My lack of writing , specifically about my coastal path adventures, stands as evidence as to how much life can suddenly change. At my last time of writing , on the back of my gender confirmation surgery going wrong, I was in the worst mental health place I had been for a while. My anxiety was so high that going outside was a challenge that took me two days to work up to and a week to recover from. I needed solitude, finding people to be just too much to cope with. I couldn’t handle people being close to this body of mine which had returned to feeling like it was wrapped in barbwire and if I moved too suddenly or someone moved against me I would be cut to ribbons.
I haven’t written here for some time. My last post here was about deciding to begin to walk the South West coastal path, I have not made a lot of progress on that, in fact lets not beat around the bush here, I have not made any progress whatsoever!
I desperately needed to balance looking after myself with also gently pushing myself to not sink into depths of isolation. I decided that challenging myself to a regular walk would help to accomplish this aim and would likely also help me to have a feeling of achievement.
Then, out of the blue, I met a woman who was to completely change how I felt in every way possible and would suddenly catapult me forwards in life, meaning that finding the time to do a coastal walk would turn out to be impossible!
Thanks to this wonderful woman, I have had a complete sexual paradigm shift. Despite my body still not working in the way that I hope it will one day in the not too distant future, I no longer feel the dysphoria I felt just a couple of months ago, My body feels freer than I ever thought it was possible to feel, especially considering its current “unfinished” state. This wonderful woman and I are no longer in a relationship, but the healing and growth that she ignited continues to blossom and I will be forever grateful for her.
My point in this post, as well as noting my lack of coastal walks, is to reflect on the wonderfully mysterious way that life works. Had I not had the awful surgery experience, I would likely have not been open to this sexual and relational epiphany that’s happened. Its hard when times are tough to not label things as good and bad but developments like this are proof that things are not good or bad, they simply just are. Trusting this means in the midst of a difficult experience, such as the one I had for the first half of this year, the faith and knowledge that it will open up again and make sense , helps me to keep on travelling on.
When my new and exciting sexual world stops spinning so fast, I still plan to find the time to do these coastal walks, its just that now I shall do them with a rather large spring in my step and a incredibly wide smile on my face.