Growth

I’ve had a lot of time to think recently, since submitting my dissertation I’ve had a lot more time to think about what’s gone on in my life over the last few years and I’ve realised I’ve grown as a person. Not just in the sense of I’m older. I feel like I’ve genuinely grown up.

As a trans individual that lost a parent at a young age who never really dealt with my grief I became a person that I’m not proud of.

I became angry, distant and not the person I truly am, not the person I was brought up to be.

I’d love to say my degree has helped me discover things about myself I wouldn’t have realised before but it hasn’t. Honestly, my degree has been kind of pointless. I haven’t really learnt anything new about the topic I’ve studied. I have however learnt a lot about me as a person.

I understand why I became the person I did. I lost a parent and went straight back to school, I didn’t talk about how I felt I just tried to ignore it and those feelings came out as anger. Now I’m not saying I was a violent, aggressive person. I wasn’t, but I was angry. Angry at the world. I was angry and upset that my mum was gone, I didn’t know how to trust people. I didn’t know how to deal with this turmoil of emotions I was experiencing. I was angry at myself for never being honest with my mum about my gender. I hated myself for that.

I was angry because people blamed my gender dysphoria on the fact my mum was dead and I “didn’t want to be myself anymore.” At the time I didn’t understand why they were saying that and I got angry at them for it. It put a strain on my relationships with people, with family.

Looking back at the person I was a few years ago I’m not proud of that person but I understand that going through that period in my life has helped me to grow as a person. It has helped me to become the person I am today.

I’m not saying I’m now a perfect person because I’m not. I still have my issues and I think I will for the rest of my life, I am however learning to deal with these issues.

I was talking to a manager at work the other day and he said something interesting. Something I already knew but hearing it come from someone else made it sound different.

The first step in changing is acceptance

It made me realise I can’t keep running from the person I was. I need to accept it and learn from it and I think I’m finally beginning to do that.

Life isn’t easy, it’s never going to be easy but how you deal with the problems you’re faced with is what is important. In previous years, I haven’t dealt with my problems and I believe that could be what has made my life feel like it’s so difficult. By not dealing with my issues they’ve snowballed, they’ve become even larger and at times it’s felt like I would never be able to get past them. It felt as though I was trapped in a room that was blocked by this snowball. What I didn’t realise is the way to escape this room is by slowly breaking down this barrier. Dealing with my issues slowly, one at a time.

If I keep running away, the snowball is just going to follow me and it’s going to get larger and larger.

I don’t have all the answers. I’m not sure how I’m going to deal with all my issues but I’m going to make a start. I want to get my life back on track and I want to start breaking down this snowball so that it doesn’t chase me until I eventually get so caught up in it that it ruins my life.

Alone at Christmas

For the first time in my life, I was alone for the majority of Christmas day. I don’t mean alone in respect of being in my room whilst everyone was downstairs, I mean alone in the house with no one else here. Now I don’t want sympathy because I did get to spend the morning with my family. Which I know some people don’t even get to do, but being alone for the evening was weird. Its something I have never experienced before and its made me think.

I was alone for Christmas Eve afternoon, Christmas day afternoon, boxing day and I’m going to be alone until tomorrow afternoon.

It’s been strange, I’m so used to being surrounded by family all over the Christmas period but now we are all getting older, that’s bound to change and I understand and accept that.

It wasn’t all bad, I got to chill out, watch TV, relax and not have to wear actual clothes, I could wear my PJ’s which was nice.
The part I struggled with was when I wanted to use my presents. I got some board games as my main presents and because I was alone, I couldn’t play them. I tried, but it isn’t possible to play scrabble alone.

It also made me think about my future. I’m not in a relationship, I’m not even friends with anyone where it could potentially lead to a relationship. I’m not on any dating apps or anything of that nature because they’re not my kind of thing.
I kind of realised, if I don’t start looking for a relationship, then I’m going to spend a lot more Christmases on my own and I don’t want that. I also realised that soon, I’m going to finish university and I cant live with my dad for the rest of my life, I’m going to need to look at buying my own house or flat… but I also realised that I don’t really want to live alone, I’d get bored, I’d get lonely, I wouldn’t be happy. I also don’t think I would be able to afford a house on my own, or at least not a nice house where I would be happy.

This Christmas has really made me think about things and I’ve realised I’m surrounded by people, but I’m actually very lonely. I don’t even have any friends that I would feel comfortable spending Christmas with, I don’t have anyone that I can just call for a chat, I thought I had friends, but when I actually think about it, I’m really quite lonely and I don’t like it, but I also don’t know how to change it, I don’t know how to make friends as an adult…

Mental health update

I’m struggling

For the past few weeks/months I’ve been okay. To be completely honest I’ve been quite good in terms of my mental health.

I started to accept what was going on at work and the fact every time I went in for a shift something else had changed. I started to come to terms with the fact my dad was seeing someone new. I started to rebuild my relationship with my best friend that had become a little torn because of the distance with university. I also smashed my first u oversight essay of the year and got an A (or as we call it here, a first) I even got to meet up with my old support worker as friends, because I overcame the dependence I had on him and the relationship we had was a strange one anyway as I had known him so long we had become friends as well as having a working relationship. So all in all, things were going pretty well. I hadn’t felt the urge to self harm. I wasn’t dreading getting out of bed, if even go as far as to say I was positive about the future. My finances were on track and things were the best they had been in a while. I had even come off my antidepressant medication!

Then this week came along.

The weekend started off well, I went to my works Christmas party and had an amazing time. I’m not one to usually go out drinking but I pushed myself and I’m glad I did. The evening started off a little tough as I didn’t know how to go about being in a club or ordering a drink from the bar as I’m not great in new places or in social situations, but my friends helped me out and the evening turned out to be incredible!

When I went back to university it all became a bit much for me and I didn’t go in this week, I didn’t even do work from home. I have literally been in bed all week because I couldn’t face being around people. I got up, showered, went back to bed.

Yesterday I went to work and I did struggle. I knew in myself I was struggling but I pushed through and I ended up winning a day off from a little quiz we did which was nice.

It was the evening that got to me.

I came home, I watched tv then I went to see my brother. We spoke about Christmas and I came away from it realising that I’m likely going to be on my own for most of Christmas Day as my dad is going to his girlfriends, my Mum has passed away and my brother and his girlfriend are spending Christmas with her family this year. So that really upset me, Christmas is a time for family and for me, I only have my dad left really because my brother has his own life, he’s about to get married and start his own family and my Mum is up in heaven. So the fact my dad would rather spend Christmas with his girlfriend of a year than spend it with his son hurts. A lot. Especially because i can’t exactly spend it with my mum. I mean, I probably will spend most of the day at the cemetery. I have already thought about trying to find a picnic rug somewhere and take my laptop with me and watch a film sat by her grave with a big coat on to keep me warm.. but it’s not going to be the most enjoyable thing in the world.

I went to sleep last night and I was upset. I had urges to hurt myself. I didn’t want to get up this morning for work. I didn’t want to do anything apart from stay in bed and cry. Eventually I fell asleep.

When I woke up today I was tired. I hadn’t slept very well. I hadn’t had a good night and I knew I was about to face a day in work of being screamed at by customers.

Not what I wanted.

The urges were so bad and I couldn’t see a way to get through today with the urges so I gave in. I self harmed again.

My previous ones had all healed. They were fading but now there’s more.

When I got to work it started snowing and that made me even less excited about work because I just wanted to build a snow man because for me, building a snow man is what I’ve always done and it is what feels normal when it snows. Anyone that follows my blog knows I don’t like change so to change this habit I have of building a snow man is going to be difficult. Even if I am growing up now.

Work was tough. I kept getting this wave of anxiety that I’ve not had for a while. I kept feeling as though I was about to throw up. My chest kept going tight and I couldn’t breathe properly. My head was pounding. The noise was so loud. People talking all the time. No peace.

I asked if I could change my 2×15 minute breaks to 3×10 minute breaks because I knew that I would struggle only have 2 occasions to get outside in the quiet.

I emailed a manager I feel comfortable with and I tried to explain how I was feeling but she didn’t reply. I tried to push that I needed the 3 breaks but my new direct line manager wouldn’t let me.

It was such a crap day. I just felt so crap all day and I struggled so much.

When I got home I slept.

I’m meant to be going out tomorrow to the Christmas markets but I don’t want to. I don’t think I can. Im not mentally strong enough right now to go out and socialise

I’m struggling a lot. I feel as though all the progress I made had just come tumbling back down and it’s so difficult to keep positive and try and begin making progress again.

I just feel so low and so fed up and I don’t know what to do or how to fix it.

Change

Not so long ago someone said to me;

“You’re not an odd person, at least 50% of the population are opposed to change.”

I’ve tried to get to grips with this idea and I decided to do my own research. It turns out current research shows that 62% of people are opposed to change.

It’s quite a lot when you think about it, but then again, without speaking to every single person on the planet. How can we possibly know if these statistics are accurate? From where I’m sat, it feels like I’m one of only a few people who doesn’t like change.

Let’s look at it this way. Decorating your house, people often change the colour scheme, it’s considered a relatively normal thing to do. Buying new clothes, a different style to usual. A new haircut. Buying a new car, people rarely buy the exact same car they have just had, they upgrade it, get a newer model, maybe a different colour.

For me, I hate all of these things. They upset me. My dad recently changed a picture that had been hanging on our wall for 5 years and my first instinct was to change it back.
He also moved the room around so the sofa wasn’t touching the radiator so we can have the heating on during winter. When I walked in and it had changed I sat in my room for 3 days and wouldn’t sit downstairs because it had changed.

I hate change. 

The magnitude of it isn’t normal.

Change upsets me. It makes me uncomfortable and it makes me anxious.

In my job, things are changing at the moment. I knew they would eventually, but the changes seem to be happening very quickly. With me only working there 2 days a week, the changes seem to be happening very drastically and I don’t know how to cope with it all. I’m not programmed to deal with change.

I tell people I don’t like change and they say they understand. They say that I’m not alone in disliking change but when it comes down to it, I am alone in these thoughts because no one truly understands how difficult change is for me.

Apparently this week the team I work on has changed, the colleagues I used to sit with have been moved and they now sit elsewhere. I cannot begin to explain how anxious this has made me. I don’t know what I am going into on Friday. I don’t know who I am sat with, I don’t know if I have moved desks.
This shouldn’t be an issue, this shouldn’t be making me feel the way it is.

I feel so confused like I don’t know what is going on anymore because things aren’t the way they used to be and that makes me uncomfortable, it makes me nervous and I hate it.
I know change can be good but its hard to see it at the moment.

Social media

I wish I lived in a world where social media didn’t exist. 

Social media has become a part of my everyday life. There’s no discussion there. I’ve had facebook since I can remember, Instagram and snapchat since they came out. Tumblr for years. 

I live in a world where we are programmed to wake up, check social media and then start our day. Where a few hours without social media and you feel as though you have missed out on something. Where no matter what you’re doing or who you are with there is this constant need to post about it online. 

Likes have become a value of your worth. 

Id love to just delete all social media and just live a life without it for a while but it isn’t something I can do. It’s too much of my every day life for it not to be there anymore. It’s like a drug. It’s an addiction. We crave likes on facebook or Instagram. We feel like we need to post about everything online. 

When we’re bored, when we have nothing to do, when we are waiting, when we are with friends, social media is something that’s just a part of everything and it’s annoying. I wish it had never been invented. I wish as a society we hadn’t become so dependant on it. 

I miss the times I used to ring my friends for hours on end to catch up. When I met up with them and we could talk for the full day about what we have been up to. Now it’s a case of “oh yeah I saw that on snapchat” conversation over. 

Social media is making us less and less social. You go for a meal and people have to snapchat it, you go to a concert and people spend the whole time on their phones recording it so they can “enjoy it later” why not enjoy it now? Why not live in the moment and embrace the experience? Why do people feel the need to post about it online… is it a need to show off? To prove something? 

I’m fed up of it all. I want my life back and I want to enjoy the experiences I have and I don’t want to be so dependant on my phone. 

So as of tonight, I’m deleting the facebook app on my phone. Then as time goes on I’ll delete each app slowly but surely. I’m tired of being a robot to social media. I want my life back.