All my life, I've felt a lingering loneliness. Even when with other people, I didn't feel like I was being with them; there was something removed, something remote. The part of me that nobody knows, the part of me I assumed no-one would ever know. I looked in others for traces of myself; I sought out the people who most reminded me of how I felt, every day. Seeking a reflection of myself to confirm that I existed, that I wasn't just the 1 in 100,000, that there was some possible way for me to fit, even if with only one person. It wasn't necessarily a romantic search, in that sense; I wanted companionship, something that could assure that I wouldn't have to feel like I was adrift in the sea of humanity and barely treading water.

Now, though, the feeling is intensified by that much. In the past, I've been quite the cynic, and that distrust manifests itself now more than ever. It's just getting harder and harder to relate to people, to put the energy into managing interpersonal situations. Before considering transition, I viewed any type of social interaction as a dance, to hide one's true self, play up the aspects of the persona, guard the inner self while leaving enough vulnerability to be conversant and presenting enough cues to make others believe in your authenticity.

A big primer on issues of identity for me was the experience of coming out as a gay man. I found that people wouldn't treat.me much differently if I assured them that I was the same person and, more importantly, acted as mostly in the same role. Thing is, my methods of interacting with the world were structured around not seeming 'gay' (I'm referring here to the whole gamut implied by the word 'gay' as epithet), effeminate, or female, even when I felt that way inside. I automatically suppressed all of that, after a while, because I didn't know anyone I could interact with in that mode. By then, the near-invisible mask of assimilation had been grafted to my face; it couldn't come off without some sort of gigantic shock to the system. When I realized that I was constantly in a state of un-being due to my own constant self-imposed estrangement, things got even harder. After I started growing away from the boundaries I've set for myself, the gap grew wider, and now maintaining it takes more and more energy.

To keep living in my current situation, I must pretend that I'm still the same person. I feel so frustrated that, having discovered this place in myself, I can't visit it save for in my own mind. I understand now the mental consequences of trying to be something you aren't; I used to revel in the power I could exert over people with artifice and deception, but now I desire only authenticity, the ability to simply exist, honestly, whollly. I can't nurture my female side because I can't bring her into the open, lay her and I out before the world and say, Well, this is it. If even only for now, I must remain cloistered, unhappy for so many reasons, able only to find solace in the spaces where I'm alone. Now that I've made the decision to go beyond the clearly demarcated danger zones, I find it infuriating that I'm feeling all of the dissociation from the majority of others and reaping none of the comforts derived from being able to just be.

I just feel that, right now, I need to find someone who isn't ambivalent about my existence, someone whom I can clue in with total honesty about my situation. I guess that's what psychiatry's for, but it doesn't seem like enough. I know that I need to grow beyond whatever's making me hold myself back, but it's hard. Every time you think you've destroyed your last fear, another one becomes visible. Problems hide behind other problems, creating a big psychological Gordian knot, layered, intertwined, impossible to untie unless one realizes the trick, the chink in the invincible armor. The flaws are hard to find, though, when you're wearing the armor every second of every day; it becomes too familiar to be stripped down to its component parts. You can only see the gestalt, your subjective experience of life, after a while, and it hamstrings you.

I feel myself relying on my negative emotions, gradually becoming the face I see when I look in the mirror. I can't maintain this duality anymore, because I realize that I'm doing it. Before, I was lying to everyone, including myself; now that I'm in on my own oppression, I feel like I've allowed myself to become a little shadier, accelerate towards my shadow, cold and uncaring, and I let myself play the role of the hateful, hated outlaw more and more. Ah, to be well-adjusted.

I was feeling down today. I'd spent most of the day sitting around the house, doing nothing, eating a little too much; basically mixing all of the common elements of sloth. I realized that remaining inactive any longer would probably make me depressed, so I went out and took a bike ride. It was great; I worked some of my tension off and I found a pair of super-cute angel wings lying in front of a Salvation Army drop box. Well, I guess that's technically stealing, but I'm not above stealing the inconsequential from the oblivious.

I've been wavering between determination and melancholy as of late. The revelation of my desire to transition from man to woman has had a lot to do with it. I feel so happy that I'm finally on the road to understanding a large part of myself that went mostly ignored, and that's improved my mood. But whenever I think about how very far I have to go to really put my decision into action, I get down on myself. I try to make strides every day, but many times I avoid certain essential elements. For instance: electrolysis. The only reliable method of permanent hair removal, and absolutely necessary for any male-to-female transsexual. I'd love to start; it's a painful process, but I know that I have an extraordinary tolerance to pain. The problem is that it's quite expensive, and I have no inward cash flow to speak of right now.

Of course, that's just the cosmetic side of things. I need to see a therapist, both so that I can get a referral to an endocrinologist for hormone therapy, and so that I can work out a lot of issues I have surrounding the big transition. The mind is a web, wholly intertwined within itself. I have issues, this I know. I want to work out as many of them as possible before beginning an undertaking of the magnitude that I am about to. It takes bravery, determination, and a clear sense of purpose; I know that I have the first two in spades, but the amount of old issues I'm dredging up merely by acknowledging my feelings of gender incongruity is large.

I'm having doubts, too. Part of this is due to the classic definition of Gender Identity Disorder in the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th ed.) - it states that one must have a persistent, unavoidable feeling of their current sex not being right. I feel an unhappiness with the role I've been given to play, certainly. I know that, were I to have have a choice, I'd prefer to be a woman. But I wouldn't say that I've regretted my time as a boy and then a man; I've learned a lot of lessons that I might not have had I been born a girl. I feel more complete to be and feel both man and woman.

But if I were told in no uncertain terms that I had to live the rest of my life as a man, I know I would survive. I'm strong enough inside that I can handle anything. Ah, but do I want to pursue the rest of my life as a guy? Isn't that the question? Well, yes and no. On one hand, when I thought I'd be a guy forever, I expected to die early and violently. I felt this unreasonable, violent presence within myself, always fighting with my happy, loving, giving side. Every so often one or the other would become dominant for a while, and I'd become the bastard within or the redeeming healer.

Eventually, I decided that, to keep myself from being torn apart, I'd stike a deal between the two: I'd utilize my lust for violence to help others, somehow. As time went on, I realized that this was mildly unfeasible, as the only group regularly given opportunity or license to use violence for the greater good were the police/military, and I don't think I could enforce anyone else's ideal of justice. Now, I'm beginning to realize that the conflict of the aggressive and passive was partially the unspoken, subconscious conflict of the male and female pieces within me. The process of resolving this conflict is achievable alone, but it would be expedited and the confusion would be lessened if I were to seek the aid of a psychiatrist/psychologist/counselor/headshrink's relative objectivity.

The real problem is finding someone well-trained. Transgenderism, transsexuality, et. al are not common in-depth subjects necessary for a degree in the psychological disciplines. I don't want to be my shrink's first transgendered patient; it will limit the advice and care s/he will be able to give me, and I may run the risk of simply not being understood. I've asked around, and I've found a couple people in my city who are well-recommended, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to afford their rates. My alternative is to go through my HMO, which leaves the question of finding someone qualified to help me within the limited pool of doctors it makes available to me. So far I've been too afraid to go forward on this matter, even though it is most vital to my transition and my very survival. But the great advantage of the blog-as-psychotherapy is that, after writing my fears, I can get past them. Tomorrow begins the hunt for help. My fingers are quite crossed.

Well, today's update shall be briefness itself. While recent entries have taken my verbosity to a new height, I don't think that constancy is a good thing for one's writing. As I grow, this Neue grows, too. It's a good feeling.

Alienation, eh. Yesterday I told my best friend that I'm starting the transition from man to woman. Wait, let's go back.

I remember coming out to him. When coming out to a straight guy, as a rule, you really should expect the worst. Not from Nick, though. While it took some time for him to get used to it, he was pretty supportive. You know, I felt so comfortable being myself around him. I would go to his house, sprawl out on his couch, let his little sister paint my nails, and rest. No need to force normality. I could just be weird and perky and happy.

Okay, Fast Forward now. To the present. He tried to talk me out of it, tell me that I just need therapy, explain that I don't really understand the decision I've made. It's the worst when you can pinpoint the exact moment where something falls apart. It was that kind of conversation.

Look, the upshot is that my best friend, my confidant told me that he didn't know if he could continue our relationship, accept my "weirdness". An arrow, a blow straight to the heart. I didn't really trust him to support me through everything; he's not especially responsive to the needs of others. But I wanted, maybe needed, so desperately for him to try to understand. I've spent a good three years of my life in a close relationship with him; I thought that he might be able to look past all the cosmetic, stupid shit and realize that I am me, irrespective of anything else.

It wouldn't hurt quite as much if I hadn't loved him. It's a word people throw around like so much oblong confetti, but, dammit, I would've traded my happiness to give him whatever he needed. The worst feeling in the world, I think, is realizing that someone you love doesn't love you. Maybe I assumed too much thinking that he felt like I did. I guess that's the burden of a woman's heart - loving a man who doesn't, can't love you back.

The situation has yet to reach its conclusion, but I'm not holding my breath. Whether or not he loves me enough to get past it, I've learned a sadly valuable lesson. I can count on no one to support me as long as I pursue life as a gender deviant. I always knew the day would come when I'd have to abandon my old life and everyone within it, but I never quite imagined it would happen like this.

I feel like the hero in every RPG I've ever played, right on the cusp of being thrown out of the idyllic bliss of his hometown and into a violent world. For the hero, entering the world of uncertainty and risk is the only way to grow to his innate potential. I dream of it: the constant struggle, the uphill battle leading to acquiring some fragment of the ultimate primal power. The power to defeat any enemy, to transorm oneself. This knowledge will stay with me no matter what. I can't kill myself, I can't deny myself, I can't stop now. I've got to plunge into the darkness, travel through the land of twilight to the paradise of the complete self.

God, I feel so much better now. I guess it's time to go back to dealing with the real world.

In the vast majority of my life, I've lacked a clear sense of identity. I've always maintained a few very distinct personas; I can easily identify the traits of leader-me, addict-me, antisocial-me. But whenever I tried to take in the whole picture, it was as if I was looking through a glass darkly. The distortions of my own self-perceptions and biases made it a Herculean task to approach objectivity in regard to myself, so I stopped trying.

Many times I've subconsciously tried to counteract this by identifying with others or with groups, but that unsettles me to no end. I've never really trusted people as a whole, so tying up some vital part of my personality in their existence seems like too dangerous a gambit, with very little possibility of causing anything positive in the long-term. In my estimation, it's a tack that's saved me from a lot of hassle and stifled as many opportunities for interesting new experiences. C'est la vie.

Today, though, I feel an uncharacteristic urge: to state who I am. So that I may understand it a bit more. Maybe even to introduce a bit of vulnerability to this somewhat sterile, if ultimately fulfilling, record of my human progress.

Okay. Inventory. Here's where I'm at:
(note: after writing this, I realized that each subject went from the most superficial to the most private in descending order. I guess self-disclosure takes a while to work up to. I'm glad that I have this Neue instead of a psychiatrist, though; here, extraneous verbage is free, whereas a shrink would charge me for it.)
I've been thinking a lot about the art of the rice. Japanese imports, general theory, basic automobile information has started to intrigue me to no end. Plus, I'm sad to say, it functions as a rudimentary barometer of masculinity. I really don't like ascribing to conventional gender rules/demands, but at the same time I recognize that they're easily manipulated, convenient factors for low-effort, easily understood social coding. Well, that and I like driving very fast.

I'm a college student now. Huh. I highly enjoy researching medical terminology. It combines three things I love: memorizing complicated-sounding compound words, gaining functional understanding of a useful field, and cultivating a more complete understanding of my body and its workings. My interest in medicine doesn't define me, but at many times it does compel me.

I'm coming to identify more as a gay man. It's a fairly long uphill battle, as I don't have any gay friends or anything much that could be termed a support network. As a mostly closeted homosexual man, gravitating mostly around circles of straight men (with all of the subtle and explicitly oppressive homophobia that comes with) is an easy way to feel that one will never belong, no matter the situation. As I matured, I realized that I could choose to relate with the world by identifying more wholly with others, at the cost of sacrificing some portion of my personality. An unsatisfactory option. I realize now that by cultivating my own identity and sense of belonging, I can learn to relate to people on a much healthier, happier basis, even where this new growth runs counter to mainstream acceptance.

And out of this grew something different. For the duration of my life I've felt . . . dispassionate towards the roles expected of me. As a man, I don't wish to fulfill the heterosexual stereotype. Particularly, I feel minimal attraction to women and little desire to be the dominant partner in a relationship. The masculine image is rubbish; while I prize within myself many of the qualities associated with the male gender-image (strength, constancy of persona), I find the physical trappings and lack of emotional depth unappealing. To put it more simply, I'm considering whether I'd rather live as a woman. I've dreamt about it as long as I can remember, but only recently have I conceded that the possibility is within my reach.

Of course, with such a statement comes a host of questions, none of which I feel like asking right now. Currently, I'm in the process of adopting the female trappings that can be had without anyone questioning my XY phenotype: panties, pantyhose, painted nails, and bras. It feels natural, more natural than I really could have imagined. I feel so free, really; I've fnally taken the first step by allowing myself to question, to explore. Of course, that's only the first step. Right now I'm living with my mother, which places a lot of strain on the expression of the in-between parts of my personality.

The next challenge is the quest for self-sufficiency. Once I'm able to live on my own, the application and exploration of my new meta-identity will be able to enter their terminal stages. I'm excited, like a seasoned world traveler finding out that there's a half of the world she has yet to explore. At the same time, apprehension grasps at me, a vague feeling of being lost. I mean, I'm sure that I have it easier than most; I'm not really unsure of myself, but I'm as yet uncertain of how to proceed with this new knowledge. I'll muddle through, I guess; I always have, I always will. Reconciling the harsh need for independence with my desire to be submissive in a relationship is hard, though. I want to be a good fighter, a great fighter, world-class, but would that be too masculine?

I read once a male-to-female transsexual describing their gender identity as not fully male or female, but containing elements of both. Gender seems to be viewed by most as being like the two poles of a magnet - opposites defined simply by their differences. I'm growing to understand that I'm more of a pastiche. This I can live with.

I took a trip, and I ended up back here. Wherever here is and whatever it means to me.

I realize now that I've deliberately stunted my growth to avoid certain things. Things which need to be done, which I need to be able to say have been done.

See, I even use intentionally vague language when talking to you. Always in indefinite terms. Hey, diary, shouldn't we be more open with each other? Well, since you can't open up to me, maybe I should open up to you. I need to open up to someone, at least. Sidney Jourard, a psychologist, said that self-disclosure is a basic need for all humans. True, we will not up and die due to lack of frank discourse as we might with lack of oxygen or food. We will wilt. We will become stunted, malnourished.
...eh. I'm not sure if I want to talk about that.

I know now that things can't just be neat and easy, they viscerally require complication. Bah! I say to all needful things. I want to live unemcumbered, spartan. What a dream. Yet . . . I do yearn for something much more than the pleasures of the simplest possible life. To see vistas yet beyond my grasp. I don't know. I just know that I want more, more than1 life has yet offered me, possibly more than I'm willing to let myself have. How do I get there? I'll need a plan. I'll need some time to think. I'll need to be secure with my insecurities. Ah, hell.

Identity.

x = x. Any algebraic equation that uses the reflective property is an identity. If I think about it, x = x is a comfort. It's a definition that fails to define. Were "x = x"-style thinking all that was required in Algebra, it wouldn't be necessary to get too deep into the details of problem-solving. But, obviously, this sort of laissez-faire thinking can't get one too far into the textbook. It's cursorily covered on the third page of chapter 1 and never mentioned again.

When I think about myself, my identity, I usually draw a blank. Every day, I slip in and out of personas to take the greatest advantage of any given situation. With my pseudo-girlfriend, I'm a nice, generous, stupid, and sweet guy. My best friends get a vulgar, constantly joking sociopath. With women or men I desire, I'm occasionally distant, sometimes wonderfully poetic, but mostly awkward.

None of these people are me, though. It's as if I'm split through a prism; my talents for deception have created a multiplicity of me, each existing only within a specific context and with a specific person/group. While convenient, this causes as many problems as it solves.

For example.
For the past few weeks, I've been dating a girl. I've no real interest in her; she's emotionally off-kilter, unattractive, and annoying. Still, she's the first girl in years to directly express any interest in me. I'd never been in a relationship, so I jumped at the chance to experience something new for the first time.

Since I couldn't feel any attraction towards her, I created a persona that did. He's a generally good guy who brings her presents, injures himself constantly and whispers "I love you" into her ear as they make out. But he's not me and he never will be. Over the course of the relationship, I realized that the constant duplicity was doing me no good. Telling her I loved her made me feel cheapened somehow; the words had lost their meaning, becoming instead a simple currency through which I got some action, no matter how minor. As time passed, my immoral acts weighed heavier on me. I became an asshole when I wasn't around her, reflecting the warping of my self-image. I couldn't consider myself a good person, so I made the choice to be bad. All for a kiss here and a grope there.

The complications of restructuring one's self should not be taken lightly. When there are enough imperfect copies of the core persona, it becomes difficult to tell the fakes from the real thing. I'm more confused than ever now about who I am, and I don't see it getting better all too soon. I'm breaking up with the girl tomorrow in a bid to save my soul and save her from me. Here's hoping we both end up better off.

Just now, I was sitting in my chair, in front of my computer, and I felt the weight of the world come crashing down onto my shoulders. I felt trapped, in a deep fog, and I realized just how hard it would be to escape.

Let's back up here.

For the past two years, it has been my operative plan to move far, far away once my eighteenth birthday came. To ... Canada. Toronto, in specific. Two weeks ago, I came back from visting Toronto for the first time, tired, sick, and with a much less optimistic appraisal of my plan than previously. I'm not moving to Canada anymore; what once seemed like a golden opportunity now looks to be just another youthful stab at a quick fix. A fix for a problem that I can't quite put a name to. A problem that just hit me like a sack of bricks.

I have no strong desire to do anything. I do have burning urges for power, strength, good looks, fast car, inner peace, high adventure, etc. All the trappings of humanity and adolescent testosterone levels. But I don't especially know what I want to do vis-a-vis achieving those goals, much less what I can do (except for strength and good looks; they seem to be the most commonly won of all the aforementioned things). I just do whatever I think is best with the choices I perceive to have in the short-term, following my id more than my ego.

I guess the questions I need to answer now go something like, "What do I really want? How can I make it happen? And how far am I willing to go?" Hell, I know that I don't need a blazingly fast car. I recognize that it would do nothing to make me ultimately happy. But the mind wants what it wants, and there's no changing that unless one can look past the short-term to see some grand design, a big picture tying everything together. I used to have a master plan: I'd hone my combat skills, then lay my life on the line every day to save the humans from themselves. Whether or not the fantasy of reaching Big Mind on the battlefield is worth the inevitable bloodshed, at least I'd get to fight. I like fighting and I hate that my everyday life entails none. It's a big part of my personality, though not intentionally; certain circumstances in my childhood welded my brain's Power/Fighting/Fatalism circuit closed, and now I crave violence as a matter of course.

It's just that I feel like a total mess whenever I look at where I'm coming from and think about where my future is headed. Before, I had infinite faith that I could always somehow bungle my way towards the right decisions in life. Now I see the timer ticking above my head, letting me know that my days are numbered. Reminding me that I can use my time in whatever way I please, and that how I utilize my time decides the course of my life. What am I to do? Where am I to go?

Solitary. I've cut myself off from everyone I know, and it feels natural. And I feel isolated, cut off from the world. Funny thing is, it's still somewhat preferable to my past contact with others. When I was young, I went for a period of 2-3 years where I had no friends. Nobody. While everyone else was practicing their social skills for use later on in life, I was practicing the key skills that have sustained me through the years: reading, playing video games, and writing every so often. Eventually, I discovered substance use; the theoretical end-all and be-all of one-person entertainment. But maybe all of that's immaterial.

I'm really not sure if I can trust people anymore. All that bitterness I wrote of, dammed within until recently, has put up a wall between myself and all of the acquaintances I had. It's a testament to my distance that I consider all of my peers to be acquaintances, I guess.

Originally, I created this blog to show some inner part of my self to the world in an anonymous way. I wanted to communicate the approximately 70% of me that never, ever gets revealed. It's easier for me to shout these things into the void than to whisper them to my closest friend.

After the third entry, it became clear to me that this, this Neue, is most useful as a tool for catharsis, not a means of communication. Every paragraph takes something from the inside, something unvoiced, and makes it real. Even as I write, I'm revealing a little bit more of my true self, whatever that is.

. . . I'm feeling down and I'm gonna stop writing now. Stop moving and look around.

I've never experienced romance, even in its subtlest forms. Every so often I reach out a tentative hand towards forging a connection with someone, and every time it gets slapped away. Before, I thought that this was due to some great, base incompetence on my part. Something that everyone else had that I was somehow missing, a manufacturing defect that I couldn't rectify because it was simply beyond my capacity. I felt a spiritual impotence, the cold, intriguing flower called alone. It's not so much the sensation of being without anyone that staggered me. I've spent, and probably will spend, the majority of my life by myself. It's the suspicion that it's going to be that way forever. The feeling that maybe you're the special case, the one designed to live out your years anticipating a day that will never come. I tasted bitter bile, and I reveled in it. If I couldn't have love, I could have the next best thing: the glee of anger without reason or focus.

More time passed, and through analysis, I realized that there was another possibility. Maybe I wasn't an incomplete piece, but rather hampered by my own expectations of rejection. Maybe I'd grown too close to my bitter heart. Maybe I'd fallen in love with being alone. But the realization wasn't coupled with any new resolve. I now understand that I could just as easily stay home as I could go out and try meeting someone new, sparking up a conversation, passing some time. If only by the law of averages, eventually I'd have to find success. Still, I don't. I guess I'm resolved to being alone long enough to complain every so often, but not lonely enough to actively do anything about it. Ha ha! Funny joke.

I got an e-mail today. It was a chain letter from a girl I'd known some time ago. Fifteen points of mildly sappy inspiration. I read it, and I saw one that I thought about for a bit.

"6. You mean the world to someone."

I know there's no great authority to a mass mailing that promises 10 romantic screwups in the next 10 years for not propagating itself. I know it's superstitious, even. But I can't help wondering who that one person is. Though I may be a bitter, cantankerous bastard, a vindictive asshole, and pretty much totally clueless, this tiny e-mail convinced me that I had, at the least, a bottomless reserve of hope for slim chances. At least, I can now say to myself, I have hope; hope that the future can be different than the past, that I don't necessarily know what surprises lurk around the next corner, good or bad. It's a hope that can coexist with the bitterness, because I know I won't be bitter forever. At least, for this specific reason.

I wonder if this is just my desire for a happy ending. To say 'maybe tomorrow will be better' is to ignore that our future is the culmination of our actions in the present. I can't expect to sustain the same behaviors and get different results; it defies logic, common sense. I have the great dilemma of the alcoholic : knowing the problem quite intimately, but still as far from the solution as ever. No amount of reflection is going to fix whatever block I do have, yet it's all I seem to do. Mindless self-indulgence of the highest order. If I write it out, at least I can see the trails of my thought processes, try to understand the knot in the middle of it. Hell, maybe I can even find a new scapegoat.

(Why did I write that? Is my bitterness focused inward? Do I really have anywhere else to focus it?)

The trail winds on. I guess I'll stop obsessing over it, at least for a bit.