Sink Or Swim?

Pressure is everywhere right now. Everyday I wake up I have pain in my chest as I feel I have the weight of the world resting on my shoulders and I am starting to reach a point where I feel I might implode from the inside.

My heart hurts, my head hurts and my chest now hurts.  Why? Well there are certain things I am not going to put on this as they are personal and I think it's a bit inappropriate to shove absolutely EVERYTHING down on a public blog, but at the same time I won't be dishonest and pretend everything is amazingly hunky dory when it isn't.

Life doesn't always work like that and a crucial part in growing up is standing up and being counted every once and a while as well as assessing what it is that truly drives us, fires us and makes us truly happy.  Without being too selfish about it.

Being a human means by default that we are a slightly selfish species. We aren't just content with having food, water and mating like other animals do.  We want to travel the world, we want nice things, we like to eat different types of food and we have cravings for different clothes and maybe other things like ipods and iphones.  OK in context this is how we are in a consumerist western sphere.  This is based on having come cash flow and having a choice.

For some this reality isn't a feature. This is also the needs and wants of someone who comes from privilege. Something else I am acutely aware of.

But looking at other things it isn't always about money and material possessions. For some it is but for a lot of us it's a vast array of things in which we crave. Some have multiple lovers for every month or every season. Certain people don't have relationships because they are constantly looking around for a fresh newer model of person all the time. This is how people choose to live.  Just as some people like to have very long relationships where they grow old together and wake up morning and realise they have no teeth left.

I hope to have that one day but at the same time I wouldn't (consciously) put that pressure on each successive partner I might have in life.

This is the thing to remember though, we are all different and what makes us happy is a truly unique thing.

There are nights where I crave not to be out but to have a quiet night in where I cook something and E and I have a nice night where it isn't defined by having to be somewhere at a certain time or having to 'slot' in a load of things.  This is something which makes me happy.  Just as I love seeing friends, exploring different spaces and seeing what the world and my city has to offer.

If you live in London there is a lot of culture to be experienced if you want it and it doesn't have to be super expensive.  But that's the thing. Whatever we do wherever we are, everything has a cost - be it emotional or financial.

Creativity is important to me as that is what drives my senses and passions. If I don't have culture in my life I withdraw into myself and become miserable.  The same applies if I don't make movements in my daily routine.  I can't sit still for too long as that kills me. I need to feel I am alive in many respects otherwise I retreat and bad thoughts start surfacing.

My internal settings are not ideal. But over the years I have learned to manage the depression I have as best I can and over the last year have found better ways in which to deal with it. It's not always easy and if I am entirely honest I am in one right now.

My gender changes are something which is starting to turn into a massive internal and external battle but right now there isn't a lot I can do and it does frustrate me. In some ways having this blog is a very cathartic thing as it helps me to really get things off my chest.

I am back to not passing so well, but ultimately it is my voice that gives me away.  Or if I am having a phase where I feel fat I feel it is my body shape that gives me away.  This fraudulent feeling then becomes heightened when I remove my clothes and see that I have a pair of breasts hanging from my chest like an alien attachment.

This is also extended to then seeing how the skin has changed around them from binding and I sometimes feel disgusting. Now I know there are a million positive thinkers and even people who care about me who might think or say that I shouldn't think or feel these things but the simple fact is I do.

Being incognito with my body on the streets is fun a lot but feeling the mini rush of knowing I have passed well versus the feeling of shame when I haven't.

Now I know this is something I need to deal with and for the most part I do.  But you know something, its really fucking exhausting sometimes when I feel I have to sneak around in changing rooms and toilets hoping I don't get caught for the 'imposter' I have become.

I do wish sometimes that I would have been happier being a masculine female.  But I feel I am male.

But I am a male that doesn't feel he needs to have been born with a cock. I don't need that but sometimes I like having it. It really does depend on what mood I have.

Yet with groups of people I mix with I am starting to feel a bit more separated from lesbians. I used to be one yet I don't think its appropriate to identify in that camp as now I am male identified.  Yet at the same time I do like to retain links to the female community I was once a big part of. Just as I would like to build more links with people like me, but there are some differences.

I am not taking hormones and I am comfortable having a vagina.  For some this is too much of a headfuck an I understand.  Living with it is a big enough of one, but I like to be as honest as possible. Especially when feeling a sense of difficulty - there isn't much else we can otherwise do.

But the main thing I am discovering in all of this is that theoretically it is all going well. I am living a good life yet inside I feel a weird impurity almost in all of this.  I want to cry a lot of the time right now as there is something missing.

I have small phases whereby I feel vile. I feel angry with my body and I feel angry with myself for sometimes feeling that I have messed up my entire life and making things more complicated. Yet at the same time I was born in half of the wrong body and therefore the hybrid in me is fucked up. Or I feel is fucked up.

I also have a lot of anxieties. I have to explain a lot of things a lot of the time and sometimes it tires me. If I became single tomorrow I feel that no one would ever love me again or understand me in the way I feel E does.  Yet at the same time those thoughts are ridiculous and it creates a tension and pressure that isn't fair on either of us.

Relationships are hard work and scary things at the best of times and sometimes I feel that I have let her down because in many ways I am a complex kettle of fish.  If we were a straightforward lesbian relationship maybe things would be simpler. We would sit on beaches together in bikini's, there wouldn't be a worry of what toilet can I use or a fear that she might get branded as straight or that if we do things together will it make us be fitting into a hetereonormative sphere?

To be super clear these are things that I think about. But it is a concern that to be with me there is a lot for someone who identifies as a dyke potentially loses.

Which in effect makes me sometimes feel a strange sense of guilt.  Almost the same guilt I have experienced when I realised how far my poly potential was or isn't if I love someone. I've never set out to be a restrictive force or that of a jailer but when I love someone I can't share my heart in a way i cn if I don't love someone.

I am much better at having multiple connections with people when I don't ave masses of emotions as there are boundaries within that.  Ultimately I can keep loose connections and lovers for years as long as we don't fall for one another, that is when things get messy. Well for me they do. Who knows what the future will bring but ultimately I have to feel safe and secure.

Right now i don't have those feelings or capacities. It still doesn't stop me feeling like a failure.  Especially as when I was younger I had loads of loose and open the relationships. It seems that as soon as I fall in love I panic and therefore have potential to fuck everything up around me, as in actual stone cold reality I think I suck at relationships sometimes.

But I'm learning as best I can.  I know fundamentally I like to make sure that both people feel loved, supported and have most of their needs met and accomodated for where possible and boundaries firmly negotiated and things to be as fair as possible.

This is how I feel things should be.  For the most part I feel I do this.  But sometimes I turn into a grouchy beast that starts whacking on self destructive thoughts and before I know it I feel that no one cares when in fact they do.  It's not nice and on more thinking it's rather cruel.

I hate it. 

I also hate feeling like people are avoiding me because I am different. I knew that I might lose a few friends or some friendships might drift but I hate to admit this but I feel this to be the case right now on a few instances. Also it's something that is to do with life. We are always changing and people we are close to move in different cycles. I sometimes think it's either because I am a pain in the arse or people think I am a freak.

So this is the summary of what is swirling around and amongst this I am also trying to set up a website and one thing I am learning is that working for yourself is really difficult.  There is no let up, ideally if you are not on it 24/7 there is constant pressure that something will screw up or evaporate.

The rewards will come for sure but right now it is crunch time and I need to breathe and assist in what will be something great.  I really care about what I am working on and my main concern is that people will like it and want to use the site and interact with it. This is something I think everyone making a website feels though so we'll see what comes through in testing.

There is a lot to smile about and will be smiled about but now things are going to the wire and my mind can't keep up with my body and heart. But this is something people go through and can survive. It's all about that.  Good old sink or swim.