The Hard Stuff

I want to talk about the hard stuff again… I used to talk so much about my struggles with depression and eating disorders and suicidal thoughts because I knew someone else might be struggling and I wanted them to know they were not alone.

Well… It’s time to talk about hard stuff again. I’ve been resisting it for a long time because it is freaking hard to be judged for your thoughts that you can’t control… But maybe there’s someone out there with similar thoughts. Maybe there’s someone out there that doesn’t feel okay most of the time that could benefit from my honesty. And I feel okay enough to share my experiences without worrying too much about my mental health.

So… Here goes…

Do you know what my biggest fear is? Well… Second biggest… My biggest fear is that I’ll end my life early in a moment of rage or depression or insanity. But my second biggest fear is that I’ll die alone, that I’ll never find somebody to love me, and my family will all be moved away with families of their own, and I’ll never have that person to come home to. And the reason it is one of my biggest fears is because I feel nothing when it comes to attraction.

I feel no attraction to the opposite sex or my own sex or any sex, period. I just do not have those desires. I never have. I mean, I have had some curiosity, and I have had people I wanted to be close to. I just never wanted to kiss anyone or hold their hand or have any sexual relations in any sense.

I found out a few months ago that I would need surgery if I ever wanted the opportunity to enjoy sex with someone. And it was difficult news. I wondered if that was why I felt no attraction towards others. It also crushed my soul to think that it might cause another barrier to someone wanting me. I mean, I know I’m already an intense person. Add no attraction and surgery to that and you have a pretty hard sale.

But anyway, I’m okay. I know I have family that loves me and friends that care about me. It’s just hard sometimes. It’s hard feeling like if you left the world, there would be no evidence that you ever existed. And who would know of the struggle it took to get you there. And maybe that’s why I am writing this- just so someone will know of the struggle.

Sexual Orientation, Gender, and Religion

I have started this blog post many times. I have felt the need to write about sexual orientation and gender for a long time. I avoid this topic for many reasons, including the fear of rejection from friends and family because of my particularly religious background. Deviations in gender and sexual orientation are not readily accepted by many in the religious community. It can be difficult to find someone who understands and accepts you for who you are.

I have spoken to very few people about my feelings. Only one of those people has not struggled with similar thoughts. I am afraid of how others will view me if they knew the struggles I face with gender identity. I told my friend yesterday that if my feelings after death were anything like my feelings now, it would be hell. The inner turmoil I feel regarding my gender differences cannot be adequately expressed in a conversation or blog post.

However, I do not often think about my gender. I have come to terms with the fact that I do not fit in and will never fit in societal gender norms. Even with society changing, I still do not fit in. As of right now, I privately classify as asexual genderless, gender neutral, or agender. I have never felt physical attraction toward either sex. I have also never felt like a girl or a woman, but also do not feel like I am completely a man either. Transitioning to male would feel like a lie to myself, but pretending to be female also feels like a lie.

It is complicated to describe how I feel and have felt for my entire life. In my religion, we believe that gender is eternal. We believe that we had male or female characteristics since the beginning of time. It was difficult as a child to accept this because I never felt connected to my gender. It was always understood with my family and extended family that I did not fit gender norms, so they were never forced on me. I mean, I did wear dresses and skirts to church because that was expected there, but I did not otherwise conform to gender norms.

It is difficult to reconcile feelings of distress towards your gender and religious beliefs that tell you gender is an integral part of you. How could my gender be an integral part of me and yet feel so foreign to me? Why did I feel so much discomfort in my own skin? I would literally wet my pants in middle school because going to the girls bathroom was such a distressing feeling. I would rather go to the nurse’s office and have my parents called than brave the girls bathroom. In high school, I would rather get detention for changing in the bathroom stall instead of the locker room because I could not expose a body that felt wrong to me.

I do not have the answers for religious individuals that have conflicting views of sexuality or gender. I found peace in knowing that God loved me anyway. I found hope in the thought that this may be a mortal trial that will resolve itself in the next life. I found strength to be different because God must have made me like this for a reason. That does not mean that it has ever been easy. It is not easy, and I doubt it ever will be.

I worry that I may never find a spouse. I worry that I may never connect with someone the way I have seen my siblings connect with their spouses. I worry that if people knew how I felt, they would judge me harshly and treat me differently. I worry because I already hold so much pain from inner turmoil that I do not know if I can handle outer turmoil in this area. But I also hope that maybe someone will understand. Maybe telling someone will help me not feel so alone. Maybe reaching out will help me heal. And maybe I can feel closer to God and other people through the experience.

Sexual Attraction and Religion

There are a few things that I hardly ever speak about or write about because they are simply not culturally acceptable. Sometimes that means they are not acceptable in society at large, and sometimes it means they are not acceptable to my immediate culture surrounding me on a daily basis. Homosexuality, gender dysphoria, and sexual attraction are all things that are not culturally acceptable for me to talk about here, or anywhere else really.

I avoid these topics for a few reasons. One reason is that this blog posts directly to my personal Facebook page. I made the difficult decision to do that a few years ago because I realized how much people don’t talk about the hard stuff, and I wanted them to. I wanted to not feel so alone in what I was feeling. So I decided that if I wanted to see this, I had to start doing it.

I do not know how many of my friends know about my mental illnesses, disorders, or feelings toward gender or sexual attraction. I do not know who will read this today and learn something about me that I never would have told them in person. This puts me in an incredibly vulnerable place, but someone has to do it. Someone has to talk about the hard things to make it easier for others to talk about hard things.

So… Here it goes…

I read a post on Facebook that said sexual feelings are from God so we should not be ashamed of them. Since this was a post on a religious page, someone then asked why churches can discriminate between homosexual feelings and heterosexual feelings if they are all from God. How can we say that homosexual feelings are not from God if we believe heterosexual feelings are from God?

I don’t believe we can. I do not believe that we can honestly say that attraction in any form is unnatural, an abomination, or any other form of condemning language often used in religion to denounce the practice of homosexual behavior. If sexual feelings are from God, you cannot say that the direction of those feelings negates that statement.

However, believing that homosexual feelings are from God does not necessarily mean that acting on those feelings is sanctified by God. God gives us certain desires or tendencies that may or may not be for us to act upon. I have had depression for as long as I can remember. I have had the desire to die for as long as I can remember. I do not believe God wants me to act on this desire. However, I do believe that I should not be ashamed of this desire because it does come naturally to me.

We have a tendency in society, and often even more so among church members, to judge feelings as bad or people as bad for having these feelings. If you express natural feelings that are not common place or considered socially acceptable, you can be shamed, isolated, and abandoned by those around you. I do not think anyone should be ashamed of their sexual feelings. Whether you are attracted to the same sex or the opposite sex, the feelings that come naturally to you are not anything to be ashamed of. Again, that doesn’t mean you should act on these feelings (either heterosexual or homosexual) because there are bounds that have been set. But I believe that we need to break out of the mindset of being ashamed or shaming others for their natural feelings and inclinations.

I do not have sexual feelings naturally. Thinking about kissing or other sexual touching is not something I enjoy, and my body has an adverse reaction to sexuality in any form. Does this mean that my sexual feelings (or lack thereof) are not from God?  I cannot believe that to be true. I believe that God has given me these feelings for a purpose. I do not know that purpose, but I do know that it has helped me to better understand those around me and that it connects me on a more spiritual and emotional level with those around me rather than a sexual or physical level.

Because I feel no sexual attraction towards another person, I am more emotionally attracted to them. I feel the desire to get to know others because I feel their hurt or their goodness or their love or potential. I want to get to know people because I want to connect with them on an emotional level. I want to share their burdens and partake in their capacity to feel joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain. I want to be friends with people because I like knowing and experiencing how others feel.

This makes me a good listener. It makes me more understanding of others. It makes me more compassionate when someone is hurting. It also makes life harder in some ways because I am more emotionally involved with others so the potential for emotional damage to myself increases. And it makes it harder to desire to date or find a companion because most people want a physical connection in romantic relationships rather than just an emotional one. In fact, romantic hardly seems like an appropriate term for me because how much romance is there if there are no sexual feelings?

The point of this though is that I believe we need to stop labeling thoughts as good or bad or people as good or bad for having certain thoughts or feelings. People are often quick to judge someone who does not fit their standard of normalcy. But if you believe that we are all created equal, that we are children of God, and or that God is no respecter of persons, I feel it is a contradiction to condemn another person for feelings that come naturally to them. We need to make discussing natural feelings normal if we ever want to understand how people feel and why they do the things they do.

Thoughts on Bathrooms

I don’t talk about transgender legislation. I don’t talk about my feelings about gender or sexual orientation mostly because it’s controversial. I avoid conflict or even the very thought of conflict. And in general, I avoid conversations with people.

But today I’m going to talk about a specific topic that I cannot get out of my head. Bathrooms. I have always hated public restrooms. Not because of cleanliness or noise or lack of privacy, but because they are almost always gender specific.

There is a boys bathroom and a girls bathroom, and you have to choose which one to go into. For most people, it’s a pretty obvious choice. You simply go into the one that fits you without even thinking twice. But for someone who doesn’t fit, it’s like choosing between depression and anxiety, you don’t want either one but life might just push you into one anyway.

The worst is locker rooms. There is no privacy in locker rooms. And even though you go into the locker room that correlates to your body parts, you can never feel comfortable changing where you don’t belong. Even though I was threatened with detention every day I changed in the bathroom of the girl’s locker room, I still did it. I would rather be punished every day than be exposed every day.

For as long as I can remember, I have wished that there was another option. I wished that there was a middle ground where you didn’t have to choose between boy and girl, but could just be you.

I classify as gender neutral or genderless. I don’t associate myself with either gender or consider myself to fit into the categories of either boy or girl. I also classify as asexual, which means I feel no sexual attraction to either men or women. In a world of men and women, heterosexual and homosexual, being a gender neutral asexual person feels like being a rock in someone’s shoe. You just don’t belong, and you feel like you have no purpose and just get in the way.

I don’t expect you to understand. How could anyone understand if they have never felt like this? But I want you to know that I’m here, that I see the arguments. I see both sides fighting for what they believe to be right. I see my friends, most of whom have no idea how I feel, post about how wrong it is to choose to be something other than what you are.

I promise that I didn’t choose this. In fact, I choose to conform to what I am not every day. I choose to go into the women’s restroom despite the stares I get. I choose to go on the right side of the room when the teacher decides to divide everyone up by gender. I choose to wear a skirt even though it makes me feel gross inside.

I am not a man, but I don’t feel like a woman either. And I’m not sure I ever will. But I try. I try to fit into your world. I try to play along. I try to squeeze into the boxes I am expected to fit into. But please, before you post how wrong this is, before you tell the world to stop making things difficult, please, please know that for some people this has always been difficult. Please know that for some people, we would rather wet our pants every day at school than have to go into a restroom where we don’t fit in. And please, just please try to understand how hard it is to go through every day hating everything you are because no one seems to want you if you can’t be what they expect you to be.