Sisyphus’s Post-Trans Purgatory
On navigating the ongoing torment of regret when you have a family to feed
Check out the rest of the blog for context about my book project and previous exchanges with Christopher.
Christopher’s next letter to me in our Dear Detransitioners exchange
I read it, thank you so much. Sorry it took a while to get back to you, I've just been having a really hard week emotionally. Feel like I'm pushing a rock up a hill but I'm sliding backwards every step of the way like I'm on ice.
I think that summary sentences made large print, like you did, really gives it a blog feel and highlights some of the points.
I was glad to elaborate on the points that included unique wording which could be ambiguous. Sometimes the poet comes out and it is more metaphor than substance, asking for clarification often forces me to recognize that I'm not communicating as effectively as I need to be, and that seems to help increase understanding on both sides. Sometimes I'm just oblivious like that.
Some days I'm full of fire and confidence, other days, like this week, I feel like I'm drowning in hopelessness and ruin.
“Mostly I just worry about my wife and our expected child... I want desperately for things to start going right, even if I have to break and destroy my body to keep working.”
Mostly I just worry about my wife and our expected child. I really just wish I was in a better place to take care of them, instead of still messing around with this pathetic identity crisis of my past which is preventing me from getting any serious work, and is ruining my chances it giving the baby an authentic birth certificate with my birth name as the father's name, and the stress of wondering about the confusion the baby will have if she sees my shirtless because I have breasts as well. I don't want to confuse my child, and mostly I just feel like I've really screwed things up for myself and I want desperately for things to start going right, even if I have to break and destroy my body to keep working. My teeth are broken my back hurts all the time, the muscle spasms are unbearable, the bradykinesia and weakness make me drop things and trip over my own feet, and I take shorts shuffling steps everywhere I go at work with one side of my body moving less than the other. I just wish that my huge family recognized or wanted to be part of my life in any meaningful way, and I feel at a disadvantage how to start my family with me as opposed to having generational support.
I'm carrying on, but I just wanted to clarify.
I hope things are well with you, and I hope that there's some good that can come from all of this.
Chris
My response
Hi Chris,
I’ll meet you in that right-brained space of imagery and metaphor today, too.
Your letter evokes and embellishes on imagery from the Greek myth of Sisyphus, so I took a moment to refresh my knowledge of the tale. According to this summary from WorldHistory.org, Sisyphus was condemned by Zeus to the eternal fate of endlessly pushing a boulder up a hill as punishment for his sneaky attempts to cheat death.
Perhaps there’s a deeper connection to the metaphor. Maybe “cheating death” is just one of the many ways we attempt to defy the laws of nature and bend them to suit our wills. Buying into the absurd idea that one can just change their sex at will, in spite of the millions of years of evolution that led to the immutable and binary nature of sex, certainly does that. It’s about the most hubristic a thing a person can possibly do. It tempts fate, taunts the Gods to come up with newer, harsher ways of humbling us.
So here you are, along with so many other detransitioners and lost-in-transitioners, survivors of gender malpractice who are neither here nor there. Suffering in some kind of purgatory on earth, feeling forever trapped between man and woman, perhaps cursed with the worst of both sexes and the benefits of neither as the Gods’ way of telling you that you should have known better. You were greedy, you wanted too much, and now it’s all been taken away.
“It makes one yearn for mercy, compassion, grace, and forgiveness. Where is the God of redemption?”
Much like the laws of nature can be, the ancient Gods and the God of the Old Testament — I say with little scholarship background of either, but will paint only in broad strokes, rendering my personal inadequacy less impactful — were famously wrathful, punitive and unforgiving. It makes one yearn for Jesus and Mother Mary, or the Buddha and Quan Yin. For mercy, compassion, grace, and forgiveness. Where is that God of whom Jesus spoke? Where is the God of redemption?
I don’t know, but it might not be a bad idea to go find Him.
I’m extra tuned-in to my audience these days. For better or for worse, almost anything I say or write lately, I can hear the most uncharitable of their reactions in my head. Right now, I hear the atheists booing and the Christians cheering as I broach matters of faith, however ambiguously. But this isn’t for any of them. People love to make assumptions about my spiritual orientation. No one’s gotten my number yet, and I’m not going to give them that pleasure by enlightening them as to the precise nature of my beliefs, because I believe it’s its own kind of sin to try to wrap one’s grubby little paws around someone else’s personal lifeline to the divine. Butting in on someone else’s private conversation with God is just a way of procrastinating on having your own. And it’s immodest; I prefer the door closed when I’m naked, whether with myself, my partner, or my higher power. Or perhaps spiritual nosiness is an act of jealousy; I don’t really know. But forget them all. Forget me, too, and my petty little issues with them. This is just for you. You will recognize your own medicine.
“Fair enough, God. Point taken. I can’t cheat nature. But you’re punishing my poor wife and child. What have they done to deserve this?”
You’ve been humbled. I imagine it’s like, FAIR ENOUGH, GOD. POINT TAKEN. I GET IT NOW. I CAN’T CHEAT NATURE, DEATH, OR THE REALITY OF SEX. But does the punishment fit the crime? At what point do you get to stop suffering for your sin of pride?
At around 40, you are a couple of years older than me, a couple of years younger than my partner, and around the same age as countless people I’ve worked with in the thick of their mid-life overwhelm. Unique as your predicament is, it’s also a tale as old as time. The life you’ve lived until now is really starting to show, and the costs of each mistake you’ve made have piled up to the point where not only is it impossible to ignore them, it’s also increasingly difficult to even carefully step around the piles-of-poop you can’t pick up right this minute in order to put out the fires you need to put out right this minute. At the same time, for all your shortcomings, you’re also a better person, less selfish, more motivated by love for your family and concern for the next generation, so it’s extra cruel that you’d be so hindered by the errors in your past ways. FFS, God, can’t you see, you’re not punishing me, you’re punishing my poor wife and child? I get it, I deserve to suffer. I feel the same way about myself. But what have they done to deserve this?
Is it something like that?
“If only you had known then what you know now. About the realities of the fraudulent medical scandal that is so-called “gender affirming care,” yes. But also, about love, and sacrifice, and maturity, and what it is to have a family.”
If only you had known then what you know now. About the realities of the fraudulent medical scandal that is so-called “gender affirming care,” yes. About what it would do to you, and who you really are, and what you really needed all along, yes. But also, about love, and sacrifice, and maturity, and what it is to have a family, and how you’d give anything just to see them well, and how falling in with this stupid cult and being duped by maleficent Big Pharma would cost you something you didn’t even know you carried in your heart when you unwittingly gave it up.
God’s grace, however you conceive it, can be found in the love and redemption that finally came to you, hard-won, through family. But His unrelenting cruelty is apparently riding right alongside the grace, endlessly tormenting you with reminders of how you could have done better by the good things in your life had you not fucked it all up.
I don’t mean to be cavalier, just empathic. If these aren’t the right words to describe your experience, toss them aside. They’re not my opinions of what you experience or deserve, just what I’m reading between the lines.
“You are in pain, physically disabled, and materially inconvenienced in many real ways, because you fell for a scam and have not stopped paying for it ever since.”
Let me bring it all down to earth for a second here. You are in pain, physically disabled, and materially inconvenienced in many real ways, because you fell for a scam and have not stopped paying for it ever since. I feel like we should have gone over this by now, and am a bit embarrassed that we haven’t, but do you have a therapist yet? And if not, how can I help? Secondly, do you have a medical team you can trust? Third, do you have a lawyer? Fourth, do you have a disability advocate? Please forgive me if I’m forgetting things you’ve already shared about all this.
“Try to remember to see each person as an individual. Catch yourself in the trap of overgeneralizing, confront that cognitive bias, and correct it with some more nuanced thinking.”
About your big unsupportive family, here’s one thing I can offer. I’m not sure how helpful it is for your particular situation, but I’ll offer it for what it’s worth. I know at times when it feels like it’s “me against the world,” everyone else tends to get lumped together in my mind. I lose sight of other people’s individuality, instead projecting onto them en masse that they all think one way while I think the other. It’s the black sheep in me, the person who’s been scapegoated since childhood. I don’t know if you can relate to that. But if you can, try to remember to see each person as an individual.
Consider making a list of the people in your life who you feel alienated from. And then, one by one, try to come up with at least one unique trait about each person, or a memory you share with that person and no one else — ideally positive memories and traits when possible. See if you can catch yourself in the trap of overgeneralizing, confront that cognitive bias, and correct it with some more nuanced thinking. Notice if there’s anything you’re telling yourself about what “everyone” thinks about you or is saying about you behind your back. Then see if you can break down the errors in that thought process, too. Does everyone else get along with each other swimmingly and talk openly? Are you the only one anyone harbors animosity toward? Can you really be so sure?
Nuanced, robust theory of mind can be difficult for autistics. But it’s not impossible. You just have to go through a different, longer route in your brain to see things that neurotypicals see more intuitively. But once you learn that skill, you can become quite good at it. So practice mentalizing. Imagine people as three-dimensional, complex, varied, and dynamic. Maybe even try writing their story as if from their own perspective. See if you learn anything new about yourself, your loved ones, your relationships.
And then see who on that list feels most accessible. Who do you have the most positive impressions of? The least drama with? Who feels like the peacemaking, olive-branch-extending type? Who are the other outliers and misfits? Who has gone through his or her own journey of change and redemption, and might empathize with yours? Try not to burden your child, or anyone you’ve really hurt. But see who’s out there. Perhaps consider testing the waters.
Finally, consider “chosen family.” Where might you forge new connections?
“Your entire perspective has changed, and your motives are different. You’ve taken ownership for your life, however broken it may feel at times.”
I know you’ve already been through the process of becoming a parent. But this is in many ways much different. How old is your son now? He must be, what, 20? You had him early in life. You also had a stepson you didn’t write much about, so I don’t know the quality of that relationship. But you are in a much different place in life and a much different relationship than when you had your first child. Your entire perspective has changed, and your motives are different. You’ve taken ownership for your life, however broken it may feel at times. So although you know how becoming a parent changes things, you don’t yet know how becoming a parent this time around will change your world now. Yes, relationships will be strained. But new relationships may come, too, as a result of your dedication to your family.
Don’t underestimate the power of your parental love to aid you in overcoming the obstacles ahead.
“I don’t know what to tell you about your baby seeing you shirtless. But I do know your concern is coming from the right place. Love will accomplish a lot.”
I don’t know what to tell you about your baby seeing you shirtless. But I do know your concern is coming from the right place. You respect biology and understand there are important processes happening in an infant’s brain early in life. You realize that gender ideology is psychologically abusive in many ways, not the least of which is that it gaslights and confuses the naive and vulnerable. The instinct to recognize male from female is primal and it exists for good reason. This is a unique way to be “off” as a parent. But it is, still, just a way that you are “off.” And at least you are not going to teach your child bizarre ideas of how sex works. There are babies that grow up with parents in a wheelchair who still understand how legs work for most of us. Babies whose parents’ faces have been badly damaged by burns that still learn to see the love in those faces. Just focus on being the best parent you can be. Wear clothing you feel comfortable and modest in. Wear a sports bra, but don’t hurt yourself with a binder. See about getting legal, financial and medical help for getting those unwanted implants removed. But mostly, like you said you wanted, forget your tired old identity crisis. Keep the focus on your baby. Do everything you can for your family and your health. Hang in there. Love will accomplish a lot.
