my hermitage heritage

My most precious commodity these days seems to be that elusive human construct: time. As a result my recent post-surgical foray into the dank, default cubby hole of self-imposed hermitage is poking its nasty head out into and affecting the outside world these days. I have a heritage of hermitage cycles going back as far as I can remember. I sort of figured (or at least hoped) they were a symptom solely of the gender dysphoria, but that may not be the case. Or at least this particular symptom has outlived it's theoretical creator.

Despite wave upon recent wave of good tidings, contentment eludes me. I feel more physically complete and mentally at peace with my physical self than I've ever experienced, but the empty paunch where my gender pain and general misery used to be still roils a little. I think I've stepped forward and upward on the self=confidence meter but I'm still reeling from the new heights, still getting my bearings, and for a lifelong high anxiety addict like myself, the absence of fear is just as dizzying.

To the wayside since surgery sit neglected friends and acquaintances alike and voluntary responsibilities and social contacts I worked so hard to make myself comfortable around and feel proud of. Not to mention I've neglected this blog. I can only hope I've not also somehow tainted the only contact that really matters to me: my lover, my comrade-in-laughter-arms, my best friend, my shining star, my soulmate, Jenn. It seems to be the "somehow" that always escapes me in this Second Life reality called "the relationship." Is it something in me (or something crucial missing?) that in my past drove everyone eventually silently, subtly away? Or is my own fear simply drowning out their voices, their pleas for me to hear them?

This isn't to say I sense Jenn moving away from me in any way - she has more than made it clear in word and deed she's committed to me, to us. I hope I've conveyed the same to her. It's just that I sense an unspoken "something different" between us - an unknown just as likely positive as negative, but as graspable as the morning mists rising from the Hudson across the street. I feel the uncanny pull of certain nano-moment-long panic attacks when this mist arises; clueless as to how to swim through it. Is that an excuse or a reason or just tight words slipping from a loose tongue?

I sit here burdened with elation and buoyed by fear, but I'll ride atop this wave and onto the next trusting we'll work it all out. Hopefully I'll also shake off this general life dysphoria once I've sold my house and Jenn and I have a nice apartment and have achieved a semblance of balance in living together that we haven't had to grapple with yet. We should hopefully have more time to relax, to breathe, and to enjoy ourselves relatively free of ungraspable fears at that point.