The Game Is On... But What Game Is It?

When an avenue closes, are we left to stare at the newly formed brick wall that now blocks our way? Or are we merely boxed in, encased within a turmoil that mourns what our future would've been? I personally believe it all depends on what path has come to an end.

I must take a moment to apologise for my absence, my life has been but a flurry of new paths that seem to snake and wind their way through different bustling streets of life. 

When I was a young teenager, I had developed a hyper fixation on a television show known as BBC Sherlock. While the show itself is merely a modernised version of the original masterful series of novels published by the infamous Sir Arthur Conan Doyle within the Strand Magazine during a time that's been long forgotten. I found something so beautiful that spoke so clearly and openly into the very belly of my soul.

Some say the characters Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson have been on a very specific path for years. A romantic entanglement that has been danced around for centuries. Others believe that to be preposterous. I'm not sure how someone could so firmly believe such a thing, but either way, I'm not here to debate whether 221b Baker Street was a Watson-Holmes household or a set of rooms shared between the best of friends.

Instead, however, I am here to talk about the cephalopod of limbs that our lives can be, with the use of something that has meant so much to me over the years. 

The most notable part of my life that has changed is possibly the loss of my fiancée. After several years of being in a romantic relationship and furthermore being engaged to someone, I can firmly say, I was once under the impression that I'd 'made it'. After all, isn't that what is expected of us? To pair up with someone for the rest of our lives?

As it turns out, the answer to that question is still a mystery to me. I won't go into too many details as to how the relationship came to a quick ending, but I will discuss the emotional and visceral turmoil it has held over my life.

I loved the woman who I was planning to make my future wife. I loved her so much that I was willing to sacrifice my own happiness for her. Isn't that what love is supposed to be? A sacrifice? The answer to that doesn't matter because she didn't think so. 

After months of unhappiness, my beloved asked me if we were meant to be. I thought we were. I was damned certain that I'd force us into that encasement. But I suppose she was right in her query because the answer is rarely so simple when it comes to matters of the heart. 

Hours of talking had led me to a pathway that was cut off just before my nose. I could still smell the damp cement that slowly dried between the bricks as I stared at what could have been a marvellous future.

So, I packed my belongings, rented a storage facility and moved back in with my parents, all the while, still paying my share of the rent to my ex fiancée to ensure her stability. 

I was a husk of a man after that. A broken heart with pieces missing and a series of muddy trails that were all unexplored and covered with shrubbery, although a machete was not a tool that had been bestowed to me. - What a convoluted metaphor!

On unsteady legs, I traipsed forward into my life and found myself undergoing a bilateral mastectomy. This is the medical term for what some may know as top surgery. Or a better way of describing my procedure would be 'masculinizing chest reconstruction'.

The surgery, itself, was a success and I found myself back home with my parents recovering well, and it is in this time that I found myself reconnecting with the younger version of myself once more. A version of myself who I thought had perished years ago.

I began watching BBC Sherlock again. I was enraptured by the outstanding cinematography, the blissful character arcs and the possibilities that befell my beloved Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson.

For a long time now, I have found myself delving deep into my own psyche, and just like in the fourth season of the show. I found myself following in Sherlock Holmes' footsteps as he discovered more about himself than he'd ever been comfortable exposing to the world. 

Autism is a word that has not only grown in popularity, but has also become vaguely fashionable. From singing TikTokers to bloggers, like myself, the neurodivergent reality of someone with autism has been thrown into the spotlight and I find myself smack bang in the centre of it.

My brain has never functioned like my peers, it's always been so fractured and kaleidoscopic that I'd thought there was something wrong with me. In actuality, I am merely autistic. Alexithymia drains my emotional compass and masking seems to devour my mental integrity outside of that. 

Not understanding, or even being able to cope with my own emotions has left me in a pit of self loathing on several occasions. The physical sensations being far too confusing, and without the simplicity and comfort of descriptors, I have been driven to self harm and mental anguish on numerous occasions.

I truly believe that it's because of this, that my gender epiphany happened in my early twenties rather than my early teens. How can someone name an emotion as complex as dysphoria when they struggle to understand their own happiness or sadness? 

But here I am, an adult man, traipsing a neurotypical world with a mind that doesn't fit neatly within that box. Yes, I know what you're about to say. "Well, we're all a little autistic, aren't we?" The answer to your question is an interesting one. Yes, we are, but only marginally. We all show traits. But, when faced with the complex list of symptoms, no one, unless they are autistic, ticks most boxes like I do.

But this isn't the only form of self discovery that I had been plunged into since the dead end of my, now failed, relationship. As a bisexual man, I've always known that I hold an attraction for other men, but I'd never truly explored that part of myself. Well, until recently, anyway. 

As it turns out, I am as gay as a Christmas Tree.

Loading up the death march that is Tinder, I began my endless swiping as I endeavoured to find the new Mr Right. But being a transgender man holds its own issues with that. I've come face to face with people who are purely interested in having sex with me, as if I am a flesh light with a pulse. Others are entirely disgusted by me. But some were genuinely interested and unfortunately didn't meet my own high standards.

But that's the crux of the argument isn't it?

How can we ever find the person who we are destined to be with when the cookie cutter we hold for them doesn't fit. It's like trying to shove a square into a circular hole. The corners are too sharp and get caught on the edges. 

I found that I wanted a man who would be the perfect combination of loving, caring and entirely dominant. But all I was finding were people who partially fit that bill. I was frustrated too say the least.

I was heartbroken, shattered and entirely confused. All I kept thinking was "Is there something wrong with me?" 

The answer to that is: Yes.

Happiness isn't something we can just paint on a jar and hope the contents match up with the new label. It's not something that can be forged by Norse dwarves. It's not something that can be found. 

It's a flickering ember that burns within all of us and in order for it to be a raging inferno, it must be fed with fuel and a heat so warm that it melts the chilly confines that imprison our hearts. 

My happiness is such a dull flickering thing that sometimes I deny the fact it exists at all, blinded as I am to it's gentle humming hue. 

In order for me to be happy, I need to accomplish several things. I need to learn to live with myself again - If I ever had learned that skill before. I need to develop a love for myself that outweighs everything that has ever existed within my life and I need to be happy about that. Finally, the last piece of that puzzle is to have the relationship that ties it together. Be that a hulking mass of a man or a sweet encasement of a woman.

Maybe you're in a similar position? Maybe you feel the same as me? Maybe you're reading this and hoping for some advice that will solve your unanswered problems. I must apologise. I don't think I can give you that. Instead, what I can supply is a check list that I am willing to learn to live with.

1. Love my body. Either change it's appearance or learn to adore how it looks now.
2. Understand my mind and know how to endure the aches and pains that twinges through my skull.
3. Carve a crevice within this world that I can call my own and settle into it with warmth.
4. Find a companion who can live with the man that I am destined to be.

Maybe, if we can complete all four tasks, then maybe that cooling ember in the pit of our bodies can ignite and become the wild inferno of happiness that we all deserve. So, it is with this thought that I leave you. 

If we all sit back and survey our lives, I wonder what we can come up with. Are we a battling detective who dances across London solving the most baffling of mysteries, or are we a coagulation of a doctoral love and military brawn? If we're broken, what kind of adhesive can we use to fix ourselves? 

No matter what the answers to those questions are, we must revel within the gloriousness that is life itself. For there is something we should all be comfortable with, something that should entice us forward. The game, of life, is on, a game that will never be truly over. 

Devs out!