Notes from a crumbling self

An entry from a personal journal written a few months before detransition. Is the current version of you just a picture of yourself that gets you by while you’re waiting to become someone else?

These are my personal notes, written during my transition only to be long forgotten.

I pushed my feelings away after writing this and had a mastectomy shortly after.

I only found the courage to turn back and detransition after the surgery.

• 7th of January, midnight

I’m listening to ‘Million eyes’ by Loic Nottet as I’m writing this. I feel like I killed myself and remained dead for a period of time while a backup part of my brain was living my life for me. I was tired of life. I tried to escape being me, create someone I wish I was; I was tired of hating myself, of not being able to control my eating and emotions, of not being able to follow stereotypes and standards aimed at me, I was tired of my dysphoria and dysmorphia, of the way people perceived and treated me as someone I know I’m not. I created this alternate illusion to find a gateway to express the confidence and courage I wish I had, or that I have somewhere deep. And while this did work, I feel like for the time being, my life and mental health is wrecked. I guess maybe I just wanted to be more ‘normal’ and stop wondering what is wrong with me and why I don’t fit in. 

It really did seem like there was a magic cure to just becoming normal, not at all unusual and standard for a minute. It’s more acceptable and not unusual at all to be a straight, boring guy. Better than a gross, masculine lesbian with short hair. I just don’t want to be creepy. I hate feeling like a sex offender and a predator for liking girls. I feel like my existence is just offensive and I don’t want to be close to anyone at all.

Do you actually enjoy looking like this? Do you accept and like yourself at this moment or is this an illusion that you’re trying to believe, a reflection that only resembles someone you wish you were one day in the future?

 Do you really accept the way your clothes and hair look on you right now, or are you trying to trick your brain that this will make more sense once you change yourself and once you’re living as the true version of you?

 Is the current version of you just a temporary picture of yourself that gets you by while you’re waiting to become someone else?

I don’t see a point in lying. I tried to trick myself into believing I look different than I do, dressing and presenting the way I did. I kept telling myself it will all make sense and will all look right, and one day I’ll see that this was what I was waiting for, even if the present is just temporary. I was trying to skip life and live a lie while waiting and hoping for becoming a different person. 

As if one day I will just sigh with relief and say this is it, I don’t need to pretend anymore because this is who I actually am now. I don’t think this could ever be true.

 There’s a limit to how long you can act and make your life into a stage on which you only play a role. You play a mildly satisfying role of someone you wish you were in public, while telling yourself this is the true you, and this is who you want to be, and that it will all make sense eventually, it will come together, you just need to get through this. Act, pretend, ignore some feelings, push some feelings away, reject what you don’t like about yourself.

You create a version of yourself that you want to believe. It has an appearance, a set of emotions, a set of behaviours and characteristics that you only add to each day. You reject who you were all the way until today in order to believe in the image of you that you created yourself. You are playing a role. You play this role and ignore your actual self, you run and you want to be anything but yourself because you’re just so tired. You hope that one day the old you will shrink so much that the new you will take over and you will forever be free. But when the emotions and behaviours that you recognize from your past show through, more often when you’re weak or tired, you are shattered and you question yourself. 

You rejected yourself without realising that your friends already loved you for who you are. You create this new image, believing that you will finally live up to your own and everyone else’s expectations. You will be so strong, independent and confident, everyone will be proud of you. Perhaps they will even say one day, I’m so glad the old you doesn’t exist anymore. We were all so tired of them and despised them so much. You were right about becoming someone else, the old you was purely miserable. I’m so proud of you. Please never go back.

I despise myself and I know that I can’t run. I don’t see the point anymore and I genuinely don’t believe anyone can even put up with me. I became noone, hoping that one day I would become someone better. I can’t say anything to myself, nor can I convince myself to move on and accept myself as I am, I just can’t find a reason. I’m tired. 

My hardest truth so far is that sometimes you can’t become someone if you’re not this person already.