This has been sitting in my drafts for a while, I’m currently not doing much as I’m feeling a little low and mostly doom scrolling waiting for my bike to be fixed, which given the fact that it’s a bank holiday in the UK on Friday (bloody religions) and Monday could mean it’s not done till the middle of next week. Which also means that the money I have set aside to pay for the work to be done is basically useless to me. Going to be hungry by next week.
I have autism and one of the things within autism is a tendency to overshare… here I wish to share something everything about my physical and mental health. I generally these days consider myself to be in relatively good health, depressive episodes notwithstanding.
Physical
- Bad Back – Been bad on/off since my teens, mostly lower back. Almost certainly due to being overweight. And yes, I have been trying to lose weight since my teens.
- Sore Hips (possibly still my back but it feels like it’s in the hip, quite often if I have to dismount from my bike on the wrong side).
- Skin on my lower legs, very fragile and while not painful generally when damaged is incredibly painful, and it damages really easily. Caused by Dermatitis Stasis, I was told it would go away if I got more exercise. But walking nearly 3k miles in 2022 didn’t do it, nor did cycling all of last year do it.
- Frequent debilitating headaches, many with visual auras. They also often leave me feeling shaky or with vertigo-like effects. Some are migraines some are just really bad headaches. Had them since I was 11 or 12 and they have caused me to lose jobs, and I suspect friends and I have missed so much of life due to being unable to function when they’re bad.
- Stiff/Sore neck, I have two bones in my neck that are either fused or in the process of fusing (I forget what the doctor said) but they leave me with a very stiff neck on occasion, which while sore in its own right will also cause shoulder and headaches too. Yay. :/
- Bad heart – actually I have recently been tested, and my heart is in pretty good condition, so it must be something else in my chest that hurts during physical activity – kind of watch this space, I guess.
Developmental
- Autism Spectrum Disorder –– I am – as far as I know – considered to be higher functioning as I can almost function like a neurotypical. However, emphasis on that almost. In reality I struggle with most interactions with other people especially if the interaction is in a place where there are lots of other people. I either cannot understand the words spoken or feel the emotions that normal people can read. I also hate being touched or touching other people (less of an issue with children, but even there not comfortable) and have specific hang-ups about the texture of many things. It makes every aspect of everything I do in some ways harder. It also makes human interactions down right impossible sometimes, and while I’d love to say that I don’t need it or friendships, in truth just like all other non-sociopathic humans I do require interactions with other humans. I find it far too easy to feel empathy with other people and animals but also with things that I shouldn’t feel an empathic connection to. I feel guilty about not using an old much loved but superseded item.
- Inability to maintain friendships – I don’t know why, but maybe because I find it very difficult to talk to people I haven’t spoken to before or for a long time, so I tend to avoid talking to them some more just in case. But even knowing that I don’t find it easy to break that cycle. On the other hand, I can interact with complete strangers including intruding into other people’s conversations. But I think that is because I don’t invest anything into these conversations and it’s not often that when I do this, I will ever speak to them again.
- Dyslexia/Dysgraphia – the inability to write and spell comfortably, I actually read well and easily and have done so since I was about 6 or 7 years old. Computers have made this part of my life much easier as I have access to spelling and grammar checkers. Most of what you read – when I have written (typed) it has been checked twice or more by spell checkers. Once in MS Word where I actually write and once in the WordPress software, the same for grammar, maybe I ought to run it through Grammarly too.
- Dyscalculia – An inability to understand or do mathematics. I am not sure if when I was tested for dyslexia at the age of 13-14, I was tested for this, or if had even been described as its own malady at that point. But other than basic mental arithmetic I can’t do mathematics, how it works just doesn’t have any bearing in my head. I can use MS Excel or other spreadsheet to do sums if I know what I’m trying to do, but even then, I have to google a lot of the things I want to do to work out what I need to do to get to where I am going.
- ADHD – Though I’m non-hyperactive, so ADD. Mostly feels like utter boredom if I’m not stimulated enough, which works like falling asleep even if I’m doing something I enjoy but that is not stimulating enough. Watching films for instance, not enough stimulus and I start dozing off, even if it’s some MCU or a good chick flick.
Mental
- Depression – Caused by the following.
- Gender Dysphoria – I feel that I am in the wrong body, I have felt like this since before puberty and I’m 49 (at time of writing) now. The feeling has never changed, and I didn’t know enough when I first felt it to do or say anything about it. So, it was untreated until after the best results from any treatment could have made any difference, though given when I was going through puberty none of the modern currently reviled interventions were common anyway. I have sought treatment in the past but there was too much focus on Male in Female out in the UK GID service and as I don’t want to be a fake woman especially (my feeling about what I would be not my feeling about trans-women in general), I don’t really have a treatment path to follow.
- Libido – Very high since puberty, almost at the level of hypersexuality (what would be called in a female nymphomania), personally I found it pretty disgusting – I mean I loved the pleasure, highly addictive. But the thoughts and desires that it led to were soul destroying sometimes. Some of the dreams it caused would have led to me being locked up were they real. My hormone injection (see below) has stopped all that, I miss the pleasure true, but I don’t miss any of the rest of it. I can be around other people without seeing them sexually. It’s remarkably freeing.
- Loneliness – I’ve mentioned this in other blog posts, I have struggled with this all my life. It’s caused in part by the Autism, but also, I know it’s common in older males (apparently even the ones who don’t think they’re men). I also don’t really do anything that is with other people routinely.
- Gender Dysphoria – Yes, I am mentioning this twice, mostly as while it is the main issue that causes the depression it is also it’s own thing. I know there is lots written about this in the press these days, I think because it’s a societal issue above and beyond what individuals feel. So here I am writing about how I feel not how I think men/women should be able to interact within society. This is what I feel, not what I’m supposed to say to be trans-allied… or whatever.
I realised I was actually a girl long before puberty (it wasn’t sexual), it was while my sister and I still took baths together so we were both under ten… (sister is 2 years younger than me, and our parents were responsible enough not to have even a sexually precocious male bathe with his sister – and I was actually pretty sexually retarded) I have clear memories of the conversation, but not so much about how old I was. So, if I say 7-9 it’s a guess, but it’s going to be in there somewhere.- The feeling has never gone away, it did change a little during puberty when the sexual urges of any young person got mixed up in the pleasure, I got from wearing girls (typically my sisters) clothing. This mix up mostly went away once I started cross dressing regularly as an adult (late teens). So, for a while I was technically a Transvestite (someone who derives sexual pleasure from dressing in clothes of the opposite gender).
- I have a number of hang-ups related to the diagnosis:
The dichotomy of what my inner person sees as normal and what I should do to fit in with society. For instance, I try to never decide what I will wear to something (just going out or anything else), as the inner me will go with the sort of clothing/look that I have always preferred, but that will never go over well in normal society (or the parts of society I live in).
- The hatred I feel toward my masculinity – the physical side of it certainly, I will never look like I need to look to be comfortable in myself. This is very impactful as it makes it hard to believe things I’m told about myself. I simply do not trust people when they compliment me, how can I possibly be what they say as I know I’m ugly and useless. And yes, I have had therapy for this (and most of the rest), but at the core I need to learn to love myself and I can’t, I am NOT the person I should be.
- To an extent my inability to stick to things like dieting or exercising is down to my GD, I can’t change the bits that matter (not just the bits between my legs), so why bother trying to get thin/fit/healthy/etc.
- I am currently also (again as mentioned above) self-medicating hormones, generally called TransDIY, I buy hormones online, these are legal (Oestrogen Ethers) to own and trade, unlike Testosterone which is a controlled substance. It means that I am more at risk of DVT and liver damage and because I am self-administrating it I don’t get automatic access to blood tests as I would if under the care of a doctor. I also am responsible for actually doing the injections – for which I am glad to not have a needle phobia.
I currently inject subcutaneously 0.3ml of Oestrogen Ethanoate (@4mg/10ml) into my legs /~7 days. I was doing the same volume into my muscles but was finding with the cycling that my legs hurt all the time. Still hurts but only when I press on the injection site. (I take all the normal precautions etc that I would were I to be doing this in a hospital/clinic.)
So far apart from the lack of libido I haven’t seen much in the way of change though am definitely getting a little booby. Which isn’t quite what I want now.
- Since I started taking the hormones I have noticed a massive reduction in my dysphoria, I still feel it – don’t get me wrong – but it went from present all the time any time I had to think about pretty much anything to do with interacting with other people or going out in public… everything. Since I started on the hormones it is now only when I see females whose shape/form matches how I see my own shape (how it should be), or children – I get very broody sometimes. So that’s a good thing – I suppose.
- I also have issue with how other people represent Gender Dysphoria, this means that for me to find support from with the community I need to pretend that I am in some ways more mainstream than I actually am, I have been pushed out of one of two trans spaces because I am this way… so I tend to not say anything now, it can be lonely following a different path to other people.
I have gender dysphoria, I’m not Transgender, this is partly a language thing, the two terms are not exclusive, but for most with the people who call themselves Trans, they call the Dysphoria the feeling they get for being wrong. You often hear about people who have major dysphoria toward their genitals.
Trans to me should be used to describe the people who are making an effort at some level to trans-ition in some way from their starting gender to an end gender. But to many/most of them being Trans is more of a socio-political movement. For me if I ever go back to trying to become as physically female as possible I will be trans for that journey and at the end I will stop being trans and be female – no matter how ugly and despondent that would actually make me. ((And to just reiterate, this is how I think, this is not a statement on how other people should think. I am not now, nor do I want people to follow my path.))
- Sexuality – Not sure that this is actually an issue now I have practically no libido. I’m broadly bi-sexual, that is I find some members of both sexes sexually attractive. Though I do tend toward more pretty men and feminine women. I consider myself bi-celibate these days… a vol-cel so to speak.
- Loneliness, just not getting enough social contact from enough different people. It’s getting worse as I age too.
- Hopelessness. – Comes and goes, basically if I get depressed, I start getting depressed about being depressed.
- Money – This one used to be about debt, now it’s more if I don’t have spendable cash, I feel lower than if I do. My only major debt (for my bike) goes out the day after I get my benefit, I’m actually not worried about this at all. My insurance which goes out on the 3rd is more worrying than that as I can’t change the date and it’s 3 days before my benefit; I have to make sure I have the money available at the end of the month. Sadly, I’m almost certainly going to change my insurance provider, it’s too stressful worrying about having the money available. :/
I may well follow up on some of these issues at a later date – or never mention them again.