I'll address what you wrote and your question before I leave.
tabby said:
From the way you have defended the studies and doctors who provide transgender surgery and hormones, it would seem you do trust the words of them, so long as it aligns with what you want.
I wonder; have I really defended them? I merely stated that those things work more often than not from a scientific stand-point. The same could be said for anti-depressants, despite the fact they can destroy a person's intellect and sexuality; they treat the apparent symptoms of the issue at hand, but at what cost? If regret rates and complications are overblown to paint a certain picture, that is not a matter of Truth, but propaganda. I see the purpose in that, but I like to be correct. That said, I've often found that being correct is not the same as being right, so I do see your point, and since I'm leaving (for good this time), I won't bring it up anymore.
If an alternate treatment was presented to you, a healthier and more beneficial alternative, would you be able to consider it? Or would you continue to strictly stick to what you want?
If you went back in time to teach me about the healthier and more beneficial alternative, I would've chosen it without a doubt. Now, I'm no longer interested. To explain why, I'll go over the past, explaining the state of my mind and the psychological factors involved in making such a drastic decision, and why I've lost interest in alternatives.
When I was 17, I started to feel like time was running out, and wanted to make a decision about this topic ASAP. In an attempt to accelerate my thought process, I thought that maybe if I deliberately sought out the most depressing, horrifying stories from transgender people and detransitioners, this would scare me so much that I'd rather just commit suicide or attempt to live a normal life after all. But the sheer negativity of how these people were treated for wanting to change their sex, or changing the way they expressed themselves, made me feel numb inside instead; so numb that I felt like was no longer afraid of anything. Then, while in this state of mind, I considered my options, one by one.
Suicide, while it seemed like most effective option to end my suffering, seemed like cheating. I wanted to pick the option that would result in the best (most fulfilling) situation for me; but with suicide, there would be no situation anymore, so it would automatically result in failure to achieve the best situation. So I crossed this option off.
The second option I could think of, was to continue to try my best to make things work and live a fulfilling life as a male. However, this is what I had been doing for years, and during those years my social anxiety and insecurity about my sexual preferences had only grown worse. I had become so miserable, that I knew it wasn't long before I would fully run out of the strength and energy needed for this, as it was starting to feel almost impossible for me to continue anymore: to get out of my bed in the morning, to eat, to talk to people. This didn't seem feasible in the long run, so I crossed this option off as well.
By process of elimination, this left only the third option: to make a firm decision to transition to female, and do what it takes to succeed. It seemed difficult and frightening: I would have to face many embarrassing situations head-on despite my social anxiety, and I would have brand new things to feel insecure about. And so much was unknown: I didn't know if I would be able to change my voice, I didn't know if I would be able to grow natural-looking breasts, I didn't know if I would look like a woman to others or like some androgynous abomination, and I didn't know if sex reassignment surgery would give me anything even remotely functional to work with. But those unknowns, unlike the thought of staying the way I was... they gave me
hope. In truth, it seemed dreadful to me to have to do all these things, and yet, it seemed like the best shot I had at finding happiness eventually. It meant to head down into a valley of suffering, in search of a mountain of joy on the other side. Right now I'm somewhere on that mountain, as I'm happier and more fulfilled than I remember ever being before in my life, but I can't see from here if I'm still just at the foot or already at the peak. I understand that if I keep going forward too recklessly, I might accidentally go past the peak and fall off, becoming unable to reach the top again as I'm injured. But even so, I want to explore and see what's there for myself, since it feels like my journey isn't over yet. With my physical body being such a blatant mixture of the two sexes right now, I simply can't shake the feeling that I am still in-between where I started and my destination. The best I can do is look at the concrete information available to me to make an informed decision, conscious of the danger ahead; I'm already thinking about how to overcome it even in the worst case scenarios.
I had been talking to a psychiatrist for about a year before that, although he decided to go on a sabbatical after the last few appointments ended in me relentlessly criticising and berating him for his inadequacy and wasting my time, making it very clear that I was only there because my parents forced me, and that I hated him. He had been prescribing me anti-anxiety medication that increased suicidal ideation as it made morbid thoughts less off-putting, and caused me to be sexually frustrated as it reduced my sensitivity. He also diagnosed me with Asperger's syndrome (a mild form of autism), with some rather contradictory reasoning: saying I maintained eye contact with him for unnaturally long durations (he argued that I was trying to overcompensate for my "difficulty to maintain eye contact", even though I didn't find it difficult and was simply glaring at him because I disliked him), was overly sensitive, and that my thought processes were too extreme. He also diagnosed me with gender dysphoria since I often blamed my social anxiety on "not being a cute girl", but wrote down as a note alongside this diagnosis that I shouldn't attempt a gender transition until I've fixed my black-and-white thinking, which I found bothersome as I saw no issue with the way I think. A year later, a different psychiatrist, who seemed to think I was an effeminate cross-dressing gay guy suffering heavily from internalised homophobia, and that changing my gender role would free me from that, rescinded the diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome as he thought my awkwardness was just a symptom of my self-hatred, and gave me permission to start hormone therapy anyway.
After that first therapist went on his sabbatical, I quit taking the pills he prescribed, and the withdrawal symptoms worsened my depression. It was a few months later that that I made my decision to transition; but if during these crucial months I had instead learned how to meditate, I would have overcome my social anxiety with that instead. And in talking to other people more openly, I would've realised that my sexual preferences really weren't as outrageous as I thought, regardless of whether for a man or a woman, so I would've stopped feeling insecure about it. I would've realised and accepted much sooner that gender, in social contexts rather than biology, is merely a construct that can be manipulated to serve a purpose, turned into something helpful rather than something that makes people feel pressured to conform to things they don't agree with. And thus, rather than than what I'm doing now (trying to adhere to a system that made me feel like I was broken), I would've tried to break the system by identifying as non-binary; because that's how I truly feel deep down if all the filters are gone, which I would've discovered in meditation, and more importantly, I would insist on it not just to free myself from the gender-based expectations I had been imposing on myself, but also as a big fuck-you to those who made me feel like there was something wrong with me in the first place with their garbage norms and social gender binary. Indeed, I would relish the seething of those who tell me that I can't be non-binary because I'm biologically male, but more importantly, I would be proud of my tall, androgynous male body and wouldn't have desire to change it in any unnatural way at all; no blockers and estrogen to make myself more feminine, no testosterone injections to make myself more masculine, no surgeries, I would've loved myself just the way I was. And you can look down on that if you want to, for wanting to identify in such an unconventional way; and I would've laughed at you for looking down on me, knowing to rock my own idiosyncrasies and focus my attention on those who appreciate me, not just put up with me, but love me including all my "weirdness".
However, that isn't what happened. Instead, I took extreme measures to conform to the heteronormative system in the most round-about way imaginable, and found fulfilment in that instead. Now that I've found success, and conquered all but one of the unknowns, I want to continue in this direction. Even if you show me another path now, I'm no longer interested. If you really wanted to "save" me, and by "save" you mean push me in a different direction than the one I chose, then go back in time and teach me how to meditate when I'm 17. What, do you think I'm being unreasonable? To me, it doesn't make a difference. I found happiness this way, and I could've found happiness that way. But the point is that I already found it, so I'm not looking to change my direction in life anymore; let alone undoing all the hard work that brought me here. I traversed through the valley of suffering because I lived in the swamp of despair. I'm not going to traverse it again now that I've already settled on such a nice mountain. Instead, I'll dig a mine to see what more I can find over here. Sorry for putting it like that; I just like crude jokes too much to hold back.
I should really just shut up. I know it's insufferable how I keep talking about this, and that it's only hard to stop thinking about it because the memories of my suffering are still warm, as a certain body part serves as an unwelcome reminder. Talking about it so much, while it gives me a way to let out those frustrations, obviously doesn't help either, as overthinking it so much, then reading the criticisms from others, just puts more salt in the wounds; although I've done this deliberately because I felt like the suffering helped me push on, I only needed that push because deep down I felt embarrassed that I'm doing this. But I've finally gotten over that. It doesn't have to make sense. It doesn't have to be for a reason. I'm just glad it helped, and I'm hopeful for the future as well. That's all that matters to me anymore. So... others don't have to understand after all. They can spit on all my hard work to improve my life if they want to, claiming it was pointless or suboptimal. Maybe it really wasn't the most efficient path I could've taken to happiness, but I didn't even have a clue what else I could do at the time, and I still don't know if another path would've really made me happier than I am now; I'm sure it would've been challenging and difficult at times in its own right, just like this is. I simply did what I could, made the best of my situation in the only way I knew how; or rather, I didn't even know, I kinda just winged it and hoped for the best. Even if I'm told now: "Hey, you should've done this instead!" Then, well, "What does that matter now?" There's no fucking way I'm going through purgatory again just to see how things could've been different now that I'm finally doing relatively okay (if you don't believe that, you have no idea how bad my mental state was as a teenager). Fuck that.
Satanism, and meditation, at least give me ways to supplement and improve my mental health in ways that most people don't know how to. Regardless of whether my decisions are the most optimal, or perhaps a bit reckless, or perhaps not really for any reason in particular other than "just because I wanted to try it", I have the tools to truly make the best of it. That's why I know... no, that's why I believe I'll be fine. That's why I wanted people to wish me luck. But people's words only mean so much; in the end, all that remains is cold-hard reality, and I'll have to face that myself. Not on my own, since my partner and my family will be with me; but I'll be the one who has to live with it forever. Even so, I want to face it. Because I want to see for myself, experience for myself, what it all led to, what I worked towards all this time. Perhaps it'll feel like a joke in hindsight, like it didn't really matter so much after all, but that's fine. Life goes on, even if I am transsexual, as much as I loathe to consider myself that way. While I do want to see the conclusion as I don't like to leave things unfinished, I think what matters far more than the conclusion, is everything I learned and gained along the way. I'm sure that if back when I was 17 I had magically woke up as a "cute girl" one day like I prayed for, it wouldn't have fixed anything; I would still have been just as depressed and insecure as before. It's because I did all these things myself that I was truly able to grow as a person. And I'll always strive to grow yet further, with or without a catalyst; even after this is all finished.
HAIL SATAN FOREVER!