Tag: life

On Contentment

What does it mean to be content?

I think contentment often gets muddled in as an off branch of happiness. As maybe a general good feeling. That does contentment a disservice.

Contentment is so much more then just the absence of bad it’s a state that is often strived for but misunderstood. There’s nothing wrong with being happy just as there’s nothing wrong with being sad or angry. All are emotional states and are neither worthy of praise or scorn. Contentment is the same, it embodies a state of acceptance.

Acceptance of your current state and your past and future. There’s a tremendous amount of validation that comes from acceptance. To be accepted is something we strive for, for good or ill. To accept ourselves can be as simple as opening ourselves to the idea or a life’s work.

To accept yourself, truly and unconditionally, can be empowering. To understand yourself truly and accept your flaws alongside your strengths is a dangerous journey but often a worthwhile one.

Contentment isn’t the absence of strong emotion. It’s the fulfilment of your own emotional state. It can be fleeting at times and difficult to hold onto. Yet holding that calm in your mind makes the challenges we face a little bit easier.

Remembering Without Wallowing Pt. 3

Practicing Gratitude is a phrase that would have made the first two parts of this sound less pretentious. They’re Here and Here if you’d like to get caught up.

Yet the point stands. It’s hard to overcome the negative feelings from your past, while also trying to sort through them. Which brings me to the next scary step I’ve had to reconcile.

How does it feel to be comfortable currently, but also carrying trauma.

I don’t mean completely financial independent or perfect emotional stability or anything crazy like that, but how do you reconcile the negativity in your life when your current world, your day to day living, has dramatically less negativity in it then the previous parts.

I won’t say things are perfect, but I’m in a position where things are far easier then they used to be.

My problems are far more, nuanced and difficult. Less existential or survival based but some are even centered around thriving and healing.

Terrifying stuff.

The position I find myself in now is one where the ongoing trauma generated by my current situation is less then my capacity to handle trauma. Which actually means in net terms, healing. Which has really helped in the practicing gratitude thing.

Being able to appreciate your past and the trials and tribulations that go into it is a complicated question and it strikes into the very core of your being. It’s hard to dislodge the hurt in your heart that comes from a time of utter dependence. Especially as I’ve gotten older and I see kids now and you can see the potential trauma they’re walking either into or already carrying and it’s hard to watch. There’s an inherent lack of responsibility for the trauma we face from our childhoods. It’s not our faults, which makes it all the harder to deal with.

Rather then being a freeing idea I think that shows the roots of it. Begrudging your lost innocence, feeling regret at a life not lived. It’s a theme I’ve talked a lot through these, and having come back and reading through them I’m somewhat shocked but what I’ve said.

Because even now that pain that I was talking about both feels real but removed. Which is a sign that it did start to heal. I’ve had an issue throughout my life where I’ve held those around me to the standards I held myself to. Ones I generally failed at, but was willing to accept my own failure at, but also failed to recognize how ridiculous it was to apply my own standards to other people.

Looking back is about dealing with the negative thoughts you continue to carry as much as finding a home in your psyche for the things that happen to us.

Sometimes things do get better and sometimes those better things start to stack up, when it comes crashing down from time to time it’s hard, but it does happen again. It’s okay to mourn what’s missed but not letting it blind you to the goods around you are more important.

I’ve had many things happen to me but none of the pain was anything that didn’t happen within my mind, and that’s the time and energy that was the worst spent.

On Feeling Again

It’s been awhile. A lot has happened, and a lot doesn’t change.

It’s a little ironic that the last post I made was about coming off hormones, because that would go on for another 6 months. There’s a story to tell there but one for another time. I am back to feeling again, and yes, that it’s hormonally supported.

It’s weird to come back to this, for the last, two years now I haven’t felt I’ve needed an outlet. The irony being it was probably the time I needed it most.

I started writing again yesterday. It’s not good, but it’s not meant to be, just the inkling of a silly story. It came out though, and it felt good to create something. I’ve often had a difficult relationship with creation. There’s something very vulnerable about creating something, and also very final. Once something is done it’s an enduring reflection of you in that moment. I would imagine being an artist is a little terrifying in that way. Your life is spent creating reflections of you to find later. Moments to cringe and moments to regret.

Probably also comes with a strong emotional memory though, times to remember, and times to share. That’s probably why I have such a difficult relationship with creation. Hell this blog is the closet I’ve come to any kind of enduring creation and it’s anonymous.

Which I guess comes around to why am I even writing this. I truly haven’t logged into this since I wrote my last post. It was interesting to see that some folks were still finding what I wrote. I hope what they found gave them comfort.

I started this out of a point of pain. Coming out for me was hard. I went through the hardest part of my life through that and this was one of the few outlets I had. Taking that pain and sadness and hurling it into the internet for someone else to deal with. I think I hoped someone would see it and save me. I was pretty desperate.

So I may or may not continue writing this, but even this has felt nice. Which is the point I wanted to make the whole time but kept getting distracted. Maybe I do have a lot more to say.

Feeling is the most wonderful and terrible experience of my life. Coming out gave me the space to feel, and in those early moments most of what I felt was pain. That was at least something more then anger. Out of that eventually came more space, and more emotions. It’s not easy, most of them aren’t usually pleasant, but I’ve tried to learn and grow from them.

I still have a complicated relationship with feeling. I very much struggle with expressing myself. I’ve discovered my emotions can be… strong I’ll say. I’m often caught off guard by the reactions to my feelings. If coming out taught me that I had emotions, then being out has taught me that I must guard them. That the openness I had dreamed about when I was young wasn’t as possible as I may have wished.

Just because i crave connection doesn’t mean the person I’m connecting with can handle what I’m feeling. It’s a hard lesson to learn. and one about boundaries and assumptions and all of that mess.

So for now, I’m back to feeling, for better or worse.

On Emotionality

The last week has been hard.

My nameday went unrecognized.

I was sexually harassed.

Too many transphobic comments, too much victim blaming.

My parents gave me a stuffed rainbow horse for my nameday.

My wife made a nice meal and my family visited.

What’s unique about how difficult this week has been, is not the bad parts, the hard parts, and the awkward situations, it’s the fact that interspersed between those events were nice things, warm moments.

Sometimes nice things happen. Not often in my experience, but they do happen. The highs and lows contrasted in the same day is abnormal for me. It’s an emotionality I don’t usually experience. In really took the wind out of my sails.

In my experience, I’ve generally survived by being able to handle the worst situations, because I’m well accustomed to misery. The loss of a good feeling feels much worse then things just not being good and getting worse.

It’s an emotionality I’m going to have to learn to accept, it’s probably healthier anyways.

On Loneliness

Loneliness is a common theme that runs through this blog. It’s common, because it’s common in my life. I very often feel alone.

Yesterday was the first anniversary of my name change. I don’t celebrate my birthday, so some people in my life had asked if I would be open to celebrating a nameday. My wife and I had already talked about the idea, because she had hoped to have a day to celebrate me, since I guess she likes me at least a little bit.

Needless to say, all of the people that asked about it, those that I work with, friends of mine, even my own parents. Said absolutely nothing yesterday. After pushing me to get excited about it, and open myself up. To make myself vulnerable, so that I could be surprised and delighted about actually having something meaningful and good happen, that was exclusively about me. They couldn’t be bothered to recognize the day with even a simple message.

Having a day to feel special is not something that’s ever really happened for me. So I’m not going to lie, I was kind of excited, I thought hey, it’s a little different, but it gets me closer to feeling a little normal. Everyone gets a day that’s about them, that’s the whole point of birthdays, so it’s a second chance at a slice of regular, plain, normality.

So when no one even notices, an anniversary of something as spectacularly meaningful. I still remember the smile, the tears, the elation I felt when I held that stupid piece of paper in my hand. For something so small it meant so absolutely much. Even among all of the difficult and terrible things that had begun to unfold, and the year of pain and hardship that sits between yesterday and the same day last year. It’s still a testament to a lifetime of struggle to achieve something. To the labour of becoming oneself, and the effort of self actualization.

So to celebrate something so monumental seemed worthwhile to me. It was an important accomplishment. It was a defining moment in my life, and one I will treasure forever.

I just won’t celebrate it, because I now know, unequivocally, I am not worth celebrating. I’m not worth knowing, and I am especially not worth anyone’s time.

There’s a comfort in knowing where you stand. I know who cares about me, and even if the list only has one name on it, I at least had the foresight to marry her.