ramblings of a trans guy with cptsd *tw*

08/08/2022 // i am codependent and i hate it

i have not had a good couple days. the whole purpose of the creation of this thread is solely to get this problem out somewhere. my girlfriend has started getting back into an online game she enjoys, because i developed an interest in it and accidentally sucked her back into it via asking her to play with me. from what i heard from her many of the prominent figures in this community were groomers, or generally inappropriate to her when they were adults and she was 14. because of this, i'm not the biggest fan of interacting with players of this game, but she's very happy to be talking to her old friends. she joined a discord server ran by a friend, and has been spending a lot of time talking to and playing with these people. i'm happy for her in the regard that she has really struggled with having friends for a while, and a lot of the people in this server seem nice.

the problem arises over the fact that she plays this game highly competitively. as somebody who is just getting into it, i actually cannot keep up with her. she is climbing back up leaderboards very easily which makes us unable to play together because of restrictions placed, but her friends are the same rank as her, so every day ive been watching her play with other people for 5-6 hours while i play alone, and it's honestly really upsetting. it doesn't feel like there's really time for me at the moment. even when i have gotten to play with her, i feel incompetent compared to her. i have a really bad inferiority complex and i feel terrible every time i mess something up. she's also kinda aggressive towards our other teammates and i can't help but feel if i wasn't her partner, she'd be saying this stuff towards me too.

the mood has been kind of tense because of this, and i am consumed with so much shame and embarrassment for creating a problem over an online game. she's very frustrated that i won't try to interact with her friends, but i have really severe anxiety and interacting with people, especially several at once, makes me feel sick. because of this, she's mostly telling me to just go make my own friends then and maybe we need space etc. etc. and it really feels like i'm being pushed away almost out of frustration. i feel horrible and disgusted with myself. i feel like the more upset i get the more she's going to prefer the friends she's making, and the further i will pushed away from her. i wish deeply that i wasn't like this, that i didn't feel threatened by her friends, that i could handle her spending hours with other people. i'm trying to just keep it to myself. but because i've been noticeably upset for days, she usually doesn't want to speak to me when i sound sad. and it feels shitty for me to ask her to do things like watch movies, and it's usually a no, but she gets super excited to watch movies with these friends. i just feel like i'm inherently worth less than these people, and maybe i'd be better off removing myself from the situation.

really, i'm not sure what to do. ive been in bed for hours. she sent a long message apologizing for some things she's done too, extending a grapevine per se, but when she woke up the tone was completely different and she was upset with me. i haven't replied properly to what she sent yet now because honestly it feels inappropriate and maybe she doesn't mean it anymore.

shit's tough, and it's honestly embarrassing that this is all sourcing out from a goddamn video game.

09/08/2022 // false alarm, maybe these were valid feelings

the problem i mentioned yesterday was actually resolved rather easily, which was a shock after a couple days of a negative mood. she attempted to propose a break because i wasn't being honest with her and she wasn't sure how to be in a relationship with me if i couldn't even talk openly, which very easily coaxed me into having everything spill out once i'd calmed down. i had been shutting up because she had expressed that me being honest was making her guilty & also the fact that in our conflict, i felt more invalidated than listened to. there was a lot of asking me 'why' i think something while she's angry, which to me, reads as 'are you actually so stupid that you could think that?'.

i do hope the proposition of a break was not serious and will not become a pattern when she gets frustrated with me. she reassured me that it was entirely because she wants to be with me but she didn't really know what to do in a situation where i wasn't expressing all my feelings openly, but it makes me nervous she was wishing i said yes.

anyways, i told her a lot of what was bothering me and it actually went very well. it feels like there's been a weight taken off my back. it never fails to shock me how quickly things go back to normal with her after the ice is broken during conflict. it's just an immediate shift from all these bad emotions to feeling like i have a partner again, and then the security of feeling that way calms me right down.

within another note, i'm struggling with my dysphoria quite severely due to the fact that every time i eat, it triggers it. i feel like i'll gain weight and then i'll end up looking more feminine. while my brain wants to combat this via starving myself, that's definitely not the answer & instead im opting to meal plan and pick up some new recipes so i can make sure i'm eating healthy enough to not gain weight, but also to get all the necessary vitamins/proteins/carbs i need. i have always had an extremely bad diet and my food intake in a day can range from nothing to far more than i need. back in october i had not eaten for so long out of depression that i ended up fainting. hopefully if i meal plan then i can avoid this, especially as the fall rolls around and the worst of my depression begins to kick in.

Hi, did you want to talk about this? Or just journal about it?

13/08/2022 // its 2 am and i'm making myself a hamburger

which i am quite proud of, due to the fact that i have barely fed myself in the last 48 hours other than a small dinner and some snacks such as chips & a lunchable. i'm currently waiting for the oven to heat up so i can throw some fries in & then i will wait 5 minutes before putting the burger on, so ideally i can eat them both at the same time. last time i did this i made the mistake of putting the fries in after i cooked the burger, so i ended up waiting like 10 minutes for the fries to cook while my burger got cold.

jealousy

i find jealousy to be the most destructive emotion i experience, mostly because there's not much you can do to combat it externally. it's an emotion born through insecurity and a lack of satisfaction with your own situation. lately i have been experiencing a lot of it, whether it's interpersonal, dysphoria and towards things that i can't have. while i mostly opt towards swallowing it down, i've gotten advice from two people now that i need to express it, so i'll use this as an outlet.

i'm jealous of cis men. my dysphoria has been killing me for days, and seeing a guy makes me want to scream. it's inherently unfair that the vast majority of people are born as the gender they identify as- they just get to be raised as the person they're meant to be, they get the secondary sex characteristics to go along with it, and their gender is affirmed by others. it's not fair that i was unlucky enough to end up being in the minority group that does not get these luxuries, yet it's still my reality. i will never be able to change my bone structure, i will never be able to erase or escape the years i spent being raised as female, i will never know what it is like to be without trauma caused by predatory men who prey on women exclusively. i'm tiny, and i won't grow. i will have to spend thousands of dollars just to be comfortable within my own body, while others get it for free. i will have to cope with the fact that there are people out there who believe i am insane, delusional, even schizophrenic. people who would like to hurt me solely because i do not fit within their narrow worldview of gender presentation. i see transphobia being pushed as a 'movement', as people fighting back to speak the 'truth', no matter the fact that their truth is subjective and not even based in fact much of the time. labeling themselves as 'superstraights', military bans, the rampant misgendering of public figures, proposals of laws against trans children, hate being spread as an 'opinion' whether through social media or tv (trans people will assault you, or they're grooming your children!); it all serves no purpose but to discourage trans people from being themselves- to make them feel unsafe.

i'm angry because even policies that are not targeting trans people end up presenting me with a disadvantage. my province has talks of privatizing healthcare, and i am afraid of what this would mean for me. i am afraid of what this would mean for my transition. i've been invalidated by healthcare professionals. my doctor said she'd be doing me a disadvantage to allow me access to hormones, in case i change my mind. what an utterly disgusting thing to say to a trans person, let alone one that is sitting in your office begging you for the fourth time this year to allow them access to hormones, because they're not sure if he can take this much longer. a cis woman shouldn't be the determining factor in whether or not i get to relieve my significant dysphoria. cis people don't have to deal with this shit. i can't open a bank account, i refuse to get a student id, i dread getting a driver's license, because i need to change my legal name which is pages upon pages of paperwork. i can't get a passport. every time i see my health card i'm reminded of what i am and what i'm not. it's a coin toss whether i get misgendered, and another one to determine if the person will respect being corrected, or if they'll simply double down. my anxiety revolves around my gender. the way i dress, what i eat, how i talk. it's all done to avoid dysphoria, not because i want to. i'm so sick of it.

i can't help but feel bitter when i see people complimenting other men. whether it's about their height, their hands, their voice- it all feels like a personal attack towards me. what they have is all that i lack. i am not tall, i do not have hands that girls would find attractive on a man, i do not have a deep voice. while hormones can resolve some of this, i'll never quite be what i was if i was just born male. i can do nothing about this. sometimes i feel trapped, chained to this body that was never quite mine in the first place.

cleaning

this might be a stupid topic compared to the other things i've posted about, but i'm genuinely so frustrated right now. does anybody else no longer want to do a task if somebody tells you to? i swear to god my grandmother has a knack for demanding i do something that i was going to do in the first place, moments before i do it. i was about to go do laundry and was feeling pretty good about it, because it's self-care and i deserve to have clean clothes, but she came pounding on my door telling me how disgusting it was and embarrassing that there's a pile of laundry on the floor in the hallway, and now i just don't fucking want to anymore. if i clean this up, it's not for her. i don't care if it's embarrassing, i've seen far worse from her. it's just a pile of laundry stacked up in the corner near my door because we don't have laundry baskets atm...

i'm just pissed off because if i clean it now i'm going to get some snarky 'wow you actually did something' in the morning and it makes me want to yell lmao.