MeghanIsMe

This is quite long and probably would benefit from editing, but I'm probably not going to manage that. Sorry in advance!

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Miriam and I had a great conversation that resolved a failure of communications that had been going on for quite some time.

Miriam and I (really, 90% Miriam) have been trying to find technical solutions that will allow us to be social. Most recently, she's looked at elastomeric respirators and PAPRs such as the ones by CleanSpace. We looked at the options together last night and my mood crashed. For her, it was another in a long line of upsetting instances of her trying to find compromises that will let us be social in some way and none of them being good enough for me.

Meanwhile, I'd been thinking about how various kinds of interaction would work while wearing one of these. I'd had a lot of hope. But looking at the options available, I despaired. They look so weird; especially the elastomerics we were looking at. There are PAPRs that are much less obtrusive, but they're so very expensive.

So I crashed, and she was frustrated and sad. We talked on the couch and it came out that she has been feeling like this is about vanity for me. That I don't want to go anywhere unless I have a mask that will still let people see my face because I finally feel pretty sometimes lately. But I don't feel pretty; at least, not about my face. It's really about how people would react to me wearing one of these. I didn't use the analogy, but I feel like I'll look like one of those people who wear tinfoil hats to protect against mind control and people will treat me accordingly. Miriam suggested that the answer to this is therapy to help me with my life-long fear of taking up social space. That it's really hard for me to be trans in public, and masking on top of it makes that so much worse, and that therapy might be able to help.

She's not wrong about that at all. But, in fact, that's not actually what I'm most distressed by.

I took a nap for about an hour so my brain would start working again, and Miriam came in to join me. We snuggled and were both feeling better emotionally, and I asked if I could talk about the masking and my concerns again. She was up to that.

I expressed that therapy wasn't going to change the fact that I can't kiss people. That I'd been trying to imagine how dating or hooking up would go while wearing something like this and it feels incredibly awkward. And even if people were interested, it's hard to imagine having sex with someone and having no contact with them with my mouth or face. A big part of my distress is having this experience of fundamental sexual awakening that's come with my transition while being unable to do anything about it. The idea of not being able to do this for the rest of my life is deeply distressing, and it's not something that these compromise solutions have addressed. I'd expressed that this was something that was important to me, but I did not do so clearly enough.

I'm embarassed that sex is so important to me, and I think that's a big part of why I have failed to be clearer about it. The trans FB groups I'm in have so many people talking about dating and sex feeling right for the first time or posting salacious memes about things that I couldn't do because of Covid, and it hurt deeply. Someone in the local support group was talking about poly and trans relationships and it literally feel like an icy dagger in my chest, thinking that I could never have that.

I'd wanted these experiences my entire life, but eventually concluded that I just couldn't have them because they wouldn't work for me, and had gone terribly and traumatically wrong when I tried. Eventually, I found the term demisexual and decided that that must be me.

But I'm *really* not demi; I just didn't know how to relate to people that way as a boy. I'm nearly certain it would be different now. The thought of this entire array of experiences finally being accessible to me in one way but being closed in another, possibly for the rest of my life, really made me despair for my future. If the kind of life I'd wanted for decades would forever be teased in front of my face, just out of reach because of Covid, I really felt like the only thing in my life that made my future feel worth having was Miriam, whose presence in my life was simultaneously the thing keeping me from what I wanted.

As I've expressed to her months before, Covid and isolation is the first thing in our ten-plus years together that's made me think about whether I want to continue to be with her. I really, really do, but for the first time, I thought seriously and consciously about it. (For her part, Miriam was pleased to hear that I was thinking of and prioritizing myself in that way. We both think it's healthy for a relationship to be a continuing choice.)

I do want to stay, but having to make the choice of Miriam vs. trying to have the kind of social and sexual life I've always wanted sucks so much.

And my father's death and other losses lately have made me keenly aware of two relevant things. I have a limited amount of time left to me, and if I don't find more connections in my life, I'm eventually going to end up pretty alone, as as my mother seems and some of my parents' friends and connections seem to be. The thing I want to pursue most in my life right now is connections with other human beings. Friends, lovers, and whatever else is in between and beyond those things. And honestly, I worry that the state of the world is going to degrade in such a way that the kinds of community and relationships I want may become much more difficult. Shit's scary out there.

So Miriam understands now that it's not that I won't want to be social while wearing a big ugly elastomeric mask. In fact, I really *do* want to be social in any way I can be, and I look forward to those masks getting here so I can do *something, anything* with other people again. She also understands why those masks weren't resolving one of my fundamental sources of despair.

We're going to figure out how this can happen for me. Probably something like a schedule where I can do something risky and follow that up with days of wearing an elastomeric mask in the house and staying in the spare room. I'm building a Corsi-Rosenthal box that should provide something like 7 changes of air per hour in our condo. I have ethernet in that bedroom now so I can move my computer there if necessary. We're putting a small daybed in that room too so I can sleep there if necessary. Once all these things come together, we can think and talk more about how I want to proceed. This is really hard and scary for her because of long Covid, but she empathizes and really wants this for me too and I appreciate her so much.

I have hope for the future in ways that I haven't for a long time now, and have been feeling a lot more functional these past couple days because of it. The sense I've sometimes had that I'd have been better off I hadn't figured out I'm a girl because at least then I didn't know what I wanted, could have, and was missing, is reduced tremendously.

I think that maybe, soon, I'll be able to start being a part of those FB groups and the local support group again. They've given me so much pain, seeing other people doing things I can't, that I've self-isolated from the first places that have ever made me feel like I'd truly found my people.

Miriam and I watched the first four episodes of Xena (we got the first two seasons at a garage sale) tonight while working on things. She thought I'd like it, but wasn't sure because I can be hard to predict sometimes. I love it. It's so much fun! It's so ridiculous! When do they kiss??? (I know, it's not for a *long* time.)

I guess Kevin Sorbo is in some of it? I hope his presence is minimal, 'cause ew.

As Miriam said earlier today, I checked my mail today and saw that my Canadian permanent residency has been approved! I still won't fully relax until I have my card in my hot little hand, but the minute I do I'm changing my name on here! This is a tremendous relief for Miriam and myself both. Since I also finally have a US passport again, I could even potentially leave the country and see my parents without worrying about whether one country or the other will refuse to let me in!

Miriam had a wonderfully helpful and productive intake session at the chronic pain clinic today and, honestly, I feel even better about that than I do about this next step in the residency process. She's been in pain and increasingly disabled for years now, and knowing that professionals are going to really try to do something more about it is a tremendous source of hope and happiness for me.

And something I wrote last night after putting prescription strength Voltaren on Miriam's back and feet, and as I was lying next to her while she tried to find a position that relieved her pain enough to sleep:

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Miriam is having a lot of pain and trouble sleeping tonight and it really hurts, being here but being able to do so little. She's looking at unhelpful things online like "if you need to take painkillers for more than ten days, you should talk to your doctor" or "getting enough sleep can help with nerve pain" and I'm just so sad and angry that she's dealing with this.

We've been waiting for her to get an appointment at a pain clinic for something like six months. It's hard to get enough sleep when your painkillers wear off before you're rested and the pain wakes you up.
It hurts so much, sometimes, that I can't do anything to make this go away.

Shit's been rough, lately.

I had to be away from social media for most of a week. Back then, I had spent a couple of days reading about the current research on Covid, trying to understand how dangerous it is in general, and how dangerous it is specifically for Miriam. I concluded that the answer is potentially very dangerous, if what Miriam has is long Covid. I'd had some hope that, maybe sometimes, with small enough groups of people, I could go out and do things, and I was working to accept the loss of that hope.

Then, right after all of that, Miriam went to work and people at her meeting were not wearing masks. That, on top of having spent the last two days reading about the dangers of additional reinfection, and reflecting upon the huge number of things I deeply long for that I am giving up, was too much to react rationally to. I was enraged. I was livid. In a later online meeting she was in, I heard the voice of someone who was in attendance and I was furious. And with nothing to really focus on, that fury turned into depression and feelings of futility.

There's a lot of depression and fear beyond the loneliness of Covid too. Every one of these things could get their own write-ups.
*Fire-related fear and trauma.
-Fear that a fire will happen while I'm away from the apartment and destroy my things and kill my pets.
-Fear that it will happen while I'm sleeping.
-Still not really over the loss of our cat.
*Gender dysphoria.
*Watching my partner deal with chronic pain, brain fog, and other symptoms on a daily basis.
-Fear that her symptoms will worsen and keep her from working, threatening my ability to stay with her in Canada.
-Frustration and anger that the healthcare system is failing her.
*Lack of Canadian residency.
-Inability to work legally.
-Lack of healthcare.
-Fear that I did something wrong with my application? Other people who applied when I did have finished the process entirely whereas I still have multiple steps left. .
-Fear that they found out I'm poly or transgender and will reject my application.
*Fear about finances and anxiety about spending money.
*Depression and lack of self-worth from Miriam supporting me these past three years.
*Can I even work safely and not expose Miriam to danger? Did I waste all that time and money on my MLIS?
*Inability to do things that were major hobbies and sources of enjoyment, including:
-Photography (all my gear is destroyed).
-thrifting (can't go to stores because of Covid).
-Traveling to see weird tourist kitsch (there isn't much of that in Canada, and getting to it would cost nearly $100 or more in gas to drive to).
*Cognitive problems on my part that leave me overwhelmed trying to learn more math or work with electronics. I wasn't like this before. Is it trauma, or do I have some form of long Covid brain fog too?
*Executive functioning problems in general. I have sometimes started crying when trying to figure out what to have for dinner because it's just overwhelming. Usually it's not that bad, but sometimes it is.
*Loss of my passport in the fire and inability to leave the country in a family emergency.
*Lack of money for consistent therapy (see being unable to work legally).
*My therapist is "over" Covid, so can she help me much anyway?
-Needing to find a new therapist?
*Trauma related to the condo. Will I be able to live there after the fire after it's renovated? Will Miriam? What do we do if we can't?
*Canada Revenue challenged our moving expense declaration from 2021, so we need to work on their paperwork.
*We haven't even finished and submitted our list of lost items for the insurance claim, and I have no idea how long that will take to process once we do. Will we be in an empty condo with no money for furniture?

Sometimes, it's hard to fight against the fear and trauma and anger and despair and be a functional human being. Sometimes I fail at it, like I did for a lot of the last week. In all honesty, if I didn't have Miriam, or if something happened to her, I would be absolutely lost. Sometimes that gives rise to anxiety and fear as I try to figure out what I'd do if something horrible happened to her, and I have no answer.

I keep reminding myself, and Miriam and I keep reminding each other, that life will not always be like this. These things will pass. It won't always be like this.

It's what keeps me going sometimes.

As I said earlier this year, that's really all I want out of this new year. To find myself in a position, at the end of it, where my partner and I can stop telling each other that life will not always be this way because it won't be anymore: It will have gotten better. That's all I want.

I heard a noise last night, around 11 o' clock, that sounded like two sharp raps on the apartment door. I got out of bed, found clothes, looked through the window, and opened the door. There wasn't anyone there. I'm thinking now that maybe it was something the cat knocked over.

I had medium-high intensity fear for a while after, and it was keeping me from sleeping. I got up again and rechecked the lock on the door. I closed the blinds behind the trans flag I have in front of the window for fear of being targeted because of it. I cuddled with and talked to Miriam for a while, and then tried to concentrate on the feeling of the dog lying against my side.

Eventually I got to sleep, but I'm up super early: even earlier than I'd planned.

Miriam needs to start going to an in-person meeting once a week starting today, so we're both getting up earlier than usual so I can drive her to the campus. She hasn't been regularly working in person since Covid really got going in early 2020 after our move to the Netherlands, so this is taking some getting used to.

It's just a few people, and she'll be masking and coming back after the meetings, so we're hoping it will be safe enough, and she doesn't really have a choice.

I'm having trouble with depression again.

The doctor who prescribes my HRT has offered to renew my anti-depressant prescription the last times I've visited. I really appreciate that, since the GP I've been seeing is pretty awful.

After telling her about the fire last time, she asked if I wanted to increase the dose. I declined. I was on a higher dose while I was in the Netherlands, and for some time before that. When I stopped taking it after moving to Canada (mostly because I was too depressed to deal with figuring out how to renew it), I had a span of a month or so when I was feeling better than I had in several years. I thought maybe it had been the wrong medicine for me. But then I had a depressive crash that matched the up span: I was more depressed than I'd been in several years and was worried I would not be able to deal with school when it started again in the Fall.

I went to the GP to see about getting on Bupropion again. He wouldn't prescribe the dose I was on before, but he did give me a lower dose. That seemed to make a huge difference. However, starting that again coincided with starting a lot of transition stuff and it's hard to know what contributed to an improvement and in what proportion.

Anyway, I said no to the higher dose because I was scared of what happened the last time I was on a higher dose and got really depressed anyway. On top of that, life feels so very unstable right now and anything that threatens some kind of stability makes me fearful and anxious. I didn't want to change something as significant as psychiatric medicine dosage on top of that.

But yesterday and today I've been realizing that the depression is pretty bad again. I'm in the state where no kind of entertainment is entertaining, and none of the basic tasks of daily living feel worth doing. If I had a psychiatrist I could work with for medication management then I'd be more willing to try changing things, but seeing a psychiatrist without health coverage is prohibitively expensive. The Canadian medical system is far superior to the US one in terms of accessibility, but it's not perfect.

I have exactly one thing that I'm actively enjoying doing lately. A few days ago, Miriam and I started playing Stardew Valley together in the evenings. I've enjoyed the time together every time, even if I need a little self-convincing to sit down and do it.

This post wasn't going to be this long. I was just going to say that the depression is pretty bad right now. But I think I may be just about incapable of saying things like that without context, and context for the context, and it all kind of snowballs. I still feel like I'm not adequately describing the situation.

I haven't been around here in a while. It's basically because I haven't been together enough to write a lot about what's been going on.

(Having posted this, I looked at the dates. A month‽ Wow. That's probably the longest I've ever gone without posting something since I started Livejournaling. My perception of time has been a bit off for a few reasons.)

The situation here in the Netherlands has been pretty rough for both Danae and me. For her part, she has an emotionally abusive PI (Primary Investigator) on her post-doc project who has driven numerous undergrads and grad students from the project and has had an ethics investigation opened into her in the past here at UvA.

Danae has been on sick leave for a few weeks due to significant stress-related health issues and is discussing options with the department. If she is, in the end, forced to work with that PI, she is going to resign and we will move in with her parents in Canada. I'm doing my best to support here, and it's rough seeing her going through this.

Meanwhile, Danae is doing her best to support me. I have a level of anxiety and depression here that I think needs therapy to address, and that also make it hard for me to navigate an unfamiliar health system that defaults to the Dutch language. Though I don't have any responsibilities outside the house right now, feelings of enervation frequently keep me from doing the housework I ought to or want to be doing. I am managing to more-or-less keep up with having the kitchen clean and preparing meals for us in the evenings.

My lack of ability to communicate in Dutch combines with my irrational feelings of anxiety and deep fear about taking up metaphorical 'space' socially to make going out really hard. Every time I go grocery shopping, I have significant anxiety about being a nuisance to anyone I might have to communicate with because I have to ask them to speak English. In the US, I happily went out of my way to accomodate people who communicated in a way I did not and loved to be in places where I heards or saw multiple languages. When it's *me* as the one who is outside the dominant group, and especially when I think of the reputation Americans have for expecting everyone to speak English, it bothers me a lot. I know that this is irrational. There are folks who live here for *years* without learning any Dutch and get along just fine. But that doesn't keep it from bothering me.

I had been working on Dutch for a while with Duolingo, but between general depression making it hard to concentrate or feel motivation, and not knowing if we're even going to be here for very much longer, I stopped.

It's been pretty hard being so socially and physically isolated. I've never really had a lot of in person friends anyway, but here I've spent the last few months in the apartment for 24 hours a day unless I have to go shopping. I haven't been able to get myself motivated enough for bike rides or walks when sometimes it's hard to just get out of bed.

That's changed in the last couple of weeks though. Through an ex-pat group, Danae found a nearby person who is happy to let me walk their puppy a few times a week. They get free dog walking, and I get a litle time with a cute 7-month old poodle named Poesjkin. Win-win. The first time I went over to meet them, I was terrified. Literally terrified. I spent a couple hours on the couch beforehand, feeling panicky and occasionally whimpering. But I went, and it was good. Very good.

Poesjkin likes me and there's a nifty park near his people's place to walk and look at birds. I don't make it there as often as I intended to due to depression/anxiety, but I've been going a couple times a week for two weeks now and I'm pretty sure it's good for me. I'm so grateful to Danae for connecting us. She felt awful at first when she saw how scared I was, fearing that she'd pushed me into something I didn't want. In truth, whether if it was something I didn't want to do, I probalby wouldn't have been able to fight down the anxiety long enough to do it.

I'm pretty unhappy about my the state of my body. I'm doing a lot of over-eating, my go-to self-medication response. That combined with little exercise has lead to being heavier and having ankle and knee pain. My left ankle has been a little arthritic or something since a minor bike accident years ago and it's acting up with more weight. My left knee, the one I injured in my fall in Amsterdam, is being tricky when I'm carrying twenty or thirty pounds of groceries plus my own self upstairs to our apartment. It still has a circular scar-like mark and a numb spot, but at least it's functioning mostly well! As my sweetie Lisa says, it's not the age, it's the mileage.

I'm still glad to be in the Netherlands instead of the US. I'm stressed about what's going on there. No, I'm horrified. Or rather, I alternate between horror and a sort of disconnected numbness. My dad teaches high school, and is a high-risk person for Covid for a few reasons and the schools where he is in Wisconsin are planning in-person instruction. My mother would love for him to retire a few years early, but they're not sure if that's doable financially.

Meanwhile, anonymous people in unmarked cars are grabbing people off the streets in Portland, OR. People are threatening, or even using, lethal force against other people over whether they have to wear a mask. I just don't have words. I hope Biden is elected in November so we can try to turn this around. I hope it isn't too late. I hope we don't have armed conflict in the wake of whatever outcome occurrs. I am registered to vote from here and will do my little part that way, for what it's worth.

That basically covers the state of the dog up to the last week or so. Most of it is unchanged, though I've requested help from Danae to find the mental health care I need and she's doing so.

There is one last piece of major news. I may be burying the lede here, but I'm still pretty scared about telling anyone since my last school experience was pretty awful and I have a lot of stuff to get past from it still, and I'm feeling a lot of fear about telling people I'm doing anything new for fear that I'll fail and embarass myself...

But I've been accepted to my first-choice MLIS program. It is an entirely online program with Simmons University in Boston, MA. They are a highly-rated program, and I'm taking their concentration in cultural heritage management which I think is a perfect fit for my background and interests. They're giving me a small merit-based scholarship, and it looks like federal loans will cover the rest of it.

The day I got the news, I had to spend the next few hours in bed, being excited, terrified, hopeful, ashamed, determined, and bunches of other things all at once. I'm still working through a lot of those feelings too, but this has also given me some optimism for the future that I haven't felt in a long time.