Finding my feet
So my avatar is a Wonder Woman image from the late Darwyn Cooke. I was remembering when I was younger watching the Linda Carter Wonder Woman TV show, and wishing I could transform into Wonder Woman if I spun around enough.
Enough wishing; I think it’s time to move on to doing.
A lot of times, people recommend that you have a special place that you can go to in your head, to allow you breathing space when dealing with something that’s being particularly stressful.
I have two variations on this, one takes place during the day, and the other at night.
Both take place on a beach, but they conjure up different feelings when I think of them.
The daytime image is on a white sand beach, somewhere sunny, with that beautiful blue-green water that you only get when the water is shallow, and the sun can pierce it to the bottom. There is an on-shore breeze, which causes small waves on the shore, with that regular, repetitive shuff, swish of waves lapping the shore; in and out. I’m standing at the shore, wearing a 3/4 length white dress, and a wide brimmed white hat. The breeze is ruffling my hair slightly, and I can see a few clouds in the distance. After a few minutes of this image, I generally feel quite calm.
The night time scene is by the beach also. There is a grand piano there, and a full moon which casts a beautiful reflection on the water. There is someone playing Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. I’m wearing a long black shoulderless dress, something relatively firm fitting. In regards to who’s playing the piano; sometimes it’s me, sometimes it’s a faceless individual. I go through the entire first movement in my head and it calms me. I occasionally cry when I think of this. For some reason Moonlight Sonata causes me to cry and I don’t know why.
These are my two places. It depends on the day as to which one I want to experience — sometimes I just need to cry a little, sometimes I just want to feel the sun on my skin inside my head.
I was born male. I’ve never really felt completely comfortable with that. Maybe it was due to the fact that I had mostly sisters. I grew up, and tried to do many of the manly things – football, rugby but I didn’t stick with them for too long – I was somewhat afraid of the physical injury. I never had a girlfriend when I went through high school; although I felt pressure to take one to the prom, so I did. She was quite athletic and sporty; somewhat of a difference to me being quite the bookish type.
I went to college; and met a girl who I was attracted to. It lasted a few years off and on; but by this time I was unable to make any decisions in terms of the relationship to actually make it work as I was losing the physical attraction to her and didn’t really understand why.
My thoughts and emotions at this time were getting very confused, and as a result, I started muting these emotions with alcohol. I spent many, many years using alcohol to keep these emotions and feelings down. A problem turned into an addiction, and this is how I spent a long time denying the fact that I was attracted to men almost exclusively. Again, I spent a long time in a confused haze drinking and denying these emotions and feelings whenever they arose. Almost every time I started to think about or try to process these feelings, my denial would send me into the bottle; from which I would struggle to get out of.
The wheels fell off my addiction almost 12 months ago – I was finding it very difficult to stop drinking for anything more than a few days at a time, as the emotions and feelings would surface and I would feel the compulsion to drink to quell them because I couldn’t confront them. I was afraid of them because of what it meant, and I wasn’t ready to deal with them. I was rapidly turning from a somewhat functional alcoholic into a wreck, shakily going from drinking binge to drinking binge, with the intervals between sessions getting shorter and shorter.
I went into treatment 6 months ago. It was there that I admitted that I was attracted to men. I didn’t say the words ‘I am gay’, I deliberately chose the words ‘I am attracted to men’ because of a secondary feeling that I have been trying to deal with since I stopped being attracted to women – namely that I don’t feel attracted to men as a man. It’s at this point that I’ve started to explore the thought that maybe I’m not a gay man, but am actually a trans woman.
I don’t know, I’m confused and I’m going to need more time to figure myself out. Probably the most important thing about this is that I’m actually coming out and saying this; and even if writing it on this blog is nothing more than saying it out into the ӕther at least I’m putting it out there.
Well that’s how things have started; so how are you today?
I don’t really know where to start. I hope I truly understand what I’m doing here.