[Letter] ScientiaMagus: A story

This is more or less a short autobiography I suppose. Where my life went, and where I am now. I am posting this in the hopes that others like me might be able to learn from my mistakes and experiences. I attempted to keep this as efficient as possible while engaging all the most important subjects of what happened and how I am dealing with it. Still, this paper comes to about 3000 words. So much of the small details of my story had to be shed for brevities sake.When others in this story refer to me by name I will be known as "Anon" (short for Anonymous). All other names are pseudonyms.First, I'll explain the circumstances of my birth. I am a male individual unfortunate enough to have been born with gender dysphoria. I was raised by a single mother, and I, of course, idolized her, as she wanted. Much of my family were devout Christian, to the point in which any straying belief or lack of belief was considered witchcraft. On the positive side of things, I had an adoring adoptive father, who did everything he could to make me feel welcome in his home, whenever I went to see him on the weekends with my half-brother. His parents were also just as welcoming of me, and I carry the ashes of his father inside a bracelet charm, as a reminder of both the kindness of the human race and my mortality. I was gifted with a fair IQ and could pass in school and most any training with ease, though they had me on Ritalin and related drugs for a majority of my childhood I did fairly well in school and still excel, a fact of which I am quite proud. These were the cards I was dealt the first round.I was raised by a single mother, Samantha, and my brother until, inevitably, she started dating again. Of course, that turned into a hellscape for all of us. A fairly common story, she had this proclivity towards abusive men. She had one man who was successful, and kind, and strong, and wanted to protect us kids and her. He was the model parent and model man. She dropped him within a month or two. He was a very good role model for us kids, he played with us, and taught us important lessons even in the short time he was around. Had he stayed around he might have been a good father figure. But Samantha became enamored with a drunk, homeless, ex-logger instead.Most if not all of my mothers' confessions of love towards this logger, were about as shallow as the smell of pine and cheap booze on his body. She talked of his body, rather than his mind. That's as far as her imagination could take her, without stumbling upon the certain truth that she was really with him for the trouble and controversy of the matter. She was enamored not with him, but with the trouble, and pity he brought. I think so at least. She stayed with the man for 4 years before she moved to a new, much darker, and cunning demon.This was hard for my younger brother and me, watching our Mother abused. Granted, the actual physical abuse on us, was much less than that inflicted upon our mother. Even so, it was less than pleasant.I don't resent my mother, or I try not to. We all have shadows after all, and it is the easiest path to just succumb to them. I don't forgive her, but I don't condemn her either. Being a single parent is hard as hell. I understand that very well. But she had at least one job, and that was to protect her children.Eventually, she had a son with him. I practically raised the kid for about 4 years while my mother wasn't home. Doing my best to protect him from his own father. Many a time I shielded the boy with my body and I would do it again. I eventually convince her to leave Dick. I begged her to stop going back to him. What I didn't realize was that she was the problem, not Dick.My mother, being the Saint she believed herself to be, decided to take in this girl. Mom is never home, of course, working to provide. I'm home alone about ninety percent of the time with a female I've never met. I'm poorly socialized and starving for affection. Destiny was also starved for affection. Eventually, of course, it turned into a relationship. That, of course, was before we found out that her father, Dick, was marrying my mother. Well, this is where I usually throw the punchline: "My life is the plot of a bad hentai."My mother takes me aside one day, to explain about dick."Anon, I need to talk to you about Dick." she points out tentatively"Yeah?"She proceeds to tell me a story of Dick. How he was "falsely" accused of sexually abusing a child, and his ex-set him up to apparently get him off drugs. I took every spoonful as absolute truth. My mother couldn't lie to me of course.Eventually, of course, Destiny and I stopped our relationship. It felt wrong. It was also toxic on many levels. So life started to carry on in a new home, we all moved from new york to Virginia on a whim. Something I was incredibly uncomfortable with. There was very little planning in the event, and it bothered me deeply. You don't move an entire family without planning unless something is wrong with your life, or your lifestyle.We settle into the new house, and already this new demon begins to present itself. He places himself atop everyone else in the home since he can't get a job he enforces the rules of the house instead. This wouldn't normally be an issue to any degree. But after living in this house for a year things start to happen that make me, for the first time in my life, question my mother. I start to wake with Dick standing over my bed at night. I'm fairly sure I was never unlucky enough for him to make a move. But it was disturbing all the same. Then one day he did something that shook me to the core for many months before I started telling myself all of it was a dream."Hey Anon, Anon get up." He was drunk, he smelled of alcohol, my stomach turned."What?" I was tense."Your mother wants me to suck your cock." His voice slurred and he was grabbing onto my blankets in a way that made my hair stand on end."I- tell her to go fuck herself!" I can still feel the way my voice took on a deep grating tone. This was the first time I ever wanted to sincerely kill another human being. He left without doing anything that night. But it stayed with me until I chalked it up to a dream, but the doubt still stayed with me for the rest of my time in that household.Eventually, my step-sister escaped to new york, to live with a friend. I have stuck alone with them for another year. We moved to a new home, and most of that time I spent in bed. Severely depressed. I felt defeated. I couldn't get a job, I couldn't do anything properly according to Dick. And Samantha was just as angry at me. We now lived in the middle of nowhere, as a consequence of moving, so I couldn't escape. Not realistically. I just wanted things to go back to the way they were. I wanted to be ok again. But my mother was pushing me out of the house and yelling at me for not knowing how to get a job. Not knowing skills I needed to survive.Sometime later, I went to a cosmetology school under my mothers' pressure, and after a month of that, I moved out to my grandmothers. Who consistently believed I was doing witchcraft because I refused to go to church with her and deluded myself into being an SJW (kind of understandable they thought that though). After the schooling, I left with a mound of debt and misunderstanding to live with my Dads mother. So I could get away from them and take care of my grandfather, who was suffering from dementia. My time with him revealed much about myself, and I began to change. I spent some 3 years with my grandfather, learning about dementia and myself.I met Laurel, Still my dearest friend. We connected immediately and she helped lift me out of a dark stagnating place. Encouraged me to change. We tried dating, that didn't work out, we decided to be friends, and lift each other to greater heights. For a while, during the time I dated her, I became a hitchhiker. Living off the countryside. It was a rough life and I got used to it. I came home at some point. Laurel was honestly my first step to a brighter future.Then came my lover, another huge step for me. Since then we have been together almost 5 years now. She encouraged me to take the steps necessary to change my life and become independent. To keep bettering myself. I joined the United States Navy.Within 3 months out of boot camp, I learned what gender dysphoria was and started seeing a psychologist. I wasn't cooped up anymore. I wasn't hiding away. I had discovered others like myself online and had finally taken the red-pill. Another 3 months and she diagnosed me. By that time I was taking herbal supplements to stop my testosterone, to try and preserve my body a bit. I was slowly getting more comfortable with the timeline I was expecting to see. I was even fairly open about it and stressed the importance of people not making a big deal about it. It's my burden after all."Support is appreciated but don't go out of your way to call me something I'm not out of pity" I always told my friends.Then Robin Happened. I had considered myself very much improved, and I had taken many many steps to better myself and to become the girl I needed to be, one day. But Robin did some real damage.I and my lover came up with a pretty basic ruleset since we were in a long-distance relationship. we agreed on an open relationship setup. We set up some basic rules: 1. We can have sex with others but we must use protection. 2. We can get involved with others romantically but we have to stay loyal. We defined loyal as me always being hers. She was and is the dominant of this relationship. 3. We would see each other occasionally, the distance and time apart would allow us to develop as people, so we were once again interesting to each other when we met.We found it was an incredibly effective way of keeping our relationship interesting and our love strong. We still to this day practice these rules, although I avoid sexual contact in general.Because of this, I sought out a platonic relationship with Robin, to help bolster my emotional stability. I wasn't very comfortable with sex because it felt wrong to have sex in my body as it was.Robin found out I was trans. In hindsight, I probably should have seen the signs. She started to become obsessed with me when I told her about my mental illness. She started to talk about how she wanted to be trans once and started to come onto me. I told her I wasn't comfortable with it but she would continue forcefully in inappropriate places, like during anime night in front of tens of people under some blankets. I was actually scared. Legitimately terrified. She would tell me these stories about how she would hurt cats as a kid. And all kinds of other crazy things. I didn't know what to do to get out of it and I didn't dare tell any of my friends. At some point, I guess I just caved because I ended anime night and cut off almost all of my friends except three. Avoiding her at all costs. I remember running as fast as I could down the hall in the opposite direction just from seeing the back of her head.My first real panic attack. I tried telling someone what happened. They told me that men couldn't be raped by women. That was the day I started to lose faith in the military.Fast forward, I didn't even tell my psychologist, because I was afraid they would separate me from my well-paying job, or that she would also say that it was impossible. So I get sent out to a new school, and eventually to my new ship because my psychologist picks up on my anxiety and assumes I am afraid of being on a submarine. So they tell me I can't be on one. I graduated top of all my classes, and on my ship, I was promoted first time around. I was considered one of the best cooks of the new kids more or less. But I was still struggling internally and It's not like I could tell anyone why. I made friends aboard that ship. And I spent a lot of time out to sea before I got injured.Things out to sea make a lot of sense. All your structures are made for you. You know exactly who you answer to, you know who answers to you. You know what your job is and you know exactly what you are doing as a whole. You know that everyone around you has your back if a fire breaks out. I know that the guy next to me would pull me out of an engine fire if it came down to it. That's what we do. When push comes to shove we are all shipmates. There is something very profound about that. Something that reaches deep into the human spirit I think. Despite where you come from or what you look like, you are here, and that means you are good enough to save my life, at the very least. I wouldn't go back for a second, I went to a really dark place at the end of that deployment. I would never want to go back again. But I know that it helped to change me. For better or worse I am who I am because I experienced that time at sea.My spine ended up getting injured while we were out to sea thanks to a shipmates negligence. But the Chief Doc waved it off saying it was nothing. I went back to work and my back got worse. Then Things started to really pile up. We were nearing the end of our deployment we had 2 or 4 weeks to go. I had supported much (definitely not all) of trumps legislation thus far, and he hit me with the big one, the trans ban. To be fair I understand why you wouldn't want someone with a lower physical strength in the military, and I would even make the argument that if you are going to have to have women and transwomen in the military we should all at least be held to the same standard, the male standard. Mostly because I've seen women fail to carry a man out of a dangerous area during battle stations.But this still hit me hard. I was at risk of losing my livelihood, and I was still dealing with the fallout from the robin incident all alone. Then I got a red cross call. My grandfather had died. Atop all of this I was struggling with the regular stress of just living on a 300-foot ship in the middle of the ocean fighting Somalian pirates, terrorists, and just generally being in danger. Pack that up with not being able to contact family often at all and working something very close to a 16-20 hour workday 7 days a week, I started to break down.By the time we hit homeport and I went to take leave I was in a bad way. When I got back from leave I wasn't feeling much better. I spent the entire time unable to really spend any time with my dad, and My grandmother was showing signs of slight dementia now too. My back was also beginning to get worse and they kept giving me the run around about it. I couldn't get proper treatment and the pain was starting to become nerve pain in the front of my legs.I broke down and they took me off the ship. They assigned me a psychiatrist, and I finally told her everything. Robin, me being trans, the many causes of my stress. She told me she more or less doubted I was sexually assaulted. She also told me 2 things to stop my anxiety. She could have them stop me from transitioning, or put me on mind-altering medications. I chose the medication, a drug known as Klonopin.I spent 2 weeks in a horrid haze and I barely remember much except my attempt at suicide. I tried to jump out of my friends' car. If it weren't for my buddy who kept me from jumping and took the pills from me it's likely I would be dead. I went back and told my psychiatrist I couldn't take the pills anymore and she told me I was lying because none of her patients ever did that on Klonopin before. My friend and I did some research on Klonopin and asked his uncle who was a doctor about it. We had two sources telling us that the stuff can cause depression and suicidal thoughts. Either this naval psychiatrist was being negligent, or she was unqualified.During all of this, my sister had contacted me. With some serious talk, things came to light about my mother that I couldn't forgive. I realized the nights I woke up and the night Dick had woken me about his offer were all real. Both Dick and My mother were trying to convince his daughter to have sex with them, and when that failed they convinced her girlfriend. I decided the best course of action would be to wash my hands of the situation after making an anonymous report to CPS. Since my little brother still lives with them, it was the best I could do. So I kept moving.My Psych decided I was too unstable for military life thanks to my anxiety since it was something untreatable. She clearly had an ulterior motive and I decided to try and search for an answer myself. Proactively. She prepared me for separation from the military. I stumbled upon Analytical psychology by chance in a video game, I started searching deeper and deeper for answers. I came upon Doctor Peterson's work from a close naval buddy of mine. It took me a while to get into but, maps of meaning was the first step in a huge change for me. I always knew I was getting closer and closer, but I could never find the answer outright. I think Doctor Peterson Answers most of the question quite well.It's present day and I've almost finished with the Psych 434 lectures. I am taking major steps to get over my sexual anxiety and other general anxiety. A close friend of mine has agreed to just stand in a room naked so that I can face those feelings and master them. I have applied for and registered for classes at my local college and will be transferring up to a SUNY Uni in the area. I am finally able to properly face my dragons and I honestly don't believe it could have been more efficient than the way Doctor Peterson Articulates it.I'm finally on hormones, and I'm finally starting to be comfortable with my body. I'm getting better bit by bit, day by day. People already mistake me for a girl and I'm not even finished transitioning. I'm gearing up to be the best I can be and follow my personal legend. I'm starting school so I can become a teacher overseas and help mold the next generations into fine young human beings. So they can be prepared to take on their own stories.And the things I had to leave out of this story, as they are all stories in their own right, the people I have helped. Your work has only armed me better to help those in distress. I can't express my gratitude in words, so I'll simply do my best. via /r/JordanPeterson https://ift.tt/2k8FzkO