It'll soon be exactly twelve years since I started looking for help with my back then only suspected intersex condition.
I remember all too well how completely done I was with everything and life in general after only two years of hitting brick walls and dead ends with the Dutch medical system. One night I was chatting with an American friend when I pretty much just broke down. She already knew about my situation, which made me feel that I could open up to her. About how horrible I felt, yet also about how I felt that I could not tell anyone.
"Why not just tell everyone?"
That one question, asked by her, pretty much changed my world. The positive feedback from those who learned about my situation - barely more than strangers - enabled me to make it through the next ten years. With this blog of mine I have been able to put down most of my feelings of frustration, but also of small victories. It's been already over nine years since I started this blog.
What sticks with me the most of the past years is how much of it involved around losing all hope and motivation to live, only to get up and try again. Fall down. Get up. Try again. Fall down. Get up. Try again. Fall down. Get up. Try again.
Over a decade of not giving up. Even when I could not do it any more. Even when I did not want to any more. Even when I would rather want to be dead than continue trying.
Even after I tried to commit suicide and failed, I continued trying. Trying to believe in humans. Trying to believe in myself. Trying to find help. I continued trying because I had to. Because I wanted to. Because I did not have any choice. What else was I going to do?
After twelve years it might finally be working out, depending on next year's results with the new surgeon.
I may have made it. Only at the cost of severe psychological trauma. Forcing myself constantly well past the point of what I could mentally take and suffering countless traumatic experiences at the hands of psychologists, physicians and others have left me in a state where I can barely function in society any more. I have lost the ability to trust others. Every sense of naivety has been beaten out of me.
I'm still hurting inside of what I went through. I'm bleeding inside. I'm a wreck emotionally and psychologically.
And I am being forced to do it all over again.
Some people who are supposed to be my friends, heck, even my own mother keep pushing me to actively seek a new place to move into because of the legal issues with my current apartment which are making me feel suicidally depressed. Seeking a new place requires trusting people. Requires taking risks which may have me end up in an even worse situation than the one I am currently in. I should know, because I have had multiple experiences over the past years where a place I had rented or was about to rent turned out to be absolutely not what was promised.
I do not trust people. I want, no must live somewhere quiet. Somewhere without people. Without worries about people. I hate people so much. They're dangerous. Untrustworthy. Yet I need them. I cannot live without them.
I cannot proceed from where I am currently. There is no way out. I am blocked by my own past. Yet nobody around me can see it. Or understand me. Or help me.
I am hurting so much inside. Hurting more every day. I'm feeling more often suicidally depressed these past months than I have felt since that last suicide attempt. I wish desperately there was a way out. Maybe I have to try to do this on my own again, yet when I take the first few steps towards finding that better place I break down emotionally again, feel terrible, cry and want to hurt myself.
Yet I must. I must. I must. Get up. Try again. Get up. Try again.
I cannot.
I cannot. Not any more.
I want to tear open this skin of mine. Scratch it until it bleeds. Break every bone. Bleed profusely. Become outwardly crippled in some way to match the hurt I feel inside. Maybe then people around me can see and understand. Maybe.
More likely they'll turn away and ignore me. The way they ignore everything which doesn't fit into their tiny, happy worlds with countless small, irrelevant worries. Worries which people like me would love to have. Just those silly little things as part of a boring little life. A life without any real pain.
We are all just left here. Alone in the darkness, with our own pains and worries. Faintly working up the courage to just bloody finally end it all instead of keeping up this charade of appearing happy and okay because it's so not okay to be mentally not well. To have mental problems. To not being capable of making it through a single day but doing it anyway.
Just us here, with our plastic smiles and dead-eyed laughter.
We will continue. Because we must. Because you force us to. Because we cannot live, but cannot die. Because we do not understand any of this yet, but hope we will some day, against our better judgement.
We will be bitterly disappointed.
Maya
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