Atypical Trans Late Bloomer

You have trauma, said the fortune cookie You may never get past it, especially at your age (62) I am fortunate to have good helpers. Each one a specialist, each working their zone. They treat the parts, not the whole Depression gets Cymbalta Anxiety gets Klonopin Mild Psychosis gets Keppra I locked up memories and buried them deep. Eventually they surfaced, like rocks in a farmer’s field, like ordinance in Germany. I could not allow myself to remember I’d been raped by the priest Nineteen times, my Stations of the Cross. Later, I could not allow myself to remember I sought out men when I was young. What a thing to lock away, to bury, to un-remember. I wish it had stayed buried. The therapists open the boxes in your head without knowing what’s in there; Pandora’s Box without hope. I’m not sure it’s ethical. Thirty-five years ago, blissfully compartmentalized, I married a girl. Three years ago, the memories burst out with explosive surprises. I don’t...

I retired eight years ago on my 54th birthday, and I'm about to turn 62. May I tell you a story? It's the most compelling story I have. When I was 56 I started therapy. I got fired by several therapists which is kind of funny. Therapists and members of the healing community are very gentle when they discard you. Finally I found an effective match - a gestalt practitioner who told me I had suppressed memories and scary things locked away in little boxes deep in my head. He was right. When I was 58 I realized: I'd been beaten violently through my tender young years. I'd been raped repeatedly over the course of three years by a priest. And from that trauma I formed behaviors that tended to protect me, which were effective in the short term but it turns out, aren't very effective in the long term. I have two blog posts describing it -- but it's all just grim details. None of this is unique; the classic path of an abused kid is hypervigilance, initiative, prot...