How it Happened

After my first castration, I spent several months observing myself and anticipating the eventual death of my balls.  I went back and forth between feeling I'd succeeded and feeling I'd failed.  During this time, deep down inside, even when I suspected I'd failed I believed, or hoped, I had succeeded. 

About five months afterwards, I made some major changes in my life, packed up and moved halfway across the country.  This was a dream come true.  I was high on this dream and forgot all about my balls.  I started making a new life and the efforts of this made me happy.  I pretty much figured my castration had failed but didn't really have a lot of time to think about it.  I worked hard and got myself established and everything was ok.

A couple months later, after I was reasonably established, my partner followed me and now I was no longer 'alone'.  I thought at first that this was making me happy.  I mean, here I was, I had totally re-arranged my life to fit what had been a fantasy for years...living in the mountains.  And the person I'd shared the last four years with had just arrived.  I thought life was perfect.

It was not.  This guy who had followed me up there was not the guy I remembered.  He kept doing things that I could easily see were intentionally aimed to hurt me.  And they did.  I thought he had changed, and this new guy was someone horrible.

So I did what at the time seemed to be logical.  I put my tail between my legs, packed whatever I could fit in my car, and returned home where I promptly made everyone I knew swear they had never seen me if he called.  Based on my history, there is no logic in this decision.  I had never run from a fight in my life but I sure did this time.  I don't know why.  It seemed the right thing to do at the time.

So about 10 or 11 months after I was clamped, here I was, about 50 miles from where I started.  I had abandoned my dream, abandoned my life and returned to the life I had left.  The life I had not been happy with.

Now at this time, I had written off my first castration as a failure.  I knew my balls were a bit smaller, and I was less horny, but I never once considered that there could be any other effects.  I decided it was a failure, decided that I would do it again when I had the chance.  I didn't feel rushed about it.

I missed my partner.  I was filled with regret that I had to leave.  I was second guessing myself, telling myself I had gave up to easily.  I was thinking how if this or if that then maybe, just maybe, we could pick it back up.  Maybe if I was nicer, softer.  I just missed the time I had been able to spend with him.  I could not get him off my mind.  I could not stop telling myself how I had hurt him by leaving.  I could not stop feeling guilty for hurting him.

He fueled this fire by calling everyone he could think of that we had known, trying to find out where I was.  No one would tell him.   They all gave me the messages he left without speaking.  I felt horrible that I was avoiding his calls.  But I knew I had to remain strong, I had to stay away from him.  It took him two years to give up.  For four years I've been in possession of every phone number he ever called from and still haven't called one of them.  Never will.

On top of this, being alone was, for the first time in my life, a really big deal.  I was scared.  I somehow felt that because I was alone I had no future, nothing to look forward to.  I don't know why this mattered all of a sudden, but it sure did.  I was so shook up by it that I allowed the problem to break my spirit.  This is something that never even came close to happening before.

I tried to dive into my job, to divert the idle thought.  Only in doing so I discovered that I totally hated  my job.  After I realized that I started wondering why I worked there.  I couldn't find the motivation to change jobs.  This was also a new problem, one I'd never before encountered.  But this time I had no motivation to improve my situation.  That made me even more unhappy.  I felt like I was stuck on a dead end street but I also felt I had no choices.

I was unhappy, lonely.  But whenever I thought about having contact with people I would realize I would have to act happy, and for some reason I just couldn't find a reason to be happy.

I was a failure.  I had failed at my castration.  I had failed at my dream of moving to the mountains.  I had failed at what was likely to be the last chance at a relationship I would have.  I had failed at work.  I felt like a failure.  I was never this much of a defeatist - quite the contrary.  But this time there was no motivation, no ambition to change the situation. 

By this time I was down and because I was down I couldn't remember how to pick myself back up.  It's like when you fall down the steps.  You have to stop falling before you can climb back up.  I just couldn't stop falling.

I had been beaten, defeated.  There is no pride in that and it did cost me my pride.  When I lost my pride my self respect followed it.

I no longer believed I could do everything.  I no longer believed in myself.  I no longer believed in my future.  I no longer had a plan.  When you fail to believe you have a future, then you do not.  I was lost.  The more I realized it the more that knowledge damaged me.

I kept looking around for something to hold on to, something to value, and I couldn't find it.  I was sinking into a pit of despair with no speed brake. 

I had come full circle. The entire past year had been a waste.  I had tried to realize both my most important dreams and failed at both.  I felt defeated and for the first time that really bothered me.  I was lonely and couldn't find the motivation to do anything about it.

I was giving up.  Actually, for a while, I did give up.

I became a horrible person.  I was always angry at something and no one could see it.  I couldn't even see it.  I knew I was angry at myself and this trap I was in but I couldn't see my way to get out of it.  I went through the motions of a life and spent as much time alone as I possibly could.  I slept a lot, smoked a ton of pot, and growled and barked at every human I could.

After about a year, my roommate got a small dog, and I fell in love with him instantly.  I carried him around everywhere, babied him, took care of him and spent almost every waking minute around that little dog.  He because my best friend and the place where all the emotion I was hiding wound up.

I was still a first class asshole to everyone else but this little dog.  He slept with me, ate with me, and went almost everywhere I went.  I even took him to work with me. 

I had a few friends who came over to visit me, some that I hid from, some I did not.  Most of my friends had disappeared after the first time or two I growled at them. 

One day I was talking to one friend who had not disappeared.  She was talking about the battles that she had, and was still having, with depression.  I listened out of kindness, hoping I could say something she would value.  I believe I did, but more importantly, I recognized myself in her words.  At that moment I realized what what wrong with me:  I was depressed.  By this time I had probably been depressed for the best part of two years.

Fixing It

They say that realization is the first step in solving a problem.  It is not in my nature to seek professional help.  I don't believe they solve your problems as much as they lead you into solving them yourself.  And I didn't need help to solve it, I just needed time.

The first thing I did was to start making an effort to be nicer to other people.  I was quite difficult because I didn't feel very nice.  But I stuck it out and found that being nice made me feel better.  It got easier as I went along.

I made several lists of things I saw as problems, things I could see as goals, things I would like to have in my life, and things I didn't want in my life.  From these lists, with a lot of thought and time, I was able to find some new goals, and new reasons to want to go on.

Next I started on the problems.  I just kept asking why.  Why does this bother me?  Why do I think that?  Why, why, why.  I kept asking this question about everything and dug through all the lies to myself and phony reasons until I dug way down to the bottom of the pit and found out what I needed to fix.

In doing so I found that the need for a partner, which I had always considered to be a sexual need, was really an emotional need.  I found out the emotional need had always been there but since sex is such a powerful experience, it overwhelmed the emotional need.  I also found out the emotional need is much stronger than the sexual need ever was.

I do not believe that castration changed my emotions.  I believe my sex drive had masked my emotions, allowing me to pretend that I didn't feel emotions, allowing me to lie to myself and tell myself it was sex drive I felt.  I learned that much of what we call sex drive is really emotional drive.

Today I recognize that I need a partner to feel whole.  I no longer consider that feeling to be a flaw.  A weakness, but not a flaw.  Nothing I cannot overcome.  I will be fine without a partner now but I know I would be better with one.  Or rather with the right one.

Today I embrace the emotional input I get not as something alien, but as something that makes me a better human.  I consider the emotional input, sometimes allowing it to effect me, sometimes rejecting it.  It has become advise, not a controlling factor.  Many times it is valuable advise and it's advise I don't know how I got along without for so many years.

Today I understand that a goal is something that should enhance your life.  I do not need a reason to set a goal.  The reason is because it will enable me to enjoy life.  I have set goals, and they are to get me to points where I have something I enjoy.  And I don't need a reason.  I am alive, I want to stay alive.  I want to be happy.  I want a realistic amount of peace.  What other reasons do I need?

I do realize today that I can take emotions and good will to an extreme if I allow myself.  I now direct my self-protection efforts toward things that truly threaten me, instead of directing them toward protecting me from my emotions as I used to.

Today I realize there is such a thing as a life that is too peaceful.  At some point in time peace translates into boredom.  Boredom is dangerous as it leads to a sense of uselessness.  I can never allow my quest for peace to take precedence over the goals I set, and the pursuit of a happy life.  I must continually mix the two things to get a comfortable balance.

Today, I realize that my dream to move to the mountains is still alive.  There is nothing that stops me from trying again except myself.  I don't know why I couldn't see it before.  The failure I felt before isn't a failure anymore, just a set back.  Proof that I need to make the plan a little different next time.  It is part of my life goals today and I will accomplish it...eventually.

Today, I do see people differently.  Sexual attraction is no longer a factor in my evaluation of people.  I focus on who is inside the body.  It's funny, without even realizing what I was doing, the only friends I retained through my depression were the friends that I had never had a sexual interest in.  All the others bit the dust.

The Root Causes of My Depression

It's so easy to look at it all today and see things I couldn't see four years ago.  Now it's all clear.  Then it wasn't.

The last time I saw my friend before I moved north, I still felt sexual.  I was still seeing all the same sexual attractions I'd been seeing for four years.  Then I went north and sometime between then and when he arrived, I lost the majority of my physical sex drive.  So when he arrived, I saw him differently. He was still an attractive man.  But now I saw all the flaws that had been hidden behind the fact that he was such a great looking guy.  Now it didn't matter so much that he had stimulated my sex drive just by walking in the room.  Now I just saw him as a person.  And the more I saw, the less I liked.  I had thought he was the one that changed.  Now I realize that he was the same.  I am the one who changed. 

I think that my dissatisfaction with my partner was caused by the loss of my sex drive.  The fact that the qualities I found attractive had changed.

I still remember the day I decided to leave.  I was taking a walk in the mountains, all alone.  Time to think.  I was looking around and thinking while I walked and I remember being totally overwhelmed by emotion.  So much that I was just openly crying while I walked.  I didn't realize it then, but now I know those tears represented an entirely new emotional state for me.  Since I made the decision during that walk, while I was crying my eyes out, I have to conclude that it was a very emotional decision.  I know it is a decision I would never have made a year earlier.  And a year earlier I couldn't have cried if I had tried!

At the time I didn't recognize my crying as emotion.  I felt that I was making a logical, rational decision.  Now I know the decision was based on emotions that didn't surface until after castration, so it IS logical to conclude they were caused by castration.

I think the desperation I felt about being alone was fueled by these new found emotions.  I still don't understand why I felt it was so final, because today I see nothing at all final about it.  Back then I didn't even think my castration worked so why would I think I could no longer do what I had done many times before (find someone) ??  I cannot answer this which makes me think it was largely emotional.

The Summary

To summarize, I had one 'problem' which is that I didn't expect any changes from a failed castration.  So I didn't recognize the changes.

I did not recognize how much my sex drive did influence the way I saw other people.  I did not realize how many traits it caused me to ignore.  I was not prepared to see people through different eyes.

Emotions caused by my castration caused me to incorrectly react to a situation.  I made a decision based on those emotions and wasn't prepared for emotional consequences from the decision. 

Emotions caused by my castration caused me to get new, different input than I was accustomed to (I refer to the feelings of regret, guilty conscious).  I had no experience in dealing with emotions of this type and no ability to, either.

I allowed these emotions to knock me down.  Actually I should probably say that I failed to stop them, since you have to realize something exists to be able to allow it.  Or stop it.  I simply did nothing. 

Once I fell down, castration didn't cause the things that knocked me the rest of the way down.  It is the nature of depression.  The inability to stop yourself while you are falling down the steps.  The worse I got the more my mind kept piling other junk on top of the rest of the junk.  Eventually I turned everything that happened into something bad so my mind could put more things on the stack, simply justifying the depression that already existed. 

So to me, the whole bottom line comes down to the fact that I failed to recognize, and then adjust, to the emotional changes I encountered.  If I had known what was going on I suspect I would have solved it without the depression.

November 16, 2006

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