Who Am I, What Am I?

For the first seven months of this year [2023], I was getting Lupron injections in my butt, to stop estrogen production in my body. This was not due to transitioning/gender reassignment, though it was a heavily considered topic in past years. These injections were due to endometriosis, which is a painful disease that affects about ten percent of menstruating women, and causes the lining of the uterus to grow on the outside. We aren't here to get into my medical history or the breakdown of the disease, but this was the beginning of how I was able to find myself.

After almost fifteen years of suffering horrible pain once a month, at the end of 2022, I met with the third gynecologist in six months and she offered me a pause. I went to her desperate. I don't usually see great, lasting results when I make decisions out of desperation, but this turned out to give me something I least expected. I was looking for physical relief and possibly healing and what I got was mental and emotional clarity of my identity, for total healing. I'll explain..

During the first month, it was great. No period equaled no pain. For the first time in years, I had my life back. I could focus on other things that needed my attention, rather than the enormous pain I was sure to be in. I could finally breathe. The second month was the same, relief and breathing. As I neared the third month, something happened that snatched that relief right out of my body.. I was sitting in my daily meditation, and I started to have cramping in my uterus. Fear, anger and exhaustion washed over me as I thought about yet another failed attempt to heal my body. Then a voice spoke to me, as often happens in meditation, and told me to ask my body for the answers. DUH! Why hadn't I thought of that?! I had been to energy healers, reiki healers, various doctors througout the years, I'd even written letters to my womb in guided meditations, and yet I always seemed to come up short with the solution. I never thought to just sit with myself and ask my body what I could do. So, I sat up straight, took ten deep breaths as I do to clear my energy to receive messages, and I heard it clearly, in my head..

"As long as you fight against your nature, you will be in pain."

Whoa! What the fork?! First of all what does that even mean and second of all, COOL, she answered me! I needed elaboration of course because I wasn't exactly sure what that meant. So I asked out loud, "What do you mean fighting against my nature?" And the reply came..

"Until you love and accept yourself, as the woman you are, you will suffer."

Once again, my mind was blown! But then came the waves of questions internally. But she was done answering me, it was time for me to figure out what that all meant. I sat there with it, and immediately answers came to me. Answers that, at the time, I thought were my higher self speaking to me. But at that point in my spiritual journey, I didn't understand how to differentiate the voice of my higher self from the voice of my unresolved trauma and subconcious programming. That's who spoke up first and loudest. It immediately took me to look at my homosexuality. It told me that fighting my nature as a woman meant that I needed a man and I shouldn't be with women anymore. It told me that I had been playing the role and presenting myself as masculine, to my own detriment.

The thing about the inner voice of unreseolved trauma and subconscious programming, is they play on your biggest fears. They say things that make sense to your panicked, desparate brain. Had I have calmed myself down and sat through that information for as long as it took to makes sense to my heart, I wouldv'e saved myself several months of a spiraling identity crisis. But those voices were loud and they were proud, lol. They told me that I had been "playing a dude" for so long that I wasn't accepting myself as the natural woman who needed a man. And that, in turn, caused my body to fight against me. They said that as long as I was gay, I didn't fully accept my female body. That as long as I told myself, I'd never take the D, I was cutting off connection to my womb and telling her I basically hated her as a by-product. "No wonder she tormented me every month," I thought!

So, I sat back up straight and said out loud to my body, "Fine, if I'm supposed to be with a man, I accept. I'm too exhausted to fight anymore." Immediately, the pain in my uterus subsided. Another WHOA! Did that just happen?! Now, I was sold. The voices were right. I had been going against my nature. So then, naturally, I had more questions, this time for my spirit guides. I wanted to know about homosexuality in general. Was it really wrong? Why was I being guided away from it when I have never felt it as wrong, even with my strict Christian upbringing. In fact, nothing felt more right, for me. I fought for eighteen years for my right to be homosexual so why was it now coming to my attention that it was wrong? I lost my family because of my lifestyle and now there was a plot twist?! The answer that came was that being gay was like humans flying on a plane. Doesn't seem like it should be so, to some, but in truth isn't wrong. Right there is where I should've asked a few more questions and dug a little deeper. Didn't that seem contradictory? But that was all I had the energy for and my brain was about to explode with all of this information. I needed to call my friends.

I ended up calling five of my closest friends and telling them about this entire experience. The response was mixed. Two of them felt like this was the right move and looking back, they were the two that planted the seeds of this 'revelation' with conversations we'd had before about past life run-off into current life circumstances and what it means to incarnate as a woman. They had reawakened something I thought was resolved in my subconscious, but actually wasn't. Two of my other friends kind of laughed and just listened. They would accept for my life whatever I wanted, and I appreciate them for this. It didn't stop the buffoonery of the spiraling identity crisis I was embarking on, but they didn't try to change me and that's valuable when you're trying to find yourself. My closest friend at the time was shocked and couldn't believe what she was hearing. And I surprised myself by actually convincing her of my point, based on what all I'd just experienced. In the end she conceded and we marveled at that plot twist. I still had one more call to make, my mother.

My mother and I had barely spoken for months, since I'd written and mailed letters to her and my father and sister, telling them I no longer wanted them in my life. At the point of writing those letters, I was in the beginning of a huge transofrmation and I just felt their very Christian ideals weren't the right energetic match for where I was going spiritually. I didn't call her to admit her Christian values were right, but I did call her to share the information I had received. She was thrilled of course. She thought this meant that I was headed 'back to Christ' with a one-way ticket, lol. I explained to her, as I did many times before, it wasn't Jesus that I left, it was their interpretation of him and what he was saying to the world. She dedcided to take the 'small victory' of me renouncing my homosexual ways, in hopes that soon I would come back to Christ, her way. Looking back, I know now that the wounded, ostracized child that was still residing in my subconscious mind, was looking for a way to finally feel accepted by my family. And I was. We all began talking again and somewhat rebuilding our damaged relationships, but I was ignoring the fact that something just didn't feel totally right. We still got into huge fights about other lifestyle values, but what kept my mother 'coming back' was that something had 'finally clicked' with her daughter and all those years, preaching to me about sin were finally paying off. She held out hope that if I could admit homosexuality was wrong for me, then maybe I could start to see more sins in my life that were wrong.

Then things started to really fall apart in my life. I was now in the middle of that transformation and almost nothing in my life felt right. I had lost a lot of friends, I ended up leaving my hometown, and putting myself at the mercy of the Universe. I wrestled with the idea of dating men, but always put the thought on the backburner because at that point I didn't want to date anyone. My last relationship took a big part of me, emotionally. It was monumental for my growth, but the challenges within that relationship shook me to my core. I had invested so much of myself into that person, but was left feeling very empty and betrayed. These are feelings I had never experienced, even when I was cheated on by another ex. So, I know this added to my feelings of wanting to be alone and then eventually try a different route, with men. I just needed to heal, so I focused on me, rather than my sexual identity. Unbeknownst to me, healing myself included figuring out my sexual identity. But due to traveling around like a nomad, I had other distractions to keep my attention.

It wasn't until a couple months ago, that the issue resurfaced. By this time I had been off the Lupron for a few months, and was having normal periods again. Including the endo pain. I didn't stop to consider my sexual identity playing into this because I was so sure in my newfound ungayness that I didn't even think of it. But if the pain leaving is what drove me away from gay, wouldn't it returning be the cause to throw up a few red flags? To the normal preson maybe, but I can be a slow learner. I can also be extermely loyal to a new mindset if I feel there's proof it's beneficial to me. Plus with this loooong transformation, came many other issues in my life that needed attention. So I dealt with the pain. Until I couldn't.

Driving back to my friend's place where I had been hiding away from the world for months, the pain hit me so hard I could barely make it home. I was actually crying, which is a lot for me since I have a high threshold for this kind of pain. I got back and actually worked through an energetic visualization for three hours that took the pain away for the remainder of that period. I thought I was healed, finally. [If you know me, you know that every time I have an experience like this, I think I'm healed, lol. Really it's mind over matter, where I am able to believe in something so strongly in that moment, that I'm able to find relief. But true healing comes much differently.] So when the next period rolled around and that same excruciating pain came back, I had no choice but to ask my body wtf was going on.

I remember I couldn't even sit up to meditate. I was rolling around on my friend's couch (thank god she was away on her own road trip during these months) crying and feeling sorry for myself, when it hit me. Maybe I was wrong all those months ago and my body was once again trying to get my attention. So I yelled out, right there on the couch, through my tears, "What?! What is it now? Haven't I done everything you asked me to do? Haven't I changed myself enough?" And as clear as day I heard in my head, "Maybe I didn'task you to?"

Oh dear lord, come the fork onnnn! ANOTHER PLOT TWIST? I immediately stopped crying and half of the pain intensity went away. My guess is my body was feeling more aligned just with pondering that last question. Wait, so it's ok for me to be gay after all? I thought. And before I could even finish the question I heard the most gentle voice saying to me, "What do you feel in your heart?"

Honestly since the day of my reverse coming out (ha), it never felt totally right. It never felt totally true. This time, I didn't try to answer right away. One thing I learned in all those months, was how to be patient and listen to my heart. So I searched my heart and my soul and this is what I know for myself: I have always loved women. Since before I knew was a lesbian was, I had an affinity and affection for women that went beyond just friendship. I love their gentleness, their softness, their smell. I will always love women and enjoy them in all the ways you can; that is my truth. But now.. I was also reconnected with the love I once had for men. During those months that I thought I was supposed to be with a man only, I had realized a few things. I didn't hate men, I was attracted to them, and they actually offer a good energetic balance to my own energy. You see, when I was in high school, coming into who I was as a young sexual human, I would 'hook up' with both boys and girls. I enjoyed what they both had to offer. I realized that what drove me away from men was repeatedly being assualted by them both in high school and shortly after. That's when I adopted a more masculine persona and it was for protection. I felt betrayed by them and that I couldn't trust them so I left them alone for the most part. But now I was realizing I had put up a wall and shut all of them out for what only a few did to me. Wow, who even am I?, is all I could think at that moment. But you know what, I wasn't in pain, and I hadn't even noticed.

Fast forward to the present moment as I sit here writing this piece, and there's so much I understand about what happened. My higher self allowed and orchestrated this entire identity crisis, that at first seemed unnecessary, so that in the end I could truly heal. There was so much of my inner child that needed to be healed along with unresolved trauma. The Universe is so wise in the way it lets us spin ourselves around in these wild loops until we finally come to our true essence. And that's what this entire ordeal was about. Me thinking my way of being was wrong, only to find out it wasn't, but in the process adding to the truth of that way of being. How magnificent.

I truly have given up on titles, both in the personal and professional sense, because they don't express the entirety of who I am. What I can say now, is I am fully ME. I love women and I am still reconnecting with my love for men. Annnnddd, when I look at what the ideal partnership looks like in my life, I have both. Some call it a throuple, and that has always sounded silly to me, but I have room for both and in fact, I need both. [Is this a third plot twist?] Just being with a woman alone is, in fact, against my nature. But also being with a man alone, would be cutting out a huge part of who I am. Also, if you've made it this far, you can probably tell I'M A LOT lol, so having two partners is necessary for all this energy I have. Playing the masculine role isn't necessarily what I needed to let go of, but accepting the fememine energy I carry is something I needed to call to the front more. Balance is key for me, and I am both masculine and fememine in this woman's body. I was unbalanced (unnatural) before when I leaned too heavily into my masculine energy. So when the initial message came that I was fighting against my nature, it literally meant my nature. What's natural for me is to not have to choose one over the other, but to enjoy them both, with balance internally for the energies I hold. Accepting myself for the woman I am, means whatever I feel is truest in my heart, no matter what anyone else or trauma has taught me, is what I should be true to, to avoid suffering.

If this seems like a lot of information for you, imagine what I feel (ha!). But I wouldn't change a single thing about what I've just gone through. I know who and what I am now and I know what I want. That's more than I can say for any other time in my life, so I am eternally grateful for this hellish experience that brought me back to center. I am still enjoying my time alone, healing and transforming, and when the time is right, I know I'll meet my partners and they'll be perfect for me.

Thanks for reading. Sending you all the love I have, and hoping that you too, know your truest self.