Moments of Doubt

None of us are perfect. We all put on a face to the world that say's that everything is alright, and  most of the time that is exactly the case; everything is alright. But every once in a while, it isn't. There are times when all we can think about is crawling into a dark room, locking ourselves away from the world, curl up in a fetal position and rock back and forth until the internal darkness goes away. Instead, we put on that face that we wear every day and when someone say's, "How's it going?" we smile at them and say, "It's going great, how about you?"

There are times when we know exactly why we are feeling the way we do. It could be financial issues lurking in the near future, maybe we have had a fight with the love of our lives or maybe someone that we love with all of our hearts and souls has suddenly lost a long suffering battle with life and has passed away. These times are so difficult that all we can do is lock ourselves away until either the issue has passed or the pain loosens its grip long enough for us to recover. But there are other times; times when we have no clue why we are feeling the way we do. There doesn't seem to be any reason for it. All we know is that we hurt, we are scared and we are confused. When this happens we start searching desperately for something we can point to and say, "There! That's the reason. That is what is causing me all this emotional pain." And we always find something. It doesn't seem to matter if is actually the cause or not. We are so desperate that we put the blame on the first thing we come to.

It is human nature to try and make connections. We search for something that has recently changed and we put blame on that thing. There are still places in the world where people are killed for witchcraft because they are seen doing something that someone thinks is odd around the same time that an epidemic breaks out. It doesn't seem to matter that correlation is not indicative of causation. We jump at a correlation and use it to place all blame for our sorrows.

So, if the recent change in our lives happens to have been gender transition, we agonize over our decision. We can't help but wonder if that change is what is causing all of our stress. We wonder if we made the wrong decision. Maybe we should have just continued pretending and being what the world thinks we should be instead of what we truly are, and when someone we love is going through the same sort of emotional turmoil, we begin to blame ourselves for their pain. We even consider going back to the way things were in the hopes that everything will be OK again. We have those moments of doubt.

But if we really think about it we will remember other times in our lives when, for seemingly no reason at all, we went through periods of depression or anxiety. Times before transition. In fact, we have had times like this since childhood. And each time we blamed it on the most recent thing in our lives that had changed.

What if recent changes have nothing to do with it? What if, just maybe, it's something physical? It could be as simple as a hormonal imbalance and if we hang in long enough and make sure our diet is healthy, things will be back to normal soon. There are countless possibilities that we simply don't know about because we can't see them. It could be anything from atmospheric conditions to subsonic frequencies messing with our internal systems. If so, then jumping to conclusions and making drastic decisions could be the worst mistake of our lives. We have to take time, breathe, and instead of finding something to blame our suffering on we have to find something positive to do.

Does this post have a purpose? Have I come to any conclusions? Have I fixed things? Not really. I'm sure I will continue to have moments of doubt for the rest of my life. Basically, this has been a long-winded way of saying, "Hang in there, it gets better."