Dear Earth Angel/ Janus:

I am so glad to read from you this morning, so very glad. Please let me know how you would like me to address you in the future, Janus, Earth Angel, or both?

You started your second year in college September 5. You have a busy schedule. You are using the free counseling services there but hoping to be able to afford therapy by making money peer tutoring, if not as part of the work study program than otherwise. You are involved with the college LGBT community (who unfortunately was not responsive to you in the summer) and you are looking for more LGBT resources.

This sentence that you wrote stands out to me loud and clear: “I want to be respected for who I am”. Therefore I was glad to read that many of your teachers have changed their attendance rosters and refer to you by your preferred name, Janus, and that your updated college ID card has your preferred name in it.

Next in my reply to you I will be quoting from your recent posts under categories that I came up with:

1, life at home (summer off school)/ life in school (Sept 5 and on):  “my parents did not accept my gender identity and did not think it necessary for me to visit the therapist… my parents did not think I needed any resources to help me and that I was just being an irresponsible teenager… The closer the days get to school, the more I feel like myself again because I know there will be friends there for me. It’s like being in school awakens a sense of self in me and I can focus on learning new things again… My inner critic stems from my parents’ criticisms…- it’s the part that internalized the shame my parents inflicted upon me and now tries to torment me on the inside… I am working on trying… to disengage myself from straining conversations with my parents, but it is hard… today (Sept 19) was a hard day with my parents and I didn’t see any of my friends on campus, so I’m glad you are here… for reminding me that there is support for me when I feel alone…my parents irritate me more each day… I don’t want to keep living as the person I truly am at school and then having to put on a false façade at home because I’m afraid of my parents. I just want to be able to express myself no matter where I am… I know I have the strength to achieve my goals, but I don’t want to keep being surrounded by negativity at home. One can only be strong for a while before one starts to feel frustrated, tired of battling… I am tired of them saying things about me, tired of being afraid that I won’t be able to support myself if they kick me out of the house… These days it’s like all the sadness of summer has turned into an intense drive, an intense will to fight for who I am… as a 19 year old college student I still have a lot to learn to survive in the world”.

2, disordered eating, over-exercising and ace tape, summer: “I was filled with self-hatred because I felt I had lost control over my restriction with food and my body wouldn’t be masculine enough so I would work out to the extreme and eat little for days to burn off the calories… and also use ace tape (constricts breathing and leaves bruises) to bind my chest along with my chest binder to make it look flatter and make myself skinnier to become more masculine… I was consistently cold, tired or had aches from working out too much and eating too little”.

3, obsession and compromised mental functioning, summer: “My mind keeps playing the same loop over and over and I find myself losing myself losing my short-term memory and losing sleep… my mind has become a one-track mind playing the same record over and over and it makes it hard to focus on learning new things… all I can think about is my gender identity and it consumes my mind… always the same obsessive thought that I’m trying to escape from… it’s like my mental processes are sluggish and being controlled by this one loop that goes round and round… it made it hard to focus on the things of the moment and daily tasks… I do experience mental fog that makes it hard to focus on daily tasks… there are some things that are hard to grasp… I have trouble focusing on things with a structured order like grocery list items… when I don’t have it in front of me I find I don’t remember clearly what I wrote even if it was five minutes ago”.

4, depression, summer: I became tired of trying to live, tired and empty… like a shadow walking through life with each passing day like I didn’t really exist… I felt severely depressed… I feel numb and like the events in life hold little interest for me… the warring thoughts make it hard to focus on reality and myself”.

5, gender dysphoria: “I feel like I’m split between two people, the gender I feel  on the inside which doesn’t match the biological sex on the outside and I hate my body because of it.. like I am at war with myself… it’s hard living two people at once and wanting so much to be seen as the person I identify as and not the lie.. I do feel like the true me is trapped in a false self”.

And now my thoughts: you established it yourself very clearly that it is unhealthy for you to live with your parents. As a matter of fact, you established it clearly that it is unhealthy for you to be in contact with your parents. You established these facts for years on this very thread and in these recent posts. You asked me questions about how to make your life better living with your parents, but I have no answer to that, not a single one. Because, I believe there is no answer. In other words, living with your parents and interacting with them otherwise makes you sick and keeps you sick.

Not living with your parents and not interacting with your parents is the answer, there is no other.

If you accept this reality, it will be better for you. I understand you can’t just leave at the moment, or at least you strongly feel that you can’t, but accepting the fact that for your health you must leave as soon as it becomes possible, is very important. If only there was a LGBT resource available to you that provided you a place to live and eat while you attend college, that would have been wonderful.

You have a strong will to live and to live a life true to yourself, but living at home/interacting with your parents is robbing you of that will and that energy, that fire, as you called it. That fire almost died during the summer away from college and it was awakened when you resumed college. But your contact with your parents continues to feed your sickness and damp that fire, and will continue to do so for as long as you are in contact with them.

Back to the sentence you wrote that stands up for me: “I want to be respected for who I am”. Who you are is more than your body and gender identity. Your thoughts, your feelings, your values are who you are as well and none of these have been respected by your parents. This has been the case and still is. It is extremely unlikely to change.

You need to be respected.

When you are free from the extreme disrespect that you experience when in contact with your parents, then your disordered eating, over-exercising, obsession (the mental loop), compromised mental functioning and distress over your gender dysphoria will greatly improve on an ongoing basis. You will think better, feel better, and function better. You will need help for a while, as you do now, therapy and otherwise supportive individuals in your life.

Please do post again and again, Janus, anytime you would like. I am withdrawing my prior request from you to shorten your posts. You don’t have to ask me questions either, something I encouraged before. Ask if you genuinely have a question for me. If a post is too long for me, I will skip or read quickly through parts I don’t need to thoroughly read, so I will manage.

You can make it, Janus, I have great faith in that fire in you!

anita