Insult to injury

I've been struggling to cope these past few weeks.

After Hubby's little bombshell about taking my kids away for a family holiday to which I was not invited, I had a nice little breakdown. It got so bad that I became suicidal and the police were actually called to restore some calm & sanity into our household. I just can't cope with the fact that the fucking arsehole I married is deliberately trying to take my kids away from me. It's perfectly clear that he thinks I'm no longer suitable as a parent (because being trans is so embarrassing, and nobody wants the poor kids to suffer the awful fate of being embarrassed, do they?) so he's lining himself up to be their sole parent, supported by his own parents.

I'm made to feel like a complete & utter outsider in my own family; like I'm no longer welcome in my own home. And to tell you the truth, he and my children have been making me feel this way for a whole year now, non-stop. How long can anyone cope with that kind of trauma before something has to give?

Well, something did give. 

I'm due to have (probably) my most promising Gender Clinic appointment in a few days' time, in which I'll finally get to see the doctor who will prescribe my hormones and refer me for the surgeries I so desperately need. I should be looking forward to this, and I am looking forward to this... but my family has cast a huge, enormous, unnecessary shadow over the whole thing.

To help me prepare for this appointment my Gender Therapist asked my GP to perform a huge series of blood tests a couple of weeks ago, to give the GIC doctor a set of baselines that he could use as a comparison when checking my hormone (and other) levels after I start testosterone. Well, one of the results - prolactin - came back ridiculously high; so high that my GP rang me and asked me to come back for another test, because prolactin results that high are usually indicative of a tumour.

I did some research because I was pretty darn worried about what might be happening in my body... and it turns out that high prolactin levels are usually caused by one two things: a) a tumour of the pituitary gland; or b) severe depression, which can cause dopamine levels to drop (dopamine keeps prolactin levels low - if you're not producing enough dopamine, your prolactin level will rise).

So I went home that night and had a heart-to-heart with Hubby, telling him about my dangerously high hormone level and that it might be either cancer or depression... but either way, I really needed the family to cut me some slack for a week or two until I could get my levels re-tested, so that we could figure out what's causing it. You see, my family has been picking on me relentlessly, making sure I know that it's absolutely not acceptable for me to be trans and that I deserve to be punished for throwing their lives into disarray by attempting to finally live my life truthfully and correctly.

To their credit, the family did cut me a bit of slack for a week or so, apart from the odd little slip, and as such I felt almost normal again for the first time in several months. My mood lifted, I found it easier to cope with life's little niggles, and for the first time in ages I didn't feel generally down. I had my prolactin levels retested... and wouldn't you know, after two weeks of not being picked on my my family my prolactin level halved.

My doctor and I were hugely relieved. This indicates that I probably don't have a tumor, and that it was just depression causing this. OK, severe depression is not to be sneezed at, but at least it isn't a tumour! So I told Hubby that night that I was in the clear for cancer but that I'm clearly so badly depressed that it's showing up in my blood chemistry, so I need the family to do whatever they can to stop making me feel so goddamn awful on a daily basis.

As a result, my kids were going quite a bit easier on me.  Most of the really vicious attacks I suffer tend to come from my eldest daughter, who is at a very difficult age. Somehow she managed to rein in most of the bile, and my life actually seemed to be getting a bit better. I was hopeful that if we could keep this up, we could actually return to some measure of normality in our lives... and my brain chemistry could start correcting itself so I don't have to feel so fucking suicidal all the time.

But Hubby wasn't done tormenting me yet. Oh, no - not at all. He had yet another major trauma for me, just because he felt like being a fucking dick. That's the point at which he revealed that he wanted to take my kids away from me for a week, without my consent or prior knowledge.

He's doing this deliberately. He's doing everything he can to alienate me from my own family and it's tearing me apart. I hate him so much now, and I deeply, deeply regret having been stupid enough to marry him. I should've just used him to get the kids and then kicked him to the kerb when his behavour started to deteriorate... although in all fairness, if I'd done that I wouldn't have had my second child, because he started being a dick during my first pregnancy. When I first met him he seemed like a nice guy, but he's turned into such an oxygen thief over the years that I can no longer stand the fact that he's on the same planet as me.

So after my breakdown I was surprisingly OK for a couple of days. I seemed unusually calm and unemotional, and it took me four days to figure out why I've become so calm about the whole damn thing. It isn't that I've accepted it; rather, I'm just using the tricks I learned growing up trans to compartmentalise & push aside the deep pain I feel about this situation, so that I can just ignore it and attempt to live as normally as possible. Isn't it amazing what sort of tools you can gain because you grew up having to hide your gender dysphoria and the pain that it causes you?

He took the kids away on Saturday. And they're having a fantastic time. Without me. Fucking A.

I don't want him back in my house again.