A Necessary Entry.
I haven't written in a journal of any kind for a long time. I think I need to start doing it more often. I don't know why, but I seem to be withdrawing from things. I feel like it's time to move on, maybe... But move on from what? I feel holed in, like some things in my life are exerting an invisible pressure which is keeping me down-- trouble is, I don't know what those things are. I can't identify them. What is good in my life? What needs to change? I don't feel connected like I used to, and I worry that I don't know myself anymore. Perhaps I didn't know myself as well as I thought.
I'm having a bad day emotionally. I think it's hormones. I don't feel so stable at the moment. This reminds me of a few months after I started estrogen, when it really hit me; when it felt like I overreacted to everything. I've left the teenage angst and stupidity behind me, but my emotions are on hair-trigger again. It should settle down soon (I hope)-- when I got my blood levels of estrogen and testosterone checked last week, I was at <10ppm of estrogen, which is around typical male levels. That was a big surprise, even though I had noticed my breasts getting smaller and my emotional response changing. My testosterone was right where it should be, however, so my body is just not absorbing estrogen orally like it used to. It's all very strange. As a response to this, my doctor increased my dosage to 8mg/day, double what I was taking before. Well, I'm definitely feeling it now! Let's hope this feeling subsides. I'm also not hardly meditating, which is doubtless making things seem less manageable. I just can't seem to keep up with it. I need to simplify. I need to purge the excess from my life and find my center again.
I wish I didn't need friends. It's so hard to keep them, and it's so easy to get hurt by them. For some reason, people have decided that I'm intimidating, so they never talk to me when they have issues. I'm the last to know, when there's something I'm doing that others have a problem with. I'm not comfortable spending much time around groups of people, particularly not those I live with, so they get this idea in their minds like I'm inaccessible. They talk amongst themselves, but not to me. They gossip, it grows larger and larger, and then many people start to resent me-- and most of the time, I have no idea that anything is wrong. This seems to be an oft-repeating pattern in my life, and it's very frustrating.
Like today, for example: I came home from spending a couple days with my Mom in Buffalo for Thanksgiving, and the first thing I see is three notes scrawled on paper taped to my door; the first informs me that my cat has fleas and that he can't be let out, the second yells at me for hoarding dishes in my room (which is hardly accurate), and the third accuses me of stealing and destroying a pair of scissors belonging to one of my housemates. Luckily one of my other housemates had already let me know about the fleas, but the other two notes felt like unexpected attacks. When I apologised for unknowingly having the scissors and marring them through normal use, my one housemate immediately turned from looking like she expecting a fight and like she wanted to skin me, to being extremely nice. Probably fake. I asked her and another housemate who was in the room at the time not to leave notes like that on my door, because they felt like attacks, and that wasn't a nice thing to come home to. In response, the 2nd housemate accused me of being a hypocrite because I leave notes in the kitchen when there are messes left by unknown people, and justified things by treating my leaving for a couple of days as though I had commited some sort of offence. He implied that I left too often, and seemed to blame their own passive-aggressive behaviour on my absence. He sits around the house all day, almost never leaving, which is apparently how I'm supposed to conduct myself as well. When I reminded them that I have a cell phone, he got extremely agreeable and smiling hugely and fakely, so as to encourage me to leave.
People SUCK.
There have been many times, lately, when I've wondered whether or not I really WANT to heal people. It's such a human profession, and if I get truly sick of human beings, how will I be able to stand my chosen path in life? Perhaps it's not so bad, when you're not involved in their lives on a daily basis. Maybe that's when it gets ugly-- when people have expectations of you, and you have to adjust your life to accommodate them. If it's hard to need people, I think it's even harder to be needed by people. I'm too unpredictable to attach expectations to, or maybe even to get emotionally involved with. Maybe people sense that, and they avoid it. Maybe everyone's afraid they'll get their feelings hurt... And I suppose, since I don't seem to understand what others expect socially, that's not a completely outrageous concern. Since no-one seems to articulate their desires, their goals, their feelings, and I'm not accustomed enough to socializing to intuit what they want, perhaps their expectations will be disappointed. Is that a flaw in who I am, or just a character trait? It shouldn't make me unlovable, right? No, it shouldn't.
And the funny thing is, there's a girl who's in love with me right now! I feel sorry for her, too... I think I have the capacity to be an amazing person, but lately I've felt like that's unreachable. And I feel like, even if she accepts me unconditionally and loves me for who I am, she'll have expectations of my which will be disappointed. My emotions change like the weather, my needs and plans shift without conscious choice, and I often don't know what they'll become. I don't know whether she thinks that's endearing, or whether she's getting driven slowly crazy by it. She also doesn't communicate well, like so many people. I often don't know what she's thinking or feeling, and asking explicitly feels like it's not appropriate. Maybe it is. I'm not good at being in love. And ours is a relationship which is punctuated by a large amount of time together being spent at school, with large gaps between when we see each-other. Maybe that separation and the unpredictability of our time together makes it harder to relax and just be. I feel like she has invaded my life, even though she's not in it that much. My life has contorted itself in interesting ways so that I can spend time with her-- and of course I want to be with her-- but that means that my way of living feels disrupted. That feels uncomfortable, and I'm not sure how to fix it. Am I just unwilling to change? That doesn't seem like me at all! I feel like I'm resenting her a little for being in my life, and I can't pin down why. It doesn't make sense. Are there boundaries that need to be set? If so, how? I'm bad at being in love. Maybe it's just that I'm out of practice, or maybe it's just that I've established a status quo which keeps me in a good place most of the time, and I don't want to change it. We'll be talking tonight, so I'll bring all of this up with her and try to solve it, but I'm worried it's actually just a flaw in me, as a person. That I'm entirely at fault. That maybe it can't be fixed. Sigh. Then I would be alone again. We have to talk about it, because sometimes she feels uncomfortable because of it; she says she gets mixed signals from me, which is entirely true! Of course I want to be with her, but I don't feel like I can ever say no when we have an opportunity, because she'll be crushed. Maybe I'm not asserting my needs enough.
I wish I knew what to do. At least I got all this out in writing... that helps, a little.
Now I have to go buy flea shampoo for my cat. Argh.
I'm having a bad day emotionally. I think it's hormones. I don't feel so stable at the moment. This reminds me of a few months after I started estrogen, when it really hit me; when it felt like I overreacted to everything. I've left the teenage angst and stupidity behind me, but my emotions are on hair-trigger again. It should settle down soon (I hope)-- when I got my blood levels of estrogen and testosterone checked last week, I was at <10ppm of estrogen, which is around typical male levels. That was a big surprise, even though I had noticed my breasts getting smaller and my emotional response changing. My testosterone was right where it should be, however, so my body is just not absorbing estrogen orally like it used to. It's all very strange. As a response to this, my doctor increased my dosage to 8mg/day, double what I was taking before. Well, I'm definitely feeling it now! Let's hope this feeling subsides. I'm also not hardly meditating, which is doubtless making things seem less manageable. I just can't seem to keep up with it. I need to simplify. I need to purge the excess from my life and find my center again.
I wish I didn't need friends. It's so hard to keep them, and it's so easy to get hurt by them. For some reason, people have decided that I'm intimidating, so they never talk to me when they have issues. I'm the last to know, when there's something I'm doing that others have a problem with. I'm not comfortable spending much time around groups of people, particularly not those I live with, so they get this idea in their minds like I'm inaccessible. They talk amongst themselves, but not to me. They gossip, it grows larger and larger, and then many people start to resent me-- and most of the time, I have no idea that anything is wrong. This seems to be an oft-repeating pattern in my life, and it's very frustrating.
Like today, for example: I came home from spending a couple days with my Mom in Buffalo for Thanksgiving, and the first thing I see is three notes scrawled on paper taped to my door; the first informs me that my cat has fleas and that he can't be let out, the second yells at me for hoarding dishes in my room (which is hardly accurate), and the third accuses me of stealing and destroying a pair of scissors belonging to one of my housemates. Luckily one of my other housemates had already let me know about the fleas, but the other two notes felt like unexpected attacks. When I apologised for unknowingly having the scissors and marring them through normal use, my one housemate immediately turned from looking like she expecting a fight and like she wanted to skin me, to being extremely nice. Probably fake. I asked her and another housemate who was in the room at the time not to leave notes like that on my door, because they felt like attacks, and that wasn't a nice thing to come home to. In response, the 2nd housemate accused me of being a hypocrite because I leave notes in the kitchen when there are messes left by unknown people, and justified things by treating my leaving for a couple of days as though I had commited some sort of offence. He implied that I left too often, and seemed to blame their own passive-aggressive behaviour on my absence. He sits around the house all day, almost never leaving, which is apparently how I'm supposed to conduct myself as well. When I reminded them that I have a cell phone, he got extremely agreeable and smiling hugely and fakely, so as to encourage me to leave.
People SUCK.
There have been many times, lately, when I've wondered whether or not I really WANT to heal people. It's such a human profession, and if I get truly sick of human beings, how will I be able to stand my chosen path in life? Perhaps it's not so bad, when you're not involved in their lives on a daily basis. Maybe that's when it gets ugly-- when people have expectations of you, and you have to adjust your life to accommodate them. If it's hard to need people, I think it's even harder to be needed by people. I'm too unpredictable to attach expectations to, or maybe even to get emotionally involved with. Maybe people sense that, and they avoid it. Maybe everyone's afraid they'll get their feelings hurt... And I suppose, since I don't seem to understand what others expect socially, that's not a completely outrageous concern. Since no-one seems to articulate their desires, their goals, their feelings, and I'm not accustomed enough to socializing to intuit what they want, perhaps their expectations will be disappointed. Is that a flaw in who I am, or just a character trait? It shouldn't make me unlovable, right? No, it shouldn't.
And the funny thing is, there's a girl who's in love with me right now! I feel sorry for her, too... I think I have the capacity to be an amazing person, but lately I've felt like that's unreachable. And I feel like, even if she accepts me unconditionally and loves me for who I am, she'll have expectations of my which will be disappointed. My emotions change like the weather, my needs and plans shift without conscious choice, and I often don't know what they'll become. I don't know whether she thinks that's endearing, or whether she's getting driven slowly crazy by it. She also doesn't communicate well, like so many people. I often don't know what she's thinking or feeling, and asking explicitly feels like it's not appropriate. Maybe it is. I'm not good at being in love. And ours is a relationship which is punctuated by a large amount of time together being spent at school, with large gaps between when we see each-other. Maybe that separation and the unpredictability of our time together makes it harder to relax and just be. I feel like she has invaded my life, even though she's not in it that much. My life has contorted itself in interesting ways so that I can spend time with her-- and of course I want to be with her-- but that means that my way of living feels disrupted. That feels uncomfortable, and I'm not sure how to fix it. Am I just unwilling to change? That doesn't seem like me at all! I feel like I'm resenting her a little for being in my life, and I can't pin down why. It doesn't make sense. Are there boundaries that need to be set? If so, how? I'm bad at being in love. Maybe it's just that I'm out of practice, or maybe it's just that I've established a status quo which keeps me in a good place most of the time, and I don't want to change it. We'll be talking tonight, so I'll bring all of this up with her and try to solve it, but I'm worried it's actually just a flaw in me, as a person. That I'm entirely at fault. That maybe it can't be fixed. Sigh. Then I would be alone again. We have to talk about it, because sometimes she feels uncomfortable because of it; she says she gets mixed signals from me, which is entirely true! Of course I want to be with her, but I don't feel like I can ever say no when we have an opportunity, because she'll be crushed. Maybe I'm not asserting my needs enough.
I wish I knew what to do. At least I got all this out in writing... that helps, a little.
Now I have to go buy flea shampoo for my cat. Argh.