Phases

Ramifications of a simple hand injury

So. I hurt my hand. It hurt. It delayed my holiday project. Big deal, right?

Yeah. I turned out to be a very big deal. Something dramatic happened. I don't know if it was just the hand injury, or the gradual built up of pressure over the preceeding 10 years, or the fear that many of my hobbies were going to become very hard to do or possibly impossible. But I freaked out. Outwardly I think I was mostly visually okay for a couple months - turns out I am a surprisingly good actor. But inwardly…I was seriously fucked up. I stopped listening to music. I stopped listening to podcasts. I stopped watching youtube (I should calculate how much!). Up until this point my life had always been accompnied by a soundtrack of some for or other. But in December of 2023...my life went silent. Deafeningly silent.

I just couldn't stop thinking about how unhappy I was. I coulnd't stop thinking about how awful my life was...about how everything was just so incredibly wrong. Everything just sucked. I knew what was wrong. I'd known for years what the problem was. But I also knew that there was no solution. I knew I just had to tough it out and cope.

Every single morning I woke up and argued with myself about how I really did need to get up...how I really must keep going...how there were people who depended on me to keep going...people who would be immensely sad if I didn't keep going. Some mornings I simply kept going because I felt it would somehow be more effort to not do so. Every once in a while...maybe 5% of the time...I would get up because I Was genuinly interested in something. Go figure.

For years this had worked. My mom - she'd be terribly sad if I didn't keep going. My cat, Sigrun - who'd care for her if I didn't keep going? But. Living for other people...there's a flaw there. What happens when those people go away? Mom died. Then Sigrun died. Oh shit.

In Decemeber 2023 I was left without my physical hobbies as a destrction...as something to occupy myself. And suddenly I couldn't stop thinking about how awful my life was. Years prior I had figured out what my underlying issue was. But knowing that didn't help as the solution was just...impossible. So for years that knowledge simply ate away at my soul. I knew with certainty what the problem was. And I knew with just as much certainty that there was no solution to that problem.

And that state of being sucks. And a person can only survive so long like that. In December 2023 I could no longer do it. I cracked.

In December of 2023 my egg cracked. I admitted I was trans. I'd known I was trans for a long time. But I finally admitted it. I still could not see any solution. I could not see a way forward from that pit of dispair. But for the first time I accepted what my problem was.

And, the other huge thing I accepted was an undertanding of how many more years of coping I had left. I realised just how tenuous my grasp on life was - how it would be the loss of just one or two more anchors (people who depended on me) before I would truly be done. My sister? My dad? I'd survived my mom and my cat a few years prior. Noe life was much worse. Could I survive the loss of another? I could suddenly see the end of the road. And it was not at all far away.

Life was so unhappy, so uncomfortable, so unfulfilling.

In December of 2023 my life as Audin ended. Inwardly my whole life imploded. Its two years on now and I still cry about it whenever I ponder it too deeply. Outwardly it was a couple months more before the cracks really started to show. I'd been an actor for 35 years. It wasn't that hard to quickly construct a new act to sort of keep going for a month or two. But that new act was very short lived. She was not stabe.

December 16 2023 was the beginning of the end for Audin. He was done. He didn't give up right away, but he was done really fighting. 47 years was enough. Life was just going to get worse and worse. There was only one path that could possibly lead to anything better. But it was too scary to jump into.