Hi all,
I've been hanging out in Beauty's "living room" for the last couple of days, trying to nurse myself back to some semblance of my usual weirdness. So far, I'm back on at least one foot. It's a start.
There's just no leaving this place, dammit! (okay, Beauty, you win... I owe you a million dollars
).
Sharon,
I admire what you just did. I admire
you. Same goes for Beauty, Shannon, and the rest of you here who seem to be able to walk over the occasional bed of coals and still come out smiling (albeit with clenched teeth) on the other end. I, on the other hand, haven't been able to do that lately.
I had a nice long talk with Beauty last Sunday morning. It changed a lot of things for me (and, no, it had little or nothing to do with her beautiful voice). She told me she's been waiting to hear from the "real" me. Well, now she has. And I owe it to you all to let you see me as well in all my mundane glory. Sunday's conversation with Beauty and this post from Sharon have touched me very much and made me realize how much my desire to just get away from the forum is, to a large extent, just a desire to get away from myself. This is something that's not possible. Nor do I now wish it
were possible. Still, it's not that easy accepting yourself and loving yourself when you don't really know who you are. I thought I knew who I was. Mayhaps I don't. Not really, anyway.
This past month has been plain hellish for me. Oh, it started before that, but the crunch happened only in the last four weeks or so. At first, I thought work was burning me out. Turns out it isn't. I'm busy, but not burn-out busy. Then, I thought it was the forum. The fact that SO's are deserting pained me. But then I realized that, like CD's, SO's come and go. Even the fact that some members were (and are) also going through a hellish time wasn't at the root of my own depression. Ten days ago, I was an inch away from purging, for the first time in years. I also weighed the different ways in which I could take my own life. I'm just so tired, you know? No, something else has to be going on. Something deeper. To me, something far scarier. Scarier because I now feel this incredible push to dig much deeper within myself than I've ever done before. I'll be doing this in the coming months (and, likely, years).
Beauty, you've now seen (and heard) me be both angry and sad. Keep in mind that I also have much joy within me; whenever I manage to turn my inward gaze in the right direction I can see and feel it. You say you've sometimes (or maybe often) wondered what I'm feeling, as opposed to what I'm thinking. This is the strongest, most resistant wall CJ built: I live in my head so as to avoid what lurks in my heart. I've come to accept that I intellectualize and rationalize a lot of my own behaviour. Believe it or not, I'm okay with that. It's who I am. But it's certainly not
all of who I am. Like the proverbial "next person," I don't relish parading my own emotional vulnerabilities for all to see. Especially not on a public forum where those who hold me in low esteem will try to lever their way into whatever friable chink they can find. But I'm stronger than that. And I know it, too. I just needed to be reminded of that fact, lately.
In the end, though we are all gender-variant, we all have our own quirks and particularities, our own personalities. Alexandra is a political animal, through and through. Elizabeth is a mesmerizing yet sane whirlwind of emotions. Beauty is the big sister with wisdom to spare (of course, like Socrates, she'll deny she has this wisdom). All of you here, all of you that I've come to know and love, are distinctly recognizable by what you give of yourselves that makes you most who you are. Me, I swim in my own brain. So sue me.
I understand that what others see here of who and what we are is not
all of who and what we are. We are all so much more. Surely, we can make allowances for that. I look at Sharon's post above (and Shannon's post elsewhere) and I think we can. So there it is. My confession.
I won't necessarily be posting more often. I'm still nursing myself, trying to ease myself back into Life. Yes, I'm still afraid and not a little worried because now, for the first time ever in my life, I'm not entirely sure where my gender variance is wanting to go. But, true to myself, I'll keep an open mind. Now, all I need to do is to try to keep an open heart.
Shannon, Sharon, Beauty... thanks. To the rest of you: ditto.
If I may, I want to single out two people who held my hand while I walked along the edge of the abyss; they let me lean out far enough that I could understand and feel what I needed to while yanking me back once in a while when all I could see was the darkness: Terri, Kyra... my undying thanks to you both.
Love,
CJ
