I’ve had ‘mental health struggles.’
There’s been a terrible time in my life—the last year and a half—which was a culmination, a lifetime’s worth of layers in grief set the foundations for it. Firstly, I compartmentalized the fact I was a transgender woman my entire life until I was thirty-four years old, due to the fact the world does not hold adequate space for the existence of such people, and that damaged me thoroughly. Secondly, I’ve had one genuine romance which was my marriage of nearly a decade that is no more, and within that my greatest struggle were my attempts to receive the affection I was looking for.
It is my sorrow from loss in love, of being unchosen in all things which leads the way—not being held how I’ve always wanted or seen that way; as the woman I am in my heart, whatever that means. It’s been the greatest trauma I hold. To seek for this and find one who could deliver those feelings to me in some form or fashion has proven windingly brutal. When I get those windows I am happier and more present than any other times of my life—but they are a rarest occurrence because my trauma precludes me from finding it with most men, who seem to prove far more disposed in dispensing that form of affection in their habits. Those who qualify in an olfactory sense and are also quality men who are willing to show me on their arm prove some unicorn beyond the pale of actual existence.
My experiences as a closeted transgender youth and the child of a father who really failed to take care of me has made the pheromones of most men uncomfortable to my senses to say the least. I’ve not found relaxation or comfort in a man’s arms despite the fact I am at root a pansexual human being—as I believe we all are below deepest levels of conditioning. (I could be projecting)
There is also the stress of living as a transgender woman in this world which consistently proves to hold a lack of space for me as I am, and full of people who cannot see what is true and felt as such from within. I know my womanhood and I love it—nobody can take it from me. I’m resented for that because all who seek this are conditioned to grasp for affirmation outwardly. To see one owning it in spirit the way I do, and for it to be one who evokes such monumental prejudice in others, is a hard pill for sad bitches to swallow. They make it harder every day.
To move as a half-time single mom, full-time employee, and an adult human in this world gone wrong—atop it all, is a burden.
An abuse at the hands of my closest confidant for many years in a most precious place would be the straw to break the back, the way people treated me as the ‘man’ in face of that event, considering the fact it took place with a ‘real’ woman left me feeling helpless.
The crisis center I ended up in informed me I was bipolar in no uncertain terms when I explained most truthfully the manic place I had been in for the weeks and weeks after—full of hyper-creativity and delusional thoughts, not taking care of myself or sleeping enough—and they’d medicated me on an anti-psychotic which knocked me out for 10 hours, had me eating all day and then panicking at hour 20, until hour 24 when I would take it again and fall asleep standing up.
A briefest relationship with the chance to hold someone had allowed me to come off the medication because I was happy, and I was held once or twice in really precious ways with them. I felt fine immediately, if excitable. That relationship ended worse than any of the rest in my recent past and triggered a very extreme response which had them never speak to me again despite many, many attempts to get a word from them and seek some resolution to the grief.
That’s the stack of my trauma. Unhealed wounds with others whom I love and have left me feeling completely unseen and misunderstood to never speak a word to me again of what matters most, after they’ve made rightful decisions in terrible ways which trigger trauma responses, then never own any part of it.
I’ve seemed unable to control both my excitement for finding someone and the violence of my words in the fallouts of these relationships, and it only get worse.
That cycle has repeated itself each time I find one of those unique people who have that ability to achieve the trifecta; I admire them uniquely, they have the capacity to hold me properly and make me feel the woman I am in a sensual manner, and they smell good so I can relax in their arms. They’ve all left after I’ve fallen in love—as I define the word—then don’t talk to me because my need for what they have causes my words and feelings to become too intense.
Recent work with a psychiatrist has revealed something incredibly poignant to my heart that resonates completely as truth in my mind. My work has been art therapy, and I’ve known that. I’ve also seen honesty within it about myself in terms of how I may become with another around—I’d be fine—I’d be better than fine, zen would be mine. The single thing which continues to re-trigger my bouts of manic depression and anger and delusion is my trauma, its repetitious nature, and the ongoing struggle I have in the seeking of that healing.
I am not bipolar. I have unhealed trauma, and a lot of it. That’s all.
