lilitu23

So, there are a number of matters I want to touch on in this blog today. It may end up being a long one. Maybe someone will take the time to read some of it, maybe not - it really doesn't matter to me. I'm just going to write about whatever I am thinking and feeling and doing in my sad failure of a life, however unflattering it may be. I'm not looking to win any fans or admirers here LOL...

I have some sensitivity in one of my upper front teeth that seems to be getting worse. It's not quite a toothache yet. I had a checkup a couple months ago from my dentist and he said everything looked good, although I chose NOT to have x-rays at that time due to the additional expense. Now I am going to go back and have an x-ray on the front teeth, on Saturday. My fear is that it is early nerve damage and I will need a root canal. It is one of the teeth which has been crowned, meaning if that were the case they'd have to rip off the crown, do the root canal, and make a new crown. Paying for a root canal and a crown would cost me well over $1000, which I don't have, meaning I will sink deeper into credit card debt. There may be low-cost or free dental options for poverty-stricken residents like me, but I am going to keep my dentist and if I need major work done then he will be the one to do it. He's a great dentist, has given me many discounts over the years, and good doctors & dentists are not that easy to come by. Twice in the past I've had cut-rate dentists work on me, and both times they ended up doing damage that cost more in the end to have repaired by a competent dentist. Please God I need a break right now don't make me have to spend many hundreds of dollars on major dental work when I am so poor...

I saw my doctor at the transgender clinic last night. Dr Jody Vormohr is an excellent practitioner, I think, and I feel lucky to have been assigned to her care and that it is costing me nothing. She agreed to switch me from the Premarin to the estradiol and slightly bump up the dose of the estrodiol relative to the potency of the conjugated estrogen I've been taking. She wants me to get blood tests in two weeks before increasing the spironolactone, since that sometimes causes elevated potassium and kidney problems. I asked about progesterone and she said she might be open to adding that to my hormone regimen once I am stabilized on a high dosage of estrogen. Progesterone has side effects which may include depression, so although it is supposed to enhance and assist feminization, I would have to use it cautiously and discontinue it if I had bad side effects.

One thing I can say is my libido is way down. I suppose some of this is due to the spironolactone which I've been on 11 days and which is lowering my testosterone level. The diminished sex drive is also related to what has been going on in my life these past few days, as I've been very demoralized and depressed and hating myself after cruelly killing that poor rat on Sunday, and having such a disappointing experience at the singles party last Friday. I am really deeply mired in self-doubt. I don't feel like dressing as a woman or wearing makeup anymore. I don't feel like searching for love or sex. I don't want to look for work.

I have been socially isolating myself from friends, because I feel ashamed. I know if some of my friends were to learn of what I did to the rat in my house (I would certainly confess it all to them if asked), they would judge me harshly, as I have judged myself harshly. I'm not completely shutting everyone out, though. Deactivating my Facebook account has diminished my social contacts by about 80% since so much of my daily contact with others was through that site and my having a profile there (even my few close friends, some of them I mainly connect with on Facebook). I have talked to my friends Michael and Ron on the phone, and actively sought their support when I was going through the hard times this past weekend. And my friend James called yesterday (he and I aren't that close, he doesn't even know about the gender stuff since I haven't actually seen him in months... we mostly email or talk on the phone). So at present, I'm leaving the telephone ringer on, though I'm not calling friends I would ordinarily because I don't want to end up dumping on them, which is what I would certainly do.

It was good to go to the support group at Trans:Thrive yesterday. The woman who leads the group is just so beautiful, the kind of face and body and everything I would choose for myself if I could trade in my own physical body for a better looking one. The people in the group are all nice, too, but a mixed bag. They are all MTF except for one FTM. Most of them are fairly sensitive and intelligent, but a couple of them are obvious basket cases in terms of drug damage, ADHD, and impaired communication functioning. Trans:Thrive is actually a very nice space for homeless and socially/economically disadvantaged trannies (I don't know if that word is PC or not and I don't care, or if it isn't then I have yet to be corrected). They have free food, a nice quiet lounge, showers, and lots of supportive volunteers or staff. I have only been there for the Tuesday group, but I may be going there more often I think.

Then there was the prayer circle last night. Well, due to the lateness of my doctor's appointment, I didn't get to the circle till late, I stood outside the teepee dome for forty minutes, afraid of being too bold and interrupting someone's prayer by knocking, and so I missed out on my opportunity to pray aloud. I smoked the pipe with the others, and promptly left, too ashamed to talk with anyone. I feel like a really low mean shitty bastard, and maybe it was for the best I did not confess my misdeeds in front of all those nice people, it probably would have made some of the women cry to hear of such cruelty and suffering. As for me, I have not cried about it. I have felt sadness, anguish, crippling remorse, and disgust and loathing toward myself, but not grief. That only shows how self-centered I am, I guess, I should be feeling more grief for the animal who suffered such a horrible fate at my hands. But I am mainly feeling just sorry and angry at myself. Well, I was going to pray that when it comes time for me to die, that death come quickly and mercifully to me, unlike the death I caused that poor little rat to suffer. Yes, I know I am obsessing about this, and I need to just forgive myself and move on. Easier said than done.

So today I am going to go volunteer at the pound, pet the kitties for a couple hours, then go do some food shopping, then go to the pharmacy and hope there are no snafus so I can pick up my med refills for the hormone stuff. I got a call yesterday saying that they would NOT refill my Cymbalta prescription without talking to the prescribing physician, which will be impossible since he retired and I have yet to be assigned another shrink at Mission Mental Health. No matter, since I stopped taking the Cymbalta when I started the hormones. I am pretty sure I am really going to need to be back on an antidepressant, so as to enable me to boost my self-confidence and social functioning in order to effectively look for employment (and for a romantic or sexual partner). But I am going to hold off on treating the depression with meds for now, since I don't want to be so amped up on Cymbalta or Prozac or whatever that I cannot tell what the hormones are doing for me.

Frankly, I am even feeling like stopping the hormones. I just feel so much self-doubt at this point I keep wanting to crawl and stay under the proverbial rock. I feel like I am just as bound to fail as a transwoman as I have failed as a man, so why bother. But by the same token: Why not? I have heard the stories of how transgendered person's lives were thrown into disarray by their decision to transition, of how they lost their families, their jobs, their homes. I feel like I've lost so much and I have so little to lose, that it doesn't matter all that much if my chances of finding employment go from 1 in 1000 to 1 in 10,000. And finding a partner as a lesbian MTF probably won't be much easier than me finding one as a straight male. Shit, I just don't care anymore. Life is an adventure, I'm going forward with this journey, and if I end up regretting it all five years from now when I have tits and there is no way of erasing what I've done, then so be it.

Finally, I read that news story about the guy in Pennsylvania who went ballistic in a women's exercise class and killed three innocent ladies and then himself. I cannot condone what he did by any stretch, but I can sure relate to his sad story:

"Neighbors described 48-year-old George Sodini, who worked in a law firm's finance department, as anti-social, and the Web page in his name showcased a resume setting forth his credentials as an unhappy loner. It listed his date of death Aug. 4, 2009 and his status of 'Never married.'

"He complained of not having a girlfriend since 1984, not having a date since May 2008 and not having sex for 19 years.

"'Women just don't like me. There are 30 million desirable women in the US (my estimate) and I cannot find one,' he wrote. The page ended with the words 'Death Lives!'"

Way to go, George. I hope you have better luck getting laid in Hell cos that's where you're going, Bro...