Hi, Again

[Guest gwenthlian]

It's been the longest time since I posted here, maybe 3 months? Something like that anyway. Suffice to say lots has happened since then so I figured I'd fill you lot in.

I've kind of always thought that there was something more to the way I felt than the trans thing, in fact sometimes that seems like the least of my worries now that therapy is going smoothly and hormones are treating me well. I guess this feeling just built up and built up until I felt like I had to have a name for it. I'm not sure if this is something everyone experiences or not but if I'm sick or just feeling mentally crap I need to explain it because without pinning it to a specific cause it feels so much bigger and so much more scary. There's a safety and a security in being able to sort things into categories and add borders to each. Now of course the human psyche is far to complex to sort through and arrange in it's entirety but there are aspects that can be. One of these aspects was what I felt building up until it was becoming too much to bear.

After breaking down one night in front of my mother and after crying for ages she and I decided we would do our best to try and describe this thing. After a few hours of google searches and wikipedia entries and all sorts of bits and pieces we kind of worked out that this form of bipolar disorder pretty much described how I felt. Now I've never gotten manic, maybe over excited but none of the feelings of invulnerability or things rushing past or anything like that. Bipolar II seemed to fit that bit but instead of having mood swings over months or weeks I was having them over hours, rapid cycling wasn't going to fit, nor was even ultra rapid cycling. I was going from suicidal to feeling pretty ok in 20 minutes and then back again, to varying degrees roughly 8-10 times a day. Looking back on my childhood there was a similar pattern, I'd be really excited about something and then soon after moody and irritable.

So still without a name but hopefully closer to one I presented all of this to both the psychologist and the psychiatrist. After discussing it for a couple of weeks I was asked to keep a graph of my moods, marking off every hour or so how I felt on a scale of minus 3 to plus 3. The psychiatrist said that with a months worth of graphs she would have enough information to be able to make some sort of diagnosis and talk about treatment options. Skip forward 4 weeks and I went for another appointment. After studying the graphs she said that the number of shifts in mood were unusually high even for bipolar but that something called ultradian bipolar disorder fitted. The word ultradian comes from circadian, that is the natural processes of an organism within 24 hours, when mood swings occur over this short period we get 'ultradian'.

So a few weeks after that appointment and with a few weeks more graphs she said that we could start deciding on options for treatment. A few different drugs were discussed and one decided on. The dosage would slowly be increased until it was high enough to have some effect and so we left with a prescription for 3 months supply. I started them just last week, hopefully they work.

This post is getting really long but there's one more thing I'd like to talk about.

Increasingly over the past few months I've had this feeling of not fitting in. Perfectly natural you might say for a trans kid but when I say fitting in I mean with other mtfs. I spend a lot of time helping out in the chat here and so I meet plenty of people who identify that way and yet I don't feel like one of them. There's no doubt in my mind that hormones are right for me, no doubt that I want to get surgery and yet I don't feel like I'm all female. If I had to put my finger on it I'd say I was half female and half non gendered. That probably doesn't make a lot of sense to the observer but it makes sense in my head and that's kind of all I need. I prefer female pronouns and yet at the same time I like people not being able to work out which gender I am with a passing glance. When I was little I loved it if people asked me if I was a girl or a boy. I know what I want my body to look like, that is what fits in my head and I know I am female. At the same time though I am neither.

I fear this post has gotten nonsensical enough as it is so I shall end here ^^

Gwen

[Guest viv]

Hello Gwen,,Hun your post indicates you are on top of things

and I hope the meds work out for you . Re the last part of

your post hun,,not fitting in , dunno, a few sessions with your

therapist on the theme may help you to get to the bottom of

that , hope you find resolution ,,,,luv,viv

[Guest Donna Jean]

Hey, Gwen.....

Honey, don't forget that posting here and letting of steam can be very theraputic.

Of course one wouldn't use it instead of a good therapist, but it can be a big help!

I'm happy to see you back, Hon.....

HUGGS!

Donna Jean

[Sally]

Hi Gwen,

Good to see you again - good luck on the disorder - it seems like you are heading the right way.

As to fitting in - don't try - just be you - we are all very different MTFs are not identical and you don't need to fit into one tiny pigeon hole, spread your horizons and life is unlimited.

As you probably know from reading here in the forums, Donna Jean and I are very close friends - we started with a lot of things in common and most of our posts are in complete agreement with each other - are we exactly alike - not hardly!

Starting with the basics of she lives in the country so as to avoid traffic and congestion - I live in a big city because I have no idea of how to function in a rural setting - she has always had dogs and loves them very much - I have never had a dog or cat as a pet and I have never developed any sort of attachment to one because of my allergies and a few unpleasant instances from my childhood.

She was a bit more reckless in her - let's just be a man and be a big jerk days - I was always a very cautious and think it through first type - so I avoided the motorcycle and subsequent crash among other things - but we fit together nicely as best friends and talk almost constantly - differences are what makes it interesting, if we were exactly alike neither one of us would have a need for the other.

And differences are the key to so many of my friends here, similarities start the conversations and differences add the spice - and that explains my friendship with my spiciest girlfriend - Lizzy!

Enjoy the diversity - don't fight it!

It was mentioned to me once in a PM that I had a lot of friends here and I thought to myself, shouldn't everyone?

Embrace all that makes you different - that is why we are all unique and what makes life worth living.

Love ya,

Sally

[Guest gwenthlian]

Thanks for all the replies

a few sessions with your therapist on the theme may help you to get to the bottom of that

that would be great but the thing is therapy is not new to me, it must be almost a year and half now since I started. The topic has been covered several times but yeah, no real ground made.

As to fitting in - don't try - just be you - we are all very different MTFs are not identical and you don't need to fit into one tiny pigeon hole, spread your horizons and life is unlimited.

very sensible advice, and believe me I have long ago given up trying to fit in ^^. I think that philosophy is perhaps the reason I feel the way I do now. For years and years I pretended to be a boy and creeping back now is the feeling that I'm pretending to be the current description. Mtfs are many and varied but looking at the group as a whole one notices some common themes, likes and dislikes, attitudes to things. All sorts of bits and pieces, a great deal of which I can't identify with. I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's not that I feel different in the group, rather that there is some incongruence with what it stands for. I don't really feel like I'm going from male to female, don't really feel like I was always female and am just correcting certain outward characteristics. In all honesty I don't know exactly what I do feel. I know that the physical changes I'm undergoing right now feel right and that's about all I've got. I guess it's something I need to work out on my own.

Thanks,

Gwen