I'm not totally sure what I'm looking for here... Maybe I just need to vent, I don't know. At the moment, I'm on an exchange in Russia. I was questioning my gender identity before I came here, but I wasn't sure. I'm pretty sure it was being in Russia that made me realize that yeah, I'm definitely transgender. I had thought before hand that realizing that i was transgender would make me happier, but I now realize that was really really a wrong thought. The most accurate way to describe how I feel is that it feels like I'm drowning. I get a lot of people asking why I act a certain way, my host mother is trying to get me more into girly things when that's the last thing I want, and everyone knows how negatively most Russians view the LGBT community. I'm not in any danger and I'm not planning to come out to any Russians, but it's killing me that I can't come out! I want to so badly, I want to have people see me as male, but here I am in friggin' Russia--of ALL places--unable to do anything but feel depressed about it. I've never actually cried myself to sleep until I came here. It doesn't help that the Russians I've met don't tend to really talk to me at all, and my host family isn't all that friendly. I just feel really stressed and depressed, and I can't really talk to anyone about it. I really want to go home, but at the same time I know that this is a once in a lifetime experience here in Russia, and I want to enjoy it as much as I can. I'm sort of stuck, and I can't think of a way to wiggle out...
I realise that having me sit her and tell you to try and focus on anything else at all and try and enjoy the bits that you can is like me telling you to stop a waterfall with your bare hands, but that's basically it... Also it probably doesn't help matters that you're sitting there thinking that almost everyone in the whole country is against you. I'm led to believe that it's by no means most people, just an unfortunately loud and occasionally powerful and messed up section if idiots...you know, like everywhere else, but we don't live there so we only tend to hear the biggest parts of anything. All I can think of is just find SOMETHING there that you like and try and do that. Whatever that happens to be. I know how crappy I felt when I wanted to come out to the world and couldn't, so I can only imagine how crappy it must feel to be stuck in another country with unfamiliar people while that's going on in your head! /hug
