I had notions of doing something more intellectual with this post but life is what it is and as such I have delayed my effortpost about The Indigenously Produced Unmagnified Gunsights of Cuba once again. I’m going to talk about music again this time.
Oceanlab was a side project of Above & Beyond and vocalist Justine Suissa, who was also the primary songwriter. Sirens of the Sea was their sole album and it is very, very important to me.
Ok so it’s EDM okay? To be precise it’s some particular style of vocal trance but its singer-songwriter vocal trance. Above & Beyond does this really cool thing where they tend to actually collaborate with their vocalists by getting them involved with the creative process, writing lyrics, production and all that. Now, the lyrics aren’t particularly complex and they won’t impress any pretentious nerds but they resonate with me and that's what it's about yeah? Oh yeah and they do acoustic versions sometimes???? which is wild??
I was lucky enough to discover this group twice, the first time was on some lonely night when I was a teen. I came across Clear Blue Water (a single) on Grooveshark (rip), checked out the rest of their discography, thought it was pretty, and proceeded to forget about it for a decade and a half.
I am almost embarrassed to admit just how much Sirens of the Sea affected me when I rediscovered it in the autumn of ‘23. It was like a hug, a cup of coffee, and a sit-down with the Jungian archetype of the kind of woman I admired the most and wanted so dearly to become. The kind of woman who carried empathy, knew failure, was capable of struggle, yet always embraced the love and joy of life. I can’t really articulate how, but this album helped me lay down my grieving for the years I spent otherwise.
My favorite track is “On a Good Day”, and I consider it to be the theme song of my post-transition life. I just cried listening to it, like actually right now, as I write this I still got a little bit of tears drying on my cheek. “If I Could Fly” is a total bop and they did something to the rhythms towards the end of that one and it does really good shit to my brain. “Miracle” is about climate change, it slaughters me HARD because it came out over two decades ago and nothing has changed.
Under this spoiler there are the lyrics of “On a Good Day” because I thought I should include them.
a little bit lost and
a little bit lonely
little bit cold here
a little bit of fear
but I hold on and I feel strong
and I know that I can
I'm getting used to it
lit the fuse to it
like to know who I am
I've been talking to myself forever
and how I wish I knew me better
still sitting on a shelf and never
never seen the sun shine brighter
and it feels like me on a good day
I'm a little bit hemmed in
a little bit isolated
a little bit hopeful
a little bit calm
but I hold on and I feel strong
and I know that I can
I'm getting used to it
lit the fuse to it
like to know who I am
I've been talking to myself forever,
and how I wish I knew me better,
still sitting on a shelf and never
never seen the sun shine brighter
and it feels like me
on a good day
This is the end of this post. Take care of yourselves. Tomorrow needs you, as does the next day, and every day after.
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As a reminder, please do not discuss current struggle sessions in the mega. We want this to be a little oasis for all of us and the best way to do that is not to feed into existing conflict on the site.
Also, be sure to properly give content warnings and put sensitive subjects behind proper spoiler tags. It's for the mental health of not just your comrades, but yourself as well.
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I just can't make peace with this. It's horrible. More crying and urges. I just want to die. I don't want to be trans. This is hell. I don't want to keep going and keep dealing with it all.spoiler
This has been going on for almost 2 years now and I still hate it, still can't imagine being happy with it, fuck sake I just want to die already. Fucking hate being trans. This is just suffering. So many levels of suffering. How can anyone like this.This is the side of being trans that mainstream media doesn't tell people about. They don't even understand it.
Love and hugs, because you're a wonderful person ❤️
No they don't, it feels like no one understands it.
Thank you :cat-trans:
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When you're hungry, eating food gives greater pleasure than eating when you're full. When you're thirsty, drinking water feels good. That's really what gender Euphoria comes down to. Nobody likes being trans without GAC. They like being trans after the GAC.
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I guess so. I don't think starving half to death and then getting to eat something that won't even fill me up is worth it for me though. It's been a while since I did that type of shit. But I guess I see why some people would.If GAC actually fixed everything and wasn't in and of itself hell I'd be a lot less depressed.
cw: dysphoria
Gender affirming care doesn't need to fix everything to make you "full". Dysphoria makes things intolerable that would otherwise not be a big deal. I've only had HRT and social affirmation but between the two of them, there are things that haven't changed that just don't cause dysphoria the way they used to.spoiler
The analogy does break down since being trans isn't a choice per say.
Yeah, people don't make shit easy for us
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It's not even just other people, it's inherently hell. Srs recovery. Electro. Voice training. It's all fucking horrible.spoiler
What about when someone uses your chosen name? Or uses she/her with you? Or ma'am?spoiler
You're right, I shouldn't have said all. Most of the time I really like people using my chosen name.The things I listed are still pretty horrible though, even if everyone in the world was the perfect ally.
I meant to reply to your last reply to me but I couldn't get to it before the new mega.
Also I'm not going to delete this because I know we've been letting it slide but please put content warnings on the spoilered text like below, going forward I intend to enforce it.
CW:mental health, self harm
Is medication/therapy an option for you? You definitely need one if not probably both. If it's available I've heard of people getting good results with ketamine therapy where other meds have failed.That said, I had a very rough time coming to terms with being trans, because to some extent I had been repressing it as a survival mechanism. It helped me survive but not much else. And even then, looking back, I spent much of my life just passively letting myself die slowly. I didn't believe I could have better, but I was wrong.
I've found lately when I go back through older pictures from earlier in my transition that I don't feel the pain that I used to looking at them. The dysphoria isn't like it used to be. I can see the woman looking back at me when before, my dysphoria would grab my full attention and dictate what I saw. Being trans is not the problem, it's not an illness or even something negative. The gender dysphoria is, and I wish I knew better how to help you eliminate it. Right now the last big source of dysphoria for me is my voice, and that has gotten in the way of voice training a lot but with help from a friend I'm starting to make real progress for the first time. But even with this I know that one day I will hear recordings of my current voice and it will be okay, because the problem isn't my voice, it's the dysphoria it triggers.
The damage done by puberty is only damaging through the dysphoria it triggers. But gender affirming care will fix that. Even if it doesn't undo everything that puberty did, it can heal the dysphoria that's actually causing you all this pain. Plus, once you get into and past the second year of HRT, the changes may seem subtle but they really start to add up and just keep adding up from there.
I'd also love to see you post about some positive things if you can. Whether you make progress on your cars or were just enjoying looking at them. When you hit another month on hrt, just did your injection/dose, even if it's just that you managed to get up and exist. Normalizing thinking about and discussing the good or even just the neutral things helped me a lot.
All of the worst people in this damn country want you to kill yourself, they want all of us to. Don't let them be successful. If nothing else, exist out of spite. I've seen it posted here and elsewhere that just existing as a trans person is revolutionary, and it's so true. Stick around and Milk this life for every gram of joy it has. And post about it here if you could, your trans-siblings will be better off for it too <3
Sorry
mental health, dysphoria
Tried meds before. Tried ketamine. Tried ECT. Meds didn't really do anything for me. ECT helped but I can't get it again. I think my issues are rooted in reality not my brain misfiring anyway. I have a therapist but he is not helpful to me about being trans and I'm not sure how to get a different one that would be.Dysphoria and being trans are inextricably linked for me. If nothing body and voice wise, I will always be other. I don't want to be other, I want to be a woman, I want to be treated as a woman and unless I keep this a secret I won't be. I'll be a trans woman.
Voice is my biggest source of dysphoria too. It is so bad I can't voice train. Even if I could, honestly, I would not be happy with the results most people can get out of it. Facial hair is another big one for me and idk if I'll be able to get electro.
How can it heal the pain if it doesn't fix it? Like how am I supposed to not feel dysphoric if the things I'm dysphoric about, not looking right etc, can't or aren't fixed?
I try to, I actually worked on the car last night and a big motivator for me in that is being able to post about it. I don't like posting nothing but negativity but I really don't have much positive to say right now. Same reason I post every injection. I don't have anything else good to talk about.
I'm trying, thank you. Sorry this took a while to post I have limited phone time right now.
some oblique mentioning of self harm thoughts
Oh, for what it's worth and it doesnt amount to much mind, you do sound like you have very profound depression. One of the reasons it might have been so treatment resistant before is because you were dealing with being trans potentially before you figured at least that out. I had to take Effexor for a while and it was invaluable - a self harm thought would come and then be let go, like my mind couldn't ruminate on it like it could. After a little over a year and a lot of therapy and the stressors in my life changing (I broke up with my ex, graduated school, got good at my job, etc) I was able to stop taking Effexor.Regardless, if you do have depression it is going to lie to you and tell you that nothing will work. It is going to be very very convincing because it uses your own brain to tell you it. It isnt true. Compliments, euphoria, all of that might be hard to recieve because the depression (if you have it) is going to lie and tell you it "doesnt count." It will tell you you can "never be fixed" even though that flies in the face of essentially every trans girls experience with gender affirming care.
Trans women are women, honey. Dont transphobia yourself
No worries!
mental health, dysphoria, transmisogyny
They aren't mutually exclusive. Hell they could be dialectically linked, where they make each other harder to deal with by feeding into each other. We are not logical beings, we are emotional beings. Depression can make reality unbearable, and reality can get in a way of treating depression and trigger it. And in turn, depression can get in the way of changing that reality. You wrote about this yourself, where voice dysphoria gets in the way of voice training, something that I still struggle with. But I've found someone IRL to help me, who believes in me. And I've found a group of people who don't see me as any less of a woman when I do speak with a voice lower than 99% of men.
And honestly like most things we believe/perceive, it's contagious and self reinforcing. If all you have to hear and interact with are depression-induced negative thoughts and perceptions about how you look and sound and transphobia around you leading to thoughts like this:
it just becomes your reality. Even though it's false. Trans women are women period. That includes you. This is textbook internalized trans-misogyny, which causes a ton of dysphoria and makes any dysphoria you would've had anyway far worse. The good news is that this can change. It changed for others after all and to give you some tough love, you're not that unique. You're not the one invalid trans woman. And you aren't doomed to a reality where that's how people see you.
And for the love of you and the long life you have ahead of you as a woman, don't give up on treating your depression. Attack it with every weapon against it at your disposal. And switching therapists is very normal, it can take trying many before finding one that actually helps. There are therapists specializing in gender affirming therapy and gender dysphoria therapy. You can see them virtually if there are no good ones near you.
I really hope you're able to move and find some irl community, a community who will see you for who you are and support you in seeing that for yourself.
same as above
I think at least the majority of my negative thoughts are not depression induced, but the rational conclusion to my situation.
I agree I have depression, but it is caused by my life. Without that changing I can't do anything for the depression. I've tried.
You and @TerminalEncounter@hexbear.net both misunderstood what I'm saying here, so I guess that's my fault. I don't want to be viewed as other, treated as other, separated, etc. I do not want to be reminded of my differences. I feel dysphoric when I, say think of how my life has been different from cis women. I would feel dysphoric if women treated me as a trans woman, instead of a woman. If they made me ride in the front of an uber, made comments, etc. That would make me feel dysphoric and absolutely would happen unless I'm stealth (and even able to go stealth). I do view myself as a woman, a woman born in the wrong body and then mutilated by puberty and then cast as an outsider for her suffering.
Being trans causes me a ton of dysphoria. Not being treated like cis women are causes me dysphoria. I am a woman, I am not some "in between", I'm not a "male" who uses she/her, I'm a woman and my body, voice, and how I'm treated being different from that causes me dysphoria and pain.
Yes I am. Unless I pass, and have a good voice, and act the right way, people will in fact see me as different, as other, etc.
Switching therapists is a practical issue for me with how involved my family is with my healthcare, that's the issue.