It’s like it’s swallowed up in goodness

I wrote recently about how it’s been a long four years. Years of financial struggle, a lot of change some really great things along the way, but, there’s no hiding the fact that these last four years have been bloody hard.

In that time I have lost a lot, relationships, home, friendships, choosing to be true to yourself has its implications. Many of them are too wonderful to put words around, but some of them are just really fucking hard.

It was really hard when I had to move out of a home situation and deal with not waking up surrounded by my children.

It was really hard to lose the relationship with my wife, and with that the relationships with related family. All that stuff is really hard. It takes a massive emotional toll. The holiday times have been the hardest, with intense emotional feels that can only truly be described as harrowing.

Of course, getting to live as yourself, your true self, unlocking the closet and swinging open that door that had held captive so much for so long, so tightly and so completely has been an experience so intensely joyful that too is almost impossible to find words to put around.

The most consistent thing over these last four years or so though has been intense disappointment, in being unemployed, in consistently failing to find work, to trying and failing so many times. To feel unemployable and to get to a point of such intense disappointment in oneself that one has essentially given up on the very idea of ever finding stable work again, let alone a career.

Good things do happen, and this morning I walked into an office building and claimed my spot as a member of the organisation. I have a shiny new job, a shiny new spot to sit, a shiny new log on and email address and all those associated things that tend to go with a job these days. And I feel fucking fantastic about myself.

In all honesty I really had given up on myself, for so long that was pretty much where I was at. But as the day rolled on today it was almost as though just being there, each moment that passed, minute by minute, hour by hour, the disappointment, the negativity, the loss, the pain the everything was being swallowed up and devoured by this great new thing.

It’s not even as though I achieved much in a work sense today. It was all that first day kind of stuff in an organisation, reading about the organisation, learning about policies and procedures and all those sorts of things. Highly thrilling and exciting right. And yet, swallow up all that disappointment it did.

As a visible trans autistic woman, I really felt that it was all stacked against me so much that my sense of futility was justified. Oh how wrong that was, oh how defeatist it was.

So many times in my life have I heard that lesson about never giving up, and you never know if you don’t try. Well over the last month or so I’ve learned that lesson in spades. Today was just the culmination of that. Today was the day I walked in and laid claim to the opportunity I have been given.

It feels somewhat like I have just gained a whole new lease on life. I’ve traded in the old broken down sense of uselessness and traded up to a sense of hopefulness, a sense of purpose, a sense of belief.

In so many ways I have had to eat my words, well at least all the words I spoke to myself internally.

I know it is only day one and there is so much in store, but it’s good stuff that’s in store, not shitty stuff of the same type of had to deal with over these four long years, but good stuff. Stuff I can do that will be good, wonderful and real.

To my autistic friends, all I can say is don’t give up, there are chances for us.

To my trans friends, all I can say is the same, there are organisations that accept us, support us and even employ us knowingly.

To everyone I say don’t give up, even when it seems so dark, one phone call, one unexpected phone call, it can change everything!

It’s a cliché I know, but carpe diem, seize the day, and suck the marrow out of life. You just never know.

The horrible badness can be swallowed up before your very eyes, even, while you might not be looking.