A Year Later

I guess it's time. No time like the present, they say.

A year ago today, I experienced my last real feminine day. I wrote about it in Wednesday on Saturday. Looking back, I think I peaked that day in my transition. Not too long after, I stopped. I'm still stopped. I'm not sure if I will ever start again. Those are just facts and my feelings 365 days later.

The desire to be the real me is gone. I'm not sure when exactly it left me, but I felt it was gone at least once between April and late June of 2022. It certainly was the case after I resumed my life in early July of the same year. And I feel it now. Or, rather, I don't feel "it", today.

I learned a lot about myself in the year that has just passed. I learned... I learned that if you have a health condition, you cannot ignore it. Because it will not be ignored and you could wind up in serious trouble because of it. Which I did.

I also learned that you can come back from mistakes. Mistakes which I made many of in the past year, just like every other year. Serious mistakes that you don't always get a do-over on. But I did. And although I still don't exactly believe in myself, I have learned that other people do believe in me and that I have to do better for them.

I also learned that the grass is not always greener on the other side. I learned that being alone is not the best thing, long-term. I learned isolation can be a killer. I learned that while your family might not always agree with you, it's better to disagree than be away from them if they care for you.

I apologize if this post gets long. I haven't written in a year, after all, and I'm not sure when I will again. I haven't written because this blog was meant to be positive, and I really didn't see much positive in my time away, and I didn't want to be a downer. I realized today that it might be worthwhile for me to tell the story of my life since last April, and who knows, maybe it will help someone else. So write on I shall.

The main thing to recount, I suppose, is that I almost died. It was my own fault, and sadly, I tried to do it again to myself later. I'm still here. I don't deserve to be here, but I'm supposed to be here and despite everything, I am trying to do better now. I have to.

It was, I believe, June 29th of 2022. Actually, I can't talk about that day, other than to compare it to the previous few days. The reason I can't talk much about it is that I have no memory of it. Not June 30th, July 1st, and so on. The next day I have a memory of is July 5th. I was in a coma in the hospital for all that time because I was depressed, stopped taking all my medications, ate like I was not diabetic, and poisoned my brain and my body. And almost died. That's what they tell me, anyway.

Anyway, without too much detail, my mind was so poisoned that I actually attacked nurses who were trying to give me IVs and had to be physically restrained. Poisoned from going weeks and weeks without my insulin and other meds (including depression and anxiety meds). Poisoned from fast food three times a day and 6-8 Coke Zeros (zero sugar just means fake sugar) per day. I completely sabotaged my mind and body to the point that I needed my roommates to call 911 for me (thankfully) when my moaning in pain (I don't remember it) got to be so loud they noticed it from across the house.

The moral of the story is, don't do that, kids. Take your meds and eat better. I am damn lucky to be alive. I owe a lot to my two roommates (more on them later), my cousin who lived nearby and was able to pinch-hit for my poisoned brain with doctors, my brother who cared for me from thousands of miles away, as well as my wife, who overcame her own illness at the same time to care for me in the aftermath, despite all we'd been through in the months and years before.

So, yeah, I dealt with all that. Unfortunately, depression wasn't through with me yet. My sick mind was not ready to fight yet. Around November, I once again felt real down. I felt incredibly anxious and was unable to work. I felt alone and without a future. By this time, the desire to continue a transition had left me. I was having to find a new place to live, by myself, since our rental home was being sold. So what did I decide to do? I decided to QUIT.

I felt nothing was good anymore. My roommates, who had helped me survive before, decided to move on without me as we faced getting another place to live. They completely ignored me for many weeks and in November I wound up moving to an extended-stay hotel. I wasn't working because my anxiety was so out of control. It felt like the bottom of the barrel, even though it really wasn't. 

I knew what not taking meds, etc., could do to me, and, in my way of thinking, what happened in June/July had been my way out. The initial gratitude of still being alive was gone and I thought...I can make this happen. I can check out of the world the very same way. So I stopped. For many weeks again. This time, though, I didn't get quite as sick, and people intervened before it went too far. I missed Christmas with my family because I was too depressed. But I still was alive. Looking back, I'm glad I was.

My family got strict with me this time. Sometimes my days consisted of making a single phone call to a doctor for an appointment to be seen. Sometimes it was ensuring I ate a single meal. Or got a shower. It felt like agony being awoken by a phone call to make sure I was doing SOMETHING to help MYSELF. Because folks, no one can do it for you. You've got to take it a day at a time and crawl before you walk. I'm still walking, not nearly running. 

So that was a lot of my year. I spent a lot of the rest of the time contemplating my gender, and with everything going on, I decided I needed to simplify my life. Most people do not realize, a transition is HARD. It's difficult. When you add health issues and mental breakdowns to it, it just became not worth it. So I stopped. Maybe I will write more about the gender aspect sometime, but this post has gotten into the extreme TLDR (too long, didn't read) range. Ciao for now.