Where I've been... · 9:05pm Feb 19th, 2015
I'm sure you have all noticed that my activity here has been a bit spotty with slow updates for the past couple of months. To be honest I have fallen so behind on my own writing and fandom involvement that I can't even trace back to where this issue began. I debated for a while about making a blog post about this, but I eventually dtermined that it would be best to get all this off my chest or it will just keep bothering me. Just so you all know, this is about a lot more than just one issue, so be prepared to sit a spell.
My Own Identity
I guess the best way I can start this off is by saying that I recently realized I'm not cisgendered. While growing up, I was never exactly the most masculine boy around, nor was I too interested in typical "Manly" things. I never really got interested in masculine looks, activities, mannerisms or hobbies. I even hated my own body hair and always wanted to grow out my head hair really long. I've always felt more comfortable and happy when being around females more often than males, but could never really understand why. Overall I just really hated a lot of aspects and expectations about being a man while growing up and felt like I had a hard time realting to other boys and fitting in. This past summer, the thoughts resurfaced a lot and I finally decided to do some research on it. After doing a lot of searching around, I've found that my own feelings of being interested in traditionally feminine things, looks, fashion, behavior and activities actually fall into a certain category: I'm Gender Non-conforming.
If you're unfamiliar, it means that you don't match the societal expectations of fitting into the gender category you're assigned to; your personality, appearance, behavior, interests, or mannerisms match what is normally associated with your opposite gender. To be put in simpler terms, my desired gender expression doesn't match my male identity; even though I still identify as male and use a male pronoun, I'm actually a lot more feminine than I am masculine. I've even found comfort in crossdressing and wish to do it more often, all while replacing my men's briefs with women's panties. I'm even taking much better care of my own body and hoping to start using make-up for daily wear.
I don't want this revelation to take over my life, or to define who I am as a person, but it's been an aweful lot for me to take in over the past few months. Despite the fact that I have told my family about this and my crossdressing—and they accept me for it—I'm still incredibly nervous about how this will affect the way the rest of the world sees me, or how people will treat me negativley because of it.
Graduating
On top of all that, I'm graduating college in May; it became official about two weeks ago. While I should be excited, I'm actually dreading what will come next for my life. I studied both TV production and Theatre at school, but my real dream is to becoem an actor and overall performace artist. The biggest problem is that my parents have never exactly been supportive of me doing that for a career, but I never gave up. Over the years at school, I really grew to hate my TV major, and most of the professors who ran the department. No matter how much I tried, I just couldn't bring myself to enthusiastically enjoy myself in that field, or see myself being happy doing it for the rest of my life.
Because of that, I've officially determined that I want to go down the theatre route, but I'm afraid of disappointing my family. They paid a lot of money for my education, but I ended up being stuck in a major that I grew to really despise. One major class has even gotten so demanding that I recently had to drop a whole other course, just to lighten my stress. If my family wasn't so focused on earning a lot of money in a job, then I wouldn't even be in this situation. But unfortunately, I wasn't raised in a home of passionate people.
Even though I've already been going to regional theatre auditions and trying to turn my own desires into actions, I'm still very anxious about both going into acting and trying to convince my parents to let me do this. I'm now even seeing a school therapist about this issue and has so far been very helpful. The problem is she's only temporary and I don't know how to handle my other issues after her. I'm just hoping she can help me move past this very stressful time in my life.
And... on top of all of that, I think I might have Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD).
Overall, I'm really sorry that I haven't been as active or writing as much lately, but a lot of anxiety has been taking over and I'm trying to regain control. However, the fact that I now have 100 followers is news that I find very uplifting and I hope that it can motivate me to be more productive and open. Thanks for reading and I hope you will all stick around.
-Dramacolt.
Wow...I can't even...wow.
*hugs you tightly*
I'm so sorry to hear about your troubles and I hope everything will go your way and don't worry about not being here too often people will understand. I get that you have a lot going on, and I hope it's comforting to know that we, or at least me, is here for you if you need to ralk sometime!
I'm sorry to hear that you're going through so much, but at the same time I want you to know that I'm happy that you've found yourself in this way and are comfortable with your identity.
. Don't worry about writing right now, unless you want to of course. Your mental, emotional and physical health should be put above writing, and I know people will understand that -- so take as long as you need and know that your followers will be here whenever you're ready to get back to the pony words.
It's difficult to know what to write in response to a blog like this, not having had much experience with what troubles you're facing. I'm glad to hear though that you've gotten a better understanding of who you are and have a definition for it. I know that in my case, having Aspergers, it really helped me to get a decent starting point from, in understanding myself and where I would want to go. Apart from that I'm gay, which so far though, apart from my father not liking it, hasn't caused me too many issues.
Neither of these have caused significant external reactions, but then again, none of these can really be deduced from my appearance. As such I cannot say what reactions you might get. I'm glad your family accepts you for who you are. I would like to say that the world would accept you as well. I know that's overly positive, but then I'm a brony that likes to hope for the best in people. I do know that to be happy though first and foremost you should think about what you're happy with being and how you're comfortable.
Life after college is a little scary, I can only agree on that. Too many unknowns to begin with, and your facing our own problems to begin with. It's easy for me to say that you should do what you think you'd enjoy best, what would make you happy. If tv isn't where your interests lie, I doubt you could be happy working with it for extended periods of time. Then again, it might be a good fallback should you not be able to pursue theater right away, so you'd be able to have an income and work towards getting into theater in your spare time until you land a good part. Most important for now though is the question how the auditions to date have gone, and how you feel about them.