Over and Underwhelmed

With so many things going on in my life both personal and familial, it has been a trying time for quite a long period of late.  Redefining the very existence of one's relationship with one's spouse because of being transgender has proven to be more emotionally difficult for us both.  It's funny, because in some ways our relationship is stronger than it ever was but in others, it is as if whole segments are now gone.  While there is mourning at the virtual death of the husband that was, there is a new relationship as sisters and friends.  It is a conflagration of conflicting emotions which we both harbor within our hearts and it is proving to be a difficult realm for us both.

Familial ties and stresses for us both in our respective families has begun to test our mettle and endurance to be there for others while we both find ourselves silently struggling within with our own issues.  It is for this reason, that the first part of the title of this blog entry exists.  I, and we, are overwhelmed right now within our own struggling issues to come to grips with the facade of the man who no longer is and the woman who has replaced him.  It is the fact that we both are the sole providers to assist with family where no other bothers to step in.  It is the feeling of need and responsibility to handle all of these things, to be able to put aside our own struggles and emotions to be consistently strong to handle our aging parents that makes this an exceptionally challenging time for us both independently and together.  It is.... OVERWHELMING.

At the same time that I personally feel overwhelmed, I am finding myself in the same instant, being UNDERWHELMED.  It's perhaps hard to explain but I can certainly try.  It has to do with my personality and who I am as a person.  I tend, generally, to get bored easily.  I'm not very good at maintaining a routine lifestyles that is defined by the borders of a daily ritual repeated day after day and week after week.  While necessary, I still find myself continually trapped within the mazework of minutiae that makes up the majority of humanities daily existence.  While work is a necessity, I'm not happy nor am I content to simply spend my life in trivial pursuits and activities simply to amuse my time.  I get bored with going out to eat or to the movies or to a store for some shopping.  It's just too quintessentially quiescent.  It gets just too boring for me.

Apparently I have a relatively high IQ that is in the range of 135-145.  I don't know what being a supposed person of "Very superior intelligence" in the top 10% means, but I do know that the mundane and the regular just bores me to death.  If I am not constantly finding myself in a stimulating environment or occupying myself with some sort of stimulative activity, I become bored.  If the boredom continues, I become more and more depressed to a point where it really does become problematic for me in my life.  Feeling trapped in so many ways doesn't help matters either.   This is probably why I am always doing, building or learning something.  My latest forays are into music and painting but my other passions are never left behind.  They simply await for me to become bored with whatever I am currently doing as I skip back and forth between them.

I would venture to say that I am most like the little child, with wide eyes, who sees something for the first time; something which we might consider run-of-the-mill.  Their amazement and wonder are childlike emotional stimulants that I thrive on and find that I desperately need to keep my sanity in check, my life stable, and my sense of happiness and balance in order.  My being transgender is simply not in the equation when it comes to who I am and what I want out of my life as a person.  That doesn't even come into this equation, although it was a speed bump and an interruption in the linearity of my life's flow.

I was pondering why my love for travel is so great, to explore places and meet people.  I was pondering why it is that some people are content with the mundane and the routine; why they don't need to travel; why they are relatively content with their lives in the limited circle they work and live within.  I was pondering why I am never content, never happy - unless I am moving both mentally and physically, moving and doing something new all the time.  True, I used to travel partially because it was as escape from the mundane and the routine, a way to keep myself occupied so that I did not think constantly of the gender dysphoria I felt for so many years.  But now..... But now with the gender dysphoria pretty much squelched into oblivion I am finding that same urge and lust to explore coming back with a vengeance.  The "running away" component is gone for the most part now and so I am finding myself free once again to focus on the true spirit of nature that is my mind and my soul.

To top all of this off, I am finding myself, more and more, to be something perhaps of an oddity in this world.  I know I'm unique because each one of us is, but more so, I am finding myself to be unique in so many odd categories and ways... in interests and in desires.  I know, for instance, that I am a passionate person who has emotion and empathy and love in my heart, but also find that I don't harbor the sexual passion that men and women generally find with each other.  Perhaps I've never really experienced it the way I have longed to as a woman....thoughts and intense feelings of incongruity which had left me feeling so very alone inside my own body as someone who had to live her life as someone she was not....someone she had to play as a role for everyone else.  Someone who cursed the fact knowing she could never bear a child and experience something that has left a hole in her heart and soul.  It's so very odd that instead, I seem then to lust for adventure and explorations, for learning and achieving, for meeting and knowing people, for listening and sharing, for compassion and caring, but not needing nor wanting of lust and longing.  Perhaps I just simply haven't yet fully lived as the woman who was hidden to everyone yet who had always been within their plain sight.

There are so many times that I feel like I am at once an integral part of this world in the ways that I touch others in their lives, but also at the same time feel as though I am very different and very apart from it....and that causes a feeling of loneliness that I am this way.  Truth be told, there are more than a few days where I have considered ending this ride early....but when I think of such finality, I immediately think of the wonderful friends I have and of the people in my life who may not be able to walk with me, but who are there to give me shelter and to guide me along my way.  I think of the seemingly miniscule differences I am making in this world and find a smile forming in the comments and unsolicited remarks so many will email , text, comment or message me.  I can't do this alone.

I seem to have a very unique path before me in my life and I am not always sure that I have the strength to walk it on my own.  None of us knows the exact time we will cease to exist on this Earth, but I do know that I have telescopic vision of a long journey still yet ahead.  Yet the further into my life I travel, the further distant my goals and dreams seems to lie.  It is human nature perhaps for all, or perhaps for some who are not content with the mundane and the routine but there I times that I wish I could be happy with just that.  What I do know is that I have many miles to go before I sleep and many personal promises to keep....as long as I don't stand still long enough for the darkness to catch up to me....and ....if I just keep moving.