Neue

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.