Here is a poem:

I pick up the pieces of myself and try to become whole, but some of the pieces still need more love and light to heal

Seemingly so focused on the pieces that I can’t seem to let go as I try to work on making them into who I see myself to be, trying quite hard that I start to lose myself in all the turbulent emotions that I feel

Trying to bring light into the cracks and illuminate the shadows holding me back, my anxiety makes me feel like I’m always under attack

My inner critic roars it’s dysphoric tones and I find myself trying to focus on the world and not lose touch with the things I want to learn to grow

But sometimes it seems that I get lost in the dysphoria and things seem harder than I know

It’s like taking one step forward and then being pushed two steps back and I find myself thinking about the things that I lack

Meditation brings peace of mind for a while and I wish that it could stay longer because the fear of not being enough is straining me as I try to work on who I want to be

The pain I can clearly see as I work on building myself up, but it seems like I still don’t know enough to build myself to the top

If I could just let go of myself for a while and just be rather than trying so hard I wonder if I will truly see

Sometimes the pieces are difficult to heal and they leave scars that make me feel like I didn’t do enough to heal and I find myself getting lost in the anxiety that I feel

And I lose touch with the world and wish that I could have peace of mind for a day and that the stress would lessen a bit so I don’t feel like I’m fading away

Dear Anita

Stockton University’s Wellness center has many resources for LGBTQ people. They have an LGBTQ safe space where people can hang out and meet other people. The campus is very uplifting with the trees, lake and the birds as well as the Wellness programs that they have. The counselors are more knowledgeable about LGBTQ people and have lots of insight about where to find resources on campus or other support groups nearby. Since Stockton is an university, they have more resources than the Ocean County Community college that I transferred from to Stockton. I enjoy being on the campus and they have meditation and holistic health classes as well as clubs that I am getting involved in. I do wish Stockton University’s library had books for reading rather than having all research books, but I like the quiet peace of the library and sitting in the small cubbies desks to study looking out at the trees is very relaxing. The library upstairs has Saturn planet hanging from the ceiling and it’s really cool. The professors have a good sense of humor and help their students feel less anxious, they have students work on ways to reduce their stress by having meditation sessions for students as well as nutrition counseling for students. I really like the wellness and mental health resources at Stockton, they have more diverse resources because they are a university and I like the quiet peaceful atmosphere with the nature. Although I miss the library at my former Ocean County community College because I enjoyed the books there for reading and it was always updating with new books, I like Stockton’s library as well. The librarians at Stockton are very helpful in helping students look for books for their research subjects or just to read to improve their knowledge in a field. The labs at Stockton are quite large and a bit intimidating for me because each student gets their own locker and drawer for their materials so that they can conduct their experiments. While I find it exciting to do research on my own and build my skills, I miss having a smaller lab and working with a partner like I used to at Ocean County Community college because I could check my work, but at Stockton each student does their own experiments. There are times when the gender dysphoria makes me quite anxious that I start to feel disconnected from myself and I feel like I’m losing touch with myself and it makes me doubt whether I can make it through in life. During those times, the inner critic of my gender dysphoria roars and it feels like the doubts and anxieties are ripping holes in myself and I am only paper that is being torn to shreds by dysphoria and there is only pain that makes it hard to focus and I just want it to end (sometimes it’s so bad that I wish I would fall asleep and not wake up). The good thing is that I decided to seek out the counselors at Stockton University and talk with them and they have been helpful with helping me express my feelings. In addition, they have a “Reinvent your life” group that focuses on helping people reduce their anxieties a bit so it doesn’t make them lose touch with the daily living and they have cognitive behavioral therapy, meditation and yoga which I find helpful. I find that journaling on tinybuddha is helpful as well and I find that reading over the past entries that I have written I have realized how far I’ve progressed and sometimes reading the stories of what I wrote makes me gain a sense of self when I feel lost. I am grateful to have the tinybuddha forum and thank you so much Anita for all your help. You are a light that helps brighten the world.

My gender dysphoria seems to have been getting more prominent because the more I know about it, the more I seem aware of it and the more I think about transitioning the more I want it to happen. I have never felt like I fit into the gender binary and I don’t like to be restricted in gender expression, I have always liked to play with the guys and been closer to the guys in my life. I remember when I was called a guy once I laughed and didn’t mind, that was when I realized that being a guy felt right for me. In middle school was when my body was changing due to puberty and I never liked the girls talking about their chests growing, I liked playing lacrosse with the boys and I always never cared about having a chest like the other girls wanted because what they thought would make them attractive I didn’t like. When I played soccer in middle school with the boys, I liked playing competitively and didn’t mind running into the guys at times, I found it lots of fun. I have never wanted to have a chest and I used to wear sports bras a lot because they constrict the chest and when I got my first chest binder in college I felt quite happy because the tight binder made my chest flat. I know in sophomore year of high school I joined the gymnastics team and I enjoyed gymnastics to help me build flexibility and balance, I didn’t mind wearing a leotard because gymnastics helped me burn lots of calories so I was quite skinny and wearing an undershirt helped me hide the curves of my body that I didn’t like. I quit the gymnastics team though because although I liked the gymnastics workouts, I talked with the coach if they accepted guys or gender neutral people on the team and the coach thought I was weird and said that they only accepted girls on the team and since I never fully felt female I quit the team. I admired the girls on the gymnastics team and I was good friends with them, but I never felt like I connected with them. In junior year of high school I joined the track team and I did shotput which helped me build my upper body and I enjoyed that more, but the girls on the track team made fun of me for not being feminine enough and since the guys ran faster than I did they didn’t really welcome me much so I decided to leave the track team. In senior year of high school, I had a guy friend that I enjoyed being around and he sat with me at lunch and helped me with my school work. I enjoyed being with him because he made me feel more comfortable about myself and since he was shy we didn’t talk much but he was a good mentor for me in school. I told him that I always thought being a guy was better and he listened and said he didn’t mind, he just told me to be myself and that’s why I enjoyed being around him. Even though he was shy, there were times when we would talk about something that would make both of us laugh. When I got to college and joined the LGBTQ community and they asked me about my pronouns I didn’t really know what to say, but told them to use he/him because I never liked female pronouns. the LGBTQ community at Ocean County college made me feel better about myself and I found that I enjoyed being a guy and when I cut my hair (even though my parents yelled at me) and got a chest binder it was like some part of me fit and I found a piece of myself. I have been living as a guy at Stockton and I find that it makes me feel happy, being with the guys is great and I feel like I belong like a part of me feels at home in myself with the guys.

My parents do favor my brother more but I don’t think that made much influence in my decision. Asian families tend to favor cisgender men (cisgender means they were born as a guy) because in their culture they think guys are strong and can do lots of chores. But I think that society has lots of stereotypes of guys being independent, financially stable, strong, not showing emotions and other constricting traits that lead to toxic masculinity and that is not something I like. Culture sometimes plays a role in people’s viewpoints but I believe that people can change their mindset by learning new things and it’s important to be open minded because there is a lot to learn in this world. My parents are very culturally conservative which is why they tend to adopt the values of their culture and they haven’t changed much. Although I wish they would change a bit and learn other things so that they don’t restrict themselves with the biases in their culture, they haven’t really been open to change and I have decided to work on myself rather than trying to teach them to be more open minded.

Dear Anita

I find that I really enjoy learning about genetics at Stockton and the professor that I have explains things well and has a good sense of humor. I think that I will do well in that class. I am doing better in Organic Chemistry because there are some Classmate who I work with in class to help me understand concepts and the professor explains things quite well and if students have questions they answer them quite thoroughly. The Organic Chemistry lab still makes me nervous but I have a good lab notebook outline using the guidelines from the Stockton Chemistry lab blog and the Chemistry lab book. I will be talking with the Organic Chemistry professor tomorrow about questions that I have about the lab experiment and will have them provide advice on how to improve my Prelab so that I will be more ready to perform the lab experiment on Tuesday. I am a bit nervous about talking with the professor about my lab notebook, but I think that it will go okay and it will be helpful. The inner critic of my gender dysphoria does make me doubt myself and I often see more flaws in my work than there really are. I often check my work multiple times and am very critical of the notes I write because I want them to sound good, but I find this straining sometimes so I am working on trying my best and checking the work 3-4 times and telling myself it’s okay rather than trying to stress and check it 10 times and revise it consistently. The meditation class is helping me increase my focus on my studies and develop a shield to ground me so the dysphoria isn’t too overwhelming, but I still need practice with that. I am grateful for the meditation class because my professor has students write journals about their meditation practice and writing notes helps me keep a steady meditation practice and put my feelings onto paper. The counselors at Stockton are providing me advice on ways to express my gender identity without trying so hard duch as providing me advice about gender neutral colors that I can wear which is helpful. In addition, the Transcendence group at Stockton is the transgender people group and they help uplift each other up and provide support. The nutritionist at Stockton which I want to start setting up appointments with again since I talked with them during the fall semester and they were helpful I want to talk with them the Spring semester as well. The nutritionist can help me work on building healthy meals to keep my energy levels stable and also eat balanced meals so that I don’t feel like I’m too full and then have dysphoria because I can work on planning smaller light meals that provide energy throughout the day and nourish me but don’t cause the heavy feeling of eating full meals. The meditation class is also teaching yoga and I want to learn more about it. Stockton has a yoga club that I think I will join if it fits into my schedule because it would help me have a healthy workout routine that is not too straining. I have been doing less weightlifting workouts as to not strain my muscles and I find myself feeling less sore. I don’t think I will be able to change my parents but I will work on building myself up in my knowledge. There is a quote that I  wrote “There is not one path up the mountain, but many paths. The person should listen to their heart and build their inner self and use that strength to climb up the mountain and they should have an open mind to look at the other paths and use them to guide them along the way for that is wisdom. The person who just takes the paths others give them will start to lose their sense of self and be stuck following others ideas and not be happy because they aren’t working on discovering who they are on the inside and while they may climb the mountain a ways they will fall and may remain lost at the bottom of the mountain until they realize that they need to journey inward to discover their inner self and climb the mountain and only use others as steps to make the climb easier. If the person only follows their own advice while trying to climb the mountain then they will not gain knowledge that may help them if they reach rocky slopes on the mountain and blinded by the lack of knowledge they may fall down the mountain. It is important to look inward and build the inner self to climb the mountain and use others knowledge to help guide you to climbing the mountain. Life is a mountain that people climb, some people refuse to climb the mountain because they are afraid to fall and they stay safe never seeing the opportunities if they only took a risk. While others try to find a way around the mountain not realizing that they have to get through the obstacles by climbing but trying to circle around trying to avoid climbing or pretending the mountain isn’t there and these people end up spending their lives away living in an illusion not wanting to embrace the flaws or obstacles ahead of them so they don’t grow. It is important to embrace the flaws and obstacles and use them to grow because no matter how hard you try to find other routes around the mountain or pretend that it’s not there, the more likely it will become more immense until you have to face it so face the flaws and obstacles shine light on them and climb the mountain. People who spend time arguing with others could be spending their time building themselves up because arguing with people doesn’t change who they are much like if you try to move a mountain by pushing it, it won’t budge so you should just end the argument and walk away and build yourself up to climb the mountain to your goals. Life is a mountain, on the way to the top you may fall and that’s okay. Keep believing in yourself and climbing and you’ll get where you need to be.”

Wishing you well in the week ahead.

Dear Anita

The spring semester is quite busy for me with many assignments but I think I’m managing. I had my first quiz in Organic Chemistry lecture class on Friday January 31st and I hope that I did well on it, think that I may have gotten at least a 75. I have a quiz in Genetics tomorrow and I am hoping that it goes well. My meditation class is helpful in helping me destress from my school work. Some meditation techniques I’ve learned are breathing meditation which is focusing on deep breaths and counting to ten as well as body scan which consists of thinking of drawing down the energy of the universe through the head and into the heart and allowing the heart to fill with positive energy that helps heal the whole body, the teacher uses mantras like “I am energy and my emotions flow easily through my body, all tension releases and I am healing.” A third meditation technique that I have learned is the muscle relaxation meditation where a person tenses all their muscles and then lets them go and the mantra is “I am releasing the tension in my body, my muscles relax and my mind is at peace. I am healing my body and mind, tension fades and my mind and body are one with the energy of the universe.” These meditations have been very helpful for me in destressing and maintaining a positive attitude when I feel stressed about my classes. My first Organic Chemistry lab experiment was January 28th and since I took lots of notes in my lab notebook the experiment went well. My lab classmates were helpful and provided advice as well and the professor thoroughly explained the lab experiment. I have a mentor from Student Success Services program at Stockton and since I am part of student Success services the mentor helps me focus on building my academic skills. I am going to seek my mentor’s advice about lab notebooks because even though the lab notebook isn’t graded by the professor I will be using the lab notebook on the final exam so I want to make sure that the notebook is organized so I am seeking advice from my mentor who has taken Organic Chemistry before and knows about lab notebooks and procedures. The professor didn’t check the Prelab for the first experiment because he said that it was just a warm up, however he will check the Prelab for the second experiment on Tuesday February 4th. So I will be working on a Prelab which summarizes the second experimental procedure and gives a detail of what the purpose of the experiment is that will be due Tuesday. I will likely meet with my mentor so I can gain insight into Prelab guidelines because the Prelabs are checked by the professor before students can begin lab experiments and I want to make sure that I have a decent Prelab for the next experiment that I will be doing on Tuesday February 4th. I also have a lab report due February 4th that will summarize what I did in my first experiment in lab class. I have already completed the online quiz and lab procedure notes for Genetics lab for Wednesday February 5th. I am working on the lab report for the first experiment, the Prelab for the second experiment (professor will check this one but didn’t check Prelab 1 because it was a warm-up) and an online lab quiz for Organic Chemistry lab due February 4th. I just finished my notes for genetics class chapters 2-3 today and I worked on reviewing chapters 1-3 because the quiz for genetics lecture tomorrow is on those chapters. My meditation class has a research summary due Thursday and I have to pick a meditation topic to research and this topic will also be a presentation that I will do likely in April towards the end of the semester. It’s quite a busy semester but I think that meditation helps me keep a positive attitude and the counselors at Stockton are helpful to help me understand my feelings when I feel stressed. Thank you to tinybuddha and Anita for all your help as well because I feel better writing things down and when going back to read them I feel like I understand myself better.

Sometimes when I am working on lots of assignments I find myself enjoying working on things because my mind likes to learn genetics and molecules in Organic Chemistry and I become absorbed in the moment of learning. I am working on becoming more mindful of the things around me and thinking of practicing mindfulness meditation that will help me be present in the moment. I want to be aware of the things that I am doing and truly be present rather than going through the motions. Sometimes when I am focused on school work I will forget about the present moment and be occupied with school work and I am so concentrated on that that sometimes I am not being present in my surroundings even though I will notice small details in the surroundings if something changes. So I am working on developing a mindfulness meditation practice to be aware of the present moment and just be without having to get so caught up in my thoughts. I want to appreciate the world around me and be aware of the things I am doing. There is a quote that I like “We are human beings not human doings” and I feel that it resonates with me because I don’t want to be just doing the motions of daily life and just planning for the next thing (it’s good to plan but sometimes planning too much can cause a person to lose touch with the present moment), so I want to actually work on the human being that I am and build myself up spiritually rather than just being a human doing.

Dear Anita

I spent the weekend outlining my notes for chapters 2&3 and reviewing chapter 1 for the genetics quiz today and I got a 6/10 which isn’t the best grade but there is still time in the semester to improve. For my Organic Chemistry quiz that I took on Friday January 31st, I received a 71 on it which is slightly better than the genetics quiz. I will likely start the research summary for my meditation class tomorrow since it’s due Thursday February 6th. My Organic Chemistry professor just assigned another assignment that is due on Wednesday February 5th and I have an online quiz for Organic Chemistry lecture class due Friday February 7th. I am feeling quite overwhelmed with the school work currently. Tomorrow is lab experiment two for Organic Chemistry lab and I haven’t done the Prelab for the experiment or written the lab report for experiment 1 that is due tomorrow yet because I am just too tired and feeling lightheaded from only getting five hours of sleep last night. I emailed my Organic Chemistry lab professor saying that I think that I will miss lab class tomorrow because I am under lot of pressure and hoping for an extension on the assignments, but he said that just talking with the counselors on campus about anxiety is not a valid excuse for a lab absence and points will be taken off from my lab grade if I miss lab tomorrow. In addition to the school stress, my car has problems with the acceleration and has been slow to accelerate at times so I’m getting it fixed. I did manage to finish the reading on the brain in meditation for my morning meditation class tomorrow and I finished one online quiz for Organic Chemistry lab. I also finished my lab notes for genetics lab and also completed an online quiz for genetics lab. I am trying to work my assignments but I feel quite strained and am thinking that I need to take a break from Organic Chemistry lab tomorrow. Missing two lab assignments (lab 1 and 2) and one quiz may affect my grade, but it’s still early in the semester so I’m hoping that I can pick up my grades. I would like to attend the Organic Chemistry lab tomorrow and complete experiment two and submit the assignments but I am just feeling too overwhelmed. My body is shaking from the tiredness that I feel and the anxiety is making it difficult to focus. Hoping for some advice, thank you!