Zander's Inside Voice

I got my roster last night for the soccer team I coach. I have eight of the same kids, and it seems like four aren’t playing with this league this season. One was assigned somewhere else, but I’m not sure if she requested to be on a team with a friend. Of the eight returnees, I have coached seven the whole time I’ve been coaching this team. I lost three amazing all-around players and two great defenders. I lost two of my top three for scoring goals and I think their departure will open up the door for some others to finally shine and score more. And then I have five new kids who might be superstars in their own right. But even if they are terrible, or just average, I think I have enough talent in these eight that will carry us through the season just fine.

I’m not sure I will coach beyond this season. Part of me really wants to and the other part absolutely does not want to coach again. Since I am so cautious about other people’s kids, I feel like once I change my name, I should stop coaching. I have no agenda to force anyone to deal with anything they don’t want to deal with. I just want to live my life and protect myself as much as I can.

This is one of the days when I feel depressed about all this that I deal with. It’s so hard to explain why I feel the way I do and how there’s nothing that makes it better. And when certain things happen that force me to deal with the way I was actually born vs what’s in my head, all I feel is sadness. Why couldn’t I just be born with the same mind and body? It doesn’t even matter which way it went; they just needed to agree so that I don’t feel this intense hatred of what I look and sound like, and what I have to do to get closer to what I want to be. I’ve accepted that I will never be exactly what I wanted to be, but I can definitely get closer. I tried so hard to be what the outside looked like. That’s not me at all. It will never be me.

Fuck, I just feel like crying and sleeping the rest of this day away. Why would anyone CHOOSE this for attention? Why would anyone want this? And anyone that thinks this can be cured away is stupid. Maybe they want all of us to die because they think that will stop it.

How long will it take me to get the hell out of this hole I’m in today? Until I have to go be distracted by the soccer meeting tonight? After sleeping through the night? I don’t know. I have felt it before and it does eventually fade to nothing and then I feel better a little bit at a time over a couple days. I hate this about my life, I really do. I’ve tried everything to make it go away and it won’t. It’s here to stay and haunt me for the rest of my life in some way. I’ve just decided that eventually that way will be people judging me and calling me mental ill once I start down the road to transition.