Friday 31 October 2008

Two Steps Forward~

This week has been quite eventful so far. On Wednesday I began to feel a severe pain in the lower-right part of my abdomen, along with a headache. Aside from the pain which persisted whether I was standing, sitting or lying down it hurt even more when I had to go to the bathroom. I had been feeling nauseous a few times each day by then already. That Wednesday I also had a talk with a girl via MSN which kind of upset me, resulting in me leaving the house and walking for 1.5 hours.

The next morning I felt really sore, my entire lower abdominal area hurted now and I began to develop a mild fever, up 0.5C from normal. Nothing serious but still. Thursday I wanted to visit my GP with those symptoms, but they didn't have a spot for me, so I stayed most of the day in bed. By the end of the day I felt somewhat better. Today I didn't feel too bad. My temperature is nearly back to normal, though I still feel quite tired. My abdomen are still somewhat painful and going to the bathroom still hurts. I hope it'll be over soon.

Yesterday I sent an email to a local TV and radio broadcaster, Omroep Flevoland, containing a summary of my current situation with the question of whether they might be interested in using it for a program. Today I got a phone call from them. In short they want to make a program based on my story, both for TV and radio. Next Wednesday they'll be here.

I lost one potential new web development project this week, but I may have gained two more, one short-term, another early next year. We hope to finish our first game early December as well and make a nice profit on it. For the short term I still need to borrow money, though.

That's one reason why I'm visiting my grand parents tomorrow, though it's nice to see them again regardless :) So tomorrow morning I'll be leaving early and be back before dinner time (5-6 PM). It takes 1.5 hour by train. Then Sunday I'll go swimming at the local pool with Pieter again. He's been having some issues with his back again (since last year) and he got a recommendation to go swimming as this'd be very good for building up the strength in his muscles. I'll just be tagging along in other words :P

In other news, I've had a bit of fall-out with the ReactOS project's developers. You can read about it on the developers mailing list archive for this month. In short I proposed introducing a system to allow 'apprentice' programmers to join the project as well as urge people to start writing specifications prior to implementing something, so as to provide documentation for the next person to work on the same thing, among other reasons. Right now I don't feel like working on ReactOS is a good investment of my spare time any more. Trying to get started on the USB stack was a complete wild goose hunt, as the information I needed was everywhere. It'd have taken me a month just to get started on understand how things work internally in Windows/ReactOS. Since none of the previous developers who worked on USB support left any specs or notes, I'd have to redo all of their research. No thanks.

So anyway, I've suspended all my work on the project except for the new installer project, as I've got two apprentice programmers I'm guiding through things and I'd feel like a total bastard if I'd abandon them now. So yeah.


Maya

Wednesday 29 October 2008

Anger

Yesterday after writing my blog post I went to bed. This time I didn't go immediately to sleep, however. For some reason I felt like pleasuring myself, with unexpected consequences. In short, yes it was satisfying and yes, it made me feel better about myself. It followed a familiar pattern, though. I pleasured myself using both sides, with as result that my male side is even more useless now that it's covered with open wounds. One female orgasm. My female side was even more receptive and felt much better, there is still a huge blockage preventing me from fully enjoying it, but it nevertheless felt good. Two female orgasms. The skin covering my female side hurts afterwards, though.

Afterwards I was lying there, realizing how much of a fool I've been, letting people brainwash me. I am a hermaphrodite girl, I have got a vagina. I will make them admit this, no matter what the cost. In a moment I'll be going to arrange me getting a new GP as I don't like my new one. I'll also be looking again for ways to get publicity for my situation. I'd appreciate your help with it very much :)

This nonsense has to stop right here and right now. If I'm going down it'll be fighting, not shivering and trembling in a dark corner like a frightened child.


Maya

Tuesday 28 October 2008

Hanging On...

Yesterday's poem seems to have caused quite a bit of controversy. At one forum I used to visit in the past they even thought that I had (finally) committed suicide. That's not how I intended it. It wasn't a scream for attention either. It's a summary of the thoughts which fill my mind every day, especially when I'm tired or have just been confronted with how different I am again. They're about as boring as re-runs on TV now.

My attempts to seal away my emotional side are progressing smoothly. I find that I care less and less about anything and generally feel less upset. I guess this is my way of accepting that nothing will ever change and that I have to survive somehow. Yes, I'm becoming more isolated and no, this won't last forever. I will die within about a year at this rate, but I guess I just have to accept that as well.

How does one respond to a death sentence? Generally the five stages of acceptance are involved. First there's denial: how can they do this to me? Why don't they help me? Then there's anger, feeling outraged at the injustice being done to one. Next there's bargaining, trying to reduce one's sentence, attempting to get at least something more out of it.

The last two stages are depression, not seeing the point of fighting any more, let alone the point of anything else. Why should I care? Nothing I do matters anyway. It'll be over soon. Then finally there's acceptance. Accepting that things can not be changed, that they're okay this way. Being able to live with it.

It feels as though I'm between depression and acceptance at this point. I still feel a lot of bitterness and resentment, but they're slowly changing into sadness. It'll pain me to leave this life, but they call it unpredictable for a reason. Learn to live with it, with who and what you are. So I will. There's a chance I might live on... but it'd require me to fully accept that I'll never know who and what I am, that I'll have to live without knowing my real identity, with multiple identities in my dealings with others, that I'll never experience a lot of things including intimacy, love, friendship, and anything else which require one to 'connect' with another human.

In essence I'd have to abandon any kind of feelings, turning somewhat into the person I was in 2004, with no emotions, just living in a world of rational thoughts. It'll be hard and I'd much rather not do this... but I want to live so badly that I'll do whatever it takes to prevent myself from doing anything stupid like sticking a knife into my tummy.

Anyway, the past few days I've had this weird headache, with me feeling very nauseous and downright sick around noon which I only seem to be able to effectively deal with by sleeping. I now sleep around three hours during the day, up from the two hours of before. Another thing I'm experiencing is a tingly sensation, mostly on my right hand and arm, which sometimes expands over most my body. It feels like when the blood circulation has been cut off to one's limbs for a while after sleeping in a weird position. I'm not sure what causes it. It might have something to do with me quitting the anti-depressants cold-turkey over a week ago, though I didn't see such effects in the instructions I got with the anti-depressants.

Today I've managed to work a lot on the technical specification for the new ReactOS installer. I've finished the first few descriptions of the wizards, just a couple more to go and then some coding and file layout sections. This is only the first draft, of course. It's amazing how many little details one always needs to put in later, or even complete features, not to mention the zillion things one finds one has to research.


Maya

Monday 27 October 2008



A Different World~

Last night I slept quite well, thankfully. I woke up feeling nothing more than quite sore still from the night before. I slumbered until 10.45 AM, only to discover then that last night summer time ended and the clocks had to be turned back by one hour :P

Pieter left for his parents for a birthday party not long after I got up so I had the house to myself. So what did I decide to do? Geeking out, of course! :D For the ReactOS project I had to arrange some more things for the new installer sub-project (ROSE) I'm managing. I didn't get to write much more of the specification today, however. I should get it over with soon so that I can get the people I recruited for this sub-project something to do other than setting up a development and/or testing environment.

I also planned to do some Japanese to English translation work today on some Japanese manga (comic), but didn't get to it either. I promised I'd get the first chapter of it done by today, so I feel kind of guilty again.

So what did I do today? Organizing the ROSE project, setting up the Nyanko Intranet servers, planning a new project I've been toying with for a while already called Koneko, and organizing some other projects as well as planning next week work-wise.

The new Nyanko Intranet is really shaping up nicely now. I've been using the hardware which was lying around already to create two servers, one a Sempr0n... er, sorry Sempron :P 2800+ with 1 GB RAM, a small OS HDD and a 160 GB RAID 1 array. The other system is an Athlon X2 4450E with 4 GB RAM and a 120 GB RAID 1 array which'll be the primary server, running the SSH forwarding service (unless a security audit proves that a separate physical system is better), HTTP, FTP, SVN, MySQL and so on. The other server is used to provide mirroring of critical data on the primary server. Off-line backups will be made on HDDs in a rotating fashion (not re-using the same backup media twice in a row). Off-site backups are being planned.

I'm still looking for a new 3D modelling guy; the first one I contacted hasn't replied yet so far. Trevor is pretty much done with the game editor he has been working on for the past weeks. This editor integrates with the game engine to allow us to quickly produce our games. I'm still working on the scripts for some of those first games we'll release, something I had hoped to have finished sooner as well. Anyway, if we can just find a 3D modelling guy (or girl :P ) and an audio person, then we're all set for alpha/beta testing before the end of next month. I can't wait.

Another big thing to work at is the content management system for the new Nyanko site. I hope to have this done in 1-2 weeks time, after which the new Nyanko site can be launched. Starting tomorrow I'll also be hunting for new paid projects, web development or otherwise, to pay for my bills. Anyone knows some work for me, or of a place where I can find such work? Please leave me a hint :) My contact details are on my main site. Thanks in advance :)

I guess I didn't tell about Koneko yet... in essence it's the first prototype of a rapid prototyping machine, a 3D printer if you wish. The goals for this prototype at this moment are a maximum sample size of 30x30x30 cm and a resolution of 0.5-1 mm. I'm considering making it a semi-open project, to attract the attention of people who might want to add to it. I'm not the type who advocates open source or similar in most situations, and I won't do so here either. My goal is not to share my products with everybody, 99% of whom would just get it because it's free, but to give the final product away or sell it to those, and only sharing what's inside with those who truly care. That, I think is the greatest failing of the Open Source movement, to not really draw out the talent in people, but rather to lazily languish and let the mixture sit on the stove for months or years and hope something happens.

But that's part of another rant. It's time for me to sleep now. My body tells me it's 1.14 AM instead of 12.14 AM and I think I should listen to it :)


Maya

Saturday 25 October 2008

Welcome Back To Purgatory~

Frankly I'm not sure what to think any more. The only thing which seems clear to me is what I want and what I can do in my work, intellectually. Yesterday night I couldn't sleep, couldn't find a comfortable position, started to get annoyed at little things, like part of my bed covers touching my neck or just not feeling comfortable somewhere, or just when I felt something itch again. Eventually I just started scratching myself with my nails with excessive force, then started punching my upper body and tummy as well as inflicting pain in other ways. This lasted until I forced myself to quit and grasp my bed covers really tightly while fighting the urge to inflict more and more pain. The thought of plunging a knife into my abdomen seemed like a wonderful idea, or so my emotional side kept telling me.

My crying woke up Pieter, who came to my room at around 2.10 AM and stayed with me and comforted me until I felt somewhat calmed down. The rest of the night I spent in his bed, as I didn't want to be alone.

The past days, ever since I quit with the anti-depressants have been marked by an increase in my sensory perception, heightened awareness of my environment and my emotions. I can cry again when I feel horrible, instead of just sink away into some passive state. For these reasons I'm glad I quit with the anti-depressants.

So why do I feel so terrible, so tired so often? Why does everything from relationships to sexuality to just plain seeing others hurt? Why am I feeling disgusted with my own body more and more often? Am I obsessing about my medical questions? Why do people call it an obsession when you're wrestling with fundamental questions? Do you call someone who just woke up from a coma after a bad accident and can't remember anything from his or her past obsessive if that person says not to be able to live without knowing who he or she is? Would people just tell him/her to forget about the past and start a life without such baggage?

Likewise, why do people tell me to just give up on finding the answers to what my body is, what and who I am, and just live a life without giving a second thought to those things? Isn't something majorly screwed up with that kind of reasoning? Would you tell someone to just pretend he or she actually has a kind of anonymous body which exists and yet doesn't exist?

I feel that it's completely ridiculous that I'm being treated the way I am. I deserve answers to those fundamental questions about myself. There are actual laws against the kind of cruel treatment I'm suffering from even now. It could never be the intention that someone who is in so much mental agony due to frustration would be left to his or her own devices until that person eventually decides to do something stupid and harmful to him/herself and/or others out of pure desperation? Because that's what I'm right up against at this point... pure, undiluted desperation. I don't know where to go, what to do, what to hope for, why to keep living, why to accept things, or why not, or... just everything. I want to yell out at the top of my lungs about how miserable I am, yet I know that doing so would just result in me getting smacked down by people who think I'm trying to attract attention, and ignored by others.

I want to give up... and yet I know I can't... suicide is the only thing at this point I can decide about by myself, whether I live or die the only thing I can control. Yet I don't want to die. I've always considered suicide to be something for the weak, something for those who'd rather give up than keep fighting. Even now I'm working on AI and robotics research which eventually should lead to an existence which is at least on the level of a human. I'd transfer my awareness and memories to such an entity and in essence become immortal. This is my life's first ambition, followed by learning everything there is to know. These goals aren't something I'll just throw away.

The only choice I'm thus left with is to use my rational side to essentially disable my emotional side, to accept that I'll never experience or be capable of love, friendship, relations, sexuality. I'll never have a self-image, never able to say anything about my body. To give into such things will destroy me and thus I'll have to actively avoid encounters with these dangers.

What is left for me to do? There is the upcoming appointment with a gynaecologist, I can go to a lawyer to discuss legal options. Realistically I don't think that I can keep suppressing my emotional side as the event last night showed and that unless something fundamentally changes I'll be destroyed one way or the other. In many ways I'm now back at where I was four years ago, when I had suppressed my emotional side to a point where it didn't affect my observations or daily life any more. It's just that my emotional side has had four years to grow, and before I had 21 years the time to suppress my emotions, without it ever giving a chance to develop. Not that that was a very desirable situation.

Something needs to be done.


Maya

Monday 20 October 2008

Non-Human?

Praised be the caring forces in this country who pick up and ensure the health and safety of the poor masses screaming out in pain and frustration. Never do they let harm come to anyone through their own inaction or ignorance. It's truly heart-warming to see the care displayed by all the brave men and women in this country who give so much of themselves to ensure no harm comes to others.

During my appointment with the psychologist last Tuesday we went through all the things he had written down during our previous conversation and corrected a few minor things. He then informed me that I'd have to undergo a psychiatric test first thing after I got my psychiatrist. Unfortunately a psychiatrist wouldn't be available until early next year, but he'd email one to see whether she might have a spot before that. on Thursday I got a letter informing me that I've got an appointment with my psychiatrist on December 2nd.

On Sunday I quit with the anti-depressants. This was completely my own decision. It felt as though these pills were messing with my head, making me unable to think clearly and in addition to that making me feel more and more suicidal. A temporary increase in suicidal tendencies is normal with these pills, but I've been on them for over one and a half month now and such tendencies are getting only worse. Now that I've been off the pills for two days I feel a lot clearer inside my head already and I seem to care a lot more about others instead of just my own issues.

When I was still on the pills, a few days ago I came up with the idea of saving up the anti-depressant pills which my housemate was giving to me one a day and to take them all next week Wednesday or so if I still hadn't heard from doctor Linthorst by then. I sent him an email on Thursday morning and haven't heard from him yet in three days. Next Thursday it'll be two weeks since he promised to arrange an appointment with a gynaecologist. He'd also call the psychologist, but hadn't done that either.

Taking all those anti-depressants in one go after having been fully detoxed (13 pills of 20 mg each) would most likely have caused epileptic seizures and possibly coma. I'd have needed a hospital visit. To me this'd serve as a warning to everyone concerned that my case isn't to be taken lightly. Today, however, I decided that I couldn't do such a thing to Pieter. I've abused and used him often enough already to the point that I think he must be pretty sick of all my whining already.

In the end, however, I'm still stuck with those two questions: what am I? Who am I? Tests so far seem to indicate that I'm human, but are further inconclusive on what I am further. During my last conversation with Linthorst he basically was saying already that I might have to learn to live without the answers on those questions. I'd never learn why my body is formed like this, why my reproductive organs don't seem to function or be formed normally, why I'm forced to live as a man while my environment treats me as a girl, and so on.

The question then is: can I live with that? Can I live without identity, without self-image? People keep telling me that knowing who I am deep inside should be enough and that I should ignore everything else, but when I search inside even there I only find confusion, not to mention pain. Finding joy in life is hard when every second that one is awake one is tormented by pain, be it physically or mentally.

The past weeks I've tried to be more social, even to start dating and work on relationships, but I've found that to me it's all torture... one giant nightmare. Especially the thought of getting close to someone else on a physical level terrifies me, be it a girl or guy. Just thinking about it I can only feel pain. I haven't pleasured myself in months simply because just thinking about my reproductive organs, my breasts and well, basically my entire body disgusts me. Only safe way to regard is as a 'thing'; something which supports my brain but serves no purpose beyond that. Emotional stuff is also utter junk which serves absolutely no purpose. There's no point in relationships, be it close or just friendships. Most 'pleasures' in life really are just the emanations of sick, perverted minds. The only true pleasure is found in the innocence of a child as well as in the cold, hard logic of science and technology.

Yes, I realize that I'm withdrawing myself. Yes, I'm closing myself off to a lot of potentially wonderful things. Yet at this stage those things can only cause me to self-destruct, like a virus-infected body gradually succumbing to the relentless attacks to which it has no effective defense. There's nothing I can do at this point except withdraw behind the strong, fortified walls of my rational mind, leaving my emotional side to be slaughtered gruesomely on the battlefield.

I need to get my life on the rails for the first time in my life. I need to start earning money. I need to become independent, both emotionally as well as financially. Relying on others is a sickness which will infect and kill all those involved. I've learned this yet again in my reliance on the doctors and other specialists here. If I have to learn to live without identity, with a body I can only hate and curse for being malformed and abnormal instead of understand and rely on, then I have to become independent, quick. If I don't I simply won't survive.


Maya

Tuesday 14 October 2008

A Tour Of My Work~

In a few hours from now I'll have my second appointment with a psychologist, but that's not what I want to talk about right now. Instead I would like to detail some of the more relevant projects and such I'm working on at the moment. While most details will probably only interest about 0.1% of those who read my blog, I'd nevertheless like to blabber on about things which really interest me. Yes, I'm a geek :D

First of all I just started work on the NT4-style USB stack for the ReactOS Open Source project ( www.reactos.org ), a free Windows clone. After completing this I'll move on to creating an NT5-style (Win2k/XP) USB stack, followed by Firewire support as well. Thanks to generous donations to the ReactOS project this work even gets me a bit of money (few Euro/week, but still). If you'd like to donate to me, but see something back for it as well, you could donate to USB support in ReactOS instead ;) At this point the money I'd get from donations would be enough to work a paid 8-16 hours a month on ReactOS (6-12 Euro/hour). A few 10 Euro donations would allow me to work on this project a lot more :)

Related, I'm still working on ReactOS-Synthesis, which is the project to merge Windows with ReactOS files, thus expanding its functionality using Open Source components. Some of the things one could do this way is to add functionality to Windows which otherwise wouldn't be available. It'd also allow one to keep for example Windows XP up-to-date so that one doesn't have to buy Vista or the upcoming Windows 7 to get the latest features (and extra bloat...). Just in my work on the ReactOS USB stack I have already noticed that the Windows XP USB stack omits quite a few things in the USB specification (some were added later in service packs). It'd be nice to add such features oneself instead of having to wait for Microsoft to graciously add those features in an SP (after a year or so).

A side-project I'm researching is putting a VHDL/Verilog simulator together. Current simulators aren't that great, not to mention feature bloody expensive licenses (think tens of thousands of euros per license). An existing Open Source simulator (GHDL) is usable, but very limited. I'm looking into writing a simulator together with Pieter at this point. In his work he uses such tools a lot and thus knows exactly what he'd like to see in one :)

Trevor is at this moment putting the final touches on a level editor for our game engine, which'd finally allow us to easily construct our games. I've got a few game scripts ready already and am currently revising a draft of the first game we'll be working on. I'll soon add an entry for it on the Nyanko.ws site. This latter site will also see a complete refresh by next month, in time for the Beta testing of our first game and its release before the end of the year. Right now we're also working on expanding the company. In particular we're looking for graphical artists (for e.g. concept art) and 3D modeling people (3D Studio & Maya), audio people (music, sound effects) as well as Alpha/Beta testers (somewhat less urgent right now :) ).

I'm setting up an intranet right now to support this expansion featuring an SSH forwarding server and various servers including HTTP, FTP, SVN, SQL and others. I'm basing it on the approach used by Pieter's company, AimCom, as it seemed like a sensible approach when I saw him use it the past months.

In other news, I'm waiting for some money from a web development job to arrive this month and am about to start on a new one, featuring porting a Joomla patch to the latest version. I also was working on a website for a Malaysian company, but with no response to my latest emails I've decided to pause work on this project. For a Norwegian customer I'm working on a site, though, which'll be done this month.

I could still use more paid projects, though. There are some freelancing sites to advertise one's services, but if any of you know of some web- or software development work, don't hesitate to recommend my services ^_^

Alright, that's enough for now... it's noon and I haven't even had breakfast yet unless you count that piece of chocolate I had earlier. Need some real food now :P


Maya

Sunday 12 October 2008

All Or Nothing~

You know, the ironic part about being suicidal is that it's a reinforcing cycle; as you find yourself thinking more and more often about committing suicide, the sane part of your mind gets so fed up with this negativity and pain that it's about ready to put a bullet through the offending part of the brain, which feeds the general sense of negativity, which makes one think more often about suicide, ad nauseam.

The worst part may be that I'm having real trouble getting some proper sleep now. The past two nights I stayed awake for a long time just thinking dark thoughts and waking up feeling like absolute cr*p. The constant headache I already had for weeks is gradually getting worse and only by firmly suppressing my emotions can I still function. Even my emotional side is sick and tired of having to feel things. To say it's in turmoil is the understatement of the century.

So where's the way out, the point of light towards which I should be moving? I have no idea. The zillionth speck of hope has appeared with my latest appointment with doctor Linthorst at the AMC last Wednesday. Pieter had come along with me as I was looking up against traveling to the AMC by myself again. I was really glad he came along, as during the talk with Linthorst it was clear that he had the wrong idea about what I wanted. He started by drawing two parallel lines on a piece of paper, 'A' and 'B', saying that I was at A right now and wanted to go to B where I'd be a regular girl. At this point I already interrupted him by saying that this was not the case, that at this point I'm basically already at point B (which he admitted to by saying that I'm registered as a woman at the AMC hospital) while my problem is that I have no idea what point A is for me. After Pieter said this as well in his own words Linthorst finally seemed to get it.

This seems to be main reason why I got so little help the past years from specialists, all because they didn't understand what I wanted; they all seemed to assume that I just wanted to go from A to B while I was talking about wanting to learn more about this point A (what I am physically) after which I might adjust point B a bit for myself. My issue has thus never been recognized , leaving me stranded in my current position. I think this theory of miss-communication definitely explains a lot.

Anyway, Linthorst proceeded by admitting that there are few methods for finding out the answers to my questions regarding point A. No surgeon would just cut me open to see what I've really got down there, getting a full DNA test of multiple tissues seems to be impossible to get as well. What he could offer was to have a gynaecologist have a look at me. Next week he'll let me know when I have an appointment with this gynaecologist. If something unusual is found during this appointment, it could mean that more possibilities will open up for me.

I so hope that I'll have the answers I need before the end of this year. Not just because it'd be nice to put an end to those four years of suffering and misery, but also because emotionally I've reached my limits already a while ago and am just holding on by the tiniest of strings. If I say that I might be dead before the end of the year it's not because I'm actively planning to commit suicide, but because this string might snap and I'd just resort to taking a knife to myself, while having enough knowledge of human anatomy to ensure I won't easily botch it.

Frankly, I'm terrified of these thoughts. I want to get rid of the pain I feel inside, I want to let go of the traumas, of the chaos and negativity, but it seems wherever I turn it keeps haunting me. Only place where I'm still somewhat safe is inside my work, safely inside the cold, rational world of computers and software. Emotions have no place there.

Just the way it should be.


Maya

Thursday 2 October 2008

Identity-less...

I've been reading back some old log entries and been thinking a lot about past events. It frightens me to see how much I have changed. Sure, rationally I'm still the same person, but on an emotional level I've turned into this bitter, sarcastic bitch who is disappointed with everything and is more paranoid than that guy down the street who keeps announcing the end of the world and claims that CIA agents are spying on him. At this point I can get up out of bed feeling happy and energetic, I'll read a few news posts, read some forums and chat with some people, and within 1-2 hours I'll feel sick and depressed. The only topics which are now 'safe' for me involve matters only addressing my rational side and do not touch upon anything my emotional side might spaz out about. Things like relations, sex, gender, suicide, death, friendship, finances, adulthood, crime, many medical topics, and much, much more are all black-listed. Every time I come across one of them, it's as though I get a small electrical shock which drains off some energy and leaves behind a dark void.

I'd describe my situation as-is pretty much hopeless. According to that clinic in Germany they've looked with a team at the MRI images and now they say that they aren't really sure what they're seeing on it. At receiving this news last week my world crumbled a bit more and I collapsed emotionally (hysteria), taking me about an hour to recover. On Monday I went for an intake appointment for a psychiatrist, but I learned that it'll take about 3-4 weeks before I first get to talk to one. On Tuesday and today I suffered another attack of hysteria, involving me crying, laughing madly for tens of minutes, talking nonsense, yelling, spasms and more. I do not have conscious control over my body at this point. It reminds me of last year when I found myself lying on the floor, unable to move a muscle in a similar situation.

I was supposed to meet up with a number of girls the past weeks. Like vanishing girl, they've all either vanished, came up with an excuse, or just left me standing at the trainstation where they said they'd pick me up. I'm more sick than ever with meeting people and want to just shut down any and all emotions pertaining to this. At this point I don't need other people anyway other than to support my wussy, crumbling and/or dying emotional side. I doubt it'll ever grow beyond the emotional capacity of a 10-year old anyway.

At this moment I need a few things. First is answers to the fundamental questions about my body. It's most definitely not a male body, that much is sure. It seems to be largely female in terms of build (just not the sexual organs), has XY blood, unknown other tissues, can get female orgasms but not male ones... It's a huge mess and I seem to be fully dependent on the doctors here to answer those questions about what my body is exactly. I was supposed to have another appointment with Linthorst of the AMC, but he hasn't notified me yet with the date and time for the appointment next week. I hope he doesn't forget about me like that German hospital did.

To get one thing perfectly clear: I wouldn't give a damn if I were to get a trans-gender surgery which'd turn me into a 'normal' female first thing tomorrow. I'd be just as unhappy as I'm now because I'm looking for answers, not to see some kind of hazy ideal fulfilled. This is another reason why I'm not going to play a transsexual, as it wouldn't do me any darn good.

Another thing I really need right now is money... basically if I don't earn money this month, I might as well quit the company (Nyanko) and apply for social security, living out my days as a leech on society. It's not like I can work anywhere but in my own company (I've worked for others in the past, it wasn't pretty). So I have to somehow motivate myself. Tough one. Perhaps I'll just turn off all IM applications, stop visiting any and all non-tech forums, and stop answering my phone. Then I can finally work in peace. At least I already quit all social networking sites (Hyves and Netlog can add themselves to the likes of Myspace, Facebook and other lice-ridden, pest-infested sources of retardation).

'Is she going to commit suicide?' is the question I think many want to see answered by now (got to win back that 10 bucks you bet, right?). Unfortunately I can not, and will always refuse to commit suicide. Rationally, that is. Even though I'm constantly in a lot of pain, unbearingly so at times, the only way I'll harm myself is through an impulsive action from my emotional side. This is exactly why those hysteria attacks frighten me so much (and Pieter, who has witnessed a few of them). It's like I'm right on the edge at this point during those attacks and that I just need to move this little bit further where my rational side will just black out and I can do anything from taking a knife to myself to swalling harmful chemicals or other fun activities. So far it's remained limited to me just tearing out some chunks of flesh from my legs, but there's no telling what more could happen.

Right, now people are going to pat me on the head and back again and tell me to just hang on for a little bit longer. Hang on for what? Am I going to get my answers? What makes you think I ever will? It's been nearly 4 years already and at this point it seems as though I might as well have killed myself when I was 5 to save myself and others the trouble. I have lived for 25 years now without identity, without knowing what and who I am. In any serious attempt at a relationship how can I make this clear to my partner? So far some girls have already indicated that they still want to think about dating me a bit longer because of my body, because it's so... different.

In the end all my troubles are due to my body. Being highly gifted is bad enough already, but having a weird, messed up Frankenstein-ish body really makes it impossible to have a life, that much has been made clear to me by now. Actually only my brain is something I can learn to like, unlike my body, which I'd gladly trade in for a regular one. And the worst part? That people keep telling me that I have a regular body. A male one, that is. I'd gladly kick their heads off their miserable necks.


Maya