Slipped Through a Curtain of Thought

Okay its been a week or so now, so I finally feel like I can write this one, and I just won't share it directly to Facebook since this is going to get a little bit out there.

Let's just say this girl, we'll call her Sabrine, who was most definitely just someone I know, had a very peculiar new years experience.  

And I feel like I should tell it so that nobody else ends up having to follow in her footsteps.  

What the hell, lets even see if I can write it like its a story. 
This is going to be disjointed and inaccurate, recollections of it are hazy, and I don't feel like pushing her to work it out.

---

Her day had been frantic and full of energy, trying to keep a music festival on track and somewhat functional requires a lot of people doing exactly what they need to be and at exactly the right moments.

So she had been doing her best to be there, but the time was rapidly approaching where she could at least temporarily become just another party goer for New Years Eve.

The last hours of her gate shift were a blur of hasty makeup application and drunken punters, casual chats while checking tickets, and chasing after people who couldn't follow directions and would disappear into the crowd before check-in was even complete.

It was just after 10PM when she finally escaped back to her friends campsite, just three exhausted ladies keenly looking forward to cute outfits and the ingestion of some substances to enhance the evening.

I am absolutely certain at least this step of her evening was dignified, so as they changed their outfits and she found the small strips of LSD she had acquired in the days leading up to the festival.

They were the off cuts from a large sheet of blotter, the very edges, and so the actual quality and doses were a somewhat unknown. And for some reason she had in her head that at the absolute worst there would be five doses worth.  So she swallowed it all.

Finally outfits were on, makeup was finished, and this squad of lunatics were somewhat ready to face the world and listen to some music.

And then it happened... it was not the usual slow build up of a slightly energised and anxious body, the subtle blurring of vision that takes an hour or two to really turn into a trip.  It was a kick to the face of colour, and sound. And it happened in minutes.  She panicked.  This was far too much for this soon.

Her friends had taken various other types of LSD and were both also remarking about how quickly it had happened, but they seemed fairly comfortable with their progression.

Sabrine knew that this was going to get a LOT worse, the thought crossed her mind to find some benzos now and terminate it before it could get there.  The last sober and sensible thoughts she would have for the next twelve hours, and it wouldn't be until much later that she realised she should have followed that instinct.

But no... you can't kill it before you have at least enjoyed it a little right?

"What time is it"

"11:50"
"Shit we have to go, its almost midnight, come on Sabs"  

Panic... the idea of being amongst all that light and colour was terrifying, the concept of walking enough to get there when the physical world kept blinking out.

"I don't think I can... I really don't"
"Yes you can, you have to, we came here for New Years"
"I don't think I actually can though"
"We'll fucking carry you if we have to bitch"
"You might actually have to...I just can't"

And with that they each took one of her arms, and guided her to the exit of the tent, past the treacherous tent strings and out into the world.

She had the overwhelming desire for sunglasses even in the pitch dark, as protection from the inevitable light, but also so that nobody could see how off planet she was... 

There were other people everywhere, apparently everyone had the same idea.

Miraculously they were at the first bridge... the arms around her were gone, but she made her way across and actually almost felt like she was in charge of herself for a moment.

The wall of sound hit her like a slap to the face, and she could see the glow of the light across the next bridge... along the path there were soft lantern-y lights, and the whole scene looked very tropical like a nice lagoon.  So she stopped.... unsure if she could deal with the actual stage area ahead of this, and enjoying the cuteness of this spot.

They came back and found her.

"Bitch we have to go we are going to miss it"

She could have sworn it was already past midnight, since a bunch of people nearby had stopped to say happy new year and hug.  But apparently not.

"Oh, didn't it already happen?"

"Shit.... did it? WHAT THE FUCK!"

"Well I guess, um happy new year then..."

Hugs... always nice, until your entire body feels like its made of some kind of glowing liquid.

And then Heather checked the time... 11:59....so stroke of midnight round two!

They walked, though she had no idea how, to the dance floor of the party.. it was a sea of people, noise, light, and this was still in the first hour... there were so many feelings and distractions, it was like being immersed in the entire crowds existence all at once but individually.

It was everything she expected and more, her friends were spinning fire on the stage, it was just a blur of flame and movement to some extremely loud music.

Her bones were vibrating against the glowing liquid of her body.

And she had to keep looking away from the blinding flames.

She followed her friends... they bumped into various people she knew, but was barely capable of saying hello to, she felt like she was scaring them simply by being there. She felt like she was scaring herself just by being there too.  She felt sorry.

Too many sensations occurring simultaneously.... panic.

"Sabs, shall we go to the Chai tent?"

She had no idea what that meant but she followed anyway...

There were moments of feeling quite together, and cute in her floaty dress and cute sparkling shoes.

Back across the bridge and its Gilligan's Island vibe... a little quicker than she'd like, over the slightly more troll vibes second bridge.... and a hard right into the Chai Tent/Safe Zone.

Stepping into that space felt surreal, its an enormous black tent, with a few sketchy pillows to lie on and some provisions for chai tea making and strangely enough a bunch of condoms, she worried about the people who come to safe zone to fuck... hopefully the condoms were a takeaway concept. 

She lay down, closed her eyes, and she felt everything slipping away...

The concept of self, the knowledge that she was lying on a pillow, the tent, and even her friends... it all floated in and out of her mind as she lay disconnected from it all and thinking.

The void was not empty... it was like her thoughts were taking physical form only temporarily and then disintegrating into molecules and blowing away on some form of theoretical wind.

She had no body, and no name here.  Just an observer watching as the universe unfurled itself in this unknown space.

"Sabs, are you okay?"... the real world came rushing back like a sharp breath in.
"No" she replied. And the exhale returned her to the other universe.
"What can we do to help you?"... inhale
"I don't know... I don't think anything"... exhale

The girls were flailing about, being surprised by the fact that they could stand, and then Rose managed to clip her nose on the edge of a hard pallet that one of the pillows was sitting on... who the fuck uses a hard surface in a safe room she thought...inhale

Commotion... exhale...

Nothingness. No molecules. No Sabrine.
The void was darkness this time, the dimness of the tent had stripped it of all the shifting colour.

The thought molecules were more like the exhales of her cigarette earlier, vaporous and drifting slowly apart and into the darkness.

Inhale... Rose was gone to fix her bleeding nose, Heather was asking if some other people could also come inside to chill out.  She thought that might be okay...

Exhale... fuck... other people, and their energy, what if they are really freaking out, what if she has to try and talk to them, what if they are angry, what if... what if... what if.....

Inhale... she stood up and walked out of the tent and started putting on her shoes, much to the surprise of Heather who had just told people we were fine with them coming in.

Her shoes sparkled in the moonlight, she struggled to get them on her feet.

And eventually Rose came back, and decided she would change her outfit a little, so they walked back to their campsite.

The landscape on that walk felt completely different than it had just ten minutes earlier, it felt twisted and alien, like it stretched out forever but her legs were taking giant strides across it.

Depth perception and spatial awareness were just words at this point, words that meant nothing to her anymore.

Finally, they made it back to the camp... she lay down... and returned to her other universe.

They started talking amongst themselves, she wasn't really following the words, she was drifting in and out of here and there.

They laughed and joked as people tend to in this state, but she wasn't in that state.

It all sounded so loud, and so chaotic, it shook through the other universe she was still floating in.

It burst through the thought molecules, smashing them away rather than drifting off on a breeze.

"Shhh", she attempted.

Which just invoked even more raucous laughter.

This went on for some time, it might have been weeks for all she knew at that point, but the other universe was less serene now.

Every time she tried a "Shhh" they would laugh more, so she learned to not say it, she felt the "Shhh" inside her soul aching to get out but knowing it would make it worse. It hurt.

She felt like she had become a monk that had taken a vow of silence to try and make it better.

As the laughter and shenanigans continued she tried desperately to get her friends to at least tone it down a little, she heard neighbours in other tents yelling for them to shut up.

A few tents away she heard a lady say "I am going to get up and deck that bitch in a minute" and her partner quickly ask her to calm down.

The tension, aggression, and the way the noise was shattering her strange bubble universe forced her to try and seek solace somewhere else, she somehow gathered herself up and walked outside.

The real world was there briefly, it was completely alien and incomprehensible but it was there.

She staggered forward looking for a quiet place, she stood and looked at the stars like brilliant diamonds covered in clouds that looked like they were made of silk.

It felt good to breathe the cool air, she found a log to sit on near an old campfire and managed to light a cigarette.  Cigarette lighters have a tendency under these conditions to stop emitting flame in her mind, instead they rather spit out a red coloured pixel which you must catch on the end of your cigarette.

She enjoyed the smoke in her lungs, and watched it slowly drift away as she exhaled... it felt like you could see it forever as it disappeared into the night. 

"SABS!" a voice yelled....
"Shuuuuuuuuut up!" another replied.

Somehow she managed to find her phone... it's screen burst into life, spewing colours and light in every direction.  1:23AM

How the fuck... how had so little time elapsed, how was she in this bad of a state.

Her friends appeared out of the darkness, but she was still unable to talk, her vow of silence had not yet worn off, it was like the only thing she needed in the world was complete silence.

She tried to smile, and waved them onwards.... they looked confused... but they walked away.

She sat there for some time, people drifting in and out to check on her, just floating between universes and staring at the stars.  It was getting cold, and she realised she had been here alone for too long.

And so she headed back to the dance floor... to try and find her friends.

Her makeup felt smudged, her fake lashes felt as though they were barely holding on, she was a mess in every sense of the word.

The walk was different every time, as though the world was reconfiguring around her every time she turned around, and yet inexplicably she found herself back at the fire dancing area with her friends.

"Should we find somewhere to sit?"

She fetched herself some water from the bar tent, struggling to comprehend the various sources of water and cups available to her.

She had decided that maybe some MDMA would help ease her out of this manic incomprehensible monster of a human she had become, scrambling in the pocket of her jacket where she had kept it, and struggling to get it into her mouth.  She swallowed them, and tried to follow her friends.

They walked slowly up the steep hill, trying to find a place to rest and watch the fire dancers from a safer distance, and enjoy the music without being deafened.  But there was no sanctuary, only more hill.

They reached the top of the hill, the tree they sat under was dropping leaves which she could have sworn were a swarm of bees, that she tried frantically to bat away. She felt super exposed and visible, like people could be watching their frantic states perched in a shrubbery.

There was no calm.  Only thousands of sources of stimulation slamming into her at once, the relative safety of the other universe actually felt preferable at this point. At least there were no bees there.

She pulled the hood up on her bathrobe, attempting to block some things out, to lower the sensory volume.  It didn't work. She flattened out her dress underneath her, trying to make sure it was not getting muddy or wet.

"Do you need to go somewhere else?"
"I don't know... I want to listen to the music, I want grass, and stars, and I don't know... I want a meadow" she said softly.
"What the fuck... a meadow?"
"Yeah y'know a serene patch of flat grass, farmlands, open spaces, I don't know... a fucking meadow"

The girls stood up...

Sabrine stood and almost fell face first down the hill, the girls edged their way carefully down.

And somehow in a miracle of self assured ridiculousness she almost skipped down the treacherous slope, past the people sitting by the fire pit and flounced her way through the crowd on the dance floor.

And so they started walking back toward the music, and remembered the Yoga tent which sits beside a stream, and near a bridge with a nice big flat patch of grass.

She immediately lay down, and glared at the silken clouds for how much they were obscuring her view of the stars.  She definitely couldn't really see them, but she absolutely could see them in those moments.  Her friends were wandering around again, she wasn't quite aware doing what, but she was finally happy temporarily.

The music was nice, it was all quite funky and had a lot of attitude so she just lay there with her knees up bouncing her feet and loving the whole universe for the first time in a very long time.

Exhale.... the other universe was a bright candy coloured world now, all lavish pastels and soft clouds of imagination.  Everything was sparkling and the colours were shifting in time with the music which she was still aware of.

Inhale... 

"Hey Sabs, Rose wants to go somewhere, are you going to be okay?"
"Sure"

Exhale...

She floated for so long... blissful and happy.

Thinking about all of the wonderful people she had met the past few days, thinking about the year ahead, thinking about the people she loved.

Sometime later...Inhale...

Slow drops of rain, darkness, her friends had gone somewhere and suddenly she became profoundly aware of how vulnerable she was.  Her dress had slid up because she had her knees up, she was lying on the damp ground, still not really aware of where she was a lot of the time.

And there were wasted men walking past constantly in full view of her, and so she was in full view of them.  Panic.

What could she even do if one of them came and caused her any trouble, words like rape, stabbed, and haemorrhage floated through her head. Panic AND dread.

She stood shakily, and rearranged her clothes... unsure where to go next, would they have gone back to the dance floor? to the camp site? She had no idea... she headed for the dance floor, security giving her a slightly concerned look as she floated back over the bridges.

At the fire dancing area she saw some people she knew, tried to ask them where Rose had gone, tried to ask them how their night was going, but they all just seemed so distressed by her that she couldn't stay long.

God, what do you do when you are scared, and other people seem scared of you.

She remembered her time on the log, four hundred years ago, a younger more at peace Sabrine.
The walk back was more casual, she floated, she skipped and she flounced her way back to the log.
And once there managed to check her phone, 3:17AM...she lit another cigarette and took a deep breath.

The rain had eased to a slight mist, she stared at the sky which was just a sheet of rippling clouds now.

Groups of people walking back to the campsites, and she still had her intense feelings of vulnerability, a group of men stopped to ask if she was okay, she said she was fine, and one of them had that familiar look of shock and possible outrage...."Is that a dude?"

Thankfully his friends quickly grabbed him, and dragged him away further into the camp sites.

She managed to find her phone, and message her friends...

AT MY LOG, NOT LOVING BEING ALONE, CREEPY WASTED FUCKERS EVERYWHERE.

She lay down on the grass and leaned against the log, trying to make herself smaller, and less visible.

Soon enough her friends arrived, and the world felt much better again, they lay there and she played some music to try and soothe their fragile little minds.

She found they could talk again, she was finally at that fun stage of an acid trip where you can talk absolute nonsense and laugh your foolish asses off, she no longer wanted to "Shhh" she just wanted to explain why her night had been so insanely hard.

Rose disappeared back to the campsite and bought back her gigantic Bluetooth speaker, and suddenly it was a party within a party by her log, a soothing girly vocal psytrance sub-party.  Which made her immediately feel a million times better.

Random people stopped to say hi and listen along with them for a bit.  And eventually a little after 5AM they decided they had been civil enough keeping the noise away from their campsite, they walked home... and it felt amazing to finally be somewhere away from it all, safe, warm, and able to relax.

Sabrine had refused to get out of her cute dress all night, through cold, wet, muddy, and generally dishevelled states it was still on.  And damn if it wasn't staying on, she fetched blankets and some pyjama bottoms and made herself a nest.

Eventually the friends and neighbours found their impromptu chill out party, and as the morning started she was surrounded by all kinds of people and in the midst of numerous amazing conversations with people.  Life stories were exchanged, jokes were had, all of those amazing things that happen when the MDMA takes over from the trip.

Slowly their guests drifted away to their beds, or to find other people and check on them, and she was left with her friends who were also floating in their own universes.

Things felt relatively normal again, but only from her perspective, for any normal person this was still definitely more fluid and strange than you'd call normal.

he rain on the roof of the tent slid down the canvas looking like delicious watercolour paintings...she sipped some nitrous oxide and felt the way it shifted the tone of the music, and intensified the visual effect of the acid briefly... it felt nice... she sipped again.

THE END (well the end of the most interesting pieces, the silly bitch went on to do several more days of this foolish nonsense, but those are stories for another time)

Medical Mysteries and Chemical Soup

I want to explain some of the non-gender related medical things I have been going through lately, because I guess they're on my mind more than usual at the moment.

In my life I have had several really serious concussions, when I was younger the doctors even told me that another serious head injury could kill me, so I have always tried to be pretty careful about getting clobbered by things.
I also had Glandular Fever when I was around 18, so I spent several months being exhausted and almost unable to move.

These things are important because basically since I was 18 I have been exhausted to some degree or another, and of course everybody says things like "Everyone is exhausted, get over it" but this isn't the gee I could use a nap variety of tired, its the limbs feel like they're filled with lead, getting out of bed is a struggle, standing up for a shower is hard kind of physically incapable of movement type exhaustion.

On top of that I have also spent my entire life unable to focus, with terrible short term memory, im restless and get bored really easily.  I start projects or work and just drift off into never finishing anything and float from thing to thing quite regularly.

So here's where things get tricky right... the exhaustion could be caused by the numerous head injuries I have sustained damaging a part of my brain that regulates that stuff, or they could be caused by chronic fatigue but who knows.... the focus and motivation thing could be either of those things as well.

So why is this suddenly such a big thing? Well most of my life I have just managed this shit with stimulants, whether thats excessive caffeinated beverages or illegal drugs, and for very short bursts of time that works... I can maintain a job, I can get things done, I can get out of bed.

But with a government monitoring device attached to me and regular drug testing, thats not actually possible.

The doctor has run lung and heart tests so far which were both clear, but I don't even know where to go from there.... I am seeing a psych about potential ADHD next year sometime, but until then I guess I am just going to be exhausted and a little dejected.

Love,
Abigail

So What Next?

I have finally been sentenced for my foolish drug importation escapades, so for the next nine months I am confined to my Mums house with an ankle bracelet on.  I can only leave to go to my regularly scheduled counselors etc

But my probation officer asked me to try and think of work I'd like to do, or courses I'd like to study, and any additional help I might need for mental health stuff.

And the problem is, right now I cant think of a damn thing...

My original plan was to study psychology and counselling so that I could basically start my own little private practice helping out the LGBTQIA people and their families, and maybe write a few books, start a cult yknow.., basically carve out a perfect little niche universe for myself.

But I never really gave any thought to how I would do any of that with a criminal record, its not that I CAN'T do it, its more that it adds a lot of extreme difficulty and delay to that.  And I still have to consider transition costs... how the hell am I going to come up with 100k now.

Like do I just say to hell with my altruistic side, and go back to I.T work, but then who would even hire me at this point.

I can absolutely understand why so many trans people end up turning to sex work, because I feel stupidly overwhelmed, trapped, and frustrated right now.

Anyway, I have 9 months to do SOMETHING with.... if you have any recommendations please do let me know.

Because I feel like I am going to go fucking crazy.

What Next?

So it has been quite awhile since my last post, and I figured some of you may be curious what is actually happening given the grim tone of the last few.

My next court date is in Auckland on Friday morning, at this court date I expect to be entering a guilty plea to the charges I am facing, and from that point forward we move into the sentencing phase.  This basically means that my current living situation, my remorse, my willingness to be rehabilitated etc will all be taken into account and eventually a final sentence will be issued.

At this stage the indicated sentence is 2.5-3 years, I get some discount for pleading guilty, and for expressing remorse etc.  And the goal right now is to hopefully present enough of a case that I can be given home detention which means an ankle monitor and regular checks from a probation officer.

If for whatever reason that doesn't go my way, I could be sentenced to prison where assuming I behave myself I would serve 1/3rd of the sentence so at the most it would be a year.

Not that I want to focus on the negative, so if that happens, I will basically request to be kept in basically voluntary solitary confinement with access to writing materials and I will spend that year writing my life story.  Since there are very few chances to be completely distraction free and commited to something like that.

Obviously I would much rather have home detention where I can stay at home with my Mum safely able to be a transgender woman and not constantly worrying about all the men around me who are probably a lot more violent than I am.  I have always been a bleeder not a fighter, and its not about to change.

One of the harder things in all of this of course is that I actually have to attend court in Auckland, so I am using the very last of my savings to get myself there this Friday, but I am going to have to perform some miracles to afford the second trip toward the middle of October.

Needless to say this is a period of a lot of crying and panic attacks, so I am going to try and schedule a time with my doctor in the next few weeks to hopefully do something about that.  I know everyone says to practice mindfulness and meditate (usually I'm all for the hippy nonsense) but in some situations its just not enough.  I want to be medicated heavily for this.

I don't know who will even read this, since I probably won't share it directly to Facebook, but if you did please feel free to send me words of encouragement hehe

Lots of love,
Abigail

Notes from Prison

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

What Happened?

I haven't written anything here for months, and that isn't because I don't want to, it's because I am honestly not sure where to begin, and exactly how much legal risk I would be taking to do so.

And I am really writing now because I don't want to go into this too many times more for each new person I tell, and I want to get a little more to the heart of things than I have been in person, I have a nasty tendency to make light of serious situations so here is a much better place to get honest.

I went for a visit to Europe earlier this year, and when I returned I made the worst decision of my life and bought with me a schedule B restricted substance, in fact I probably mentioned that substance in my entry about drugs (GHB/GBL)
As a result I was arrested at my border reentry to New Zealand, spent a week in prison, and am now out on bail pending my court case where I will be pleading guilty.
Before you all play Google lawyer, the maximum charge for that is around ten years, with my relatively clean criminal record it might be more like two years, so that has really changed my life in an instant.

So why would somebody risk something like that? As some of you know or probably guessed I suffer fairly extreme anxiety and PTSD at times, and GBL in very low doses does a phenomenal job of alleviating those symptoms.  In the past I was prescribed Valium but in New Zealand that is not prescribed and Quetiapine does nothing for me.
And I remembered what GHB/GBL were like in recreational doses, so tried some in sub-recreational doses just to see how it would go, and it was like a weight was lifted.

And of course that is a really problematic attitude to have, remembering that GBL was legally available in Germany I decided I would get some there and just bring it home.  Of course if you are going to risk something like that it's kind of a case of bring as much as you can.

So anyway, I was caught, with quite a lot of it.... and as a result I am no longer at university, my court case is on May 21st and life is somewhat on hold until the outcome of that.

I am doing everything I can to try and prove to the courts that I am not the evil drug dealer they think I am, that I am usually speaking an incredibly positive person with a lot to offer the world, and that this was an isolated incredibly stupid decision.
I have started seeing a drug counselor, and will likely spend some time in a residential rehab center, and then I just need to hope that its enough to avoid a very serious sentence.

Whats bothering more right now is my future, this is going to impact literally every area of my life, my transition and my ability to travel.  And I have no idea what to do once my sentence is over, I am going to need a lot of help over the next few years.

So that's the short version of events, I may write another post about my time in prison at some point as well because it was fairly traumatic and life changing.

In other news, I have started testosterone blockers which make me really sleepy all of the time, but have noticed a little bit of breast growth which is exciting.
I have an at home laser hair removal device which I am using whenever I remember to, I figure any amount of progress on that front is a good idea.
And I am going to start doing my vocal exercises soon, though I need to find a way to do these alone now since I can no longer afford or reach the vocal coach in Dunedin I had found.

Anyway, if you read all of this thanks, I just needed to put it somewhere I can point people to.

My Girl Wants To Party All The Time...

The fact that I take drugs is not something I hide from the people I am close with, it is not something I really think should be hidden, or ashamed of.  Whatever side of the drug debate you stand on I don't mind, and I understand both sides of it.  I have seen what they can do to people, I have experienced at least some of what they can do, and I have also seen some of the ways that they can really help people too... so how do you know when its too much?

Bill Hicks once said that we never hear about the positive drug stories, so I want to give you a couple of mine that actually changed my life substantially for the better.  Lets offset a few of those "man cut up his girlfriend with a samurai sword" news articles okay?

For an awful lot of my younger life I was plagued with low self-esteem, there are a bunch of reasons for that which are probably better discussed in a clinical setting but I understand them and I have worked on them.  And much as most of you who know me may find it incredibly hard to imagine, there were times in my life where I was very quiet, nervous, shy, and unable to talk to people.
And that really does seem like a different life to me now, but during my teen/early adult years I really just latched on to a few core groups of close friends and they were my people.

So when I moved to Sydney, I found myself alone in a huge overwhelming city with no real friends, and I had to really force myself to go out and try to meet people.  And then I found MDMA (E, Molly, ecstasy)....
On MDMA you feel like you can trust everyone, you open up, you can talk for hours with any old random you find in a gutter or smoking area of a club, and you have thoroughly meaningful conversations with those people.  (there is also a lot of hugging, glowsticks, and dance music)
So for somebody like me it really taught me that if you are not scared of the rejection of being that honest and vulnerable with people, you CAN absolutely make meaningful connections with other human beings.  And I think unlike most people who run around on pills the most core difference was that I realized that if I could have those conversations with people on drugs... there was absolutely no reason that I couldn't also have them while sober.  And so the noisy emotional vulnerable honest creature that you all know and love today, was born from those sweaty Sydney nightclubs and long rambling bullshit talks in hotel bathtubs.   And so it will always be hard for me to hear strenuous anti-drugs objections, because the gift of meaningful moments with people is the one thing that has actually saved my life more times than I can count.

And then of course there was the moment I described earlier where LSD allowed me to inspect myself enough to be able to realize who I really am, and what that actually means to myself.
But another time I did it, I was basically home alone and having some self-diagnosis time, and I thought to myself how would the 16 year old me react to the me of today, would that wide-eyed sober child approve of my drug taking antics and my running around the world throwing my life away on a regular basis.  And so I basically had this conversation with myself, and it was deeply therapeutic, at first I felt like he would have been disappointed in me.  So I also explained all of the once in a lifetime moments that I had along the way.  In the end it was really nice to feel like we had resolved our differences.  For anyone who has never taken LSD that will probably sound super rambly and odd... but for those few who have, you probably understand.

SO.... all these beautiful things, and yay moments.... and then the other shoe drops.

Another substance I play with on occasion is GHB (GBL, fantasy) and it basically takes you from sober to the pinnacle of drunken selfish obnoxiousness in the space of moments, and lasts for around two hours.  You will basically be a loved up floating monstrosity of self absorption and you will be incredibly horny.  In short its a really dangerous feeling for someone who is repressing who they are, because on that substance you give absolutely zero fucks about hiding things.
And so while I was overseas I was able to get litres of it at a time reasonably cheaply, and you only take 2mls of it at a time to get high.  So whats a girl to do with literally hundreds of doses of readily available relief from feeling like she needs to hide, but do a lot of it, on a regular basis.
The thing with GHB is that you start getting used to it, so you start taking more of it to try and feel like it did early on, but REALLY it is affecting you just the same and the higher dose is actually a bit more than you should ever take at once.  And that leads to... spontaneous unconsciousness, in public places...and if you do it long enough, your body will actually panic when you try to stop unless you reduce your dosages very very gradually.
If you have ever wanted to feel like you are having a stroke... that is how you do it.  So that is the one time I have ever been physically addicted to a drug, it hospitalized me, it caused depression and erratic behavior and it was really not good for me.

And yet.... even now if I can get just a little of it once in awhile, I still do it, I just don't ever want so much of it available to me that I can ever become dependent on it again.  And that's the real kicker, knowing why you do a drug, knowing what it does to you, knowing its all an illusion... it doesn't always help.  Sometimes a fake moment of being truly free to be yourself is worth it still, even at such heavy prices.

And of course there is the standard drug of damage, the most ill-reputed of desperate filth... crystal methamphetamine (P, Crank, Shabs, Meth)
When I was going out partying back in the day I tried crystal meth a bunch of times, and it never really held that much allure to me, it was fantastic for partying all weekend, but I never really felt the thrall a lot of my friends did during that period of my life.  It only ever felt like a tool to remain awake and focused for long periods of time.
So how have I managed to find myself having problems with it?.....Work.
In the past year or so, I have found myself using it more than I ever did before simply for the fact that it allows me to focus and be productive, and I have always struggled with that.  At one stage I actually did visit a psychologist for an evaluation for ADHD and while she said that I was definitely symptomatic it was not negatively impacting on my life enough to medicate it.  BUT... that was when I was unemployed and not in a relationship so there was no yardstick with which to measure it anyway.

So here I am, in a job which involves juggling numerous large scale projects and I am the only one in my office who can handle that work so it all falls to me.  And so on occasion I have used meth to achieve the required miracles, but of course that comes with all of the downsides, what goes up must come down... and on that substance the down is a nasty haze of uselessness for a few days where I will be ridiculously unproductive.  Right now I am doing my best to avoid that, and it has been mostly successful, but really, I just wish I could feel that focused in some way without it.

The other thing about that substance, is that it can be used to buy yourself a 12 hour window where everyone else is sleeping to get some you time when you are totally drowning in work and feel like you haven't had a moment to breathe.  And that can be a really enticing proposition when you are depressed and need a break.
And theres your vicious cycle again... afterwards you will experience a massive burst of depression on top.... and so you want a little more to feel better again.

So there you all go... drugs.... my experiences....

And at the end of ALL of that... I still think there are a lot of situations where drugs are actually super beneficial, and for those of us who need that level of escape sometimes there are just not any options to relieve the root cause that makes us need that escape.  Its not always about robbing old people to get "high", sometimes its just a desperate need to express parts of ourselves we normally can't.

For me... I need to start transition sometime soon, which means finally talking to my employers about it, which means finally talking to my doctor about it, which means a lot of really hard moments... so forgive me.  There is a plan to handle this in the long term.  And in the meantime kids, if you want to take drugs PLEASE do them safely around people who will take care of you.

How Do You Know? How Are You So Sure?

I think that's a pretty common line of questioning from the people who I have talked to about my gender identity, and honestly those are the two questions that at some stage we have to ask ourselves as well.  I can only really talk about this from my perspective and that goes for everything else here, there may be common threads to transition but almost every person experiences things differently.

So with that in mind....

The tired old cliche is that "I have always just known", and I think probably for the next generations of transgender people that will probably be true enough.  But back in my day (because I am absolutely archaic compared to these glorious modern creatures) things were a little more rigidly defined.  While its true that I always knew, from my perspective at the time there was something deeply wrong with that, and it was a "problem" to be corrected from societies perspective.

The problem with that is that you become victim to that conditioning as much as most of the general public are, for years now crossdressers and transgender people have been portrayed as abnormal monsters or the punchline in most media.  The general public are not really informed and tend to think of it as belonging somewhere on the sexual deviancy spectrum.

So you are raised in this culture where you need to stay hidden, nobody can ever know how you feel, how you would prefer to look, how distressing the realization that quite probably you won't EVER get to be the person you long to be.  And so you have to try and come up with ways to manage.

For almost my entire life I have surrounded myself primarily with women, I find it much easier to talk to them and always have.  The guys that I consider close would probably all be considered somewhat soft and delicate by your average alpha male type.  And so most of my life I just fit in as "one of the girls" even if it was a token membership to the club.  It helped a lot to be thought of that way even if it was said jokingly.  Because with the girls I could just be myself, be expressive, emotional, and bond on a more intimate level.  The stark contrast to that was pretty much any interaction with a "manly man" it's honestly like talking to a badly written chatbot online.
It's like they have some form of approved content list... that goes something like sexual conquest bragging, cars, dick measuring in the form of drinking/drugs/again sexual conquests/income etc, sports... and basically once you fall through the cracks or are discovered as not knowing a goddamn thing about any of that you are immediately suspect.

And the most fucked up thing is that spending a lifetime being told what SHOULD be important to me as a man, you actually have to learn to fit in with that shit, and thats a problem not just for the transgender girls its a problem for everyone who has to deal with these assholes.  This is how toxic masculinity starts... talk about women like high scores or you're a faggot....ummmm....
And why the fuck does everything need to be a contest?  Every fucking interaction has to have a winner and a loser with these people.

So yeah...I don't really want to give that much more time, clearly hanging with the lads was shit, it eroded parts of my soul I didn't realize how hard it would be to get back, and so I spent a lot of time alone and thinking or hanging out with my girls.

One thing I will say is that I firmly believe that transgender people REALLY end up knowing themselves, when you spend your whole life questioning who you are, what you are, how you can be the sublime version of yourself you can imagine if you just close your eyes and ignore all of that fucking body hair for a second. 

When I moved to Germany for a few years after a particularly rough breakup I suddenly found myself in a situation where I was completely alone, with minimal options to talk to anyone, zero influencing factors or other people's feelings to take into consideration and I really spent the majority of a year tucked away in an attic thinking about who I am.  Normally speaking you would have your friends, your partner, your coworkers etc who all influence who you are whether you see it or not.
And the thing I realised was that most of my life had been wasted attempting to fit in rather than attempting to fit me.  Along the way I had confided in some of my closest people about how I felt, usually with a typically defensive type explanation of it just being some lighthearted crossdressing.
Because up until that point that was all I could really afford myself, when you are deathly scared of people finding out that you are deeply resentful that you are not a woman, you really don't want a flatmate to find a stash of clothes and improvised bra padding you know?
A little kink I have found is at least forgivable by most people.  But once it is more than that its like the step too far that you can't walk back from.

And then there were hallucinogens.  I am fairly honest with people about my drug use, so no matter what your personal views are on drugs I want you to just hear me out for a second.

So LSD is a really interesting substance that allows you to consider things in a lot of different ways, you can consider a viewpoint from multiple perspectives, argue the point from each perspective and generally come away with a deeper understanding of each sides view and reasoning.  You can imagine scenarios and ask yourself hard questions from an ever so slightly detached mindset and be okay with the answers no matter how personal or confronting they may be.  Which is why it is being used to treat people for PTSD, depression, childhood trauma etc... you can process these things without as much harm to yourself.

The scenario was that a friend and I had been tripping and talking all night as you tend to, solving the worlds problems, envisioning a utopia of enlightened humans working together etc all those fantastic cliche hippy things...as well as watching all the pretty sparkles on everything.
Once we were nearing the end of that, my friend went to bed, and he told me I could go and sleep in his daughters bedroom.  You have to imagine this bedroom, we are talking six year old girls pretty pink unicorn fortress complete with bunk beds....
So there I was on the top bunk, in the pretty princess fort and as had been the case for that year alone in Germany I again was thinking about what to do about myself.  And I began to imagine how life might have played out if I had just been born a girl, the thing you have to keep in mind is that on LSD its not just a wistful sigh of that would have been nice.  Its a full blown reproduction in incredible detail, no crushing human development moments were spared, I experienced bullying and heartbreak and the eventual comfort that comes from knowing yourself and contentedness within your own skin.... and after living that entire life compressed into a few hours lying in a bunk, I cried, for quite a long time actually.  I escaped back to my apartment and called my best friend in Australia to talk to her about it, and I think that was the first time I actually openly applied the label transgender to myself, because I knew that just continuing to exist with this constant sense of unease was never really going to be enough after feeling how much more confident and at peace I could be.

Right now I know at least 30% of you are going to be thinking, but a drug addled imagining is hardly a thing to determine your life from.  And I just need you to know that the particular night I just mentioned was just the catalyst, I have felt that way my entire life, I recall really vividly when I was quite young that my only option would be to fake my own death and move to New York... because somehow in my child brain that was a place where living in the open as a lady would be totally okay.
I spent my entire life suppressing that urge to just pull a vanishing act... and the only reason I never did was that I didn't want to damage my family like that.
So there was this constant internal debate between the vanishing act, accepting my internal identity and giving it rare moments of expression in private being somehow enough, and my most pessimistic self saying that maybe you actually are just a fucking damaged mess of a human and you should be grateful nobody knows.

I don't know if everyone feels like that.... but its not really sustainable.  You know the old thing about when you cant make a decision just flip a coin and even before it lands you know what you want the result to be?  That has been womanhood from as long as I have been aware that I wasn't a part of it because of my body.

So yeah, drug epiphanies may not count to you, but it helped me just surrender to myself long enough to accept that and end the debate.  So I don't really care if you don't like it.

One other thing I want to mention because it has been a bit of a personal revelation in the past few months, I have ALWAYS desperately needed to be loved, for a lot of reasons I don't feel like going into tonight.  And my relationships have always been quite serious, emotional, and intense.  But one thing I never realized until quite recently was that some of those relationships were really just about the girl being in some way exactly the kind of girl I wish I was.  So not realizing I would get involved and think it was love, when really it was more like a deeply sincere admiration.  I think in future I need to notice when something is an intense platonic admiration to save all of the hurt feelings later.