To admit defeat

Last night I had to watch on helplessly as the life slowly left the body of my young daughter. Unable to stem the flow of blood from the gash in her neck from the car's safety belt, I had known that she was lost to me the moment I pulled her out of the car's wreck. Yet no parent would admit defeat then and there. I tried to make her as comfortable as possible and whispered comforting things to her as she complained about not feeling so well. Yet despite these comforting lies, I felt the life fade from her frail body with every breath and every cough as I held her during these last moments. Holding such a small body in your arms and knowing that the person inside it will never grow up to be an adult is simply impossible to comprehend.

Fortunately all of that was just a dream. Another pleasant nightmare courtesy of my mind. Despite none of it being real and me never having had a daughter, it was real enough that I still feel the pain inside my heart as I remember her face and can still feel the small, warm body cradled inside my embrace. Also the feeling of the utter helplessness of the situation, of being stranded far from help, with one's own child dying there in the cold yet completely unable to do anything about it.

It is in many ways comforting that I have only myself to take care of, yet the feeling of helplessness I feel towards my own situation and regarding helping myself is no less distressing. A while ago I mentioned that I was going to make a last effort to find the help for my intersex condition and with it find a solution to the medical uncertainty and psychological madness which has been torturing me for well over ten years now. With it I also hoped to find a solution to or at least a way to deal with these monthly pains, with the question there being whether they're side-effects of my intersex condition, with possibly harmful or even fatal consequences.

So far my GP has been very helpful and forthcoming, finding a gynaecologist who specializes in the topic of intersex, among other help. Only glitch was that I had to call this gynaecologist myself yesterday, in order to make an appointment.

I really thought I could do this. I had gone through the usual lists of fears, possible issues, motivational speeches and which things to say during the conversation until around half-way through the afternoon I decided to go for it. Yet the moment I held my phone and realized the full scope of what I was about to do - again face the same hopes, fears and possible crushing pain if it didn't work out like every other attempt - I just felt overwhelmed by this sensation of sheer terror.

Thoroughly shaken, I put the phone back again and wrote an email back to my GP, asking whether she could please make an appointment for me, regardless of the date or time, as I simply wasn't capable of doing so, psychologically. After doing so, I resumed working until the end of my usual working day, yet feeling the incredible numbness of dissociation as a result of crashing head-first into traumatic recollections like that. I also felt like an utter failure because I couldn't even handle a simple phone call like that any more, apparently.

Upon leaving the office I ended up chatting with one of my female colleagues, one with whom I have talked before. As it turned out, she had in fact found my website after our last talk, so I felt free at that point to talk about my failed phone call attempt earlier that day and my struggles in general. I must say that it felt really good to talk about it with someone else. Someone who isn't a doctor or psychologist. Someone who just listens really well and asks the right questions. I will admit to shedding about the maximum amount of tears as is allowed in a public place during this conversation.

One thing which it also reinforced for me is just how incredibly alone I am. Not just because of my giftedness, but also because of the struggles around my intersex condition. It's easy enough to deal with being smart by just finding the right people to hang out with, yet if you don't know what in the flying hell your own body is even about and you only get conflicting reports from doctors despite mounting medical issues, that's when you tend to really withdraw and avoid people in general.

If my GP is kind enough to make an appointment for me with this gynaecologist, what are the chances of it working out this time, with me getting the real facts and proper treatment/surgery? Based on my experiences over more than a decade I give it about a 5% chance. Maybe 10% if I'm optimistic. With how physicians in general treat intersex individuals almost as sub-human beings without a voice, I can only hope to find these rare physicians who aren't apparently born biased. Yet I still do not wish to hope, for doing so only hurts. Despair and bitterness are soothing and final.

Yet there is that one last, final, conceivable chance that this all could be resolved successfully and I'll just that which I am, the person who I actually am and with no physician, psychologist or the like ever able to declare me crazy, transgender, or worse, ever again. If there were to come true, my joy would know no bounds.

More than a decade of misery says it just won't work out. Yet to admit defeat is just too easy, isn't it? Just like committing suicide.

No wait, that last one is the most tempting yet also the hardest thing of all. I'd rather die than be intersex, yet I'd rather suffer through another failure of a physician than to try and take my own life again.

Please just let this waking nightmare be over with, soon...


Maya