Parts of me: The not so glam reality that is Penellope's Transition. (Part 3)

In ending my last article, I have spent a great deal of time trying to look back for that one moment, that one shining example of when everything changed, as with most things in life. There was no direct singular event, there was a long descending stair case into depression, anxiety, and disappointment. I was a barista for many years, interaction with the public was my joy. It was my preventative medicine. I loved interacting with people and hearing about their lives and forming friendships and serving wonderful coffee, it was my whole life and I loved every moment of it until slowly it became impossible to march that long march to work, to interact with smiling faces that I had known for years. I was lowering myself down a well with no recumbents with no ability to even see that I was falling. And eventually, as these things happen, I found bottom in all walks of my life and all ways of my life and upon finding bottom, I quit my job because I could no longer face people I could no longer be an active part of this society. And it took me a long time. I was not financially stable, but I did own my own home, I did have some savings I was able to subsist, I was able to live away and recluse myself. I got my series 7 and became a broker and started to trade to earn enough money to allow myself to no longer be public to no longer exist in the public sphere to become completely internal and wrap myself in a blanket of depression, and my hope was to never have to face this. It was all too confusing and too much I severed all contact with friends and family.

These are photos of my trading office, by shutting the door I closed out the near by world, I spent years in here.

I left the world behind me, essentially. I was in a state of constant study, because the markets are a demanding husband and they require constant attention and validation, and my quest for knowledge in conquering the markets sent me down rabbit hole after rabbit hole of philosophical thought in trying to understand what was happening in the markets. At that time things where very chaotic not at in line with the financials that I was reading so in this state of deep, deep anxiety and depression and withdrawal I found Stefan Molyneux of Freedomain Radio. And his philosophy of anarcho capitalism. I credit this man and his deep, deep well of knowledge for the saving of my life. The non aggression principle, Socrates and Stefan himself with his call in show and his deeply empathetic blogs, woke me up to the turmoil that was inside of me. I left the markets, I began to study the world around me and to look reflectively at myself at what I had become, at why I was allowing my world to get smaller and smaller and not paying attention to what this might mean about my mental state about my well being. Upon leaving the markets, I found a subsidiary market called scrapping now scrapping is very simple yet infinitely complex, I had a van, a lot of free time and a very big will, and I would drive around from one end of the state to the next, starting at 10 o'clock at night ending at 10 o'clock in the morning. I would dive in the dumpsters and find things that I could tear apart or things that could be broken down and turned into base elements, then turned into a scrap yard for cash, I did add a layer of sophistication to this because I did have a very nice van and a great garage, and I wasn't living on the street as so many people who scrap are. I was very much doing this as a substance way to survive. White privilege still intact, like very belladona, not desperation, but it did allow me to leave the market and continue to exist in a way that was fun and fanciful and free and unburdened by government.I was a pirate hunting treasure every night. I left government behind completely in scrapping.

There is so much cool stuff to be found in a dumpster!

My new office was open to the world!

I got very good at scrapping and was earning a substantial living. As I was beginning to scrap, I made the commitment to myself and to my future to seek help, I found a psychiatrist who would work with me financially but was still not a government employee, he was a man that was deeply committed to soldiers returning home from the war and he made himself available to me and helped me even when I couldn't pay him. His charity carried me until I got to a point where I could reimburse him for his time, he was my biggest fan and my saving grace, we explored all the venues of my PTSD, and this eventually led us back to my childhood traumas and the burying of my womanhood and my sexuality. All of this coming to light was an exhaustive 7 year process of self reflection in order to find harmony in tandem with my embracing anarchy and my separation from government and my new understanding of this world in which we live was coupled with my new understanding of who I am and both of these things culminated in this 7 year period. Until the market fell out of the scrap world in 2015, I don't know if anybody is aware, but in 2015 the scrap market because of, I would say a false bubble, but whatever it bottomed out and I was left with a garage full of scrap and a deeply stimulated imagination combined with some free time, and I began my artistic endeavor picking up from high school, I began to utilize those cognitive processes that were destroyed by a fragile person entering the meat grinder that is the United States Army. I rebuilt myself into who I wanted to be one atom at a time. In that process, I have now stepped forward.

And this is me and my son fencing, just for fun. This girl loves to fence BTW :-)

The process of realizing my artistic ability and my artistic bend in tandum with my deep love of steampunk and a garage full of artifacts I launched into my artistic pursuit, coupled with the beginning of my transition from male to female now this process was not quick. It was a very thoughtful, deliberate process that engaged all of my mental and physical abilities into desired goal of becoming the woman I had always been internally and to just live that life. It had nothing to do and has nothing to do with physical expression, the physical expression is a by product of the will to be myself, and I think it's my understanding that a lot of people do not comprehend this nuance.

Physical restructuring is solely a process of the mental. Stepping out of the mental understanding of who I am leading into the ability or the desire to express physically as we all have this desire to express ourselves, not only with beautiful flowery language and long loving flowing letters, but also in our physical being in the clothes that we wear and what we put on our face in what we ingest into our bodies, making us become who we are and how we are represented in this world. It is all one process, and I think that bigoted people or people that lack consciousness and understanding of this area, not in all things, but in this area look at it as a very glamorized, very invoked process of one becoming another, I have never been a man! Ever! that is something that people need to understand about transition, it is not that one day I woke up and decided to become a woman.

Over a lifetime of being crushed into a form that I did not want, that I did not fit into, I decided to stop pretending to be what everyone around me wanted me to be and to be who I actually am, that is what transition is, it is when you have decided that society no longer has a hold on your perception of who you are and you allow yourself to step forward into who you really are, it has nothing to do with the preconceived notions of those around you. It has everything to do with this desperate, unyielding need to be who you are and no longer pretend to be who those around you want you to be, we all go through this process, some of us just find more than we bargained for in rediscovering our self. That is it, there's nothing weird or crazy or un-understandable or unobtainable in being transgender. There is nothing separating me from you except that my transition is harder than those who seek to find themselves typically. It is a small minority of us that find ourselves in my position of having to contend with gender in discovery of self. Now for those of you, who don't have to go through questioning your gender. Brava. I think that's wonderful. You have such a straight forward path, I think that's great and I hope that your journey is peaceful and lovely and filled with joy, I really truly do. Mine has not been, however, I found my joy when I found and allowed for myself when I culminated my soul when I gave up social misconceptions of me and that's what we're all doing that freedom is what we are all seeking, especially here on steemit in this freedom based crypto currency, generating wonderful social media platform, we all are seeking our own freedom. Mine involves my gender expresion, but I'm a girl who loves philosophy. I'm a girl who loves anarco capitalism. I'm a girl who is deeply vested and invested in crypto currencies. I'm a girl that is bringing 15,20 people over to this platform because I believe in it so much I have my children signing up for accounts because it will change their future!

I also happen to be transgender but it is not a definition it is a state of being that I am experiencing that I am sharing with you not to glamorize it because it's not glamorous. It is however part of me, a true and real part of me that is happening right now. I share it for the same reason I share my art. Its who I am and with so few of the population being trans it is easy to step on us, to kill us, to deny our humanity. I am not staying silent for that.

if I could not do this if I could not be this way I would not be this way. It isn't a given choice, given the choice I would want desperately to have just been born correctly and live my life, it's not glamorous, it's horrible, however it is. And in that, in accepting that and moving into it and living that life and living that joy I have found there isn't an ability in others to take that away, I went out and I got a job for the first time in 7 years, working with the public, that's what brings me happiness I work at target in customer service and interact with hundreds of people every day, and there is never a point that there is not a smile on my face, there's never a point that I am not bubbling over with joy for being there because I love it, I love it, I love being around people I love interacting with people and sure I get weird looks sure I questions. But whatever I am me 100 percent of the time, not ever again, wilI conform to that which society demands me to be because that is a lie that I will not live for the comfort of others and that is all that you're asking me to do when you say don't be public or don't force this upon us, I'm not forcing anything upon anyone by living my life that is empirically true and undeniably healthier than the alternative. I have walked a long turning road, I have found true joy and I live it every day, I get to happily watch my sons grow into fine young men, I get to breath in free air and pursue my dreams and I worked very hard and suffered very long to be here, I refuse to live another moment falsely and without joy. In the end I suppose what I'm trying to say is that love is the answer, love for everything around you and every part of yourself. Its worked for me anyway.

Thank you all for following this trilogy, if you have any questions feel free to ask, thank you in advance for your up vote, if it moves you don't hesitate to resteem and follow me. Love to you all from the very bottom of my soul.