Life With Music

I was listening to some of my favorite music this morning. After a few tunes had come and gone I realized something curious about the music. There have always been certain songs that seemed to speak to me, either simply through the sound or through the lyrics or both. Just a few years ago some of these songs very much stood out, enabling my feelings of futility and hopelessness at that time. The strange thing is that this morning I heard a couple of those same songs but now they resonate with hope and life and goodness.

Music has been part of my life for a very long time. It began when I was 12 or 13 years old and my parents gave me a hand held AM/FM transistor radio. This would have been around 1966 to 1967. By the early 60's and due to the increased prevalence of television, music had begun to dominate AM radio formats. By the mid 60's the number of AM radio stations had exploded and since FM radio offered a better technology than AM more and more stations were beginning to broadcast within the FM band.

So at the time young me acquired an AM/FM radio, broadcast music was really taking hold. I found many listening choices even here in the hinterland of the country, the back sticks of east central Iowa. Music was as much of an enhancement to my auditory sense as pleasant scents were to smell or good flavors were to taste. Music enhanced my moods and my thinking. I developed quite an appreciation for most kinds of music. Over time differing aspects of my life began to influence the type of music I listened to. And of course, since part of my life held a concealed darkness, heavy metal became the musical genre I most listened to. I was drawn to its doom and gloom lyrics and sound, but at the same time I was able to distinguish the craftsmanship put into the better composed pieces, and this greatly added to my appreciation of well composed music.

My love of music never led to an ability to create any of it myself, but while I might not always recognize art when I hear it I know what is good. Today there are very few genres that I turn away from. For me, music is life.

Two Weeks Post-op

Two weeks ago I finally Gender Confirmation Surgery. All of my life a physical part of my body did not belong, an actual birth defect in that, while I am female, this physical thing that was attached to me was actually a piece of male anatomy. How utterly weird is that? I had no choice in the matter. Though wrong, it was simply the body that I had developed. While I never accepted that it was truly part of me I had to use it. There was nothing I could do to change my body. I always loathed this birth defect but the thought of having this surgery was always a mere fantasy. There were no experienced surgeons nearby performing such a thing and the cost was astronomical.

However, within the past few years things have changed. There are more hospitals putting teams in place to offer the full slate of gender related surgeries. And many insurance companies are now covering the cost. Even Medicare and Medicaid. The gender specialist I see in Iowa City informed me almost two years ago that the University of Iowa Hospital was putting such a team together. How perfect would that be! A surgical team less than an hour's drive away! In July 2018 I had an orchiectomy by one of the doctors training for gender surgeries and had a chance to discuss when they might become available. First I was told the Spring of 2019. But it kept getting pushed back until finally the first gender surgeries were to occur in the Fall of 2019. I was ready.

Meanwhile, I learned of a few transgender people who were planning on having their surgeries done at the University of Wisconsin Hospital in Madison. They had a team that had been performing these surgeries for well over a year and had developed a very good reputation. These friends pointed out that they preferred having their surgery done by an experienced team as opposed to acting as guinea pigs for the first surgeries in Iowa City. Then in July 2019 I drove one friend to Madison for her surgery and stayed a week while she had her initial recovery. I had a chance to see the University of Wisconsin Hospital myself and meet the surgeon. I was convinced. I had a consultation with this surgeon regarding my own surgery and the date was set for December 10th, 2019.

That was two weeks and two days ago. The surgery went very well as has the recovery, my having surprisingly little real pain and immobility. Oh sure, there is still quite a bit of swelling and scarring that will require a few weeks of healing time, and a persistent soreness that should also dissipate over time. I am to refrain from sitting straight up, or directly on my bottom for at least 30 days but this is a minor inconvenience. My body is finally as normal as is possible! I am in a very happy place.

Soul Mate? Twin Flame? Who cares, these labels do not matter.

There's a concept out there of something called a "soul mate". Like most other things there are varying descriptions of what this is. From all of these differing descriptions here is what I believe. A soul mate is a person you come across who at once seems totally familiar and who you fell totally comfortable with. A soul mate is someone who has more in common with you, is more like you, than all others. A soul mate is someone who you have shared previous lives with and who you will likely share future lives with. And someone who is the very best to share your current life with.

Another concept exists called a "twin flame". This also has many varying descriptions and all appear to refer to a relationship that is more deep, more spiritual than a soul mate. One description is that a twin flame is a mirror of your soul, may have actually been the other half of your soul. At some point your soul, your spirit split in order to increase energetically spiritual work within the universe. A twin flame is someone you would be connected with in mind and spirit, and that connection will always exist.

I have heard that the the thicker, taller and healthier a tree becomes the more its root system spreads outward. Which leads me to imagine that the root system beneath the Great Redwood Forest must surely encompass half the planet. There is a person in this place and time that I have spent more than half of my existence with. During this time my love for this person has grown every millisecond. This love cannot be seen in any physical sense, cannot be measured by any visible means. But like a healthy, long-lived tree the foundation, the underlying life supporting its existence has grown and strengthened wonderfully. The love I feel for this person is stronger than the deepest root system that could ever support the largest forests on this planet.

I don't know whether or not such things as soul mates or twin flames, or planet-wide root systems actually exist. And truthfully, it doesn't really matter. Because to the deepest core of my being I do know this. If these things do exist, there is only one person in this universe that fits the description of them all for me. That person goes by the name of Susan Kay Rolfes. Sue is someone I am certain has been with me in past lives, who will be with me the rest of this current life, and will be with me again. She is the only one who is able to raise my spiritual energy to higher levels because of the unconditional love we share. Sue is the only body, spirit and soul that has made my life possible. Our emotional and spiritual connection has become so solid and strong that I believe nothing in this place or time could ever diminish it. That's how it has always been, and how it always will be.

I love YOU, Sue!

Goodbye to the old?

Transgender people are each as different and unique as are all other individual human beings. Each trans person has had their own unique experiences and issues, and all have their own way of dealing with being transgender. In general, after most trans people begin living as or transitioning to the gender that they identify as, they do in fact wish to push their previous, incorrect self behind them in some way. Some absolutely loathe their birth body and name, and more than anything else would like to erase it permanently. Some do have ceremonies or celebrations as they bring their lives closer to their perceived reality. One common example is some sort of ceremony that includes burning a copy of their original birth certificate when they have a legal name change, or after having a life affirming surgery.

After I first began living my life as Mikayla, I wanted nothing to do with references to my past, my incorrect self. I didn't want to see old pictures, didn't want to see my old name, and I didn't wish to be known as a transgender woman. I merely wished to live the rest of my life as the person I had always known myself to be.....a "normal" woman.

Over time that sentiment has mellowed. My past did happen a certain way and cannot be changed. I am in fact a transgender woman and I have come to believe it important to openly live my truth, to be visible. As wonderful as it might have been if I had been born correctly as female, two very important aspects of my life would not have happened. These two things ARE my life. One is having met Sue and having been blessed with our shared life. The other is having the honor to become a father (oh yes, father!) to our beautiful, wonderful daughter, Christina.

So, contrary to what many other trans people might have done, I did not say goodbye to my former body. During the lifetime that I lived with, and thoroughly hated, having male anatomy be a part of me, I don't feel a need to say goodbye to those previous physical pieces.  For me, this surgery doesn't really change who I am. My body now better conforms to my perception of reality, but my ongoing reality, the core part that defines who I am, remains unchanged.

I no longer feel a need to delete or ignore any aspect of my past. It was all a real part of my existence and truly influenced who I am today. Except for the great joy of Sue and Christina I might not ever celebrate any of my former maleness but at the same time it no longer depresses me. And I must admit to an increased happiness with how I now look.

I did it!

I did it! After a lifetime of dreaming and fantasizing about having a true female body, after a lifetime of being unable to ignore and do anything about the hated male physiology pieces of me, after knowing this would happen "sometime" but never really sure when that time might be, I have had Gender Confirmation Surgery. The procedure is called a Vaginoplasty and I had this done on December 10th, 2019. A talented and experienced team at the University of Wisconsin Hospital in Madison has taken the male parts of me that I have always loathed and reshaped them into fully female anatomy. This is so indescribably wonderful!

The surgery itself and subsequent recovery in the hospital for a mere three days went surprisingly well. I had expected extreme pain and greatly reduced mobility, but it has been nothing like that. There was a very small amount of pain at first but that has greatly subsided. There has been an ongoing soreness (so far) but that seems to be lessening every day. I must refrain from sitting straight up, or directly on my bottom, for at least 30 days to prevent stitches from being unduly pulled. But I have been able to stand and walk around somewhat freely, and I have in fact been out already a few times to stores and restaurants. My genital area currently has a certain amount of swelling and scarring as expected, and I must go through a few weeks of necessary healing. The UW Hospital medical team has told me that everything "down there" looks very good and that I can expect it all to look and feel completely natural after this recovery time has passed. I do not wish to look at myself yet. I am trying to be patient, to give myself this time to heal. However, it is necessary to feel and touch myself when showering and peeing. So I absolutely know that the hated male anatomy is completely gone and this part of my body is finally (FINALLY!) 100% correct.

I am not experiencing a more pronounced sense of femaleness. This surgery has not changed who I am. My spirit, my soul remains completely the same. However, I do feel a heightened sense of happiness and joy with myself. It's a bit difficult to describe but I feel a kind of completeness that I don't recall ever experiencing before. I also feel more anticipation for my life going forward. Life is good.

The Hallowed Halls of Education

I graduated in high school in May of 1973. Oh yes, I'm that young. To have actually graduated was something of a miracle since during my last year & a half or so in that establishment I made zero effort scholastically. I was at the beginning of being frustrated with and hating the world because of my gender issues which I had no choice but to keep hidden. Also, I was attracted to boys which was something I could never, ever act on way back then. Believe me, it really was a different world.

So. I hated life. I was getting more & more involved with drugs & alcohol as a means to numb my existence. Miraculously, I graduated from high school. I had absolutely no goals, but everyone else was going to college so I applied to UNI. And was accepted! I spent two years there, barely getting by on a minimal class load and getting high way more than attending classes. As that 2nd year drew to a close I was realizing what an incredible waste of time & money I was making. I quit school.

In the interest of surviving this life, and supporting my substance abuse, I got a job in a factory. This allowed me to sustain my recreational lifestyle, as well as to get a car and an apartment. Then, two or so years later, the best miracle happened, Sue came into my life. I still was only attracted only to guys bu by then I had long given up any shred of hope in finding a relationship with anybody. Sue was very different. I found myself attracted to who she was. I found her to be the nicest, most honest, and real person I had ever known. Gradually I got to know her better and was immensely surprised to find myself falling in love with her. I fell in love with her mind, spirit, and soul. I realized that this was someone I wanted to always be with so we married. I gradually stopped my substance abuse after she came into my life but I could not bring myself to telling even her about my gender incongruity.

A few years after we married Sue talked me into returning to college, and I did. I enrolled at Cornell College in Mt. Vernon. They had a very good financial deal offering a much lowered tuition for what they termed returning education students. I found that I now had a much more positive appreciation of school. I did very well there and graduated with a bachelor's degree in Computer Science in 1986.

Fast forward. After over thirty years of marriage I had come out to Sue as transgender. After denying my reality and stuffing it way down all of my life I had reached a point where I could no longer continue living as a guy. Of course this news was a huge shock to Sue. The man she had been married to for more than half her life considered himself to be a woman? But instead of ending our relationship as I expected she wanted to stay together. So instead of rushing headlong into a gender transition I gave her time to process it. I held back on beginning any elements of transitioning for a couple of years.

I began by seeing Dr. Nisly in Iowa City in May 2013 and starting hormone therapy the following August. I very gradually started dressing and presenting as a woman, first at home and the in public. In August 2013 I enlisted the help of a lawyer to have my name legally changed and my gender marker changed to female. By mid October the name and gender change had become legal, I came out to the final place that I needed to, my workplace, and at that point I began living legally 24/7 as Mikayla Grace Rolfes.

You'd think everything would be going great, and it mostly was, but about a year later I started dwelling on my past. A past life that I had missed out on, a past socialization as female that I never had. This led to a period of deep depression and suicidal ideation (including real attempts), a depression that I really didn't get out of until Fall of 2018. During that time I had gone on an extended leave of absence from work, eventually was asked to take an early retirement, and had started Social Security Disability.

Toward the end of 2017 my therapists (yes, multiple) felt that I needed to find ways to "keep busy" in my life. Back while at Cornell. I had developed a real love of school, and since that time I had always joked that if I won the lottery I would become a full time student. So I started thinking that returning to school might be good thing to do. I had this idea of pursuing my now current interest of History, and if things worked out maybe going for a degree, maybe eventually teaching. Lofty goals.

During November & December I applied at Mt. Mercy and Coe College. I was accepted at both but I chose Coe because of its more traditional campus. I signed up for 4 classes, a full-time student. But it was too much and too soon. The mild social anxiety I had always experienced had become much more heightened during my depression. I had difficulty keeping up with the homework and worse than that, spending extended periods in rooms full of people proved to be overwhelming. Apparently, the mild social anxiety I had always experienced had become magnified during my depression. I dropped one class, then another. After a few weeks I realized that just couldn't do it. So I dropped completely out of Coe. I may yet give it another shot, but possibly by taking classes online. I recently applied at the University of Iowa, and was accepted there. That plan is still pending.

I should add that I certainly don't believe education requires a formal piece of paper. Sue never went further than high school and she has more smarts & common sense in her little finger than many who have a PhD. I believe there's as much to learn by actively living as there is to be found in a formal classroom. Learning anything is growth, as well as being part of our purpose here. The how of learning and growing is not as important as just doing it.

Let's talk about Gender

It is factual truth that regardless of the body you inhabit, you have a gender identity and a sexual orientation. It is also a fact that these things begin forming while you are still in the womb.

Gender identity and sexual orientation are NOT the same. Both can easily take pages and books of discussion, so today I am going to mainly talk about gender. I fully realize that some of you know this stuff so you may be excused to return to your Fortnite marathon or Netflix & Disney+ bingeing.

Gender is how your mind/soul/spirit identifies. Many of you give no thought to gender identity. People are male or female. You are one or the other and have been perfectly happy with that situation for as long as you could breath. You might not have ever considered there to be any other self-identity than male or female, and that has been okay because for the longest time society has existed this way. It's referred to as the gender binary. In the past, society has not allowed for recognition of any other way to be. People were expected to exist within one box or the other. However, today we recognize that gender identification is more of a spectrum. Most people identify at one end or the other, male or female. Yet there are many who fall somewhere in between. Maybe not so strongly male, or strongly female. Maybe a bit of both male or female. Maybe directly in the middle of the spectrum, identifying as both male and female, or neither (non-binary or gender questioning). Humanity is rich this way. Please believe that there are as many people in this world that do not identify as distinctly male or female, as those who do. Me? I have always considered myself to be distinctly female, thank you very much.

(If those in the know are still around, please add any relevant comments that might better enhance or explain this discussion.)

There also exists this thing called transgender. Simply, when one is born into this world, the gender that the mind/soul/spirit identifies as does NOT match the physical body that one was born with. By the way, this is me. The truth is that existing this way can be very difficult. Most transgender people fear having this truth become known. They are afraid of being seen as a freak and/or shunned. Too often a trans person is rejected by friends or family, or loses their job or financial stability (if it even first existed). It's true that there are still far too many instances of discrimination, hate, homelessness, and abuse of all kinds towards anyone who is transgender. There are still far too many places where transgender people are not safe. I dearly hope that we might be getting to a tipping point where all that negativity begins to wane. Also, living with this kind of physical body/gender identity mismatch can and is a mental minefield. Society does seem to be reaching a point where many more transgender people are feeling free enough to accept who they are and share their authenticity publicly, and there are more resources available for dealing with being transgender. For those who are transgender, living as authentically as possible often does require medical intervention such as cross-hormonal therapy, mental therapy, surgeries and other things that often become very expensive. Insurance companies have begun covering some of this but we still have far to go. Acceptance is often all that we ask for.

Comments or questions are very much welcomed on this post.

The Blogging Mindset

When I started this blog I had the best of intentions. I wanted to share my feelings and my life. Especially after fully accepting my transgender nature. Sadly, I was a slacker. I could attribute it to being a lifetime member of The Procrastinators Club. But I think it might be partly due to not really believing anyone would be interested, or maybe that people might find these ramblings and see the real me. Lately I have also wondered if subconsciously I have kept a piece of me on hold. Before accepting myself as transgender my existence was partly within a long lasting fog. Since beginning my path to authenticity that fog has mostly lifted. However, there has always been this thing that always seemed to be blocking any full and true happiness with life. A part of me that has existed since I was born and was quite physically wrong. You cannot hide or ignore physical aspects of your body and this one thing has certainly been no exception. Every waking day of my life I have been confronted with this hateful piece of maleness, this physical thing that never belonged on me. This thing that should have never, ever been. In less than four days this atrocious physical aspect of myself is going to be removed, and shaped into that which I should have been born with. My excitement is through the roof to finally have this happen. The happiness and joy I am feeling is indescribable and I suspect this may only astronomically increase following my surgery on Tuesday.

So, it might be interesting to see what becomes of this blog I started a few years ago. There have been good postings as well as fairly dark ones. I have purposely left it all intact. Good or bad, positive or not, wouldn't it be nice to see more regular entries appear here?

In The Home Stretch

So much to talk about.......
I really need to post entries in here more regularly. Overall, my life right now is very positive. I'm moving forward on achieving a better spiritual awareness and learning the value of unconditional love. My soulmate, Sue, is still with me and I hope we are able to share decades more together. What more could I want? I have been leaning toward what that Zen saying proclaimed, "Nothing is what I want."

Well there is this one thing. Two weeks from yesterday I will be in the University of Wisconsin Hospital in Madison having my Gender Confirmation Surgery, a Vaginolasty. This is a procedure where an experienced surgeon takes the remaining pieces of my physical maleness and uses that to create a true vagina. The procedure I have been wishing for most of my life. A way to be as physically female as possible. Over the past six years the hormone replacement therapy has been doing a great job in smoothing my skin, making my body hair nonexistent (or fine enough to seem so), rearranging muscle mass into fat mass and shifting it to create more bodily feminine curves, including increasing the matter in my breasts, increasing them to a truly feminine shape and size. The main physical component of my body that hormones cannot change is my male genitalia. ugh.

So two weeks from today I will be recovering in the hospital the day after my surgery, and my genitalia will have been finally corrected. I remember when I was a young teen, praying to God before I went to bed to please change me during the night into a real girl (sort of a reverse Pinocchio). I also remember a couple of times wondering if I could find the courage to actually cut off that horrid maleness. Anyway, you know most of my story. Those things never happened and I went on living most of my life incorrectly as a guy.

I am not in any way frightened about this surgery. Up to now I haven't really been too anxious or excited either. This surgery is merely a procedure to correct my body, to finally make it normal. However, I have been thinking more lately about the reality of this surgery, and when I recover fully from it. Every day I cannot escape the male junk still on me, and the hate I have for it. This surgery will make my body normal for the first time in my life. It will not really change my thinking but it will somewhat change the way I think about myself. Bringing my body to its authentic state will more greatly match my sense of gender. And free up most of my remaining dysphoria allowing me to better concentrate on my spiritual path. 

An Actual Consultation For GCS!

Over the past few weeks I have been able to talk with a woman who had Gender Confirmation Surgery a year earlier. She had it done by a Dr. Gast at the University of Wisconsin Hospital in Madison. She had a great experience with the surgery and that hospital, and has been totally happy with the results. She talked in detail about her experience and what her life is like now. I learned that a good friend was scheduled to have the same surgery on July 19th and two other transwomen from the transgender support group have dates set in November. Madison isn't terribly far from my town so I decided to go there too. I made an appointment for August 1st for an initial consultation with Dr. Gast.

I drove my friend to Madison for her surgery and stayed until she was discharged from the hospital. Her surgery was on a Friday and she was discharged the following Wednesday. I then drove her home. My appointment was to be 8 days later.

So. Two days ago I had my initial consultation with the surgeon in Madison, Dr. Gast, who does Gender Confirmation Surgery. She's very caring and respectful. I'm in. The last step is verifying what my insurance will cover, and then set a date. But I must choose which type of GCS to have. There are two types of GCS: full depth and zero depth. Both result in a fully normal appearing vagina as well as a sexually functional clitoris. The difference is that full depth (Vaginoplasty) results in a full vaginal cavity. Zero depth (Vulvoplasty) will result in a small dimple (no vaginal cavity), but on the outside it will result aesthetically looking like a cis-woman's vagina. The full depth option requires laser or electrolysis hair removal around the base of the penis & around the scrotum, bowel cleanse before surgery, and dilating the vaginal canal the rest of your life. The zero depth option requires no hair removal, no bowel cleanse and no dilating. The zero depth surgery is safer and takes less time in the OR. The full depth option is being scheduled out to January/February. Zero depth surgery can be scheduled sooner, maybe
October/November?

Dr. Gast fully explained the pro's & con's of both options and did not pressure me to choose one over the other. She told me she would accept whichever option I choose, and she would do the surgery on me for either one. But she did explain that because of my age, diabetes, high blood pressure, etc. that I would run a risk of complications during surgery and a higher risk of infection. She advised that due to the health concerns the zero depth option might be the better choice for me. One other consideration is that I apparently don't have enough penile material (wtf?!) to create a full vaginal canal. The truth is that, most likely from having a lower level of testosterone all my life, I was never endowed with much "down there". For the full depth option she would need to take a skin graft, probably from my thigh, to complete the vaginal canal. I have dreamed of having the full depth most of my life. I have wanted to be as close as I could be to anatomically correct since I hit puberty. And it really isn't so much about experiencing sex correctly as a woman as it is feeling that my body is fully complete, fully whole. I have allowed myself to believe that I could only feel right about myself by having the full depth vaginoplasty. But I do understand the health risks so I will need to choose the zero depth option. After taking in everything I told Dr. Gast my choice would be zero depth GCS (Vulvoplasty). I got all emotional. I started bawling. Damn it, I'm bawling now.

Besides being a less complex procedure and much safer, there really are some good advantages to having the zero depth surgery. Hopefully I will be able to concentrate on the benefits of this choice. It truly is a final decision and I will need to fully accept it for the rest of my life.

The experience of loss

Despite the sentiment I expressed in my last post, and which I do strongly believe, a number of losses occurred over a few years' time that  had a profound affect on me in one way or another.

My brother-in-law Al passed away in May 2008. He was about 12 years younger than me. He had a very slight learning disability but he was everyone's friend. He was my friend. His death was completely unexpected. I was shocked and grief stricken. I will always miss him.

The flood in June 2008. I include this because it was such a disastrous event for our city. In a way it was a death of permanence. It showed everyone that nothing lasts forever. I wasn't personally affected but my in laws' house was flooded, more than halfway up in the main floor. And their house was six blocks away from the river. At the time I don't remember feeling profound grief. But afterwards any reminder of that event will choke me up and cause instant tears. 

My mother-in-law passed away in September 2011. She was very sweet and caring, and accepting of who I was when I came out. In many ways I felt closer to my in laws than to my own parents. My mother-in-law's health started to deteriorate some time after The Flood. Sue and all her siblings were with her during her last couple of days in Hospice. All of them, and I, were deeply grief stricken after she was gone.

My own mother's health began to fail around mid-2011. She had fibromyalgia and something similar to cystic fibrosis. This last was causing some kind of fiber-like growth in her lungs making it more and more difficult to breath. She eventually required extra oxygen which restricted her mobility somewhat. During her last few days my father and all of my siblings and their families were at my parent's house. The day before she passed away I stayed overnight there. Her breathing became more labored and she was for all intents and purposes unconscious. She passed away in her own home in February 2012. This was the second time I was present during the last hours of a close relative. Although I didn't feel close to my parents, my mother's passing had a deep effect on me.

My youngest brother Jay died in February 2013. I got a call from my sister the night he died and at first I could not believe it. No way could this be true. He was ten years younger than me. Apparently it happened right after he got off work. He was driving away from his workplace when it happened. His car went off the road still within the business grounds where his coworkers found him. His death was caused by a calcification of the heart. He was married to a nurse but rarely of ever saw a doctor for anything. At that time my father was in the hospital due to a growing issue with lower back pain. Since our mother had passed away just a year earlier we were afraid this news would have an adverse effect on him. I believe that Jay and my sister were closer to dad than anyone else. Even though Jay lived an hour and a half away, he came to visit dad quite often to just spend time with him and help him with things. I had a very difficult time at Jay's wake and couldn't bring myself to talk much with anyone. My sister and brother Kevin were awesome in the way they stayed beside the casket and talked to everyone lined up to view the casket. And what an incredible testament to how well liked my brother Jay was. It seemed that almost everyone from his workplace, from his church, neighbors and friends, and many relatives came to the wake. The line was long most of the evening and the funeral home had to stay open hours after the scheduled ending of the wake just to accommodate everyone. I think losing Jay affected me more profoundly than all the rest. Even now, years after his death, I can't think of him without weeping.

Dad passed away in December 2015. During the preceding two years his health gradually declined. He suffered with lower back pain. The doctor told him that surgery might fix it but that the place where the surgery was required was too near vital nerves and the surgery could cause critical damage. He had severe hearing loss as well as losing much of his eyesight. As I've said I didn't feel very close to my parents which was more my own fault than theirs. While I never felt much familial love for them, I never blamed them for it. I did feel close to my siblings but all three had moved far from home. I never blamed my siblings for this either but since they lived so far away and I stayed in town, I was the primary contact to my parents whenever they needed immediate help with anything. As their health began to fail their need for support increased. I will never, ever blame my parents or my siblings for this situation, but as my parents' need for assistance increased, so did my level of stress. A month before dad passed away I had made my second attempt to end my life. It's entirely possible the shock of what I did contributed to dad's passing but that is something that I will never know with certainty. In December 2015 dad's health became bad enough that he was taken to the hospital's ICU. After a few days he had reached a point where the doctor told us that he was still living only while wired up to the machines. We had the dreaded decision to make of whether to pull the plug or not. My brother, sister and I reached the decision together based on dad's wishes of not wanting to continue while hooked up to machines. This was the most difficult decision I ever had to make.

They are not really gone

Recently a friend was grieving deeply for a beloved pet that had passed away.
This is what I wrote to her:

Once you welcome them into your home, and start giving your love to them, they cease to be animals. They become true members of your family. The unconditional love you give them, they return doubled and tripled in their own innocent way. In many ways the bond they form with you is stronger and truer than any you might have with people. You, dear friend, are a special kind of person that finds it easy to extend this kind of unconditional love to our slightly more furry friends. Your bond with those that become members of your family has no equal in the human-only world. This kind of bond that you form is worlds higher and better than most people have ever realized. You have such a special, caring soul which now has an important part missing. Try to remember the love you had when they were still on this planet with you. Know that the love you provided has elevated the soul of your departed one to a higher plane than that reached by "ordinary" creatures. You two will be together again once your own spirit ascends to that same plane. They are not really gone, they are saving a place for you.

I love you, dear.

I fell deeper down the rabbit hole

I thought everything would be okay if I just kept busy. If I did that, maybe I wouldn't dwell on my inner darkness. By mid-2015 I had gone back to work. I went back to the PFLAG and transgender support groups. I joined the Cedar Rapids Pride committee. I got in a book club. I remember those things. There may have been one or two more. I cannot exactly say that this was a mistake but it did prove to be too much. I felt so much stress that I quit some of these things shortly after starting them. I think the real problem was that Depression was tightening its grip on me. No matter what I did I could not feel good anymore, no joy in anything. And I kept it to myself. Again. After that first incident in February I was afraid to admit to anyone that my mental state was still down in the pit. It became a simmering shitpot. The therapy and medications hadn't erased the depression, I was feeling increasingly stressed by the world around me, and I couldn't bring myself to tell this to anyone. Every thought running through my mind was negative. It seemed to me that it had been a huge mistake to have failed my suicide attempt in February.

By October 2015 I was again feeling that I wanted out of this life. I felt absolutely no hope. So I began making another plan. This time I just had to succeed. On a warm day in November I left work early, went home, and started swallowing all kinds of pills again. This time I saved the ones that would put me to sleep for last. I was well on my way when I started feeling really weird. I felt like I was vibrating and that I was being covered or wrapped up in something so that I could barely move. And I got scared. I wasn't sure how to contact Sue at her workplace and somehow was able to call my therapist for help. She told me to stop everything I was doing and she would call for help and get ahold of Sue. I was only partially aware of everything after that. I must've gotten the front door unlocked because soon there were some cops and firemen in my living room asking questions. I really don't remember much after that until I woke up realizing I was in the hospital ICU again. After a day or two they moved me to the Behavioral Management Unit again. After another week there I was sent home.

Was I cured now of depression? Not likely. But it was back to therapy and an ever changing prescription list intended to help me maintain some semblance of sanity.

Three years and ten months?!?

Wow! It's way past time to brush the dust off of this blog thing. Much has happened since August 9, 2015. Much is beyond the capacity of my memory cells to recall. But much needs to be said before I continue on with this thing.

The bad news is that my recent bout with depression lasted about four years. During that time I attempted suicide twice and two other times I became suicidal enough to require hospitalization. Yikes! The good news is that I finally got past that depression last Fall. Yayy!

There were ups and downs during that period of depression, mainly downs. Now that I've left it behind I am looking at the future. Setting some goals and making some plans. One day at a time.