the highest gratification (important word here) in situations where I'm female, but under threat of some kind. In a situation where I may be harmed or even killed. This is likely derived from, or at least somewhat related to my masochistic traits (I don't think I've ever even mentioned this on this blog, lol). It is both sexual and non-sexual gratification from a variety of submissive acts whereby I am submitting to a dominant person, up to and including situations where said dominant person causes me physical harm.
The sexual side of this gratification has another component, that I will not discuss here as I'm not ready yet (don't worry, I'm not a pedophile, all my kinks revolve around me, not other people), but it also involves situations where I would come to harm, up to and likely including death.
The non-sexual gratification component appears to have a neutralising effect on the dysphoria I mentioned earlier. There is a possibility that it is not related, but simply "crops up" when thinking about how much I hate myself in those moments - i.e, I want to be female, but I also want, even more, to be submitting to someone. But the underlying cause of the dysphoria is likely not the fact that I'm not actively submitting, if you know what I mean. It's just mixed in with the fantasy.
There is no denying that I find the male aspects of my body to be extremely uncomfortable, but I would hesitate to suggest I am in a "Pre-MTF Transgender" situation and largely apply myself to the "non-binary" classification since I AM a transhumanist by nature. But that's another topic for another day. Long story short: psychological gender identity is detached from biological sex.
I suppose I should actually type about the trigger that caused this excessively long, drawn-out post? Well, it was a situation I've been in many times before; with the same mistakes made, and the same dysphoric feelings as a result. I simply don't learn, apparently.
I made a new friend playing War Thunder a while back, a really nice, friendly guy. I never intended the friendship to go beyond War Thunder, and the idea of voice chat was never even considered (as usual with me), but it developed into a situation where voice chat was present and now a second game (PlanetSide 2) is involved, along with more people.
I, of course, cannot actually speak on these voice chats for twofold reasons, the first of course being my extremely bad social anxiety, and the second being, well, I told this person I was female. The same driving force of "online, I can pretend to be whoever I want", bullshit that has burned me so many times before: it simply serves to remind me that I will never truly be who I want, and that all my interactions and relationships built upon this lie are fake. Every single time.
Even when pronouns are used to refer to me in the voice call I am a participant of (listening only), of course being female pronouns, it simply reminds me that I'm not female really, and I hate myself. This is something I've experienced many times before, and I actually found it better to not pretend to be someone else, and just "roll" with who I am, because the fakeness of the "pretending to be what I WANT to be, but am actually not" was worse than the gratification from a genuine (not fake) friendship. But here we are. I dug myself a hole.
Of course, the very fact that I feel I can't just turn around and explain this to this person is another indicator of the underlying issues: anxiety. Fear of human beings. A deep-seated, intrinsic fear of being hurt by other people has broken my ability to interact in many ways. I've typed about this before, many times. This is also the cause of my engagement in the situation to start with - the classic "Can't say no" problem where I'm essentially strung along for the ride and watch myself forced into even worse anxiety-provoking social situations because I literally am terrified to say "no" to people.
I guess that comes from the same "self-preservation" complex that kicks in from being constantly, on a daily basis, abused at school and to some degree at home. The constant defensive fear of people, often reinforced by physical consequences (being beaten, hurt, especially at school) has created this broken complex where I must be a "pleaser" and a "yes-man" to stay alive and not get hurt. Because, as I remember very vividly, those behaviours actually helped me avoid physical abuse at school. Lovely.
Anyway, the point is that all of these issues culminated today and I was simply overwhelmed. We were playing Planetside 2 (rather hectic large-scale mmo warfare game), I was listening on a 4+way voice call, felt pressured to be good at the game (my aim is terrible, and no, this friend at no point pressured me, this was entirely my own anxiety). Throw in the dysphoria, and the inability to say "i have to go", it was a pressure cooker waiting to explode. Of course it was. and of course, I was absolutely powerless to do anything about it until it actually exploded.
And it did.
I quit the game instantly and turned my PC off without saying anything. Great, ironic, actually, if you consider the entire premise of the anxiety is to NOT draw attention to myself/provoke a negative response from people. But, my mental health conditions rarely make "sense".
The idea was to remove myself from the situation before anyone could say anything and I would go and hide in this very bed, likely cry a bit, and then sleep. Then everything would be OK tomorrow and the cycle repeats. Unfortunately I didn't turn the PC off fast enough and got a response from my friend.
Of course, my autistic, broken, anxiety-ridden brain is picking this response apart and coming to all kinds of bizarre and likely completely unwarranted conclusions, but that's just the way it is. So I guess I can add that to the list of shit that hit the fan, finish this post, publish it, go for a piss, then go to sleep. I might also hug my cat.
Bye.
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