I am currently in the midst of a losing battle with my brain. See, my brain does this thing where it decides that it's going to either torment me with insomnia or torment me with nightmares. It's one or the other. I haven't had a good night's sleep in TWO G*DDAMN YEARS, with the exception of the nights when I get drunk. Alcohol is a natural depressant. It's good at knocking you out. Unfortunately, substance abuse/addiction was a problem for my biological mother (have I mentioned I'm adopted yet? I can't remember...) so I'm very cautious about how much and how often I drink. I can't rely on alcohol to put me to sleep otherwise I'll wind up an even bigger mess than I already am.
Last night, my brain had no choice. I took valerian root (in case anyone is worried, it's a natural herb that helps your body produce melatonin, which is a chemical that your body is supposed to produce naturally, but some people don't get enough. Melatonin puts you to sleep. I'm not popping a sh*t ton of sleeping pills).
My brain put up a fight for a while, but eventually gave up, and I fell asleep. But I was not free.
No, my evil brain was like, "YOU CAN MAKE ME SLEEP BUT YOU CAN'T MAKE ME LIKE IT!" and gave me nightmares.
One particular nightmare from last night stands out to me.
As you've probably gathered from previous posts, I wear men's clothing. Sorry for stating the blatantly obvious, but I promise there's a reason I bring this up.
When I first started to transition, I kept all of my girl clothes. I would look at them hanging in my closet and hate them and love them at the same time. I hated feeling obligated to pretend to be what I wasn't; I missed being someone my parents loved.
My parents DO love me, as a side note. I wasn't out to them at the time and I was relatively convinced that they'd stop loving me and shun me forever if they found out. I started taking medication for my anxiety a few months later, and this illogical worry basically went away.
I went full steam ahead with the transition in January of 2010. I bought a binder and a bunch of guy's clothes, practiced talking with a deeper voice, and started introducing myself as Pete. But I kept my girl clothes in my closet, partially as a reminder of who I had been, but mostly as emergency backup clothes if I had to go to a family function or hang around people who I knew weren't okay with it.
In April of 2010, I moved into a new apartment with Purple-Haired Roommate. I packed up my girl clothes into big trash bags and prepared to move them to my new apartment. I looked at the bags containing my girl clothes, of which there were at least six. My boy clothes took up a mere one and a half bags. I thought to myself, "This is pointless! I don't even wear these! I'm clinging to them like a security blanket!"
I donated every item of female clothing I owned, with the exception of one Alice in Wonderland t-shirt (which I kept because Alice in Wonderland is my favorite book and not because it was a girl's shirt) to Salvation Army that afternoon.
The point of that long and (seemingly) useless story was this: last night, I dreamed about those clothes that I had kept.
In my dream, I had the bags of clothes in my closet. I never touched them, but I knew they were there. And then, for some reason, a little girl who was a friend of one of my siblings, was playing at our house and she found the bags of clothes and took them. I'm not sure if she lost them or gave them away or what, but my brain was quite insistent that those clothes were GONE and not coming back.
Dream Me apparently has a much worse temper than Awake Me. Dream Me dragged the little girl to my parents' swimming pool and held her underwater while she thrashed and cried.
I don't remember if the girl died in my dream or not. I don't think she did, but don't take my word for it. I have a worse memory than Dory from Finding Nemo.
I woke up terrified. My brain had turned me into a murderer!
A friend of mine, who has quite a bit of experience in the medical field, stopped my panic when I told him what had happened. Doctor Friend knows a decent bit about psychology. He told me that under no circumstances was this dream a reflection of my homicidal capabilities; instead, I was informed that, most likely, my mind was trying to deal with the clash between my male self and my female self.
Apparently, this dream was my mind's way of trying to "kill off" that girl part of me that I wish wasn't there.
I didn't get why Dream Me got so mad that my girl clothes were gone. If I was trying to kill off a girl part of me, wouldn't the clothes being gone NOT spark homicidal tendencies?
Doctor Friend says no, that I still have lingering attachments to the girl part of me, but on the whole, I have a lot of suppressed rage and guilt and this is my body's way of handling the entire trans situation. In a nutshell, I want the girl part of me dead and buried and forgotten.
I think he's just waiting for me to really snap.
No comments:
Post a Comment