Depression, Self-discovery, Transitioning - what I've learned
Another post about being trans! But also partially about depression and learning to understand yourself. Which is often also part of transitioning. What sparked this post: finding old pictures of yourself and realizing a lot of things about the you of the past.
Roll back the clock roughly three years. It was the tail end of the Covid pandemic, I had a stable job with a decent income, I had friends I could rely on and even though I maybe had put on a bit of weight during the pandemic, I genuinely looked good. I had a well-groomed beard with a matching haircut, tall but not too tall, blue-grey eyes and smiling in most of my pictures. Was I a 10/10? Nah. But going by looks, I would date my past self in a heartbeat! Herein lies the crux though: from the outside, I seemed happy, content and calm albeit a bit quiet. Inside, I was miserable and at that point in time, I didn't know why.
Having a father with a very successful career and an older brother already following his footsteps, school and thus grades were always on the top of the priority list. If you didn't get your a-levels, went to university and graduated with a good degree, your life was basically worthless, so I often thought. And while that didn't exactly make me a grade A student, not being allowed to fail was always on the top of my mind. It made me an anxious mess that always needed to please others', most prominently my family's, expectations. I realized that fairly early in my life, around 7th grade, yet I always kept telling myself that I would just have to keep my head down and keep on keeping on. And when I would have my degree and a stable job to match, all of this will be worth it. Fast forward 10 years with a Bachelor's degree in Business Information Systems and a well-paying job I was still an anxious, insecure mess.
At that time, I looked for other explanations - surely the pandemic depression had hit me as many others. I went to a neurologist at my GPs recommendation who did little but prescribe me Sertraline. I took it for a while, convinced myself I was better and eventually stopped taking it. Found myself a girlfriend, surely I must simply be lonely. Nope, it only made me more miserable having to pretend I was a stable guy with no problems at all. She could tell, I wasn't exactly good at hiding it. Should you ever read this, Maria - I'm sorry. Maybe I need to switch jobs, maybe more money is the answer! Nope, that also wasn't it. Moving back into my hometown, back to your roots? That actually made things worse. More on that in another post, maybe. In the end I tried to tell myself this was simply living: I performed at work, I made good money, why are you still trying to fix something that (seemingly) wasn't broken? Maybe this was how it always meant to be.
Something... wasn't right. That much I knew. I understood that people would've done a lot to have a life I had. I felt ungrateful for being unable to enjoy the life I had built, but after speaking with my friends, I realized that what I felt wasn't normal. And so, at the suggestion of a friend, I went soul-searching. Now, it might sound a bit more esoteric than it actually was. To me, soul-searching is spending time with yourself. Not for yourself, with yourself. I sort of observed myself in every day life, noted how I felt, what my subconscious was doing, really trying to understand myself. And what I noticed during this time was invaluable.
What I noticed first and most prominently was how I perceived women. More often than not, the feeling that dominated the most when I saw another woman was jealousy. I was jealous. Jealous of how their hair looked, jealous of their clothes, jealous of how soft their skin just looked in the sunlight. I expected to feel lust, not longing to be in their skin. That realization... confused me more than it answered any questions. My first instinct was that I was so unhappy, so depressed that I simply wanted to be anyone else but me. And what was the furthest removed from a depressed man? A happy woman. It made sense at the time, but it didn't answer any questions. I had no idea what to do with the realization and that was until I decided to follow through on what I felt.
Most people know the cliché that trans women played with dolls when they were kids, played primarily with girls, opposed boyish stuff. It was nothing like that for me. Yes, I was a social outcast, I was a nerd back then that likes anime and video games (still am) but I played football (soccer for my American readers), participated in a sports club and had plenty of male friends. So imagine my surprise when I stood in front of my bathroom mirror with poorly done makeup and a dress that didn't quite fit me, weeping tears of joy. I felt like I finally saw myself in the mirror, past the mask that was practically glued to my face for the past 28 years. I was happy, thrilled, ecstatic even - but I was also so very scared. Scared for what it meant, scared for what it said about me and how it would affect me.
It's difficult to describe in words what this cocktail of emotions swirling inside you feels like. The best way I could come up with is to imagine feeling tense and relieved at the same time. Like a beating heart, you contract and relax multiple times a minute as my thoughts pingponged all over the place. It took me a few days to mentally recover, at least somewhat, to a, say, functional state. I had to take days off of work to figure out who I am. It sounds silly saying it now, but it was like losing "yourself" and finding yourself at the same time. Emotional whiplash, so to speak.
The following days were spent looking up what I felt. Finding other people, learning terms like "gender dysphoria", reading reports of people that have felt similiarly. One story after the other, it was like someone was reading me like an open book. I could relate so well, understanding their feelings and accepting the truth, that this is who I am, or rather, always have been, just buried so deep in denial and telling myself it's something else but this.
I went to a therapist, who confirmed my thoughts - I had gender dysphoria and, over the course of 18 months and many sessions, we figured out why it took me this long to realize and accept this. I'll go into that another time, but it was a lot of mental work and energy to finally be at peace with yourself. I know I kind of rambled in this post and what I experienced isn't necessarily applicable to everyone else. The takeaway I wanted to share is that depression isn't easy to explain, it ever won't be and it's especially difficult to explain for people that are not you. And, more importantly, that it isn't your fault it is that way. Even if you end up finding the reason you're depressed, even if you understand why you are feeling this way, it won't magically fix you. It will only give you the ability to make things better, but most of the work will have to come from you.
I know that this isn't what someone who is depressed wants to hear, but going by my experience, it's what they need to hear. Saying that things aren't going to magically get better is the unfortunate truth. But! What is going to lift you up is that you can get better. It's not a never-ending story with no way out, but there is hope, you just have to want it and let others help you to getting out the pit you're in. It's not easy, it never is. But things can get better.