social habits

this one has been on my mind for a little while now, and truth be told it's actually something I've been accused of before not liking people, or otherwise being antisocial.  but as I hope all my friends would be willing to tell you that's not the case there are however a number or things that keep me from being a very social individual.

one of the biggest (and most normal) reasons for this is that I am an introverted individual. the short version of this is that being around crowds of people just drains me, I'd also much rather have a slower conversation were I have a few moments to think through my response than the rapid conversations that are the norm. I've actually been reading about it in an issue of psychology today and there is a lot more to it than that, but if you feel shy or out of place in big parties I recommend doing some reading, learning about common introverted behavior really felt freeing to me. (the psychology today website doesn't' have the article I'm reading, which is entitled revenge of the introverts, but check a few of these out and you'll get some basic ideas, they have a lot more if you just search introvert thttp://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-introverts-corner/201002/dont-call-us-we-ll-call-well-no-actually-we-probably-won-t   http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-introverts-corner/201001/itll-be-fun-and-other-extrovert-lies 

the rest of the reasons are actually things that cause some problems. most relating to my being a transexual, and the depression that comes with this.  basically the way that this works out is that if I can't find way to constantly keep myself stimulated while in public.  I'll give you an example, recently I had to attend my schools orientation, despite having been there for a month, I already knew about everything they started talking about, and after about ten minuets of my mind wandering I suddenly had to start holding back the tears while my mind went to, well I'll just say some dark places.

on a similar token it also seems dishonest of me to socialize with people as long as I have to pretend to be a boy. this isn't always the case but the more intimate I want the relationship to be the more dishonest it feels to go forward unless I were to work up the courage to tell them first. I recently decided not to ask a girl I like out but I'm still OK with trying to get a dungeons and dragons group together, just for an example. this trait is defantly a problem and I believe is the biggest reason why most of my socializing is done online, all the people I talk to online know my current status and they still accept me as a woman, I'm not at a point in my life were I can get this anywhere else and it's the only way for me to have a deep meaningful relationship (friendship or otherwise) and as many times as I have to hear people tell me how bad that is for me or claiming I don't like people. it's far better than the alternatives I have access to.

links highlight: gender bitch

well this weekend I have to put together both a 3-5 page paper and a 3-5 minute presentation (ok I did procrastinate the presentation but the paper is fairly new news) and since I don't want my long emo rant to be the top post for much longer, how about another one of the link highlights.

this time it's one of the activist blogs that I ran across recently it's called genderbitch: musings of a trans chick.
http://genderbitch.wordpress.com/

I have to say this girl is completly awesome I'm still reading the back catalouge of her blog and I've probably spent more time this week reading it than I have doing what I'd normally consider leisure activities (I actually tend to do that when I find a blog I really like). she's very expressive and clever. she also as a way of writing which is very very good at pointing out how other's have severly fucked up http://genderbitch.wordpress.com/2010/01/23/intent-its-fucking-magic/ I've also taken to following her on twitter http://twitter.com/genderbitch which includes updates to her tumblr account (fair warning she posts a lot to tumblr) which are still just as awesome.

and since I have a feeling some people reading this may want a bit more I'll give you this Scott pilgrim avatar I made, I'm considering redesigning the site to use (an idea I actually stole from Kinsey of genderbitch) it since a part of me as always been a little uncomfortable using some one else picture as the intro into the site.

I love the machete

 

emotinal baggage

OK a bit of a story behind this surprise post. I can feel my depression flaring up again, and as is it's patterns it attacks the same areas of my life, the same thoughts, I'm not in a position to counter most of them, or possibly all of them, but I figured I'd try and this time it's attacking once again my feelings regarding my last relationship. for the record, part of the problem is that I truly blame myself for everything I'm about to bring up, in my own head everything bad about the relationship was 100% my fault one way or another, but if I'm to gain any control over this depression(at least enough so I don't' drop out of school like last time) I can't keep thinking in those terms, so this well out of necessitate frame her to be worse than she is, so the few that know who I'm talking about please keep that in mind. (and if she ends up reading this I'm really really sorry but if I don't let this out I think it might start ruling me again). also I have no idea how to start this or structure it, and being a pretty emotional piece at an emotional time I don't think I could, so this might not be very clear.and also keep in mind I only ever talked to her through text, instant message email that sort of thing

first off a small things I'm likely to repeat, despite the fact that we met on a TG friendly website I always had the suspicion she considered me a man, this was mostly a number of small things,  I'd always be holding her, never the other way around, when she asked to dance she'd also make it a point of saying I was leading you get the idea


I suppose one of the biggest things was that I never felt free to express myself in the relationship, early on I had gone to her with a few of my emotional problems, and she'd respond by telling me how hurt she was to hear me talking bad about myself, this only served to make me feel worse I'd try to apologize and say I wouldn't bring up stuff like that again, then she'd state that just make her feel worse, this would bring me to an even newer low and our exchange would pretty much end by that point, I doubt she knew but I was crying after both the times that happened.  one of the reasons why this was so pivotal is because one of the primary ways my depression attacks me (for the record she doesn't know this) is convincing me that I am nothing but a negative impact or a burden on those I care for and those around me, so having my girlfriend confirm that no matter what I did I was significantly hurting her made an already emotional time pretty extreme. after we'd had exchanges like that twice I didn't feel comfortable volunteering my problems no matter how much I felt I needed to talk about them, ans since she very rarely asked how I was doing I never got a chance to express them.

on a related note she also started planning an expensive trip for the two of us, very shortly after we started dating, as some one who honestly didn't believe they were worth anything the fact that she was paying for most of it was putting a lot of stress on me, I was able to communicate this a few times, even using phrases like I'm not worth it, she wasn't willing to give up on it completely, in part I believe do to the fact that it was going to be our first time meeting face to face. but eventually she promised to stop bringing it up until some time really close to when things had to be finalized. shortly afterward she regularly brought up "the thing I promised not to mention" which was a double hit, I know exactly what she was talking about so not only it was an instant reminder of how much I was taking from her by going on the trip but how much I was taking just from asking her not to talk about something she was looking forward to.

another big aspect was that I know for a fact the feelings she was feeling for me in the relationship, weren't actually for me, she had some how constructed a sort of persona me that she had fallen for, I tried bringing this up a few times, and she'd usually just get angry, on several occasions she stated she did in fact know who I was.  but there was one specific time were I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was a persona she had built up of me, it was pretty much the in sighting incident that made me realize I had to break the relationship off.  I had been pretty down for a while, I was once again contemplating suicide, I was in bed upwards of 14 hours a day and often only eating only one microwave french bread pizza a day, this went on for weeks, in fact from a nutrition stand point I don't know how I made it out of that. my roommates didn't know much but even they seemed to be picking up on the fact that something was wrong, and my closest friend (some one who I also communicate with exclusively through text) picked up that something was wrong, but I didn't talk to my friend much since at the time I thought all the stressors in my life were related to my relationship and I didn't feel right talking behind her back. one day it got so bad that I couldn't even gather the will power to really chat, I'd give one word responses to everything, my GF

the purpose of this blog

as usuall I've been doing a lot of thinking in my spare time and one of the things that came up is why I've been incorperating things like twitter and forumspring into my blog (by the way it's still here http://www.formspring.me/venatuscindy if you have anything you want to ask me it's so empty right now) afterall I first started this blog purely as a form of emotinal release and self expression. while I originally joined twitter just to follow some web celebration I didn't have any reason to update it let alone impede it in my blog and I didn't have any reason to sign up with forumspring at all. believe it or not despite the fact that these were my own actions it took me a while to figure out why I was doing it and I think I figured out why.

The primary purpose of this blog is still self expression and emotional release (and because of that I'll probably be more ego centric here than I am in other places) but I remember when I was first coming to terms with my own gender identity and realizing the concept that some one could truly be born in the wrong body the only sites I was able to find were either based on the sexual fetishes of TG or it was http://transsexual.org/. the idea that my gender issues were just some sexual interest caused it's own problems, due in part to the fact that as I was just discovering this I still considered myself devoutly mormon. and while transexual.org was a wonderful site full of information there wasn't a lot I could relate to on it on a personal or emotional level, I didn't feel as sure as she was when I was just a child (though it was always an innocent fantasy), I was never obsessed with things that others considered girly. though I may have desired a few they were pretty small and I hid that desire easily) and due in part to the diffrences in how well we fit into our assigned gender roles I spent a lot of time thinking it wasn't me and that once again, it was just some sexual fetish I had to control.  and has the story goes that didn't last all that long before I finally had to come to grips with it.

ok I got a little off topic there but hey this is my blog, in the end the point I was trying to make is that I think on some level I hope this blog might help some one else, some other confused transsexual girl might stumble across this blog someday and find some one she can relate to, and hopefully that fact will help her come to terms with herself more easily and the more of myself is out there, the more likely that becomes. and while I'm probably not the best qualified to answer any questions she may or may not have I know that when your in that situation you often want something more personal or emotional than an expert so I want to make sure I'm as available as I can be.

a bit busy

sorry I haven't posted much but I do have some legitimate excuses, last week I was busy both moving and getting ready to go back to school, which started last Monday. I had planned to make a post this weekend but I found out a local convention was going on so any time not spent there is pretty much being spent on my homework. I forgot my camera today but I plan to bring it tomorrow, so with any luck I'll be able to at least give a basic break down of my first con.