One Year

It has been nearly one year since my life took an incredible turn that nearly changed everything. For anyone who reached this page from my old blog, please take note, I am transgender, and I have transitioned since my last post there. This is nothing new, but the process of change continues for me, and I take on different tasks when I feel the time is right. At this moment, I felt the time was right to  reshape my online presence and start talking about things that led me to where I am now, and where I plan to go from here.

To begin with, as I said, my transition is nothing new. This is a journey I have been on for some time now, which started when I first decided to take hormones at the age of 24. I am 32 years old as of last October, so you can imagine that a lot has changed since then. I changed my name, I changed my legal gender, I grew long hair (again), I trained my voice (and subsequently had voice surgery), I endured hours of painful hair removal, I came out to friends and family (to mostly positive response), I changed the way I interacted with people (I am generally a much more positive and outgoing person than I used to be). Overall my transition has been an overwhelmingly positive experience that changed my life for the better.

But my transition is not what I want to talk about today. You see in spite of the positive changes, I still wasn't in a good place. I had gotten my chronic sleep issues under control after dealing with them from a young age, but I was now having severe headaches that seemed to have things in common with migraines, but traditional migraine medications were not effective. I still lived with my parents due to general lack of motivation and social anxiety over things that happened in my pre-transition life. My parents were tolerant of my transition (eventually), but they never really embraced it or accepted that it was something that I needed to do. I had a serious mental health episode at one point that led me to be hospitalized, and I was put on anti-psychotics. The experience took a lot out of me, and it took me a long time to feel relatively normal again. I had also been watching my father slowly succumb to Alzheimer's disease for the better part of a decade. In general I was constantly stressed out about my life and my transition, and not having any real friends since high school, I had no one else except my brother to turn to (who has always been supportive of me), which ended up putting a huge amount of stress on him.

I think in a lot of ways my transition only served to increase my isolation, because I wanted to completely disconnect myself from my old life, and I really had nothing to replace it with. I did things like online gambling out of desperation. I spent all day watching YouTube on many days. Even though my social anxiety had improved, I still hardly ever got out of the house. And then it happened. In December of last year, I had a complete psychotic breakdown. I ended up trying to kill myself, I threatened my family, and when the police were called, I resisted them and threatened them as well. I ended up being put in jail (after a short mental hospitalization), and spent the better part of the next month in solitary confinement (it wasn't technically solitary, but they did keep me by myself in the medical unit because I was transgender). For the first two days I was there, I wasn't even given my medication, which led me to be by myself, in a cold jail cell, unable to sleep, for two days. Trust me, it seems much longer when you are alone and sleep deprived. At one point I threatened to kill myself just to get access to the heavy blankets they give people who are suicidal, because I was freezing cold.

I don't really have anything to say in my defense. I made the decisions that led me to get to that place, and although I may have lost perspective during my episode, the anger and hostility that led me to reach that point was very real. I guess it's easy to become mad at the world when you feel like there is no one who really cares about you, and that all you can do is hold everything inside of yourself. But I also had a negative attitude about life in general, and I lost my ability to see the beauty in life, and what it had to offer. However, this was a choice I made. You may not always be able to choose the experiences you have in life, but you always have to choice of how to interpret them, and the interpretation I had chosen was of a dark and hostile world that only wanted me to suffer. And it was this interpretation that led me to where I ended up.

In a way, jail was probably the best place for me, because while I was locked up I had time to reflect on the decisions I had made and their consequences. Once they let me into the library, I stated reading David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, and I have to say, that while I was aware of his work, I was nevertheless quite impressed when I actually took the time to read it. It was a fairly dense book (I only got about halfway through), but it was a much needed outlet for me to rebuild my mental stamina. I also, started writing, and drawing, and actually exercising. And while this may sound a bit cliched, I also reconnected with God.

I think that it is easy to blame God when bad things happen in your life, or turn away because there are so many confusing messages about faith and morality in the world. Truth be told, I had begun to find it unconvincing myself, since everyone seems to practice faith in their own seemingly unrelated ways, that a true higher power even existed. And yet, the time I spent in jail, and the circumstances surrounding it, left me with no doubt that a higher power had intervened to save me. When I was lying in a hospital bed (before I ended up in jail), I saw something. I guess you could call it a near death experience, although it was only in the metaphysical sense, but I literally saw hell itself. And as it turns out, it was nothing at all. I mean literally nothing. As in an infinite and eternal empty void, in which nothing exists but your own disembodied consciousness.

They say sometimes you have to hit bottom before coming back up, and that was truly the lowest thing I had ever seen or experienced. It made me question almost anything and everything I had ever believed. And the bizarre experiences that surrounded my psychotic episode and subsequent time in jail only served to further convince me that what I'd seen is real. My experiences led me to realize some things about God and the nature of our existence as human beings, and I think I should set the record straight about a few things.

First, there absolutely is a God, and believe it or not he does love and care about you. If it ever doesn't seem like it, you need to keep the following point in mind. Second, God does not "cause" suffering. Suffering a state of mind that one enters, and entering it is always a choice. Some people might read that and say "But is feeling pain a choice?". I would say, pain and suffering are not the same thing. Pain is just a feeling, and suffering is a way of responding to that feeling. Third, bad things happen, because without bad things, good things would have no meaning. We are imperfect human beings, and we need an imperfect world to live in. Sometimes bad things will happen, but if you maintain a positive attitude, that just makes you appreciate the good things even more. Finally, love will always lead you back to God. Regardless of how you practice your faith, love really is universal. In this world we are often confronted with complex questions of morality, and our path is not always clear. I think in general, trying to process everything in a purely rational way, will just leave you confused. What you feel in your heart about something is more meaningful than any rational thinking could ever be, and if you are willing to trust your heart, and live your life with love, that will lead you back to God.

Among other things I can to realize, is that God is truly everywhere, and he is always with you, and considering he has put up with you until now, the least you could do is give him the benefit of the doubt. Ultimately, the specifics of how you live your life are much less important than what is in your heart, and God always knows what is in your heart. It is impossible to hide from him. No rational justification will ever be enough. If you do not in your heart believe you are doing the right thing, you will face the consequences. Eastern religions sometimes call it Karma, but whatever you call it, it's real, and you can see it working in your life every day. I had allowed my heart to be corrupted and to turn against the one who cared about me more than anything, and I did face consequences for that. That I was given a second chance, is really a testament to God's mercy.

So, what happened next you might ask? Well I spent Christmas in jail, but in January I was bailed out and went to a crisis house. I met a lot of very interesting people there, and began to share my experiences with them and talk about what I had come to understand. I did have a night where I jumped out of a second story window (yes, really), after which I was hospitalized for another month or so, and then put in another crisis house for a more extended stay. Eventually I got together with a new friend I made to rent a house together with some of his old classmates from high school. And I have generally been working to better myself and try to have a more positive influence on the world. I am still a very imperfect person, and I don't always know the right thing to do, but I'm learning that if you treat people with love and kindness, you will always see the best in them. That is my story, but I still have much more to come.

I started this blog because I wanted an outlet to talk about some of the things I have experienced, life in general, friends, family, and other projects I have been or am currently working on. I still do programming stuff, and there will of course be some of that as well. But I really want to just let this blog organically evolve and take on a life of it's own. In any case, I hope that what I have to offer will reach you and/or help you in some way.