[counselling log, I suppose] To be found wanting

First, a poem I keep coming back and back to through the years:

( Between | Michael O'Siadhail )

Second, the thing I'm playing wall with most this week (and for the past few months, to be honest) appears to be the concept of desire. I'm tangled up in finding it hard to treat wanting as anything other than binary: something one does or doesn't, in effect, completely divorced from emotion (so "I want to, but it's impractical" is something I interpret - and to some degree experience as - "I don't want to"). Which - isn't healthy, but is also a very typical set of experiences/behaviours/beliefs/systems for people I shall euphemistically class as of my background.

( Read more... )

It's clearly being brought to the surface by the current round with depression (about which I am feeling less immediately despairing this week, between no longer being in a high-progesterone stage of my cycle and working myself to pleasant physical exhaustion and having just spent three-four days in close proximity with one of my best friends), but this is an ongoing issue I ought to work on, sigh.

Good news of the day

Two clinicians at CHX GIC have approved me for top surgery, no-hormones, in spite of everything that's physically wrong with me, even though I have been absolutely clear and explicit and unflinching about being genderqueer and having retained my given names as forenames despite their being gendered and my mental illnesses and autism.

If I'd been definite about which surgeon I wanted to see I think they might actually have referred me today, after my second appointment. As it is I get to go away and think about it, and let them know where to send me after my third appointment.