Dear Janus:

In your very first post on Dec 30 2015, you shared that you were sexually harassed and bullied in seventh and eighth grade. You wrote about it: “This lowered my self-esteem and made me adopt some negative views about myself such as that I am not athletic, not smart enough, not pretty enough, not healthy enough and especially that my weight is too much…”- notice: you listed not being athletic as the first item on the list of your negative views about yourself.

On May 20, July 14, & Sept 1, 2016, you shared: “I worry about not being a good enough athlete since I am a girl… I wonder if my guy friends think less of me b/c I’m a girl and I begin to think I’m not as a good of athlete…. I realize there is still an inner bully within that keeps telling me to be the most perfect I can be, to be the most athletic,.. I have wanted to be athletic since seventh grade when I was bullied for athleticism“.

From an online source: “So what’s an athletic or rectangle shape, anyway? * You’re not particularly curvy * Your shoulders and hip measurements are nearly the same * Your waist isn’t very small or well-defined, but rather straight up and down * Your weight is fairly evenly distributed throughout your body”- in other words, to look athletic means to look masculine, like a boy/ a man; not feminine like a girl/ a woman.

Notice, I am not saying that a girl should look feminine and a boy should look masculine. What I am saying is that biologically and according to what is traditionally accepted and expected in society ( the society that you grew up in), a girl/woman  looks curvy, having a smaller waste, having breasts and thicker thighs, less muscle, more fat, and a boy/man looks more rectangular, no small waste, no breasts, no thick thighs, more muscle, less fat.

For a long time, you tried to achieve looking masculine (like a boy/ man) by losing fat and building muscle: “I have been busy toning my body and I am limiting junk food like cookies.. I haven’t eaten fast food or pizza for two years and also haven’t drank soda or eaten chips in three years… I haven’t had a donut in 6 months.. I haven’t eaten a bagel (200 calories) in since months… I am currently 115 pounds and 5’ 5”… If I do eat something unhealthy even if it is very moderate, I always have a workout to cut the calories… I also managed to bench press 50 pounds and also do 5 pull-ups.. I can run 10 miles in 50 minutes…I am a bit irritated b/c I didn’t go to the gym on Friday or Sunday, but I did do a three mile run on Saturday in 10 minutes which burned 200 calories. Also on Monday, I ate a chocolate chip cookie, molasses cookie with chocolate fudge and a fudge graham cracker brownie… I realize that my height 5′ 5” and I have become 120 instead of 118.. Oftentimes whenever I am sitting, I want to be up and working out b/c I feel as if the calories are adding up” (2016)

*115 lbs. at 5’5 = 19.1 BMI, which is at the low end of normal weight for an 18-year old, much closer to being underweight than to being overweight.

On May 15, June 13 & Sept 19, 2017, you shared: “I feel like controlling my body by being anorexic makes me more masculine and also hides the insecurities I have. One insecurity I have is that I am not strong enough to be a male and this results in me feeling anxious if I miss a day of exercise because I fear I’ll lose muscle mass… 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“.

By Dec 2017, in addition to trying to lose all feminine weight (fat) and building muscles, you were also wearing a chest binder. Its function is to flatten the female breasts: “Wearing a chest binder helps…  hiding my chest... the chest binder (is) not making my chest flat enough… I have started to wear looser clothes in case my chest binder doesn’t hide the ‘bumps’ of my chest. My chest causes me the most anxiety… I wish my chest would be flatter” (Dec 7-9, 2017).

June 13, 2018: “Sometimes I feel like being anorexic will make me skinnier and make me look more masculine and I think about what it would be like to die from anorexia and silence my inner critic’s voice. I think ‘What if I made myself so skinny that my chest would be extremely flat? What if I died trying to be a man, would that make me happier than the life I’m living now?’ These thoughts often scare me and make me feel numb and at times I cry. I’m scared of anorexia, but I’m more scared of not.. looking masculine so it feels like two sides war with each other”.

Fast forward a year to June 3, 2020: “I have been having muscle aches and pains and sometimes feeling just really tired… I have a sharp jabbing ache in my hip bone… I tend to run a lot… I think that the stiffness in my hips is the soreness from running. Other times I think that the sharp jabs of pain… is from my full binder that I use to bind my chest and hips to make them look more masculine…  I used trans tape to bind my chest and also wore a binder over it…. wrapped it on too tight because after a while I could feel it digging into my sides and when I went to remove the trans tape, I had some cuts and my chest was feeling sore. So today, I currently have soreness on my chest and the sides from trans tape”.

November Nov 27 & Dec 21, 2016: “My inner bully will say ‘look at all these people, they are all saying you are worthless. you are weak as a girl. why don’t you change?… it keeps saying to me ” you are ugly and fat, go exercise“-

– sometime during our communication, we named your inner critic=> inner bully. Your inner bully wanted you to change from a girl to a boy. Clearly, you’ve been hating yourself for being biologically a girl for a very long time. It is not far from the truth to say that you’ve been trying to kill the girl in you for a long time: (1) by starving her and over-exercising her to the point of malnutrition, exhaustion, aches and pains, and (2) by taping and binding her chest and hips to the point of cuts and sores.

On Sept 1, 2016, you wrote: “I have wanted to be athletic since seventh grade when I was bullied for athleticism, but once I achieved it, I still didn’t think I was perfect b/c I wanted to be smarter.. I want to find a way to live happily on the inside, then when I feel happy on the inside I can reflect it on the outside“- I don’t think that you can make yourself happy on the Inside by changing your Outside: I don’t think that you can make yourself skinny enough, muscular enough, flat chested enough, and rectangular enough to be happy on the inside, because the Inner Bully resides in the inside of you and it is loud and hateful: it will always find something to harshly criticize you for.

Notice: I am not saying that you should gain weight and stop exercising, or that you shouldn’t wear a LIGHT chest binder (closer to what a sport bra). I am not saying that you should dress feminine.. What I am saying is that going to the extremes of an eating disorder, over-exercising and wearing a binder on top of tape- for your chest and hips WILL NOT SATISFY the inner bully.

Jan 12 & 17, 2017: “These days I feel like my inner bully has taken 55% of me and the other 45% left is someone I don’t know anymore. I feel I have lost myself“- further find that someone-you-don’t-know, and get to know and love her.

Jan 17, 2017: “There are two sides of me warring with each other, one side that wants to follow the labels and another side that wants to break free and live as my soul“- think of the “someone I don’t know” (above quote)  as your Soul. Consider your soul as neither feminine nor masculine because it is neither male or female, cisgender or transgender, binary or non-binary.

Notice that through the years you moved away from traditional, binary labels, but you adhered to other labels, non-traditional non-binary labels,  but still labels, still confining. Free yourself from any labels and you will find your soul.

April 16, 2018:  “Also at my college, I have been using the name Janus because he is the Roman god of new beginnings and transitioning“- think of Janus transitioning from Labels to Soul. Think of a spiritual transitioning vs a physical one.

Dec 7, 2018: “Wearing a chest binder helps with the dysphoria, but putting it on sometimes makes me feel dysphoric because I feel like I’m just hiding my chest and the insecurity of possibly having the chest binder not making my chest flat enough sometimes contributes to dysphoria”-

– the solution (chest binder) is temporary and after the temporary relief.. it is not a solution at all: instead, it contributes or adds to the problem. Same as undereating and over-exercising… temporary relief followed by adding to the problem.

Notice: I am not saying that you should not exercise or that you should eat whatever you feel like eating. Neither am I saying that you shouldn’t wear a LIGHT chest binder, such as a sports bra. I am saying that the extreme solutions you tried are not solutions.

Dec 9, 2018:  “I know testosterone will help redistribute the fat in my body and help build more muscle so my chest will look flatter. I will also have a lower, deeper voice and grow facial hair that will make me feel more masculine… Mastectomy (top surgery to remove the chest) usually requires a transgender person to be on testosterone for six months or more… The recovery for top surgery is six months”-

– will your Inner Bully be satisfied with the amount of muscle, hair, deeper voice and flat chest that hormones and surgery will provide, or will it still harshly criticize you? Will these extreme “solutions” solve anything or just add to the problem?

“Some of my transgender friends that have transitioned are happier with their lives“- maybe they don’t have harsh inner bullies. You are not the same person as any other person, regardless of labels. You have things in common with any other person, and things that are different.

Sept 18, 2019: “There are times when I feel like I’m a fragmented person and although I have a sense of self, it doesn’t feel complete. I feel like I’m trying to complete a puzzle for who I want to be but I’m not sure if I have all the pieces or if the pieces are really there“- I think that a spiritual transitioning, or spiritual transformation will put together all the puzzle pieces for you, so that you are finally  at peace.

Dec 28-31, 2019: “The stress and anxiety has lead me to working out intensely and following a strict diet and being anorexic because I want to look more like a guy and not have any curves on my body and I worry about myself“- you see how applying the same “solutions” year after year… lead to no solution at all?

Jan 25, 2020: “My gender dysphoria seems to have been getting more prominent“- like I said, see above.

Feb 21 2020: “My gender dysphoria has been getting more intense lately…I feel shaky, my throat hurts and my heart races most of the time… the anxiety is quite intense and I always feel like I’m unsafe like there is someone who will hurt or criticize me“- the same old, same old “solutions” are not solutions at all.

March 17, 2020: “I withdrew from my classes on March 8th due to intense anxiety“.

May 8-22, 2020:  “Lately I’ve been having some panic attacks where I’m just crying and shaking… being afraid of myself and to escape those thoughts I start to work out a lot until I start to see shadows in my vision… and I find myself feeling like it would just be better to just let go and just fade away… I currently have stomach cramps and chills, and still feeling dizzy. I had thought that this would be the end and I was prepared to go, taking one last look at the world, but I’m grateful that I had strength to reach out because if I hadn’t I might have fallen asleep and not have woken up“-

-I am grateful that you reached out and that you are alive!

June 1, 2020: “I just feel lost in gender dysphoria and anxiety. I feel like I just want to understand the world, be spiritually fulfilled and alive within myself, be out in nature and enjoy the simple things“- you said it, “be spiritually fulfilled” within yourself. The spiritual transitioning I am referring to does happen within oneself.

August 10, 2022: “Sustainable agriculture is fascinating helping with soil health“- a spiritual transitioning will sustain you and it will help your health.

“A lot of the conventional agriculture uses tilling that destroys top soil… as it removes soil nutrients“- over-exercising, under-eating (malnutrition) /binge eating, chest tapes and harsh chest binders, these have been destroying you!

“loosening the soil. Then the soil is loosened and a tractor is used… to make the fields ready for planting“- loosen your attachments to labels: the traditional and the non-traditional, and ready yourself for the planting of a spiritual transitioning.

“Sustainable agriculture also helps with providing and managing resources well so that they are still available for future generations use” – a spiritual transitioning will avail your resources for present and future use: you will no longer use your energy in extreme ways (over-exercising and exhausting yourself for a long time), but in moderate ways .

“I feel that sustainability is important since the earth is a beautiful planet that needs to have resources protected“- and I feel that a Janus Sustainability is important since Janus is a beautiful soul, and her resources should be protected.

“I can learn about the living things in the environment and also environmental science provides me tools to go outside and explore“- you expressed your love for the outdoors so many times, throughout the years; so working outdoors is very fitting to who you truly are: a beautiful soul.

anita