cougar9q's intro reloaded?

[cougar9q]

Hello again to all!

This once again is cougar9q, I am a 20 y.o. intersexaul, and according to society's rules I am a lesbian/ some what bisexual female....For me it is confusing and very frustrating to live in such a chaotic world of labels. I was diagnosed at birth with MGD. No!!!! not Miller Genuine Draft...lol instead Mixed Gondal Dygenesis. I at the beginning of this year was struggling to terribly find my identity or understand it. I recently have started to research my condition, my beliefs, and even my values, and that is what has brought me here. SUPPORT is what I am looking for. It's just that I know that I am normal, yet I feel like such a freak. I feel so handicapped because I mistakingly believe that I am so messed up that I don't deserve to be with anyone. I feel lost, threatened, vulnerable, lonely, and so isolated. Slowly that has started to change yet I still feel those emotions strongly. I started to laugh when I started to read a couple of weeks ago of conversations within this website. I was not laughing out of joking, I laughing because I read and realized that many people feel as sad/mad as I do. I guess that I feel like I have stumbled upon my "true" family. I didn't believe it, and now I do, and now I am asking for some support. Feel free to reply or email me at cougar9mc@<hidden> thanx for your help. I have so many questions that I know that will probably not get answered but will hopefully will be addressed. Once again thank you for your help.


Thanx,
Cougar9Q

[claraJane]

Welcome Cougar9q!

Hope y'all get the support you're looking for. There are a bunch of friendly people here. :cool:

Because I'm also xy/xo (MGD) I'm a little curious about what you've been through physically and emotionally. Are you willing to share some of that with us?

Kind regards,
Jane

PS: Regarding MGD... I do correspondence for www.xyxo.org, so if you need medical info, if you don't find it on that site, feel free to ask.

[cougar9q]

Sharing is my middle name...


I guess that I haven't "dealt" with my [MGD] condition until now. I basically downplayed my emotions. I bottled up, and to an extent now hide my emotions. I felt like I had to "act" a certain part. That role is what has frustrated me because I am trying to get out of a role that I have played for too long. In that role, I played the role of I guess a wallflower. Trying not to be noticed, showed the correct emotions at the time, and said the right things at the right time. I screamed and cried when I had to prove that I was a hetero-woman. I would laugh at former friends jokes about gays, and would cry at the medias depictions of intersexuals.

I feel that my foundation of emotion has been built on shame. Shame from society for who I am, and shame on my own part for feeling inadequate as a human being. I felt so out of place because I realized that I didn't fit into this cookie- cutter world of religion, sexuality, love, or even masculinity or feminity. My religion shunned me because I blurred the lines of heterosexuality/homosexuality. I felt like I was born wrong when had to undergo a clitorectomy, and then the hormons.....just all too horrible. When I was little and realized that I was a girl that liked girls I just wanted cry.

To this day I am not comfortable with my sexuality or more important my identity. I don't like the scars on my body, I feel like such a freak.... I still remember the way my clitoris looked before they cut it down....I liked myself then.....Sure I felt different, but I liked it. Now I just feel too numb and scared to approach females that I am attracted to. I feel rejected from homosexuals and heterosexuals. I feel that my difference leaves me out of both of their "teams." (I know...I drag on and on)........

So how do I find myself in this world? How do I find someone that has felt what I have felt, and is okay? What do I need to do inorder to change or better understand myself?

I am going to go back to my big book of medical records, and I wil try to sort that info. I will talk more about my condition once I understand more about has been done to me...I would love feedback on what I have written here or new questions...

Thanx again Fam. (my family)
Cougar9q - [Monica]

[Az1]

Hi,
I am glad you feel like bodies like ours is a family.
I have looked for the answers the same as you. I have looked for family guidance and cannot find the answers I too seek.I did not sart flipping thru the med records I have joined bodies like ours to get a meaning of being IS and to share with others the tribulations I have experinced being IS.

I have looked within myself and have found someone who has ideas,thoughts and can share my thoughts and not be trashed becasue of being IS and proud.
I am also trying to identify being one or the other.
I really do not want to identify with what I have learned by being the identity society wants you or I to be.
I'd rather be myself.
Sure you are lonely like me but I have other interests to keep my mind occupied.
Cougar try putting everything out of your mind for five minutes .
by the way cool screenname.
I hope you find the answers you seek.
Have a Nice Day

Muhoe

[Dana Gold]

Hi,

You, perhaps, don't realize it yet, but you are in a way fortunate to deal with this in your 20s...I started dealing with my condition and life in my 50s....I felt like I wasted so many years (decades). Finding the truth about my past and what was done to me was of paramount importance, but my advice to you is not to obsess about it to the point of it being the ONLY thing in your life (like me)..it will bring you down when the answers don't come quickly enough to your satisfaction. Please try thinking forward, about what and how you would like your life to be...and please do not rely upon society's definitions of yourself...because (as in my case) they will only reenforce a negative concept of yourself. As another member once said, it is not we as IS that need changing , but society's concept of us. In your journey to find yourself, please note one important thing: learn to love yourself, take time to see those things that make you a good person (this will mean that you have to look inward) and the things that you have to offer others, especially others here at BLO (you did say sharing is your middle name...a good person shares, right?). Healing will take time, in addition to feedback from BLO members, be nice to yourself during the next few days and weeks. I leave you now with the hope for a better future, for you and for all of us. Take care.

Dana:)

PS: Cougars, as I understand it, have the ability to survive (and live) very well in the wilderness, is that not so;)

[Jules]

First off, I would like to say Welcome
I also feel that I was ashamed of myself when I was twenty. But I did not know I was intersexed untill I was in my thirtys. I thought that I was a bad daughter. A bad friend, a bad worker. I thought I was defective sexualy. Yet now when I look back, being a intersexual has less to do with my shame then I thought. The shame of leaving childhood to become a mature adult was what I was dealing with. Going from having no control over my feelings to a point when I controled my feelings was the big step I stuggled with. Also learning that my sexual idenity had nothing to do with what anybody else thought of me. I think that many people at diffrent ages of their life of course, feel inadequate and often misunderstand that these feelings are what everybody must over come if we are to reach out to become our fullest potental as people.

Remember that we are not our feelings. Our emotions are like rooms in a house set at diffrent temptures. One room is hot, one is cold, one is warm. If we walk through the rooms, our emotions change like the temptures in the rooms. If I asked you "What is the tempture of the house ? You could never tell me that the house "is" its own temprature, or you could not say "That any one room is the tempture".
We transistion through our emotions but we never "are" them.

SO when you say things like " I feel lost", or when you say that "you are out of place" You have the power to change those feelings just like you can walk out of a room that is to cold.

Sure you can choose to lock yourself in a room to cold, or get stuck on one set of feelings but if you want help to learn how to feel better about yourself don't think thoughts like "You were born wrong." Nobody is born wrong. Even if we have medical problems.

Remember that learning anything new can be fustrating.

Also you can "shun" the people who don't like you for who you are. Sometimes it is healthy to have some people not like you. I would not be a individual If I couldn't pick and choose who I liked and who I didn't. And had the right to change my opinon about someone!

As far as the scars. Remember a person with no scars on their body has led a very sheltered life and at the very least your scars are something to talk about.

And "Try" not to say the word "freak" when discribing yourself. If you feel that way, take a good look in the mirror and be proud of what make us diffrent, and what makes us the same.
Being a intersexaul can be no diffrent the having gray hair. What if Gential surgery was no diffrent then gum surgery, wait gum surgery was no fun!!:confused: I like my crooked teeth why should I change them? O.k my point, I think any surgery no matter what it is not fun. Of course that is "really" over simpflyed. I just had gum surgery that why I tossed that in.
As I said before, we are not our medical condtions eather.
I may be a intersexul. But I'm realy Julanne, Polish and Irish, known as Jules, white female, bisexual, daughter, sister, girlfriend, student, deli worker, friend, intersexed activist counlser. If all these are just labels when who am I really??
that is up to me to decide:cool:

[Sofie]

Hi Cougar9q,

Welcome!
Being alone and feeling lonely can be very hard.
I too blamed myself for not beeing able to have any close relationsship, thought I was bad and stupid until I decided, that this way of thinking about myself would lead me nowhere. Now, when I get the impression, that others won't accept me I just leave. That's not always an easy thing to do, but I like myself the way I am and don't like pretending to be something or someone else.
If others will like you only, while you live up to their expectations, most or all of your energy is wasted to "act". So don't "push" yourself to be someone you are not. Wallflowers are very pretty. :)
And sometimes your best friends are people who you didn't even expect to be your friends.

Anyway, Happy new year,

Sofie

[cougar9q]

I have another question...... How do you find local support, or do you solely rely on BLO?



Thanx,
Monica

[claraJane]

There are a couple of national support groups that are pretty good. Or, if you're willing to give out your general location, others in that area can contact you. When I travel I generally try to meet people, just to sit and have lunch and chat.

Kind regards,
cjs

[Jules]

Well to be honest apart from my doctors who have been very kind to me, BLO is one of the only places that I can find what I call real support. "Beach" has been a real shoulder to lean on for me anyway. I've been to Texas many times and I would guess that it might be very hard to find support there although not impossable.
I've spoken to a few bodys members and this so far has been the very best support I have ever found yet, and I guess I have Besty to thank for that.