Holy fuck balls I don't know where to
begin.
I'm going to try to sum things up as
best I can. If I got into detail this post would go on forever.
As you may recall my wife went up to
her parents after I pissed her off. While she was up there I fell
into an even deeper depression that I was already in. Upon her
return we had a talk and we decided that I needed to go off on my own
(but not too far!) to find myself. We are like two pees in a pod,
best friends forever; but my transitioning is driving us both
nanners. So this made sense to me and I began looking for a way to
make things work.
At first I thought that if I found a
room mate I could live out in town. I know a friend who is also
looking to move out of his apartment and I figured if we pooled our
resources this might work. I went so far as to do some preliminary
apartment hunting. (I found this cute place in Hillcrest right in
the middle of everything that I would kill to move into.) However,
upon further review of my finances it became painfully apparent to me
that unless I was willing to make some MAJOR sacrifices this just
wasn’t going to work financially.
This made me a sad.
It wasn’t that good a plan anyway
because then I still wouldn’t be able to save money for transition,
and and as I've just hit the “transition or die” phase of my life
that's not acceptable. After wracking my brain the only other thing
I could think of would be for my wife to move out until February when
she completes school and gets a job. Then I would rent out a room
which I would use to help finance my transition. Then after my wife
was financially stable I would sign over the mortgage to her and move
out on my own with a room mate so that I can save money for
transition.
This plan sucked balls but at the time
neither of us could think of a better idea. I don't really know anyone plus I'm trans/whatever so that makes things even harder. She agreed to this, but
as you can imagine, while all this was going on we had reached critical
drama levels. We seemed to have things worked out and I started to
feel a little hopeful. Transition is all I think about now. It's
something that I'm willing to give everything up for. That must
sound batshit insane to non-trans people, but what they don't
understand is that it really can be a matter of life or death.
Once I thought I had finally made
things work my wife started changing stuff around and she threw a
monkey wrench into the gears of my plan. (Not that she was trying to
do so, this is an extremity complicated situation.) This was three
nights ago, so on the 17th. We argued and I began to, for
lack of a better term, freak the fuck out. I'm trapped in limbo,
unable to transition when I can no longer wait. Seriously, I even
considered defaulting on my loan for the mortgage and destroying my
credit just so I could get an apartment to save money. (Turns out my
wife's name is on the mortgage too so that wasn’t going to happen.)
As the night went on my depression
became more and more profound. I couldn’t think of a way out and I
was completely overwhelmed with hopelessness. I drew up and hot
bath, got an old box cutter and I began cutting.
I used to do this in high school and at
various points in my life when I've felt that all hope was lost.
It's a very unhealthy and self destructive behavior, and I'm
embarrassed that it's all I had to fall back on. At the time I was
not in my right mind. I cut myself all over my body and when my
wounds stopped leaking blood into the water I would scrub them so
they would reopen. I kept trying to cut deeper, but I couldn’t
bring myself to open a vein to end it all. At one point I finally
came to my senses and I crawled out of the tub and tried to ask my
wife for help. She was sleeping and when I tried to wake her up,
blood trickling down my body from multiple incisions, she mumbled at
me and told me to go to sleep. (She didn’t look at me and it would
not be until the next day that I would learn that she had taken two
ambian before going to bed, so no wonder I couldn’t get her
attention. At the time however I was very hurt.)
I then drove myself to the VA hospital
ER and attempted to voluntary commit myself to the psychiatric ward
as I was damn near suicidal. However, all the beds were full so they
kept me there in the ER and observed me over night. I cried for
hours and at some point I drifted to sleep for a short time. When
they woke my up as they needed to move be to another room there was a
huge wet spot around my head.
In the other room I could not sleep and
finally my wife showed up. (By then it was like 0900.) We talked
and worked some stuff out. They still didn’t have a bed open for
me and I decided to go home rather than staying at the hospital. I
was hospitalized for my depression once before for a three week
period and I was miserable the entire time.
We finally got out of there at noon and
I went home, got stuff cleaned up and called my gender therapist, who
was able to see me on short notice. As always she helped me to put
things into perspective and I'm going to be attending some sort of
program that should help me deal with these kinds of situations in a
healthy way. (DBT)
So, it's been rough. My body,
especially my arms, are covered in scabs and I'm going to have to
wear long sleeves for a while. Up until now I don't think my wife
realized just how desperate I am to transition. I think she does
now. This has also shown me that I need lots of outside support to
get through this. For a shy, introvert like me that's going to be
hard, but I have to do it.
More has happened since then, but I'll
put it in a separate post to keep things organized and to keep my
individual posts from getting too long.
A final note – if you are feeling
hopeless and it seems like there's no other possible way out, please
reach out to someone and get help. A few days ago I was desperately
trying to work up the resolve to open up my veins so that I would
bleed out into the tub, but now here I am typing up this post in a
much better state of mind. I'm getting the help I need and there's
always hope, no matter how bad it might seem at the moment.
Paige
