Thank you so much, everyone. I’m feeling miserable, although I’m successfully resisting the urge to hurt myself. My heart is aching really badly right now. I don’t want the majority of my family to hate me. I just want to live peacefully with them. I want my family reunions to be happy ones, with family members joking about how I’m coincidentally adhering to traditional gender norms by being trans female and cooking for the family. Things like that. I don’t want to lose all of that. I just can’t afford to. But I know that it will all go away eventually. I used to joke about being the black sheep of the family but it really isn’t a joke anymore. It might as well be a reality already.
I feel so hopeless. Hopefully, though, when I go to a trans support group this week I can ask for good trans-friendly therapists in the Boulder county area. I really need a therapist.
Kiwi girl – a NZer guy I knew back in the 80s told me how a weta landed on his head once, and he said his scream flattened all the crops and trees within a twenty-mile radius.
I could well believe it!
Kiwi girl
10 years ago
@Ally: good luck with the therapist search. 🙂 And remember that it’s all about therapist-client rapport, so if you get one that you don’t gel with, even if they come highly recommended, that’s cool – it’s just that that particular therapist is not a good fit with you. 🙂
@kitteh: there are various types of weta, including cave wetas. The Waitomo caves glow-worm tourist attraction in the Waikato, which is dark because.. glow-worms.. -full- of wetas on the ceiling. /shudders
Currently we only have a cicada crisis, the damn things are trying to fly into the house via the windows. And they are -loud- which isn’t helped by us being partially surrounded by bush (so we have more of them). Tonight was deafening, thank the FSM for double glazing to cut down on the noise. The cats, however, are barely interested.
See cassandra, I did that however grammatical form just for you! 🙂
Marie: Ghyah… Yeah, I can see how living like that would cause a phobia.
It’s fading, but I still have a phobia of moths for similar reasons. Like, reading late at night, so they’re attracted to the lamp above my head, then start to land on me when I’m trying to sleep. Or casting monstrous shadows across the far wall. Or appearing dead in a bag of “pre-washed” packaged spinach.
Kiwi girl: I didn’t have a problem with the wetas, but that beetle pic triggered the moth phobia. Just the sight of the fuzzy moth-looking beetle monstrosity and i jusaaaskldsfakjsvshsfsbeneleee *foams, falls off chair*
@Kiwi Girl, I have commented to my coworkers that the animals probably don’t care about us getting their pronouns correct, and that the ones who refuse to put pink bandages on males are probably overthinking it (unless they’re doing it so the owners don’t complain). But “your privileging of the penis as a sex marker is indicative of patriarchal ways of thinking” is not a conversation that would make friends and influence people. People there already think (know?) I’m pretty weird.
As for bugs, I used to have fairly severe arachnophobia (I wouldn’t sit down or stay still outdoors, and tried to avoid walking under trees, in case one got on me). So I feel your pain. Your experience may differ, or course, but hypnotherapy worked wonders for me.
@Ally, yay for not hurting yourself! You will get through this, I promise. And then you’ll be able to get on with your life as the brave, no-shit-taking, intimidatingly intelligent woman everyone here already knows.
Kiwi girl
10 years ago
@emilygoddess: 🙁 I was hoping that they would be a bit more open as I classify vet staff jobs as “caring professions”. I didn’t know there were coloured bandages, so I learn something each day.
****bug experience trigger below****
The only time the phobia has put me in danger was when we had visited a friend’s house and my (covered) shoulder had brushed a tree. About 15 minutes later, on the motorway in dusk/early evening, I noticed a weta on my shoulder out of my peripheral version (Mr Kiwi was driving). After I managed to squeak out what was happening, I made him pull on on a no-stopping part (kind of a breakdown lane area) under a flyover onramp and I had my seatbelt off and pretty much the car door ajar before he had even stopped. Then I jumped out and stripped off my jacket (button variety) and was shaking it – and he had to keep pulling me off the motorway because I was too focussed on the weta and where it had been. Luckily there was pretty much no other traffic. I had wondered about behavioural therapy, but I don’t think it will work because I’m too scared, although I hadn’t thought of hypnotherapy.
hellkell
10 years ago
Kiwi girl: I just looked wetas up, and nonononononogetitoffgetitoff.
emilygoddess
10 years ago
@Kiwi Girl, you would think people in a majority-female profession would be more conscious of gendered topics, but alas. And no, being in the “caring professions” sadly doesn’t make some people any more caring, either (even keeping in mind that some of my coworkers are the stereotypical “I love animals and hate people” type). We often have people bring in pets that have been sick or injured for some time, but that they haven’t brought in sooner because money is a real problem. And some of my co-workers will bang on about what terrible people the owners are, and why were they letting this animal suffer, and I’m just like…there are people in this country who won’t take themselves to the doctor unless they’re sure it won’t heal on its own, because they literally can’t afford it. And you’re surprised that some families have to make the same gut-wrenching decision for a beloved pet? Or maybe, just like people who are sick, they didn’t want to come in because they feared/knew it would be bad news. People are funny like that, especially in unexpected circumstances. I mean, until I started this job, I wouldn’t have even noticed if my cat didn’t pee all day, let alone known it was a potentially life-threatening problem. And back when I lived on public assistance, yeah, I might have waited until it got unavoidably bad before risking the cost of an emergency vet visit, especially if I knew that I might not be able to afford to do anything but euthanize. There’s a lack of compassion among my coworkers for the poor, for people in a state of panic, for people who aren’t in the vet field and have no idea how bad some things can get. And I try to be as forgiving with them as I am with the clients, because compassion fatigue is a big problem in our line of work, but it’s frustrating (and with the poverty stuff, I take it a little personally).
As for hypnotherapy, part of why it worked for me is because my arachnophobia was connected to my overall anxiety problems, so learning to relax around them was a big help.
emilygoddess
10 years ago
Thanks to an ill-advised attempt to cure my own phobia by learning to appreciate spiders as animals, I find I know a fair bit about them. Like that the “waving” was probably the spider investigating you, as they “smell” with their feet. And that the spider posture for “go away” is to rear back and show their fangs, so your friend was probably not signaling that.
Also, despite the phobia, I have always loved jumping spiders. I think it’s partly because they have shorter legs, so they don’t look as “spidery” to my hindbrain.
This morning my sister came over and let me try out her foundation (her skin color is super close to mine). I put it on after applying beard shadow cover, and I think it actually looks okay: http://i.imgur.com/yGp4Bfj.jpg
I’m making that image the first one in my transition timeline, which I’m starting today.
Silly? More like awesome! And I’d say it’s time to hit up the hair are accessories and get yourself some barrettes or such — maybe the little dash of girly would help you feel better? (In any case, you’ll probably need some if you’re growing your hair out, the awkward phase looks to be fast upon you)
We often have people bring in pets that have been sick or injured for some time, but that they haven’t brought in sooner because money is a real problem. And some of my co-workers will bang on about what terrible people the owners are, and why were they letting this animal suffer, and I’m just like…there are people in this country who won’t take themselves to the doctor unless they’re sure it won’t heal on its own, because they literally can’t afford it.
I know. 🙁 My poor arthritic doggie has a sore on her front elbow, and we really need to get her in to get it checked out, but no one has had the money for ages.
Heck, my dad, while he was unemployed, didn’t really go to the doctor unless someone bugged him about it and it was serious (atm i’m thinking of a mild/moderate skin infection), which is partly because he doesn’t like doctors, and partly because he had no health insurance because he had no job. Luckily for him and my brother, he had a place to stay, but still it couldn’t have been fun.
I’m hoping now that both my parents have jobs, we have enough money to take our dog to the vet soon, so she can get that sore checked out. As far as we can tell, it’s not actively making her miserable, but i still feel like a bad doggie mommy.
@Ally
Yay! I don’t think the foundation looks silly, tho I am by no means a makeup expert. I think it looks nice.
Marie
10 years ago
@Leftwingfox
Marie: Ghyah… Yeah, I can see how living like that would cause a phobia.
It’s fading, but I still have a phobia of moths for similar reasons. Like, reading late at night, so they’re attracted to the lamp above my head, then start to land on me when I’m trying to sleep. Or casting monstrous shadows across the far wall. Or appearing dead in a bag of “pre-washed” packaged spinach.
Oh god in the spinach package! I think that’d have put me off spinach for quite a while…
@kiwi girl
Having one on your shoulder for however long does sound pretty scary 🙁 Heck, it sounds scary even without the phobia.
@emilygoddess
And some of my co-workers will bang on about what terrible people the owners are, and why were they letting this animal suffer, and I’m just like…there are people in this country who won’t take themselves to the doctor unless they’re sure it won’t heal on its own, because they literally can’t afford it
🙁 That’s just reminding me of when I was younger and had rats, which get tumors often (2 out of the four I’ve had got tumors) and I could never take them to the vet because damn I can’t afford it. One of them had a tumor that grew on her leg and interfered with her walking and being able to move around, and she died after it got pretty big, and the other had a tumor on her eye, which didn’t get that big (she lived with it for about 6-9 months) but later on got one near her mouth and eventually couldn’t eat. It was pretty heartbreaking 🙁
@auggz
Oh god that spider story is pretty horrifying.
@Ally
Your foundation looks fine to me :3
Re: spiders:
I mostly like spiders, though I didn’t used to as much. In my old house there was one that lived in the bathroom I let live, because 1) it happened to not get in the way and 2) it caught one of the cockroaches in it’s web and I was hoping it’d kill more. I hate cockroaches, even though they’re harmless. That spider did a service in my mind.
And I’d say it’s time to hit up the hair are accessories and get yourself some barrettes or such — maybe the little dash of girly would help you feel better? (In any case, you’ll probably need some if you’re growing your hair out, the awkward phase looks to be fast upon you)
Barrettes sound nice, but I think I want to wait until my hair is a bit longer.
And I admit you have me spooked at “the awkward phrase looks to be fast upon you.” Can you please elaborate on that?
I think what Argenti meant is that when you grow your hair out, there’s usually an awkward stage where your bangs are in your eyes all the time or things don’t look quite right, but you have to wait through it if you want your hair to stay long. No big deal, it happens with pretty much every hair change ever.
We Hunted The Mammoth
[Content note: self-harm]
Thank you so much, everyone. I’m feeling miserable, although I’m successfully resisting the urge to hurt myself. My heart is aching really badly right now. I don’t want the majority of my family to hate me. I just want to live peacefully with them. I want my family reunions to be happy ones, with family members joking about how I’m coincidentally adhering to traditional gender norms by being trans female and cooking for the family. Things like that. I don’t want to lose all of that. I just can’t afford to. But I know that it will all go away eventually. I used to joke about being the black sheep of the family but it really isn’t a joke anymore. It might as well be a reality already.
I feel so hopeless. Hopefully, though, when I go to a trans support group this week I can ask for good trans-friendly therapists in the Boulder county area. I really need a therapist.
@Ally
::hugs:: And good luck finding a therapist. :3
::hugs Marie back::
If anyone has any good trans-friendly therapists they know in the Denver Metro Area or Boulder, CO, please let me know. It would be much appreciated.
Kiwi girl – a NZer guy I knew back in the 80s told me how a weta landed on his head once, and he said his scream flattened all the crops and trees within a twenty-mile radius.
I could well believe it!
@Ally: good luck with the therapist search. 🙂 And remember that it’s all about therapist-client rapport, so if you get one that you don’t gel with, even if they come highly recommended, that’s cool – it’s just that that particular therapist is not a good fit with you. 🙂
@kitteh: there are various types of weta, including cave wetas. The Waitomo caves glow-worm tourist attraction in the Waikato, which is dark because.. glow-worms.. -full- of wetas on the ceiling. /shudders
Currently we only have a cicada crisis, the damn things are trying to fly into the house via the windows. And they are -loud- which isn’t helped by us being partially surrounded by bush (so we have more of them). Tonight was deafening, thank the FSM for double glazing to cut down on the noise. The cats, however, are barely interested.
See cassandra, I did that however grammatical form just for you! 🙂
Yeah, cicadas are noisy beggars. Never had them try to get into the house, though.
I don’t know what sort of weta it was that scared my friend. Probably a deaf one, after that!
D’you remember the time in Footrot Flats when Wal’ thought he’d scare Aunt Dolly by putting a cave weta on his head? That joke backfired …
@kiwi girl
How about I take some of your cicadas and you take some of my (east coast USA) snow?
Marie: Ghyah… Yeah, I can see how living like that would cause a phobia.
It’s fading, but I still have a phobia of moths for similar reasons. Like, reading late at night, so they’re attracted to the lamp above my head, then start to land on me when I’m trying to sleep. Or casting monstrous shadows across the far wall. Or appearing dead in a bag of “pre-washed” packaged spinach.
Kiwi girl: I didn’t have a problem with the wetas, but that beetle pic triggered the moth phobia. Just the sight of the fuzzy moth-looking beetle monstrosity and i jusaaaskldsfakjsvshsfsbeneleee *foams, falls off chair*
I’m just going to leave this here for anyone in need of cute
http://youtu.be/QwGYeVpaC9g
@Kiwi Girl, I have commented to my coworkers that the animals probably don’t care about us getting their pronouns correct, and that the ones who refuse to put pink bandages on males are probably overthinking it (unless they’re doing it so the owners don’t complain). But “your privileging of the penis as a sex marker is indicative of patriarchal ways of thinking” is not a conversation that would make friends and influence people. People there already think (know?) I’m pretty weird.
As for bugs, I used to have fairly severe arachnophobia (I wouldn’t sit down or stay still outdoors, and tried to avoid walking under trees, in case one got on me). So I feel your pain. Your experience may differ, or course, but hypnotherapy worked wonders for me.
@Ally, yay for not hurting yourself! You will get through this, I promise. And then you’ll be able to get on with your life as the brave, no-shit-taking, intimidatingly intelligent woman everyone here already knows.
@emilygoddess: 🙁 I was hoping that they would be a bit more open as I classify vet staff jobs as “caring professions”. I didn’t know there were coloured bandages, so I learn something each day.
****bug experience trigger below****
The only time the phobia has put me in danger was when we had visited a friend’s house and my (covered) shoulder had brushed a tree. About 15 minutes later, on the motorway in dusk/early evening, I noticed a weta on my shoulder out of my peripheral version (Mr Kiwi was driving). After I managed to squeak out what was happening, I made him pull on on a no-stopping part (kind of a breakdown lane area) under a flyover onramp and I had my seatbelt off and pretty much the car door ajar before he had even stopped. Then I jumped out and stripped off my jacket (button variety) and was shaking it – and he had to keep pulling me off the motorway because I was too focussed on the weta and where it had been. Luckily there was pretty much no other traffic. I had wondered about behavioural therapy, but I don’t think it will work because I’m too scared, although I hadn’t thought of hypnotherapy.
Kiwi girl: I just looked wetas up, and nonononononogetitoffgetitoff.
@Kiwi Girl, you would think people in a majority-female profession would be more conscious of gendered topics, but alas. And no, being in the “caring professions” sadly doesn’t make some people any more caring, either (even keeping in mind that some of my coworkers are the stereotypical “I love animals and hate people” type). We often have people bring in pets that have been sick or injured for some time, but that they haven’t brought in sooner because money is a real problem. And some of my co-workers will bang on about what terrible people the owners are, and why were they letting this animal suffer, and I’m just like…there are people in this country who won’t take themselves to the doctor unless they’re sure it won’t heal on its own, because they literally can’t afford it. And you’re surprised that some families have to make the same gut-wrenching decision for a beloved pet? Or maybe, just like people who are sick, they didn’t want to come in because they feared/knew it would be bad news. People are funny like that, especially in unexpected circumstances. I mean, until I started this job, I wouldn’t have even noticed if my cat didn’t pee all day, let alone known it was a potentially life-threatening problem. And back when I lived on public assistance, yeah, I might have waited until it got unavoidably bad before risking the cost of an emergency vet visit, especially if I knew that I might not be able to afford to do anything but euthanize. There’s a lack of compassion among my coworkers for the poor, for people in a state of panic, for people who aren’t in the vet field and have no idea how bad some things can get. And I try to be as forgiving with them as I am with the clients, because compassion fatigue is a big problem in our line of work, but it’s frustrating (and with the poverty stuff, I take it a little personally).
As for hypnotherapy, part of why it worked for me is because my arachnophobia was connected to my overall anxiety problems, so learning to relax around them was a big help.
Thanks to an ill-advised attempt to cure my own phobia by learning to appreciate spiders as animals, I find I know a fair bit about them. Like that the “waving” was probably the spider investigating you, as they “smell” with their feet. And that the spider posture for “go away” is to rear back and show their fangs, so your friend was probably not signaling that.
Also, despite the phobia, I have always loved jumping spiders. I think it’s partly because they have shorter legs, so they don’t look as “spidery” to my hindbrain.
This morning my sister came over and let me try out her foundation (her skin color is super close to mine). I put it on after applying beard shadow cover, and I think it actually looks okay: http://i.imgur.com/yGp4Bfj.jpg
I’m making that image the first one in my transition timeline, which I’m starting today.
(Bear in mind that this is the first time in my life I have ever used foundation, so if it looks silly you know why.)
Silly? More like awesome! And I’d say it’s time to hit up the hair are accessories and get yourself some barrettes or such — maybe the little dash of girly would help you feel better? (In any case, you’ll probably need some if you’re growing your hair out, the awkward phase looks to be fast upon you)
@emilygoddess
I know. 🙁 My poor arthritic doggie has a sore on her front elbow, and we really need to get her in to get it checked out, but no one has had the money for ages.
Heck, my dad, while he was unemployed, didn’t really go to the doctor unless someone bugged him about it and it was serious (atm i’m thinking of a mild/moderate skin infection), which is partly because he doesn’t like doctors, and partly because he had no health insurance because he had no job. Luckily for him and my brother, he had a place to stay, but still it couldn’t have been fun.
I’m hoping now that both my parents have jobs, we have enough money to take our dog to the vet soon, so she can get that sore checked out. As far as we can tell, it’s not actively making her miserable, but i still feel like a bad doggie mommy.
@Ally
Yay! I don’t think the foundation looks silly, tho I am by no means a makeup expert. I think it looks nice.
@Leftwingfox
Oh god in the spinach package! I think that’d have put me off spinach for quite a while…
@kiwi girl
Having one on your shoulder for however long does sound pretty scary 🙁 Heck, it sounds scary even without the phobia.
@emilygoddess
🙁 That’s just reminding me of when I was younger and had rats, which get tumors often (2 out of the four I’ve had got tumors) and I could never take them to the vet because damn I can’t afford it. One of them had a tumor that grew on her leg and interfered with her walking and being able to move around, and she died after it got pretty big, and the other had a tumor on her eye, which didn’t get that big (she lived with it for about 6-9 months) but later on got one near her mouth and eventually couldn’t eat. It was pretty heartbreaking 🙁
@auggz
Oh god that spider story is pretty horrifying.
@Ally
Your foundation looks fine to me :3
Re: spiders:
I mostly like spiders, though I didn’t used to as much. In my old house there was one that lived in the bathroom I let live, because 1) it happened to not get in the way and 2) it caught one of the cockroaches in it’s web and I was hoping it’d kill more. I hate cockroaches, even though they’re harmless. That spider did a service in my mind.
Fade — if it’s the sort of sore that won’t heal cuz doggie won’t leave it alone, neosporian might help.
As for vets…my pets are fish, I don’t even have the option. It’s horrible when you know they’re dying but there’s nothing you can do.
neosporian? *writes this down*
I really hope so, tho it might be the kind that cuz she’s lying on it all day (she can’t move too well, b/c arthritis)
Ally, I think that foundation looks great!
Thanks everyone! :>
@Argenti
Barrettes sound nice, but I think I want to wait until my hair is a bit longer.
And I admit you have me spooked at “the awkward phrase looks to be fast upon you.” Can you please elaborate on that?
RE: Ally
I think what Argenti meant is that when you grow your hair out, there’s usually an awkward stage where your bangs are in your eyes all the time or things don’t look quite right, but you have to wait through it if you want your hair to stay long. No big deal, it happens with pretty much every hair change ever.