I just learnd theres a character limit :(

Now this is the part I’m worried about but I feel it is important context.

This relates to trans stuff so I want to preface this with. You do you whatever makes you happy is OK in my book I will do my best to make you feel welcomed and comfortable. This will become clearer as to why its important in a bit. (this is very badly worded but I hope my intent is clear)

spoiler

Out of nowhere some high up person in the work decrees work signatures must have preferred pronouns in them. I read this and being the sort of person that didn’t care about that stuff I chose to ignore it. A couple days later my gaffer ask me why I hadn’t updated my signature. I told him I didn’t feel it was in my best interest. He pressed the issue and out of nowhere I started panicking and full blown fight and flight mode and no idea why. He sees my reaction and asks that it be less mandatory and its left at that.

Fast forward to the 9 weeks of counseling where all of the above ramblings hopefully come into focus.

The first thing I learn is that my childhood is less normal than had told myself having been let down by every adult and system in my life at that point with 3 recurring themes

1. My mother
2. That unfortunate resident in my 1st job
3. The shit in primary school

Working through these things We spent some time working through point 2 which is pretty much what it is I’m working to accept it and my role as someone who tried to help.

point 3 is about coming to terms with it there’s nothing I can do about it and try to become unstuck mentally at that age and try to grow my emotional maturity as it to say it clumsily I’m basically still emotionally a 10 yr old (or whatever) having shut out that part of myself at that young age.

point 1 is probably where most of the work still needs to be. We covered way more than I have listed with not just my mother but dad and grandparents. The 2 things that came out of this were

1. my parents would use Gender as a way of torturing both my self and my sister saying things like you (me) should have been born the girl and your sister the boy. This apparently was the root of the above panic attack and why I don’t see pronouns as anything that makes you you. You are what makes you happy your loves and aspirations not what other people call you (yes I know its more complex than this but its the best I can do without researching a thesis)

2. This prompted me to reach out to my system and ask to meet face to face to ask if it was as bad as I remembered or time embellishing my memories. Something we haven’t done in years and she told me it kinda freaked her out worrying something bad had happened. We met in a pub on Georges square and sat chatting we covered a lot of ground. The highlights being no it was infarct way worse and she had gone through a similar journey to this just a couple years earlier. We realised that the reason our relationship was so strained was because our parents were manipulative bastards playing us like chess pieces to keep us at odds. For example. my sister didn’t visit my daughter because we had a silly argument. Was one of those you forgot my kids birthday so I’m forgetting yours before it all kicked off. My mum used this to twist the situation to make her think I wouldn’t want her there. She told me in this conversation she did however phone every day for an update but wouldn’t let the staff pass her onto us. Something my dad is still doing but we agreed to leave him to it just keep each other in the look to watch out for it.

So where I’m at now

Work despite its normal issues is going well. I got a job right out of uni as a graduate helpdesk analyst for a software company where I quickly rose through 1st and 2nd line before moving to a Jr SaaS engineer where I built out the job from nothing (new post when I started) to requiring an additional 2 staff where I was given the senior engineer job an as of a couple months ago I run the entire department with 8 engineers 2 SNR engineers and a DBA

I’m working on moving past my mum and let all hope of that part of my life magically fixing itself and my sister. Our relationship is currently better than its ever bee.

I’m still having days and external stimulus does kick me in the head often. After going through that watching Encanto hits like a freight train. One of those off days is what prompted me to ask the question that lead to this thread of which I’m eternally grateful and way more than I hoped for as it allows all of us the chance to look at this side of ourselves in the anonymity of the internet.

If you made it to here thank you and apologies it seems I had a lot to get off my chest