Zander's Inside Voice

I have felt myself fading from blogging the past few days. I’m not even sure how long it’s been. One day? Two days? After my January break from blogging, I wanted to be consistent. I love stats and metrics, so I love when I see that I’m on some super long streak. But at the same time, it starts to feel like WORK to blog. What do I feel like talking about? How do I spin a bunch of daily prompts that are dull to me? What if I’m just feeling introspective and don’t want to share? So I work hard to not bind myself to blogging, no matter how long my streak is.

I have been introspective lately. I let myself feel through the journey of losing my therapist summer and what that means for my surgery letter and that led me to a terrifying discovery that the surgeon I want to use now requires two letters. And one must be from an MD basically. Great. Sometimes it can be tricky to get into those appointments. I get the increased scrutiny to cover the doctor’s butt, BUT I am not a minor and I haven’t been a minor in a long time. I know any surgery is permanent and not reversible. I know this is what I want; it’s what I wanted since I was 12.

I then spent a very brief amount of time wondering why the hell I have to be like this, why I can’t just will this away, and what caused it biologically. There’s no way that there isn’t some biological reason. Because I tried HARD to pray this away, to will this away, to just make it stop. I ignored it, shoved it down, and felt like it did go away.

But it didn’t. And the more I accept it and stop trying to fight it, the happier I feel inside. The more I feel like myself. If there was any way possible to make this go away for real, I would be all over it. But there isn’t. It’s just part of who I am and I have to do what will make me stay alive, to be honest. When I was shoving it down and ignoring it, I was unhappy and suicidal. Even lately when I think that maybe I can will it away, I start of feel upset and really sad. Maybe not suicidal, but I definitely head down a bad path that makes me feel like everyone’s life might be better without me. I have learned through all these years of therapy that I need to stop, turn around, and head back towards the path to healed, not the path of suicide.

On the outside, I don’t care what people think. I never did. But then people started conditioning me to care. My parents said things like “What would your grandmother say about XYZ…” Or “What would the neighbors say?”

And when I tumble into that space of caring what people think, I stumble. I start to question what I want to do with my own life and my own body. Why am I caring what people who don’t pay my bills think? Why does the way I want to live impact any other person outside my own home or even family? And why do I have to bend and hide and change to please my family? Why don’t they need to learn how to flex for me, the real me? If they love me, wouldn’t they want me to be happy? Wouldn’t they want me to feel whole and not wandering down some suicidal path?

So that’s part of what’s been on my mind during my “however many days” absence. Heavy shit that weighs me down and makes blogging really hard sometimes.