The Cyclone - The Thoughts And Voices I Hear, The Hell of Mental Illness

The Cyclone

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Contents

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Life in Kansas - Before the Cyclone

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The Wicked Witch Of Oz

Trigger Warning: Mental health problems. Self harm. Suicide.

The Cyclone - The Wizard of Oz

You've had a good day you say? Met with friends? Climbed a tower? You're happy with your life are you? No you're not. Idiot. You can't do it. You can't keep going like this. It's all going to go wrong you know. Come crashing down around you. Tonight. Now. It's all gone wrong already. You just haven't found out yet.

It's true. I had climbed a tower. Grey's Monument.

Get that feeling in your stomach? You know it so well. Let's start to ramp up your heartbeat too shall we? Just try to tell yourself it's not real. Try to say it's anxiety and that it's not rational. Yeah, go on. Be rational. You can do it. … Of course you can't. So have a few more beats per minute just for attempting.

You're useless. Never going to amount to anything. You can't do people. Can't do skills. Can't keep up appearances. Can't keep up pretending to yourself that you'll be able to keep those friends or develop those relationships into something meaningful. You can't. Because you're a useless piece of shit aren't you?

She's going to leave you too. Look. She didn't say that in just the right way. She's not said enough. It's obvious. It's over. Christ, you might as well call it off yourself because she's going to do it for you eventually. You're going to be abandoned. By her. By them. By everyone. As soon as they see through you. See just how evil and twisted you are. You're going to be alone so what's even the point of keeping on trying? Remember those friendships that didn't work. The people you don't see. What's that? You don't see them because you moved town or changed your interests and left their club? What does that matter? It's you. It's your failure. It's your own stupid fault and it's going to happen again. She said today she wanted to meet for a drink. She didn't mean it. Who'd really want to meet with you if they knew you? And those people who want you to come for lunch next time? It's only because they don't know you. If only they knew. Stop kidding yourself. You deserve to be alone and you will be alone. Yeah, abandoned. Left. Believe me, I know what I'm talking about.

Oh no, don't try to fight this. Don't get rational on me. I'm not going to let you think your way out of this. Here. Some more stomach pain and just for a laugh let's spread it out across your whole chest. Few more beats per minute too. Palpitations! Yes, have some of those. Then you can worry yourself that you're heading for a proper heart attack. Might kill you too. But that's okay. That would be better, yes?

She doesn't love you. She's just waiting for the right time. Don't try to deny it. Don't look at the evidence. I don't care about evidence. I care about panic. Panic. PANIC. Just get on with it and panic.

Here. I'm happy to assist. We're happy to assist. Hey, I've been joined by my friends. I've got friends you know. United in a cause. You've got nothing. Don't look at them. Stop it. Don't look at her, or her, or her, or him or anyone else you might try to think of. Don't think of how much you feel at home with those writers or actors or those other nice people. Don't try to remember how she made a point of inviting you out with a few friends to celebrate her birthday and how good it was to be there. You bitch. I told you not to go. We said to stay away but you went anyway. Bitch.

We're going to talk louder. In unison. In chorus. In a total disharmony. Abandon. Pain. Sorrow. Anguish. Happy. Sad. Happy. Sad. Sadder. Sadder. Sadder still. Until all is sadness. Apart from the anguish, anxious, and what the hell is the point of it all? Don't you go hoping that the drugs are going to take you to sleep. Just imagine what we can shout at you and scream at you and even sing to you before then. And maybe we'll give you nightmares.

A few more beats per minute and would you look at this? Look at that person in your room. She hates you too. Naturally. And look at this crowd. Wandering up and down in front of your eyes as the walls close in upon you. You're going to be squashed, squeezed, all life removed. And you don't even know who you are do you? All that work you've done to work it out. You're kidding yourself. It's all pretend. Even she said that. Oh? She didn't? Really? She said that. That's how you should interpret those words. Even she doesn't think you're real and you're not. Sham. Fake. Façade hiding nothing. You're just an ignorant cipher, a null set, an emptiness wider than the sea. What are you going to fill it with tomorrow? It's all a distraction you know. Because as soon as you stop you'll be back to square one and we'll laugh at you so much tomorrow night. As you deserve.

She's going to leave. They're all going to leave. Apart from those people walking in your bedroom. Looking at you. Reaching out their hands to you. Calling to you.

It's fortunate for you perhaps that you're not even in your body and you can tell yourself that the whole thing isn't even real. Get back in your body this instant. It's not over yet bitch.

Had enough yet? We've got more. Lots more. The tales we will tell.

There's a way out of course. You know it. Remember. See here. These images. Your arms. Bloody. That's right. Cut. Cut. Cut. It's easy. How about it? We'll even go away for a while. Fetch a blade. Play with it. Stroke yourself with it. Press it in. Testing metal against flesh. And slice. Find peace.

Hey, it's better than the alternatives. Here's one. Why not go out for a walk now? What? No, we don't care at all that you're drugged and want sleep. Get up. Go walking. It's not far to that bridge over the motorway. That's nice. Or even better, that bridge over the river. Why not go there? It's pretty there and I know you love pretty things. Make up for your own ugliness. Ah, shit woman. Don't try to tell us that you know you're not ugly. Don't tell us to go away. Don't tell us that you know better. Hear us laugh as you tell us you're a good person and that people like you and that you have skills and life's worth living. Just don't. We're not going to believe you. Not when you should believe us.

How about it? One jump and it'll all be over and you won't have to hear from us ever again. No more anxiety. No more abandonment fears. No empty places. No more battles as your emotions rise and fall with everything turned up to twelve on every fall. Kill yourself girl, and we will never speak again. That'll make your life much easier.

You refuse? Idiot. Stupid bitch. Okay. If you insist. But the blade. Or just scratch yourself. Then you don't even have to get out of bed. Or hit your head or your wrist. Just do something.

Do it. Do it. And then you'll have peace.

View from the tower.  My life is very good.

The drugs kick in. Sleep wins. Peace comes without harm. Tomorrow I will fight again. Tomorrow I will take one more step to being free from the voices, free from the hell that it can be inside my head.

I will win. Rational evidence will win. I am a good person. People like me. I'm not going to be abandoned. I have skills. I have joys. I have purpose, meaning and am finding more. And I do know much of who I am – having had a long battle to find out. I'll fight my over-reactions again tomorrow. Stave off anger and try not to over-react.

I won't self-harm. I refuse. And I'm not going to kill myself no matter how loudly the voices scream or the images they show me.

Don't worry. I'm staying in one piece. I may not climb a tower tomorrow. But I will climb. And I will triumph in some little way.

One more day. One more step along the road to healing.

Tomorrow night the voices, the anxiety, the fear may strike again. But I will win. They're not real. They're just thoughts. Neurons firing and old neural pathways that haven't yet collapsed to be replaced by the life I'm choosing to live.

I know that the healing may be difficult. As I type a voice tells me it will be impossible. They lie you know, the voices. They lie. Find a small part of truth and twist it so far out of context, out of shape that even that truth is a lie. There's not one thing they say that I should believe. Not one. It doesn't matter how clever they are about it. It doesn't matter whether they're coaxing me or screaming it so loudly that I'd block my ears if it did any good. It doesn't matter what they show me. It doesn't even matter when they tell me to do things.

It's all lies. Beyond the lies, I know better.

So sleep takes me. For a while I can live in Oz. But whether I'm in Oz or Kansas or even in Newcastle Upon Tyne I know my life is good. I can kill the witch. And I can kill the cyclone in my mind.

I can. And I will.

No you can't. You ridiculous charlatan.

Yeah, I can. It's all going to be okay.

[1636 words]

On An Encounter With Fundamentalism. And On The Wonders Of The Human Race.

I chatted with some preachers in Sunderland yesterday.  I wasn't meaning to.  I was just wanting to finish my ice cream in peace.  Damn you preachers, you thwarted my quiet ice cream enjoyment.

But once they began talking at me, and because I am still utterly obsessed about God things and think about them a heck of a lot, and because I wasn't at that point falling to pieces mentally, I talked back.  It's still a novelty to me to be so far on this side of the dogmatic fence.

We talked about a lot of things.  All of them may bore you.  Some of them you may find strange.  Some of them will make you wonder why Christians sometimes don't even love each other let alone non-believers.

I am no longer a Christian.  I'm not.  But I am still fascinated by it all.  It's a special interest.

So as someone with a deep fascination, I've done the talking.  So you don't have to!  There.  Aren't you pleased?  You will know, when you encounter such people, the kinds of things you are happy to be missing by not having a conversation with them.

I have to give this disclaimer:  Not all Christians are like the ones I chatted with.  Quite a lot are very different indeed.  My plans for the day had fallen apart due to my own absent-mindedness, confusion and panic.  But those plans had been to meet with, sit with and relate with a group of Christians.  To talk, share and learn about theology with them.  I'd been looking forward to it too and am sad to have missed out on the experience.  I believe it would have been great.  And I believe that the Christians I didn't manage to meet with would have had nearly as many disagreements with the fundamentalists as I did.

If you did choose to engage a fundamentalist of this variety, a strange choice, what might you talk about?

Image from https://lotharlorraine.wordpress.com/2014/06/14/is-fundamentalism-destroying-christianity/

I'll start with the more boring bits (history and doctrine) and will end with the most interesting bits (humans and my thoughts about the people I met).  Skip through to the end.  Most of this is not exciting stuff for most people, only strange obsessives like me.  Seriously.  This is long.  And it doesn't even cover the full encounter.  Skip through to the part about people.  Because that's the important thing.

We talked a little of church history.

They said there was a church existing sometimes in secret and sometimes in persecuted groups from the time of Constantine until the Protestant Reformation began.  Theodore Beza, the successor of Calvin, wrote about this history.  That's not an uncommon claim among Protestant fundamentalists but it's a laughable one.  Plus Beza, a man who wrote in defense of burning heretics alive, didn't have the information available to write a reliable church history - which might be why he didn't write one!



They gave some examples of the secret church that upheld the "one true faith."

The Cathars

I was informed that this group were Christians with a beautiful Christian faith, part of the true church. They were persecuted because they held the way of salvation hated by Rome.  This is something I find very funny.  Because the Cathars were dualists - they believed in two Gods.  And they believed in reincarnation.  The Cathars were also gnostics and believed in the ultimate salvation of all people.

In all honesty I don't think the Cathar faith was quite the same as that of these preachers!  I tried to tell them that - because I looked into the Cathars years ago when, as a Catholic, I had the same claims thrown at me.  But no.  Everything I had read and learned was a lie.  Propaganda.  Invented by the Catholic Church.

The Albigensians

I was told that this group were also just like beautiful Protestants.  Bearers of the one true faith.  In fact they were a Cathar sect.  Where most Cathars were pretty ascetic, the Albigensians were more extreme than most.  They also believed that Jesus was just human, not God.  For these people to be held up as models of the true Protestant gospel - the proper Jesus - is crazy.

The Waldensians

This is the funniest of all.  I'll say why a little later.

We talked of other historical documents from the early church.  Reputable ones.  The ones for which we know who wrote them.  And when.  Such as the epistles of Ignatius of Antioch to seven churches, written on his journey to Rome where he was martyred in about AD107.  Such as the two Apologia of Justin Martyr, written to the Roman Emperor around AD150 in the hopes of stopping a persecution.  Those documents contain much that wouldn't fit into the Beza history or the preachers' ideas of the early church.  I know.  I read them a lot before becoming a Catholic for a while.  But no.  All of those documents were fabrications, forgeries from much later, many centuries later, written to prop up a false church.  All such documents that the preachers disagreed with were deemed to be completely non-existent or fake.  I urged them to read these early church documents.  See what was believed by these men of faith and see, especially in Justin, how the early church functioned and how the mid-2nd century Christians worshiped.  I didn't say to follow the way of Justin - just to see for themselves that such a way had been followed by early Christians.

The preacher kept on talking about what Beza is meant to have said and how we have to believe Beza and how all the other things were just false and shouldn't be touched at all.  I could see that historically, there wasn't really any wiggle room for a rational conversation.

We talked a little of doctrine.

The Catholics invented Transubstantiation in AD999.  And believes we're saved by works.  And rejects the Bible.  And has a false Jesus.  And a false priesthood.  And Constantine invented it.  And so on and so on.  These preachers don't like Catholics!

I found it strange.  Two days previously I had laid into some of the teachings of the Catholic Church - with full acceptance that I was giving one side of the teaching far over and above the other.  Now I found myself defending Catholicism.  Of course I'm not Catholic now.  But the accusations fundy Protestants throw at Catholics are ludicrous and hateful.

On a personal note, I am condemned for my Catholic ways and if I don't repent of them I will be judged and burn for eternity.  As a non-Catholic learning this came as something of a surprise.

The New Testament was in its final form by the end of the first century because the apostle John made it so.  Er, no.  Just no.

The gospel was preached across the world by the first generation of Christians - because the Bible says so.

This does not include Australia or the Americas because there wasn't anyone there to tell about Jesus then.  I was told that we know there can't have been people in Australia 2000 years ago because the apostolic church didn't go and preach to them.  Honest.  I was told that.

But the gospel was preached in the British Isles in the first century AD.  Oh yes, I was told that.  And I was told who by.  Apparently the Waldensians came here and told the natives about Jesus.  Oh yes, they did.  Now, unlike the Cathars, the Waldensians did have a faith similar to that seen in the ideas that can be seen in the Protestant Reformation.  Some of their ideas and major criticisms of the Western church of their day are not only valid, they are very praiseworthy.

But did the Waldensians bring the story of Jesus to our shores in the first century?  Well, no.  It would have been difficult for them to do so.  Peter Waldo didn't start that movement until the late twelfth century.  It's an interesting story.  But his followers were not time travelers.

On a personal note, I am the antichrist and an abomination.  That didn't come as a surprise to me.  Old news.

We talked a little about ethics and morality.

I was asked if lying is wrong.  I agree, it usually is.  But to me it wasn't a yes/no question.  I posited an extreme situation.  Sometimes extreme cases disprove a rule.  I was in Germany in 1943 harboring a family of Jews under my floorboards.  The Gestapo paid me a visit and asked whether I was harboring any Jews.  I said I would lie.  He said he wouldn't lie and that God would judge me for my sin in lying.  I tried to explain situational ethics 101.  For the preacher the way of righteousness would have been to give those Jews up to the Gestapo - and myself too, I suppose, for protecting them.

We talked about the verses in the Old Testament in which God commands genocide.  He said that he didn't believe God would command his people to commit genocide now because God does things differently now Jesus has risen.  He said that God is holy and commanding genocide was holy.  He said that if God did command genocide now he would take part in it and kill people because it was better to obey God.  I pointed out a group of children who were passing at that moment and asked, "Would you kill those children?"  He replied that he would, if God told him to.

We talked of the times when it's written that God hardened pharaoh's heart after some of the plagues - and so pharaoh didn't let the Israelites like he had planned.  That's in the story.  But that means that the killing of all the first born children of Egypt wasn't necessary.  Which kinda means all that horror is God's fault.  It's there in the text.  If you, like the preacher, want to believe the text.  The preacher didn't like that.  He couldn't accept it was there because it didn't fit into his dogma. Others say God did it so his power could be seen.  Which rather makes God out to be an egotistical monster.

Yes.  The preacher would slaughter the children of Sunderland under some circumstances.  

Holy crap!

We talked of science.

The preachers believe that the universe is 6000 years old.  I asked about the light coming from a supernova 50,000 light years away.  I was being kind to the man giving this number because it's hardly any distance at all in terms of the universe.  Of all the galaxies in this astonishing universe, less than 100 of them are closer than ten-million light years and we have detected supernovae in galaxies far further away than that.   Wouldn't we thus be seeing the light from a star exploding thousands of years before they would say the universe began?  I got the reply that I didn't know what I was talking about because (a) the universe is expanding so the star would have been much closer 6000 years ago, (b) the speed of light is very different in space to what it is here, and (c) there is no time once you leave planet Earth.  Time doesn't exist anywhere else.  I was told that's what science says.

Evolution is of course a lie.  Anything a scientist says that doesn't fit in with the preachers' brand of dogma is a lie given by Satan.

We talked about other Christians.

Because there are Christians I love who have a faith that's attractive.  They said that these people aren't Christians at all and certainly haven't got the right Jesus.  They said that these other Christians need to repent or burn.

The Protestant Church was going well because it had the Authorised Bible.  But then people started making non-authorised translations from the wrong Greek and Hebrew manuscripts.  And then the Protestant Church went wrong.  Any church using the false Bibles hasn't got Jesus.  Any Christian with a false Bible probably isn't a Christian at all and if they are they desparately need to repent and find the true Jesus in the King James Bible.

On a personal level, I am a fool.

We talked of judgement - and inevitably talked of sexuality.

Please note that I didn't bring this up.  They did.

God has judged and condemned nations in the past.  And he's going to judge this one and condemn it if it doesn't repent, especially from the sin of homosexuality.

On a personal level, I am condemned for my sexuality.

And we talked about other human beings.

They told me this of the human race:  All people, from birth, deserve to burn painfully in Hell for all eternity.  All people are at root evil because of sin.  There is no light in them.  Nothing of God.  Nothing of hope.  Unless they believe on the Lord Jesus Christ (and exactly the right version).

I have a confession to make.  I used to believe that kind of thing.  I thought the Bible said so.  And I wanted to believe the Bible.  I wasn't as extreme as the preachers I met yesterday.  But I believed quite a lot of things that I now find either embarrassing, shockingly reprehensible, or both.  I don't blame myself.  I know the reasons why I came to believe as I did.  But I regret many things.  I accepted Christ in a fucked up state.  And in many ways was fucked up further by my Christianity.

As I talked with those preachers I felt myself more filled with light than I possibly ever have been before.  I did.  And why?  Because when I looked at all the people around me, ordinary people from Sunderland, I saw light.  I saw beauty.  I saw magnificence.  If God is light then I saw God shining from each and every person on that shopping street and saw it as plainly as I could see their physical forms.  It was an amazing experience to have that clarity.

Now, I believe that humans are basically good.  No matter what they do, what they've suffered, what they've been taught to repress or embrace.  No matter what they're going through.  They're basically good.  All humans.  Every single one.

We all make mistakes.  We're all imperfect - or perfectly imperfect.  And sometimes we muck up bigtime or embrace views and beliefs that we later may look back on with a sense of regret or shame.  We all hurt other people sometimes.  We let each other down sometimes.  And all of us may become people who say or do horrible things.

All of that is admitted.  We screw up!  We hurt.  We may be in need of healing.  We may be hungry.  We may be scared.  We may be lonely.  We may act badly out of insecurity.  We may get raised in an environment in which we are taught racism or homophobia or some other prejudice.

But.  We are all basically good.  I believe that.  I know I can be rubbish at social skills at times.  I know I can fail to act in love and light - out of laziness or out of my own woundedness or out of lack of resources.  But I do believe all human beings are wonderful.  Yes, even the suicide bomber.  Even the preacher!

I looked yesterday at the people of Sunderland and I saw shining lights.  And it was wonderful.

And I was being told that all those shining lights were evil.  Dead.  Deserving of eternal torment.

And that for me, beyond history and dogma and science and all the rest of it, is the saddest thing about those preachers.  The saddest by far.

As I think about those preachers I feel this:

Sadness for the years of my life in which I would have gone along with at least part of what they believe, including that view of a fundamentally evil human race in need of salvation from Hell.  Sadness for the relationships I missed out on because of my faith.  Sadness for the times I hurt people because of my faith.

Gladness that the rest of my life will not be spent following such a path.  Gladness for all the things that happened in the last five years - some of them very painful and difficult - which have brought me to this point in my life.  Gladness that I have been "set free from the law of sin and death" which I lived under as an evangelical Christian.

And as for those preachers, I pity them.  And I feel deep sorrow for people in their lives who become affected by the results of their dogma.  I won't be leading the preachers out of the darkness in which they now unwittingly stand.  I hope that they find their way, just as I have been learning to find mine.

My other sadness was that the woman I talked to - because she was answering back to a preacher and had really cool hair and seemed nice - didn't have time to come for a drink with me.  And she really didn't.  Lots of shopping to do before a six hour Megabus journey this morning.  She says if I see her again, to ask again.  I think it would have been quite fun to drink tea with this stranger whose life I completely butted into.  It wouldn't be the first time I've done something like that.

In Which Clare Says Something Unpopular About Her Autistic Life

This one is hard to write.

It might not be popular.

What the heck?  I'll just free write it and see how the words come out.  I hope that my community of autistic people will hug me rather than crucify me.

I am in my mid-40s.  For pretty much all of my life I have struggled.  Every single day.  Things used to be a lot worse.

I used to struggle with depression.  Every single day.  Even on the days when I wasn't actually depressed according to any diagnostic criteria there was a dark, dark shadow falling over me and I knew that the depression would return at some point.

I did not like myself and believed that I was, fundamentally, some kind of monster.  As a result I embraced a conservative version of a faith that bolstered my own belief.  It said that yes I was, fundamentally, corrupt.  An evil being, deserving only to burn for eternity in a hell so awful that it was beyond imagining.  That's what the faith taught.  It taught that we were all like that.  Evil.   But it was okay.  Because it preached a God who gave a way out of the consequences of our own disgusting sinfulness.  It preached a solution.  Not necessarily to our own evil.  At least not in this life.  But a solution that meant God wouldn't be angry anymore and wouldn't throw us all in the fire for ever and ever and ever.  I already believed in my own monsterhood.  And so I embraced that faith thoroughly.

Yeah, I did not like myself.  And conservative Christianity gave both hope and an excuse to keep on saying mea maxima culpa.  I have grievously sinned.  And so has everyone else.

That all changed three years ago when I embraced and welcomed myself as a transgender woman.  The dark shadow lifted for the first time in my life.  In one day it was gone.  It was like a miracle.  A miracle I had prayed for over two decades of faith.  In many ways it was a miracle.  For someone who believed as I did to say "Yes, I'm transgender and that's okay," couldn't be described better than with a word such as miracle.

I had already begun a process of healing, of moving from self hatred, self abuse, hopelessness that I could ever be truly happy or content.

From that day I began the process of healing, of coming to the point at which I could honestly say I both love and like myself.  The process is still not complete three years later.  I have come a very long way.  But there are still moments.  There are still unfair self critiques.

The shadow had gone.

But that didn't mean everything was fixed.  Yes, I had a long spell of euphoria.  A long period of exploring the new freedom to be myself.  And - in amongst all the fear, the verbal abuse, the struggles that most transgender people share - all of that was wonderful.  More than wonderful.  Today I don't quite have the words to describe what it is like to live under that shadow, that crushing weight, that night of darkness, and then to have it all lifted away and to finally see the sun and know that the shadow will not return.

But after the euphoria, then what?

Then I had to look at myself honestly.  And see that many of the struggles I had always known - every day - were still there.  Social struggles.  Sensory struggles.  Anxiety struggles.  And removing my depression, removing my self-loathing, didn't remove these struggles.

And these were things I had been trying to solve for most of my life.  They were things I had received therapy for.  I had read the self help books.  I had prayed almost unceasingly at times.  Through the treatments for depression (which never worked because they didn't tackle the cause) I also sought treatment for my own struggles, struggles I thought intimately bound up with depression.

I looked.  And it was all still there.

Unsolved.

Uncured.

And although I didn't talk about them with everyone like I do now, they affected my life profoundly.

People didn't know.

My coping mechanisms and the masks I wore made it look for the most part that I was reasonably okay a reasonable amount of the time.

I struggled on.

Social struggles.  Sensory struggles.  Anxiety struggles.

I wanted them solved.

To put it bluntly:   I WANTED A CURE.

____________________

And then, nearly two years ago I started to think about myself another way.  I got talking with some people about their lives.  Their problems.  And I realised through much thought, much discussion, much reading, and much to my surprise and shock, that something which was true for them was true for me too.

They were autistic adults.

And I learned that I am an autistic adult too.  I'd been putting off learning that truth for many years.  Because of stigma.  Because of shame.

The process of realisation and acceptance and then seeking diagnosis took much of last year.

It was incredibly difficult, far more so than anything else I have ever done in my life.  I thought it would be pretty easy but I turned out to be completely wrong.  Hey, I've gone through the gender transition thing.  At least socially, although the medical side won't be done and dusted for a long while yet.  The medical side is simple.  The social side is complex.  And the acceptance of myself as Clare, when it finally happened, was quite easy.  Gender transition isn't easy.  Surely a little thing like autism would be a doddle after the whole changing my name and wearing frocks thing!

Autism. 

Now that was hard.  Excruciatingly hard.

One word changed everything.  Every single aspect of my life and my being needed to be reexamined in light of that word.  Everything became open to intense scrutiny as I began to understand myself a lot better.

It was hard.  It is hard still.   It's been ten months since the official diagnosis.  I am still working through the ramifications.  People tell me it's a process that can take many years.  People agree that it can be tough.

But this new knowledge was wonderful.  Totally, beautifully wonderful.

Now I had an explanation.  I had a reason why things had always been as they were.

There were so many things I had always felt guilty about, or ashamed about.  And now they had a word.  They had a name.  There was a reason for me being as I was.  There was no cause for guilt.  No shame.  No whipping myself about social struggles, sensory struggles, anxiety struggles.

And in that I could breathe.  In that I could find pride in myself.  Autistic pride.  I hold it still.

But.

Social struggles.  Sensory struggles.  Anxiety struggles.

Every single day.  Without remission.  Without rest.  Without any break at all.

There are much better days.  There are much worse days.  But they are there.

In some way they will always be there.  Always.  Always.  Fucking Always.

This is my autism.  This is how being autistic plays out now.   For forty years.  For many years to come - hopefully many, many years because I would dearly love to live as many years as someone who knows herself as an autistic woman as I did as someone who lived as a man and would never have accepted the autism label.

And what are these struggles?

They are the very things I fought against for so many years.  They are the thinks I wanted a solution for.

I wanted a cure then.

Now they are named.

And I know there is no cure.

But sometimes.  Some days.  When things are bad and I know I have the rest of my life to experience it all.

On those days.

I WANT A CURE.

Why should I not want a cure?  I wanted one before I had an explanation.  Why shouldn't I still want one?

It's irrelevant in a way.  There is no cure.  Being autistic is a part of my identity and it always will be.  There is good in that.  There is.  And I happily wear my autistic pride badges and bracelet and often a necklace that just says "Autistic".   I recognise that autism gives me gifts as well as hardships.

I am proud of me.  And I am proud of all the other autistic people who struggle every day, and all the autistic people for whom autism is far more debilitating than it is for me - for the ones who will need twenty-four hour care every day until they die.

I am proud of them all.  Because autism is fucking difficult.  For me it is that difficult every day.  Every day.

And on some of them.  If I am honest.  As I am being publicly honest right now:

I WANT A CURE.  A fucking cure so I don't have to endure what I endure.  Yes, one that would leave my personality intact - which would probably be an impossibility.

I say that knowing that it's not a popular view.  We're all meant to be proud.  We're all meant to be autism positive.  We're all meant to cultivate our autistic space, autistic identity, autistic culture, to fight for acceptance not just awareness, for accommodations to help us, to say that we're autistic and we're bloody wonderful.

Yeah.  I can do all that.  And I will keep doing all that.  Because, as the saying goes, we are different but not less.  I believe that.  Firmly.  Without hesitation.

And yet.

On some days.  I want a cure.

There.  I've said it.  The unpopular thing.



[1611 words - far more serious ones than the 2700 written earlier for Blob Thing's blog.  Read those words for light relief.]

Dreamscape. When Dream Lingers into the Waking. And Calls Unto Renewed Death.

An hour after waking:

I hate that dream.

I hate that house.

It's not happened for a while in any of its variations.

Tonight was the worst, not necessarily for the events but for the place.  Other dreams have far worse events.

Dream events are nothing compared to this place.

This place is entirely the essence wrongness.  I have no better word.

Every wall, passage, room, staircase is wrong.  Physically the walls look just as walls, ancient wood.  But psychically they exude the stench of something far beyond simple death.

The fabric far beyond darkness.

The wood, the walls, the house itself is hard to survive inside my own being.

And it has HIM in it.  Whoever he is or represents.  HIM.

There is no light in HIM, none.  None.  Just venom, hatred.

Somewhere in that house, he will be.  Always writing, whatever HIM writes.

Tonight he saw me and moved with more resolution and speed than I've seen before.

Urgency.  Urgency.  Desperate to come to me.  To steal all light from me.

He is fear.  That place is fear.

The whole place is twisted by Presence, vile presence, manifesting whatever it wants and able to exclude Spirit-Source from the house, able to transform calls to Spirit and fight back, increasing the wrongness and the manifestation.

But worst of all is HIM.

I feel HIM now.

I see him grasping for me because this dream takes too long to fade.

If I must go to a dream house, can't I go to the other one?  Yes, there's a door there that passes through to an Elsewhere that isn't right.  And I can't not go to it.  But that Elsewhere feels like Hell has passed away and the place just needs to be brought to life.  Tainted but not threat in any major way.

Tonight's house, ancient wood, is entire threat, entire psychic danger, sometimes physical danger.  And tonight's house remains into the waking and calls for me to return.  Return and have the hope of Spirit, of the creative, of Being, ripped from your being.  HE can do it.  There is no Spirit there to stop him.

And I see him now because whatever HE is, that is still within me.

Mother of being, protect me.
Father of light, protect me.

Because that place, that HIM, are within and they want to return me to my death.

Inside.  That place is real.  And it wants me to return. To stay.  In waking and sleeping.  To stay.

If dream is manifest psyche then inside me, that place is real, HIM is real.

And he must one day, in my waking, be addressed and fought.

Mother of being, guide me.
Father of light, guide me.

About My Breasts, Fucking Passing, And The Wisdom of Autism

Warning in advance:  This post contains completely honest, no-holds-barred, discussion of my breasts.  If that is going to offend you, stop reading.  Right now.

Not long after I had started wearing skirts publicly someone at church asked me an important question:  "Have you thought of chicken fillets? That's what I use."  The person who asked was cis-gender and was wanting to say that using them is OK, because plenty of women use them.  No.  I hadn't thought of that.  In the amazing rush of coming out to myself and going full time two months later, somehow I'd missed thinking of buying someone to give me the appearance of an obvious bust, the appearance of breasts that could have been there for years.

So.  I bought breast inserts.  I bought bras of the right size to hold the inserts in place and wore them with pride.  All of a sudden, the public Clare went from being flat chested to having C cup fake boobs that plenty of people told her looked good.

They really helped with confidence.  Because you know that when the idiots are staring at the shape of your fantastic chest they're not looking so much at your manly looking face so won't throw abuse at you as much.  Unless they look up and think they've just accidentally fancied a bloke and start worrying about their own sexuality.  At least that was the mental theory that boosted my confidence - whether it had any basis in truth is an entirely different matter.

But the time has come to change.

For the last couple of days I have ditched those inserts.  I've been walking with my chest being the shape it currently is naturally.  Yes.  This really is an entire blog post about my breasts.  There will be no photos included!

So.  Why?  Why have I taken the step of putting aside those confidence building, good looking, breast forms?  Am I mad?  Do I want to start getting more abuse again?  Why, Clare?  Why?  Isn't your life hard enough?

Three reasons.

One:  For the good of my own health.

I've now been taking oestrogen every day for seven months.  The dose is still low - in fact it's still lower than what the normal start dose would be in the USA.  And roughly two months ago I started to receive implants of goserelin, which is an anti-androgen.  Basically, it blocks the production of testosterone (and of oestrogen too but that doesn't affect me).

The hormone treatment is having an effect.  I am going through the soreness that any pubescent girl goes through when their breasts grow.  And the inserts affect this.  Yep, it all gets painful at times.  Not that I'm complaining, just laughing at the pain because it means the hormones are doing their job.

The inserts I have are designed to fit over breasts that aren't growing - either because someone wants to add to what they naturally have, or because someone has had a mastectomy and wants to appear to still have their previous appearance.

That's no good for me because my breasts are growing.  That process has begun, though just as in any other female puberty it will take years to complete.  (Too much information?!  If that's the case, why didn't you stop reading when warned at the start?!)  The inserts, because of what they're designed for have a concave back.  And that's no good.  To press growing breasts into them is to try to force them into a shape that they shouldn't have.  And now they're growing there is less room in that bra so the pressure is greater resulting in increased risk of growing misshapen breasts.

So for my own health - and my own comfort too because any woman can tell you that extra constant pressure on growing breasts isn't exactly a blissful physical experience - I have decided to ditch the inserts, regardless of how that changes my appearance or increases the perceived risks.  ("Perceived" is probably the right word, rather than "actual".)

Two:  Passing.  Passing.  Passing.

Readers of this blog will know that I recently have had to come to terms with being autistic, after so many years of denial.  This process has taught me so much and affected me in ways that I'll be working through for a long time.

I always knew that I had a tendency to rock, to stim, to do some of those typically stereotypical autistic things.  And I felt terrible about them and did everything I could to not do any of them.  Don't rock Clare.  Don't stim.  Stay still.  Stay very, very still in case the autism detecting T-Rex in your head sees you and devours you.  (Yes, autistic people CAN invent metaphor and play with words!  Even while often being over-literal about anyone else's metaphors!)

What I have noticed as I have begun to let go and let myself rock and pace and move and play with stim toys and so on - and I know that I have only begun, not finished - is that holding myself still was bloody knackering.  Letting go has been challenging but it's also being a source of freedom and I have a lot more energy through not fighting myself every moment of every day, consciously or subconsciously.

What I've realised is that for all this years I have been trying to pass as neurotypical.  And it's been such hard work even when denying my as yet unofficial diagnosis.  Passing.  Passing.  Passing.

And that realisation has come as something of a revelation and it's affected the way I can treat my gender presentation too.  Because I've been trying to pass there too - pass as reasonably cis-normative so I don't get abused, to look like what other people might think a woman should look like, so that I can claim the same privileges that any cisgender woman is automatically given.

With the autism I decided that, as much as I can manage it, I shouldn't try to pass anymore.  I should just be myself.  And that should be easy because I haven't got a lot to lose in my life and I know that the important parts of what I do have - my family, my church, my friends - are not going to be lost if I learn to be openly autistic, openly the person I am behind the masks.

With the autism I just haven't got the energy to pass.  I haven't got the energy to put on that act all day anymore.  To do so would be more crippling than it was when I didn't even realise how much I was doing it.  And I haven't got the desire to pass either.  I keep reading the writings of people who are proudly autistic and they have been influencing me so much.

So with the autism I came up with a catchphrase.  I penned it and proclaim it.  I used it in the last post on this blog.  I am massively thankful for the people who brought me to the point of proclaiming it.  And bear in mind that I never used to swear and would never have let such a phrase cross my lips in the past.  But ...

"FUCK PASSING"

Easier said than done. 

"Fuck Passing"

Because not passing is not conforming.  It's a risk.

"Fuck Passing"

 It's a letting go of security, of respect, of automatic privilege.

"Fuck Passing"

Yes, that's easier said than done.

"F.U.C.K P.A.S.S.I.N.G"

Because I'm still on the path of discovering what I am and what not passing might mean.

Yeah.

Fuck Passing.

I'm done with it.

I choose the harder life of standing out.

I choose the easier life of being free.

And that's fed back into my gender.  It's easy for me to say because I generally pass pretty well anyway.  I look reasonably like what people think a "woman" looks like.  But for gender too.  Fuck Passing.  I'm not going to get into all the discussions that could be made but these days my use of make up is minimal - far less than a lot of women wear every day.  And I realised.  In order to stay true to my little obscene slogan, the breast inserts had to go.

3.  Women.  What are they anyway?

To be brief:  Breasts do not make a woman.

That's obvious of course.  But if it's so obvious, why should I wear fake breasts?  Doesn't that imply somewhere along the line a view that breasts DO make THIS woman?  Aren't I just falling into some completely bullshit view of what a proper woman should be?

Yes.  At least to some degree - beyond all my concerns of security and self-confidence - that's what I've been doing.

So those breast inserts have to go in order to not stand against the misogynist world that would define a woman by her cup size.

That might be a bit radical.  And I know full well that in some ways that leads to questions about hormones and eventual surgery.  But there are other issues involved there and it's far more complicated than any discussion of sticking bits of silicon in your bra in order to appear "normal" or "acceptable".

So.  There you are.  My chest is worn as it comes.  And I walk with pride because this is who I am and this is what I am and this is the healthy, risky way to be.

And thus I had to buy new bras.  Those C cup bras will have to be put away, at least for the moment.  Who knows what the future will bring and what the medical treatments will do?  And thus I join the moans of all other women:  "Why are bras so expensive?" and "Why doesn't anywhere cheap sell them in my size?"  Honestly, I tried Primark.  Would anything fit?  Not a chance in hell!

It's a new day for my boobs.  What you see now is far less than what you would have seen a week ago.  But what you see is mine.  All mine.  And they are what they are and will be what they will be.

Fuck Passing.  Because the only person I want to pass as is me.

A Post About Autism in the Life of a Woman Reborn

Throughout my adult life my mother worked to an assumption, a belief that could not be shifted.

She believed, wholeheartedly, that she understood me thoroughly. And that affected the way she acted towards me.

I have had a long history of mental health issues and I have spent my life not quite coping with that life in general, with relationships; with others and with myself. My mother would say to me very frequently, “You think that because you ...” or “You're doing that because you ...” Bless her, she was trying her best. But in the majority of cases I could only disagree with her conclusions. Her words to me showed consistently that she didn't understand me or the way my mind worked at all. She could not have understood me in any case – for I was, to all appearances, her neurotypical son.

And she had another habit, arising from my mental health history and a history of not feeling physically great without developing any obvious serious diseases. She would give me diagnoses. Many diagnoses of physical ailments and mental health conditions that would explain what she thought was wrong with me. A new diagnosis would crop up with alarming regularity depending what she had been reading or what someone on Radio Four had talked about that week.

All of my mother's possible diagnoses for me failed. All of them sank into the background and were quickly forgotten about. Or they were knocked out of their place by the next diagnosis.

All of them were wrong. Obviously and demonstrably wrong.

Except for one of them.

Probably fifteen years ago my mother came up with a new diagnosis. She had been doing some reading, following another health issue being discussed on Radio Four.

And I have spent these fifteen years having to deny that diagnosis. Reject it. Swear that there was no possible way that it could be the truth. Mother, you got it wrong again. Very wrong.

Fifteen years ago my mother diagnosed me with Asperger Syndrome.

I rejected that – just like I rejected every other one of her diagnoses. And yet it stuck. And stuck. And persisted. It just would not go away.

Too many things fitted. And later I aced the test available at that time to lowly lay people – the Autism Quotient test devised by Simon Baron-Cohen. There were other clues too that added into the pattern.

But I still rejected it. I could not be autistic in any way. Impossible. And, psychologically I couldn't accept the possibility that my mother was right in a diagnosis, even if that only meant accepting that she had struck lucky on one occasion. Perhaps, sadly, I am only able to deal with this now that she has gone. Most certainly I am only able to deal with this now that I've dealt with my gender issues, accepting and embracing myself as a woman.

There has been a joke about me in my family for years. The joke, which really isn't funny, is that I speak in certain ways, think in certain ways, act in certain ways because I haven't got Aspergers. I am who I am because I am NOT an Aspie.

I couldn't be. No. No. No. There was no way and I refused to look further into the matter. Except it kept popping up and there was no way to escape it for very long.

A great deal has happened recently. I've had to do a great deal of rethinking of my life and of my mind, my brain. There have been many revelations. Discoveries about myself. Discoveries about how I've used logical rules and brute force to suppress and reject things about who I am. Discoveries about just how much guilt and shame I've felt about these things that led, in part, to me building impregnable defences so the truth couldn't leak out.

A great deal has happened. I will be writing about it. I need to write many things in order to understand it properly for myself. And I need to write many things to explain quite how these things happened and how I can be so sure of my conclusions. But for today the writing needs only set out one basic fact of my being.

A great deal has happened: It's a process that has led from me rejecting any suggestion of Asperger Syndrome, any possibility that I am somewhere on the Autism Spectrum, to being one-hundred percent certain in my own mind that I am autistic. I. AM. AUTISTIC.

I've been having to come to terms with a lot. I've been having to strike down those defences. I've been having to start to learn to be who I am.

In a very real sense, for the second time in two years, I have had to come out to myself.

This accelerating process is proving to be very difficult for me at times. And combining it with suddenly having a very different set of hormones within me (As of a month ago I have been taking a testosterone blocker and increased oestrogen) is adding to those difficulties. There have been some awful days. And those around me have been subject to those awful days. At some point I will be writing about those awful days.

Realising this autistic truth about myself is not in itself a solution to anything. But it is a map, an explanation, a guide to why I am as I am. And that's a good starting point for gaining a better life.

It doesn't necessarily change as much as my revelations about my gender. But it's so much harder to deal with. All the gender revelations brought only joy, release, relief and understanding of much of my past. Coming out as transgender and living as myself, female, is pretty easy in comparison to coming out as autistic and having to work through so many things that are painful and have no easy solutions or simple solutions and sometimes, or often, will have no solutions at all beyond accepting them as part of who I am and getting on with life accordingly, without the old shame and guilt.

So, now I sit, impatiently.

I have been referred by the GP for a proper assessment for autism. I went to her prepared. I knew that asking to be referred for assessment would lead to the question “Why do you want to be referred?” So I took along lots of reasons, several pages of reasons to cover the very basics. I hadn't got a quarter of the way through when she cut me off and said “Yes, we'd better refer you.”

This referral may take a while, a long while, because like so many parts of the NHS, especially mental health services, there is a shortage of cash, a shortage of staff and a shortage of facilities. I crave the day the assessment begins or takes place. I can only hope the experts agree with me, and agree with autistic friends of mine, that this is the truth.

This is the truth:

I am autistic.

This is my coming out to the world. It may be premature since I am not officially diagnosed – not that official opinion will affect what is already truth. This is me. Coming out. En masse. Coming out as transgender was such a slow, adrenaline fuelled, tiring, terrifying thing. If I could do it again I'd get it over quickly. So here's a new coming out. To everyone at once.

I. Am. Autistic.

18 Months - The Best of My Life

Eighteen months ago tonight I came out to myself as transgender, as a woman, in a way which left no possible room for denying the truth about who I am.  That night was the end of a process of finding space, of allowing myself to explore my thoughts and feelings with an honesty which had not been possible before.  On that night I stood in front of the mirror in a skirt and blouse, for the first time able to dress in such clothes without feeling great shame.  And I recognised myself for who I am.  I spent much time talking with myself as I stood at the mirror, and welcomed Clare into her existence - I already knew my name through dreams.  Until that night I could, had I so chosen, locked everything away again and gone back to the way things were, put the recent thoughts and experiments down to an aberration, a mistake.  After that night there was no possibility of going back.

That was the end of a process of experimenting with self-honesty but it set the course for the rest of my life.  Eighteen months on I look back and can say that it has been the best time of my life.  The best.

Here are just some of the things that have happened:

• My mother died of cancer.
• My father became seriously ill with dementia.  He's now in a care home having spent several months in hospital.  He broke one hip while in a different care home.  He broke the other hip while in the hospital.  And being hundreds of miles away I've been able to do nothing to help him and have had to leave everything to other family members.
• My cherished Christian faith died, very painfully, over the course of a year.
• We've had all the usual sort of family problems here - plus a few more.  But I don't talk of those online.
• I have been sexually assaulted.  The police couldn't find the assailant.
• I have received much verbal abuse in the street for dressing as I dress.  Thankfully that's pretty rare now but to being with it happened pretty much every time I left the house.
• I've spent sixteen of the eighteen months waiting for medical treatment.  That treatment has only just begun.

Yes, plenty of horrible things have happened.  Most people would say that the year in which they basically lose both their parents, their faith, and undergo abuse and assault would be among the worst in their lives.  Circumstances have indeed been pretty poor in many respects.

So how can I say that the last eighteen months have been the best of my life?  How bad must the experience of my first forty years have been if so much can have happened and it still be my best time?

It's simple.  I have lived these months as myself, free.  I have learned to love myself.  I have learned that the truth of who I am does not to be utterly crushed, despised.  I have learned that I am not a thing of shame.

And I've remembered and healed a lot of my past.  All the clues and thoughts and acts that I'd suppressed for so long.  Many painful memories and many confusing memories.  They're still coming to light now.  Just this week I remembered things from my childhood.  Words said to me by my parents - who were of course doing their best but in the 1970s couldn't see past their little boy.  But words that led me further into Hell and the long attempt at self-annihilation.  Remembering them hurt.  A lot.  But now they can be left behind and peace can be found.  Some of that language may sound over dramatic.  I promise you that it isn't.

It's been the best eighteen months of my life.  And that brings my past into sharp relief.  I knew it was bad.  For thirty years even the best of days contained the shadow of depression, ever felt.  So many episodes of mental illness.  So many years of not knowing if I'd be alive by Christmas.  So many years in which others had to suffer through that uncertainty.  Looking at photographs from my life is hard as there are very few in which I cannot see signs of that shadow.  Even on the days of many smiles those photos display pain, if you know what to look for.  Comparing my present with my past shows me just how awful my inner life was for all those years.

There are a lot of challenges involved with being transgender.  But the chance to be who I really am outweighs pretty much any rubbish that life could throw my way.  Because, accepting myself and being Clare took away the cause of that shadow of depression

I've lost friends.  But I've gained more friends.  And my wife and child stand by me giving full support for me being who I truly am.  I am truly fortunate.
I've lost that faith.  But I've gained a better faith.  And have written much about that wild journey.
I've cried many tears in the difficulties.  Many more tears for my parents.  Many more tears as the past has come to light and been grieved for and healed.  But I've also learned the meaning of crying tears of joy.
I've suffered transphobic abuse.  But I've grown stronger through battling onwards regardless.  And I've been fortunate.  The abuse has only been verbal.  I know others who have been less fortunate.
I've been sexually assaulted.  There aren't many "buts" to that.  But it could have been a lot worse than it was.  Many women are sexually assaulted.  I don't want to belittle what happened to me but so many women have suffered far worse assaults, or repeated assaults, or rape.  I count myself fortunate.
I've experienced fear as I never felt it before.  But I've overcome that fear in walking into freedom.
I've lost my mother.  But that last year was precious, to be able to share just that short time with her, knowing she was proud of her daughter.
I've lost my father - though he is of course still living.  I must admit that the silver lining is harder to find when I think of him and the sadness we all have for everything that his illness has brought to him.
I've remembered much pain from my past.  But I've been able to clean those events and words, repair wounds, and leave them behind so the future can be better.
I've waited so long for treatment - for the physical help in being who I am, having transitioned mentally and socially last year.  But the treatment has begun, just about.  I'm now on the lowest dose of oestrogen and waiting for my next appointment which should lead to increased hormonal treatment.  Waiting impatiently - as every timeline I've been given in the last eighteen months turned out to be a false expectation.  That next appointment, from what I was told, should have been this week.  It will be next year.

I know who I am.  And I accept who I am, embrace myself in love.  That in turn enables me better to receive love from others and to show love too.  The changes are immense.  I find myself doing things, frequently, that the old me wouldn't have done.  I'd either not have conceived of being able to do them or felt great shame that I couldn't do them.

I know that there is still quite a way to go.  The healing is not complete.  And without too much trouble I could make a long list of things I don't do but would be better for doing.  And a list of things I do and say that would be better left undone or unsaid.  A long way to go but the difference between now and then is to me nothing short of a miracle.

Yes.  The past year and a half has been full of the most difficult things I've ever faced.  Full of pain.  Full of challenge.

Yes.  Those months have also been the very best of my life so far.  The very best.  By a very, very long way.  Simply because they have been lived free.

Quick Changes, More Overcoming of Fear and Waiting For the Great Leap Forward

I've had a speech therapy appointment today.  It seems that the bulk of male-to-female transsexual speech therapy can be summed up as follows:

• Speak higher
• Modulate with a feminine rise and fall
• Just do it

While I was there I asked about the appointment I'm waiting for with a gender specialist, the person who can give me a diagnosis.  Until I am officially diagnosed I can't be referred for hormone treatment or laser hair removal.  Since I have lived full-time as myself for the last eight months this is difficult.  (full-time in this context means living at all moments in one's preferred gender 'role' - it also gets called 'real life experience'.)

I can't complain too much though, it was only recently that someone like myself would have had to be full-time for a period before being referred for treatment - it's only in the last few years that the NHS has moved towards removing that mandatory period.  And the waiting times for appointments used to be much longer - indeed, in other parts of the UK they are still much longer.  I talk to people who transitioned more years ago and their stories are even harder.  A woman I know could not be diagnosed at all until she had lived as herself for a year and then had to sit before a panel of psychiatrists and fight tooth-and-nail for that diagnosis.

Socially, the process of transition was much harder then.  The stories of suffering dwarf anything I've experienced in the last year.  Every transsexual person who transitioned back then amazes me for the things that they had to go through.  And I thank them for what they've done, that their actions and courage and, often, campaigning have been big steps to making the whole process comparatively far easier today.

But it's still hard to do this.  I've heard people ask, "How did people manage to go full time without hormone treatments?"  Answer: you just do and you cope with the difficulties that come your way as a result.  At least that's my experience.  But my experience is not anyone else's experience - there isn't any single right way or right experience in gender dysphoria.

One thing I find hard is not having control over the process.  I had almost complete control - and support of family - in moving from living as him to living as her.  I could choose times, places, clothing, levels of comfort or discomfort, the levels to stress I was prepared to face head on and overcome.  I could choose who to tell and when.  I could choose the speed of the process.  Most of it in any case.  It did speed up after my mother accidentally let things slip a bit too publicly.  In the end that worked out well because people were not shocked or dismayed and it meant that I got the whole process of coming out over with in a much quicker burst than I might have done.  It was stressful, but the stress of not telling people and the fears of what might happen are almost always far worse than any consequences of telling them.

Early in the process I saw a video on youtube.   Click here for the link if you feel like watching it too.  I haven't turned into a transgender video addict but there have been some useful ones.  The video was about fear overcoming fear.  The fear is normal.  But inaction doesn't tend to remove fear.  And it doesn't remove many of the barriers that seem to stand against oneself and positive action.  Yes, we're back to overcoming fear but this isn't the blog post I've been meaning to write about it.  Sorry about that.  Maybe I'll have to let that post slip away.

The question was asked:  "Which is worse, the possible consequences of being yourself or never being yourself?"  That's not just a transgender question.  That's a question we can all ask ourselves.  Is what people might think of you worse than being yourself?  And if you're not yourself who are you going to be?   It turns out that many people's reaction to me has been based on this question.  They say things like "You can/only be yourself."   "You only live once - so live."  They don't generally say "Eeeuurrrrgh!  Go away and hide in a box."

At the start of June last year I quoted the video on my facebook account - of course without saying where the words were from.  Lots of people liked it.  I'm sure people could find lots of problems with the video - people generally do - but in those days of early June it helped me immensely.  The video helped in my decision to run with my identity and live it to the best of my ability.  If we could all be inspired to do that for ourselves and let others do the same for themselves then society would be transformed in amazingly powerful ways.

Most of you are not transgender.  But take these words to heart and be courageous.  Go out.  And live.

"Don't let fear stop you. 

Because it will take away the minutes of your life

and then hours, and then days,

weeks and years

when you could have been you, 

when you could have been happy."

And no asking "what about people who want to murder or rape?"  People always ask questions like that, just before asking one of the most common questions asked in any discussion group: "What about Hitler?"  Probably none of you want to do those things and none of you have become who Hitler became so there's no problem.  People ask questions like that seeking an excuse to not live for themselves.  In any case, murder and rape are not start points.  They are end points that very often arise in people who have not been allowed or allowed themselves to be themselves.  The truth is suppressed whereupon it mutates and what may have been a perfectly natural bit of anger or an attraction to another human being goes mouldy, strengthens and emerges again in a far worse form.

Anyway, as I said, I asked about the appointment I'm waiting for with a "medically qualified" specialist - because (she said cynically) you need to study for years and have a certificate on the wall before you can spot the profoundly obvious.  Anyone else who meets me can correctly diagnose me in two minutes even though they may not have a certificate.

When I contacted the clinic in February I was told the appointment would be late March, which is what I'd been told back in November at my initial clinic appointment with a "non medically qualified" therapist - someone who can have a different certificate on the wall.

A month ago I was told that my appointment would be in early May or possibly in late April.

And today I was told that my appointment would probably be in May, unless anything happened and it got knocked back.

It's frustrating and tonight I'm just a bit grumpy because they tell me one thing, then they tell me another thing, then they tell me another thing and at this point there seems to be no progress in how long the wait will be.  In reality I'm further up the waiting list but it feels a bit like being left on hold indefinitely, just much worse.  And each day I live as myself - I wouldn't have it any other way - but there are some challenges doing that.  I said I like to have some control.  I have control over my name, outward gender, clothing, reading, jewellery, perfume, and so much that has changed in the last year.  I have no control over my appointment - and no control as to whether an "expert" will even be able to diagnose me during that appointment or whether I'll have to wait even longer to get the help to begin to live the life I'm already living.  I controlled the practicalities of social transition and I'm very happy with the result and with the still ongoing process of self-discovery.  But nobody can control the NHS!

I didn't really have a choice - it was either live as me, quickly, or die again.  Or rather, I had choices but only one was acceptable.  Maybe it's because I'd so thoroughly squashed the truth that, realising it and pretty much healing and understanding my life in three weeks, I couldn't not jump in.  If I hadn't mainly successfully covered up who I am and rapidly stamped on any clues, if I'd been more aware of it all and more used to it then perhaps I'd have had a choice.  I don't know - as we can only really know our own experience.

So it was fast!  Swapped clothes totally in weeks, told everyone - family, friends, neighbours, strangers, church quickly, which meant weeks of hyper-adrenalin and stomach pain.  Got barred from the things I was doing in the church - which had been leading into much more official ministry.  The parish were supportive but I was told that word had come down from on high!  In this diocese that's not a big surprise.

And verbal abuse in the street was very regular:  I can't say I recommend the experience of walking as female before laser treatment and after having a short male haircut, while not being good at faking some bravado.  Abuse wasn't going to stop me - I could not go back, horrific thought (ah, my screwed up psyche!) and fortunately nobody attacked physically.  Nowadays that verbal abuse is pretty rare - wouldn't say I "pass" but I don't obviously "not pass" (to use that problematic term).

I tried to delay for a bit - I thought I should save my mother the stress because she was dealing with some big problems and I didn't want to add to them (I thought I was a problem).  And so there were lots of people I couldn't tell without risking her finding out from them.  But I couldn't bear not being truthful with her and having to lie on the phone about such a big part of life.  Glad I told her.  She accepted the news pretty easily.  And if I had delayed due to her situation I'd still be delaying now - that situation is still there, and worse than it was.  It also meant I could visit my parents last summer in my clothes not his clothes - which would have hurt so much.  Of course I didn't really know how to dress then and some of the photos are quite scary!  Happier face, terrible dress sense.

That's enough writing.  More than enough.  This is essay length - 1,800 words.  Sorry!  Congratulations if you've stuck with it to the end.  You deserve a medal.  Or at least a hug.