Another Month’s Musing

TRIGGER WARNING

The following post contains mentions of suicide, if you are experiencing these thoughts and feelings, please reach out to one of the following places for support:

• Beyond Blue: 1300 22 46 36
• Lifeline: 13 11 14
• Suicide Call Back Service: 1300 659 467

Hello there!

I actually thought I was going to be late to write my follow up blog post, the joys of navigating suspected ADHD, but I’m actually bang on time.

My first post was a small insight into some of my beginnings as a person and the journey on which I found myself, but I want to take a slightly different tangent for this next one. Don’t worry, I will continue the story I started, but this has been forefront of my mind for a while now.

Who, reading this, feels like a quitter? I am absolutely raising my hand at this one.

When I get overwhelmed and feel like I can’t cope or things are too hard, I give up. Up until I was 18, I never really got the chance to exercise this option, as my parents were still very much in control of what I did or didn’t do. But, come 18, towards the end of year 12, I think it might have been September, I quit school. In retrospect, not my smartest move, but I’m doing relatively well considering.

Why did I quit year 12? It was all too hard. I had the trip of a life time when I was 18, travelled internationally with a concert band, more on that later, but came back the day before mid year exams… needless to say I did not do well at them. As the rest of the school year wore on, I realised that I was not going to have an easy time preparing for and passing my end of year exams. A couple of teachers had commented in the past that I start the year off with promise of a great year, but fail to deliver as my focus/concentration wanes. This started causing me anxiety.

In addition to this anxiety, the focus I wanted to take at university (conducting as part of a bachelor of music) was not offered as a major, rather a unit in the bachelor, this coupled with the fact that my parents wanted me to be a music teacher and I being a rebellious teenager that wanted to do their own thing, I decided that I was not going to go to uni, I couldn’t cope with the stress of school, so I quit. Not my finest choice.

Anyway, that was the first of many subsequent quittings. It lead me on a trajectory that, if I could go back and change, I absolutely would but here I am…

I bring up this point of quitting because, as I grew older, I started to realise that my suicidal thoughts, which started around 13 years of age, were the ultimate method of quitting.

I want it on record, here and now, that I do not view suicide as a weak, cowards' way out. When you feel like that is the only way to ease the pain that is becoming unbearable, you try and do what you feel will stop the pain. I don’t think it is sinful for those that succeed. I think, if you have a loving Heavenly Father that can see your pain and is in pain with you, he will wrap his arms around you and give you peace and rest. He understands the pain you feel and wants you to be free from that. But please, please, please reach out to someone before you get to that point. I’m slowly realising that quitting is not always the best/right course of action.

Some people may view quitting as being an easy way out, or a lazy way out, and this is the point I am stuck on with my transition…

I know I need to do this for my own sanity, but it’s so freaking hard. Some trans people are lucky in that they have natural feminine features that bode well for them when presenting as their true self, others, do not. I fall into that category… it took a close friend a long time to do my make up to make me passable. They did a fantastic job by the way, absolutely sensational (I started getting hits on dating apps), but I find the techniques required, the amount of make up required, the time required and the brain capacity required to be too much. Why do things need to be so hard?

I also have a lot of hair. This disgusts me and brings me great emotional distress as it is so hard to look like a woman when tops are cut low and you have a man forest front and back. It is so expensive to maintain a smooth body, and with the current cost of living that we are experiencing, it is nowhere near as regular as is Ike.

This leads me to the low points in my life where I throw my hands up in the air and go “F@&$ this, it’s too hard, I want out”.

The main things that get me through are:

1. Family, especially my niece. She is the brightest ray of sunshine in my life and I love her to pieces, she is my favourite little human and she knows it (which is very dangerous)
2. Friends. Without my friends, I would definitely have succumbed to the whiffing bug a long time ago. I’m not usually one for naming names, so I won’t, but one has known me over half my life and has been there through all of my mental health/sexuality/gender struggles, and I appreciate them immensely
3. Would be music. It took a long time to start making inroads with ensembles in Victoria but I am now connected with a community brass band and 2 orchestras. I’ve done couple of theatre shows in the put. It’s starting to go great. I’ve even started trying my hand at composing. It’s looking up. My problem now is. All my time and energy goes into being a functional adult at work that I have very little left in the tank to do what I want/need to do to be better at my craft. I have lost a lot of skill and technique in my playing which depresses me, but I can’t seem to change it for the better which, again leads me down the quitting rhetoric.

My advice, and you’re under no pressure to take it on board, is to find that thing or person worth winning the race for. There will be something, no matter how small or insignificant it may seem to others, there is always something worth fighting for and hanging in there for.

Sure, you may feel like quitting, and you may be hurting like a b!$&@ on the inside, but kicking its butt and overcoming it is so worth it.

It’s not easy, and I think about quitting multiple times a day. That just means you need remind yourself twice as much that it’s worth it.

Peace friends, till next time.