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My dream is to have someone—anyone—see me as more than just a friend. To have someone who wants me, in more than just a sexual way. That dream haunts me.

The only attention I receive is from Grindr. I see my worth as how much I can starve myself to stay thin. I figure at least if I’m petite, pervs online will want to use me as part of their fetish. I oblige them because they desire me in those fleeting moments. After they get what they want, they never contact me again. That is my value as a person.

I’m so insecure, so unconfident. I see people like my best friend, who can get any guy she wants without even trying, and I have only envy and resentment. What’s worse, I think I have feelings for her, unrequited love that will only serve to hurt more as she explores her new life as a single woman. I don’t think even she sees me as a woman, but as a feminine man who lies to himself in the mirror each day. A pretender.

I don’t even try anymore. What’s the fucking point?

Clearly I’m not in a good place mentally/emotionally. I’m tired of therapy; it has not helped me. I feel like a failure in almost all aspects of my life. I can’t even get high anymore, so now on particularly bad days I drink instead. Today I’m getting drunk. I don’t care to tell anyone IRL how I really feel these days. It’s just a waste of breath on my part, and a waste of time on their’s. No one I care about wants to hear about my problems, feelings and fears anymore. It’s best to accept this bitter reality—better to be the funny person than to share my internal struggles and profound sadness.

I’ve got my son, and he is going to venture out into the world on his own in a matter of a few years. Then I will truly feel alone. His love is what keeps me on this earth, nothing else.

Edit:

I told my best friend how shitty I’m feeling over text, she said she’d call me. She didn’t. I waited all day for her call. I’m always there for her, but when I really needed her today, she was nowhere to be found. That really hurt. Like really bad.

  • dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    13·
    2 days ago

    Have you read any of Casey Plett’s works? I think you might find it relatable, her collection of short stories A Safe Girl to Love might be a good place to start (but I love everything she has written).

    All I can say is that you’re in the same boat as so many other women, and not just trans women. So many of us feel worthless and reduced to what we can provide sexually to men who throw us away after they are done getting what they want. These are struggles so many people feel - you are not alone. 🫂

    I can’t really give good advice, but if I were trying I would suggest not letting your experiences on Grindr color and make up your reality too much - reality is so much more weird and open than you realize, and just because experiences on Grindr leads to predictable outcomes like being reduced to a fetish doesn’t mean there aren’t real people out there who are not only capable of seeing and loving you, but who would feel so lucky to.

    To that end, I guess the closest thing to advice I could give is to do what you can to not get sucked down into the self-loathing, the insecurities, and so on - and to actively break out of that mindset and seek a different reality. Not everything is in your control (maybe nothing is in your control), but there is power in recognizing the things you feel aren’t as much reality as it feels, that what we pay attention to influences what makes up your reality. There might be some freedom in there, and there are ways in that freedom to see how beautiful you are, a way to see that you are worth so much and that there are other people who will see that too.

    When I was really bad off, sometimes this meant sitting down and forcing myself to take a different perspective - to recognize when I thought I was ugly or a failure or bad, and to instead to actively recall memories that made me feel like I was a good person, to sit with the feelings those memories created - sometimes I focus on times people made me feel loved, other times I focus on times I felt like a good person (when I helped someone in a tough spot or did something anyone would consider good). It can be hard to come up with examples at first, but again it’s a matter of persistence more than anything.

    Surprisingly, spending 20 - 40 minutes a day doing this makes a difference over time.

    There’s a lot to unpack, but I guess my advice is to just not hang onto your suffering and to seek better perspectives, you are worth that.