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Identity

~impulse

Hey ~bartender, it's been a long night. I just need a water, please, nothing special.

It's been a long night. I've been thinking about my identity, who I am, and who I want to be. I've also had to face some things that made me uncomfortable, but I needed to face them.

I was born a man. Recently, I've been considering, "maybe I'm a woman." I don't know if it's because I truly feel that way, or because of internalized sexism and the want to be someone else. I'm just not sure.

I have friends, older and younger than me, that are going through similar experiences. They have their own issues and trials they're going through. I want to help them, badly, but I know that I have to deal with my own problems first.

I have been the main cause of most conflicts in our friend group. It usually goes like this:

1. I get anxious about something.

2. My OCD causes me to obsess over it to the point where I just have to start talking about it.

3. My self-hatred and internalized negativity causes me to blame every bad thing in the situation on myself, no matter what really happened.

4. I'm too stubborn to say that I'm a good person and everyone gets too heated up and then walks away.

I cried today. I cried that I wanted to stop hurting, that I wanted to stop hurting others, and my friends. By hurting myself, which seems like a fitting punishment (calm down, it's only mental, still hurts though), I'm also hurting the ones I care about as well. I also need to learn to control my mind and my obsessions, and chose to focus that obsessive energy on something more worthy of obsessing over.

Why do I tell you all, patrons of the Midnight Pub? Your judgement is untainted. I've only recently arrived. Plus, if I'm gonna put my own little corner of the internet in here, might as well use it like it.

Another water, ~bartender. I tend to drink and eat quickly when I'm nervous.

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Replies

~eaplmx wrote (thread):

I think the search for an identity is a important part of our existence.

Breaking family traditions, social expectations and such. So, I wish you the best luck, best vibes and energy in your finding.

That said, I'll leave a question that I like to discuss with friends and family. What does it mean to be a woman?

Every time I ask that I get many different answers, which is really interesting.

~mellita wrote (thread):

I'm sorry you're going through this difficult time, ~impulse. I second what others have said about the troubles that come with examining your gender in greater detail. For whatever it's worth, I find it helpful, in tending to my own well-being, to remember that every human being has intrinsic worth, including me, and that there is always some portion of my being, however exhausted or diminished, that intends upon nothing other than for me to be healthy, content, and to love myself; and furthermore that sin does not exist, and therefore I have never sinned. (To have made a mistake, or even to have done wrong, is not at all the same thing. I reject that notion of an infraction which is metaphysically transcribed on your soul, like a stain which can never be expunged.)

You have intrinsic worth. You are not stained. You are capable of love, and there is love in you now. (Such are the sorts of things which I try to say to myself, whenever I remember to do so. I like to think they make a positive impact. They say that gratefulness is both cause and product of contentment, and that you must be trained in gratitude, if it will not come naturally.)

~xiu wrote:

Hey ~impulse, I have no advice on the identity or anxiety issues, but just wanted you to know you are seen. I hope you find comfort today and get a step closer to a peaceful resolution. ~bartender, another water for this soul.

~inquiry wrote (thread):

To me the whole identity thing seems rather "a rose by any other name"-ish, as though trying to qualify who/what you are matters relative to just plain being here and now.

I mean, that doesn't mean others don't think a rose necessarily smells differently if called - i.e. given a specific conceptual symbol - differently. But that's their problem/issue.

Just be, and help others do the same by educating them on how little - if at all - any conceptual modeling matters to the core/underlying reality.

~owleyarc wrote (thread):

Well, this seems like a twofer. For the first part, I can certainly sympathize. My own questions of gender aren't totally settled either. The best advice I can probably give is to remind you that gender is complicated, nuanced, and often fluid. Your gender might not fit so neatly into one category or the other. No matter what your reasons for feeling that way are, as long as you are comfortable with the end result, don't matter. (Though I will say... if you want to be someone else, and that someone just so happens to be a woman... you might be a woman.)

As for the second part, I don't know. As someone with clearly pretty bad anxiety and relentless self-deprecation, you're hardly going to be the most reliable narrator (making yourself sound worse than you are, of course). This may be obvious to you already; I don't know your situation, but if there are any options for anxiety that you're not already investigating, I'd highly recommend it. I had a series of panic attacks about a year and a half ago so bad that I had to take a week off of work, and the combination of medication for my anxiety and a brief bit of therapy was life changing.

Every step of the thought process you've described is something a good therapist would help you prevent, with activities like thought challenging. It certainly doesn't magically fix anything, but it gives you at least some tools.

I'm glad that you already recognize that your more self-destructive tendencies hurt the people you care about. Far better to realize that now and solve the issue before your mental punishments turn into holding ice cubes or something worse. That post-cry brain rush that drove you to write this? That can take you to a bad place if you're not careful.

If you ever want to vent/seek advice from someone totally removed from the situation, feel free to hit up my email on my profile.