I was reminded today how I used to (and occasionally still do) seek approval from the outside world. This can be in reference to anything; weight, job, looks, education level and so on. Today though I’m going to use my story as a transgender male as a reference for this. While everything and more of what I listed I and many others have sought approval for it wasn’t until I chose to transition to male that it came at me full blown.
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Yep, so I’m a big ole gamer. I started off with my mom buying one of the first Mac’s on the market and played goofy little games on it. Well really, there was Atari first and then Zork and maybe a few others I don’t remember. Eventually I got into MUD’s which are text based games on the web where a bunch of people join in the game. Everyone has their own character; we pick races, professions, magic or non, weapons, skills and so forth. Most of the first ones were based off of D&D which in turn was based off of the Hobbit/Lord of the Rings and other books in the genre. One of the biggest things in these games is to not be OOC, or Out Of Character. In other words if I’m playing I don’t suddenly say “OMG did you see last night’s SNL skit?” or something to that affect. Nope in these games we want to RP or Role-play our characters to fit what others see of them on screen so that they match up to the ideal troll, ogre, elf, magician, thief, warrior, etc. When my mom died I went through a ton of different emotions. For a while they were all surface things about what had happened, what our last words were, who was there, who wasn’t there and so on. I was a few years into Higher Consciousness and I was attempting to apply everything I knew about looking at the stories, the emotions, the things my head was saying to me to work through it. I knew I had anger because I was cussing and bitching about a few things. I knew I had pain because the tears would come every once in awhile. I knew I had guilt because I would hear myself degrade myself. About a week ago a ton of stuff was stirring up inside of me and hitting pretty deep. I’ve always been aware that I can sometimes get stuck in the logical idea of right vs wrong, after all that is one of the many things we are here to transcend. The way I was raised also hammered this into me, I have to be “right” in order to have anything validated. I have had to be logical and come from a very scientific approach to things. It was constantly ingrained in me that my feelings were “wrong,” and in some cases I was blatantly told I was stupid for having the feelings I had. I found myself sitting in the bath tub with the shower pouring over me as I cried. I had just ended an 8 year relationship with a beautiful, loving and talented woman and was mourning it. My heart was wide open and I cried and cried, some quiet tears, others heart wrenching. The thing that struck me the most was that there were no words in my head. No stories of my unworthiness, my undesirability, the fact that she, like so many others, would be better without me. Nothing, none of those stories played, no sound other than the tears I cried. |
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