At the moment I am stuck in some sort of quarantine together with emergency stormblown flatmates. They ended up homeless due to not having communicated with their planned hosts in detail, and I could offer, so I did. Then pandemic struck and now there is no housing market and a call to stay inside and isolate. So I am here with them.

Moreover, the pandemic means hospitals are not scheduling surgeries. Unsurprisingly. So window of uncertainty for SRS just became much larger and pushed forward. Chances of having it by 40 increasingly smaller. This affects me.

I don’t have good words for this emotional state because people say it is not dissociation. Detachment? Nothing feels like it is safe or happy or meaningful. All emotions are kept on hold. I act on them, I act as if I care about myself or others, but it is something like a play I put on because rationally I know it makes sense. I try to numb myself even further by ensuring I work as hard as possible on those things I can do, because that feels… a little less unsafe, a little less intolerable. But all in all, I watch myself and others hurt and it barely moves me. Bitterness and contempt for myself and others, a smile on my lips.

Once more my eyes avoid my body, my thoughts avoid my body. I have no social interest because I don’t want to be observed by others, because there is no acceptable me to observe. Everything is waiting for something else. It is a state of activated dysphoria, brought about by the emerging nearness of possibility of cessation of genital dysphoria then thwarted.

It’s OK. I can deal with it. This is what being detached from everything feels like. I could watch someone die, try to stop it, but not feel so much about it.

I realized on way to therapy that this is why I try to diet so hard now. I can’t fix my anatomy right now, but doing something to improve my body at least keeps away some of the deep, deep grief that comes from the thought of this lifetime being wasted. If I can get otherwise pretty and into shape, I will have that with me for later. Just as any professional successes stay with me for later.

So right now I am basically an anorectic workaholic who avoids social interactions, is largely disinterested in herself or others, and who is dangerously at risk of dependency of anxiolytics; hopefully the new antidepressive meds will kick in and simplify.