A different perspective on things

Isn't it funny/weird how one place that used to be a safe place, somewhere that you could find some peace when the world was so tumultuous, be a place that brings you nothing but empty emotions, no joy, noting but the desperate desire to be anywhere but there. This is what I am experiencing at the moment when I go to work. When my life felt as though it was collapsing around me, it was the one place I could escape to and not have to worry about the rest of my world during the work time.

Not long before I ended my last relationship, I recall I mentioned to someone that I hated the end of my work day. I'd find reasons to delay going home, just to avoid the conflict. Then once I had ended the relationship and moved out, it was the place that got me up in the mornings and get out of my apartment and gave me purpose to my days. Upon reflection, and for those 18 months, going to work was my safe place, the one thing that kept me going, the one thing that helped me stay. I don't really talk much about my depression, or how bad I got a times, but I do a great impersonation of someone who has most things together. I can hide my pain so well, no one notices when I am really struggling. These days I am a lot better at communicating, with room still to grow, so I don't seem to have the dark times like I have had in the past. I mention all of this, because I have caught myself starting my work days with nothing but the feeling of despair.

Quite a few people who meet me, take it for granted I am 24/7 living and working as female. That is not the case yet. I made a plan, a commitment to others. As I begin each work day, I know that this chapter/part of my life is finishing and a new chapter is about to begin. The thing that is making me feel despondent, is that I want it to be over now. I feel like I am trudging on without the reality of getting to my date I have planned. It is 106 days until I can release the shackles of having to dress as someone false forever. I am so over it. I am a person who believes that I have integrity and this was the date I informed my employer that I would give them until and that is what I am doing. Although, it is starting to be something I am getting too fixated over. The closer it gets, the more excited I become, but also the feeling of "I'm so over it" grows inside of me. So how do I manage this confined energy that wants to be let free!?!? Anyone?? Any tips??

As always, with me being conscious of my true trans female self, I get some memories of my past and a realization of how my repressed true self or nature has most likely influenced how I live my life now, and how it probably restricted my growth in areas of my emotional or physical growth. That sounds a little vague so I'll give a couple of examples.

Going through high school, most of the guys at school were obviously going through puberty, and all at various stages, me no exception, though a tad later than others. I also went to an all boys school. I had no sisters, and much social interaction with girls at all. I always felt really awkward around them, but knew I felt some how that's who I'd rather be hanging out with. When puberty was running rampant in my classmates, dating (or whatever teens think is dating) was become a big thing. School yard stories of sex and hooking up stories being blurted about left and right as all boys tend to do. Me, not so much. Sex was never something that really fascinated me that much, not like some others that only every seemed to want to talk about sex.....

Another thing I can really recall, and this has been a continual thing right up until this last year, is behaviour in changing rooms. When I see/have seen guys covering themselves up with towels in changing rooms, I just didn't get it. It's not that I was proud how I looked naked, or that I thought someone would be looking at me, or even embarrassed, it's that I now feel that I never really had a feeling of connection to my physical self. I really get it now, now that I am going something of a 2nd puberty. Especially as my breast begin to increase and I want to present less male and more female, I am way more body conscious now than I have even been at any other time of my life. This not only was happening at school, but it also was the same behaviour I was doing away from school, around my friends that lived around home. When my friends, and brothers were all boasting about sex and girls etc, I just didn't really engage myself in the topic, or ever really feel that burning desire to try and have sex like everyone around me was apparently doing. I didn't even have sex until I was 20, and since this is a platform I am being honest in, I didn't really have that much of it. Don't get me wrong, I do like sex, and I mean I really like it, I just feel I don't need it much.

I feel both of these behaviours contributed to me not really developing a high sex drive and also an inability to really become physically intimate with so it goes into a much deeper level of emotional intimacy. I have loved many people in my life, and when my first love slept with my brother, along with other behavioural habits, I think I developed a sense to protect myself from being hurt. I have emotional guards in place so I don't ever go to that deep, intimate, fully immersed place that people go. Don't get me wrong. I do love. I love more inclusively, and I protect fiercely those I do love. I don't know if I can open myself up to being loved so romantically, intimately, so completely.

I am putting myself out there a bit more so than other posts with this one. Where I believe I am at the moment, I am not really putting myself into positions where being sexual with someone is an option, and I am really not putting myself into a position where I can form any type of intimate emotional relationship. I learnt from a very young age that I needed to be self sufficient and not dependent on anyone to survive. Was this due to how I was raised in my infancy? Was it due to my temperament as a baby? Is it my dysphoria/dysmorphia/disconnection from the world around me. Or is it something else?

I'd really like to believe that I could have someone come into my world, and totally rock my socks off. For them to make me believe they would be there for me no matter what I do with hormones, surgery and professionally. Am I ready for someone like that to enter my life? Could I handle someone like that right now? I'd like to think so.

Anyway, for now.