Mortal Combat

I haven't been keeping up with the blog posts like usual these days, I've had a busy week. My brain has been divided between writing here and writing a speech, among other things, so it has been difficult to lock down what I want to write here.

I have learned something about my dysphoria, it seems to be quite talented at strategic combat.

Let me explain...

Before, I was a captive to my dysphoria. It treated me as it willed, never let me rest, berated and beat me at it's leisure. I haven't escaped yet, but I'm standing up to my captor now. It's like I confused him at first and I caught a break, but now he's starting to figure out how to demoralize me again.

I was out with my partner to the mall yesterday buying my first pair of earrings (Squee!). The mall was quite crowded so there was, of course, plenty of women around. I checked them out, I still find women attractive, but every now and then I'd see something or someone that my dysphoria could get a foothold. 

One woman I seen had fantastic looking cleavage which catches everyone's eye. When I looked, I seen the appeal but I was immediately attacked by my captor.

"You'll never have that, you have to fake being a woman, THAT is a woman."

That was the first one, almost right at the beginning of our little outing, and it kept going the whole time. I'd see how comfortably the girls were fitting into their yoga pants, how beautiful so many of them looked without the need of makeup, their long hair, how easily they were all just beautifully feminine and they don't even need to try. All things I feel like I'll never feel, and my dysphoria telling me I'll never be. I felt so fake, like I'm pathetically trying be something I can't be. 

Then my captor finishes me off.

"You feel like that because you aren't a woman. You don't have a womb, you can't have children as a woman, the breasts and vagina you'll have, if ever, won't be natural, you will forever be a fake, pieced together, woman. Like some sort of Frankenstein." 

The only thing that saves me now is I can recognize which voice is mine and which is my captor. I can look up from the floor after taking a beating and say "go away." Most of the time it kinda works, but it's more like he just leaves my cage, closes the door, and stands outside, and waits

What makes it so hard is he's right. I don't get to say "Go away, you're wrong!" I only get to tell myself not to think about it. I was watching a youtube video a few months ago where the trans-woman on it was talking about how bad she was feeling that day. One of the things that was bothering her was she was dwelling on how she won't be able to pass on her genes as a woman, she could only do it as a man.

At the time I could still have children so I was thinking to myself why was that such a big deal? Not because I still could, but because I didn't feel the difference she was talking about. I just assumed it wasn't for me, felt bad for her, and moved on.

Now though I see exactly what she was talking about. Before I found out I couldn't have children at all I started to feel what she was feeling. I couldn't pass my dna as a woman, and I'm now starting to want kids. I'd never get to feel what it is like to carry a baby inside me, to feel it grow. To eventually give birth and breast feed my own baby. All things I'll never be able to do because I am a target of natures worse curse.

I wonder how long it will take for these feelings to go away or if they ever will. Will I ever feel like a real woman or will I forever feel like a half-breed? Will I ever feel accepting of this hand I was dealt? Will I ever generate the confidence to feel sexy, desired, womanly and feminine and use these obstacles as strength rather then weakness? That is the picture I have in my mind of a future me. It is the one thing I can tell myself to get me through these sort of days. The all powerful human "hope". I hope I will be the beautiful confident woman I picture myself as.

I have to cling to that.