Some Night Thoughts
My sleeping pattern's gone crazy consistently for the first time in a while. I've been getting up after midday for a while now and going to bed at 2/3 in the morning. It's not been fantastically fun and I miss the daylight. Thanks to the early start of the SJA activity and the long shift, I came home and fell asleep pretty much instantly and slept until one in the morning, but now I can't quite sleep. Usually, when this has happened, the best thing is to get up for a couple of hours and go back to sleep. So that's what I'm going to do.
However, as I was lying half asleep, some thoughts were going through my head and I thought I need to get them down, otherwise I really will not be able to sleep. They also seemed good thoughts, so it's worth a go.
My brain was floating thinking a bit about my childhood. I've been able to remember a lot more of my childhood than I've ever been able to remember before. I've been trying to sift through the memories a bit more in a meaningful way to try to work stuff out.
Pretty much there are two things, neither of which seem to be very connected at the moment. The first is that I seem to have inordinate trouble being emotionally vulnerable. It's weird, because I've been thinking that, thanks to the transition, I'd be having to get used to being physically vulnerable and I do have issues with that. But they've kinda settled down as if they never were.
Why it's more emotional vulnerability is that, well, being female I've kinda been glorying in how strong I am there, but well, maybe a bit too much. Friendships and the like are usually based on shared vulnerabilities and I've become a little conscious of how I've been saying to people "I don't need you, I don't need anyone." That's not very nice and it's been driving people away. Today was kinda nice because I got to show that minimal bit of vulnerability that made for pleasant company with people, so that's why I'm thinking of it.
The second concerns childhood memories a bit more. I've had more access to my childhood memories than I've ever had before. Instead of just being traumatic and really bad, I've been able to see a lot more. I think I'm suddenly interested, for the first time, in how children develop because I can see how my brain accepted and dealt with certain things. In terms of the gender dysphoria, I can also see how there is no awareness of it before the age of 14, yet how it had already shaped my whole personality by that stage.
I'm not doing a good job of explaining it quickly, but it's like, because of the gender dysphoria, I didn't develop in certain ways which would have given me the emotional capacity and maturity to deal with who I was and what was happening to me. Not having that maturity meant that I couldn't be self-aware about it, so I couldn't see what was happening to me and I most certainly couldn't do anything about it. I can also see how my upbringing as a boy failed to stimulate certain areas of my brain which started to get stimulated and develop further during transition. It's kinda weird, but a lot of my childhood development, if I understand it correctly, really is between the ages of 25 to now.
I'm kinda amazed I got through as much of life as I have with what I had and I can see how the whole growing up and being very successful at physics would have given the appearance of growing up without necessitating any growing up on my part.
That completely borked up childhood development pathway which I followed means I probably have no real intuitive handle on how real children grow up and maybe some of my pain is seeing children have what I couldn't have. I'd actually like to study it for a bit. It would be interesting to see. It might also help me understand a lot of how I did things wrong with the behavioural side of teaching. Not that I'm planning to go back there, but it would be nice to learn from my mistakes.
However, as I was lying half asleep, some thoughts were going through my head and I thought I need to get them down, otherwise I really will not be able to sleep. They also seemed good thoughts, so it's worth a go.
My brain was floating thinking a bit about my childhood. I've been able to remember a lot more of my childhood than I've ever been able to remember before. I've been trying to sift through the memories a bit more in a meaningful way to try to work stuff out.
Pretty much there are two things, neither of which seem to be very connected at the moment. The first is that I seem to have inordinate trouble being emotionally vulnerable. It's weird, because I've been thinking that, thanks to the transition, I'd be having to get used to being physically vulnerable and I do have issues with that. But they've kinda settled down as if they never were.
Why it's more emotional vulnerability is that, well, being female I've kinda been glorying in how strong I am there, but well, maybe a bit too much. Friendships and the like are usually based on shared vulnerabilities and I've become a little conscious of how I've been saying to people "I don't need you, I don't need anyone." That's not very nice and it's been driving people away. Today was kinda nice because I got to show that minimal bit of vulnerability that made for pleasant company with people, so that's why I'm thinking of it.
The second concerns childhood memories a bit more. I've had more access to my childhood memories than I've ever had before. Instead of just being traumatic and really bad, I've been able to see a lot more. I think I'm suddenly interested, for the first time, in how children develop because I can see how my brain accepted and dealt with certain things. In terms of the gender dysphoria, I can also see how there is no awareness of it before the age of 14, yet how it had already shaped my whole personality by that stage.
I'm not doing a good job of explaining it quickly, but it's like, because of the gender dysphoria, I didn't develop in certain ways which would have given me the emotional capacity and maturity to deal with who I was and what was happening to me. Not having that maturity meant that I couldn't be self-aware about it, so I couldn't see what was happening to me and I most certainly couldn't do anything about it. I can also see how my upbringing as a boy failed to stimulate certain areas of my brain which started to get stimulated and develop further during transition. It's kinda weird, but a lot of my childhood development, if I understand it correctly, really is between the ages of 25 to now.
I'm kinda amazed I got through as much of life as I have with what I had and I can see how the whole growing up and being very successful at physics would have given the appearance of growing up without necessitating any growing up on my part.
That completely borked up childhood development pathway which I followed means I probably have no real intuitive handle on how real children grow up and maybe some of my pain is seeing children have what I couldn't have. I'd actually like to study it for a bit. It would be interesting to see. It might also help me understand a lot of how I did things wrong with the behavioural side of teaching. Not that I'm planning to go back there, but it would be nice to learn from my mistakes.