Inescapable feeling of despair

Disclaimer: any calls for therapy will be nothing more than unnecessary wear and tear on your keyboard/touchscreen.

This is not really on any one particular issue, and its not something I really expect anyone to be able to solve. This will probably be some large ramble without coherent links between anything I say.

I don't know if despair is the right word. There are just so many things in my life which suck, and nothing that doesn't suck, as far as I can tell. And the worst part is, apart from a low level of dysphoria contributing to my current state of mind, and a frequent sense of doubt and worry that things won't go as planned, the way I'm feeling doesn't have much to do with being trans. Indeed, there is hope in that area; I should be able to get top surgery in about six months, and I don't really care about bottom surgery.

I feel lonely, kind of. Apart from my cat, I have little in the way of friends, and the less contact with my family I get, the better. I have one close friend, but her mother has taken to hating me since I transitioned. Furthermore, whenever I'm with her, I constantly worry that she doesn't care as much about me as I care about her, that she isn't truly reciprocating my friendship. And anyway, she lives in another part of the country. So she doesn't provide much in the way of companionship.

To tell the truth, I've found making friends with guys difficult since transitioning. Though I was never comfortable with myself before transitioning, it seemed the nature of the friendships I was 'allowed' to form back then was fundamentally different. There was more emotion and honesty, and the connections that were formed were much deeper than now. Now, the most I've ever found in the way of friendship is the occasional discussion of a mutual interest, and, with one exception, these 'almost-friends' never became particularly close to me. I was only someone they hung out with if there was no one else around.

Now on to the exception: I had just started at a new school. I'd had loads of trouble the year before, and there were some foreseeable issues with the school I was starting. I was an outsider in my own way, I'd lived most of my life in spain. I met another outsider, and italian. We shared some common interests, and a bus journey to school. We kind of started hanging out, and neither of us had any other friends, so we sort of accidentally became best friends. (I should note that I never tell anyone I'm trans). Eventually, though, we started talking about ourselves more. I discovered that he was extremely homophobic, ridiculously religious, and almost violently opposed to atheism. I realised I really couldn't tell him anything about myself without losing his friendship, and I was just too isolated from everyone else to lose it. I also caught the same bus, which would have made things even more awkward. So that is the only friendship I've really had recently. I've since left that school, for a number of reasons, and I've left education completely.

I spent about four months at home after leaving the school. I did very little other than play videogames, not because I was addicted to them, just because that was what I'd done before, and then I'd found I had an extra 10 hours to fill every day, so I did more of what I was doing. I've since stopped playing videogames for the most part btw. Then I decided that the best way to achieve my new ambition of getting the hell away from my parents was to attend a training course and hopefully move onto an apprenticeship afterwards, which with the odd minor benefit, would probably be enough to allow me to move out. Yey. Better than staying home I guess. But I still feel apathetic about the idea. I'm moving from hell to that place where you just start doing the same thing every day for the rest of your life, and I don't know how to face that. I can't imagine the boredom and apathy that kind of life will bring me, but I don't think I have another choice. I started the course last week.

Now, the course in question is in childcare of all things. It isn't exactly my dream job. I quite like children, though. The center I'm taking the course at offers three courses, and childcare was the only one I could stand the idea of. The others were so deeply drenched in capitalism they made me want to puke, and that, readers, is the real reason I chose childcare.

So, onto family. Firstly, they do not properly accept me as trans. They have started using the appropriate pronouns and name, but that was only because I implied I would kill myself if they didn't. But its perfectly obvious that they don't see or treat me as a guy, and I can't stand it. Thats not all though. I don't think they are particularly bad people, but its like we are just a terrible match for eachother. They take constant issue at me being vegetarian, and constantly try to bully me into eating meat. We do nothing but argue. They are starting to resent me for living with them and draining their precious savings. I am the reason they are stuck, one unemployed, and one in a part time job she hates, in a country they don't want to be in. I've told them to go back to spain, but they won't. I don't hate them, though I am aware of the issues we have, but I don't love them either. My mother is extremely manipulative and can sometimes be verbally and emotionally abusive towards me. All I can think of when I'm at home is how much I want to leave.

My parents are still (metaphorically) punishing me for getting slightly better than average grades in my iGCSEs when I could have gotten a bunch of A*s, still punishing me for leaving school and dragging them back to the UK under false pretenses of wanting an education.

And to cap all of that, the planet, the suffering I see, the hopeless inadequacies of the criminal justice system, human nature, selfishness, capitalism, and the woes caused by certain brands of religion are real sources of misery to me. I suppose I shouldn't let such things affect me so much, given that its not my suffering that is causing it and stuff, but I can't seem to help it.

I have wondered if I'm depressed, and the answer is that I don't know. I was depressed as a younger teenager for trans related reasons, and i don't feel the way I did then. But maybe I am depressed, but differently, or less severely.

Oh, and I frequently contemplate suicide. Not consider, exactly, but just think about it, how much easier things would be, how it would probably be easier on my parents because they'd be able to go home to spain, and how I'd never have to think again, and how my untimely death will make very little difference to the universe. When I was younger, I attempted suicide a couple of times, but I never went through with it. I was also a frequent self harmer, but I stopped about four years ago. I'm worried that I'm going to start again.

I also feel like maybe all my problems are pretty much the same as everyone elses, and that I have no right to feel this way. After all, everyone hates their job and their parents, really. And why can't I make friends, I shouldn't really have more difficulty than anyone else, but I do.

If you read this ridiculously long post, thanks. If you didn't, well, I forgive you. I probably wouldn't have either. Thoughts? That isn't really half of why I feel bad, but the rest of it is too abstract to put into words.

 

Thanks for answering, both of you.

I dunno if the 'knowing other people feel as shitty as I do' thing works or not. It might just make me feel sorry for everyone else too. :/

I don't know whether I can really like my family, but it matters much less when I've moved out. I can simply speak to them or not, as I see fit. The problem is that I'm not yet financially independent. I've tried being more forceful, they just decide they need to explain to me that that sort of behaviour isn't going to make people like me. Sigh.

Yeah, perhaps I should have been a little less forceful about not going to therapy. I've tried it many times, and I've found it completely ineffective, and overpriced. I was open to it once, and I went to many, many sessions.

Thanks for reading

@June Cleaver, yeah, I've concluded my best option is leaving too. Thing is, I'm not really sure if anyone would want to date, me, and I'm not sure I'm interested in dating. I'm not refusing to do it, but I've yet to completely figure out my sexuality, and its so damn confusing. I might be asexual, I just dunno.

Lol, I didn't really expect anyone to address that point. I have many problems with it, it is (obviously) inherently unfair and unequal, and causes vast amounts of suffering. There is more to it than that though - my theory is that it causes most of the selfishness in people/society. I actually know what I'm talking about in this respect, its kind of an extension of the system of providing children with extrinsic rewards to promote good behaviour, which has been shown to have negative effects, including selfishness and lack of motivation for everything but rewards. Capitalism, for the most part, is also mainly responsible for preventing us from effecting meaningful change on global warming.

Capitalism relies on a surplus of jobs, which there isn't, and this problem will only get worse as more and more services start to become automated, or else it relies on social security to feed those who don't have jobs, getting countries into the kind of welfare problem the UK has, where it basically can't provide benefits to everyone who needs them without increasing it's debt level. Lastly, for capitalism to provide everyone with a good quality of life (which should be the ultimate aim of any economic system), there must be economic growth, and this is impossible in the long term, because the earth is a closed system, and the resources needed to grow the economy are finite.

As for a better system, I would propose a gift economy of sorts. Basically, it would be reliant on everyone providing their services/products for free, and being sustained by everyone else's free products/services.

I really shouldn't have politicised a support thread should I?