When your home becomes a torture chamber

Being at home for me, pottering around the house, pottering in the garden, just being, is the quintessence of a good time.  Boring?  Perhaps.  But very therapeutic.

For those who know me superficially, this description would defy belief.  To the casual acquaintance, I am always on the move, travelling, living in someplace new, doing something different…but the truth is, if I had my druthers, I’d never leave home.

And indeed, my home has every creature comfort, is comfy and spacious, I even have my own room (thank goodness!), but even separate rooms can’t correct the energy balance.

It is amazing to me how real energy is.  I guess in the universe there are three things, mass, energy and time.  And advanced physics would tell us that actually, there is only one thing, energy.  Of course, this kind of energy is not what a physicist means when spiritual people talk about energy, emotional energy.  Or is it?  I am beginning to think that they are one and the same.

I have described the impending dissolution of my marriage, dashed upon the rocks of my in-trans-igence, my tongue-in-cheek way of saying, I’m not willing to pretend that I am not a girlieboy anymore, a non-binary inbetweener.  This “choice” of mine is really a refusal to stop the energy coursing through me to find its outlet.  All rivers flow to the ocean if they are allowed to—and rivers stopped from flowing to the open cause incredible distress.  I think often about how fundamental gender identity is to the sense of self, and there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t thank the people who helped me unlock this door, from a posse of therapists to a dominatrix.

Well, the consequences of me unleashing this river of energy has been opposition with my wife.  And I have discovered that at least in our family home, her energy is far more powerful than mine.  This was always something that I admired about her, and amused me no end when her flashes of anger were directed at others, and I could see them pinned and squirming.  She has a wonderful ability to make someone feel small.

She has been in our family home largely on her own coping with my absence (s) for work, and then living this combined with anguish over my coming out to her.  This has taken her to a very bad place on a personal level, and while I might say to her, “I haven’t done anything to you by being trans…it’s who I am, it’s who I have always been, and I told you that before we got married,” that really doesn’t matter.  She says it has destroyed her self-confidence, her sense of self as a sexually attractive woman, and has filled her with bitterness.  That bitterness can’t just sit there and pool, it needs to find a target, and that target is me.

And it is pouring out of her.  And it needn’t be overt.  Even the old stone walls of our home are filled with it.  I spent 10 days in the home alone, going from room to room doing rituals to purge the energy, burning sage and palo santo, various kinds of incense, and it did make a difference.  But only a little.  The house is energetically hers.  Her rage, anguish, even hate are dripping from the house’s pores, and the atmosphere is totally oppressive.  And when you are a homebody like me, you can really feel it.

I described how the trans euphoria has been sucked right out of me since I have been home.  Well, that has been really hard for me to deal with.  It made the words of one of my therapists really ring true—“your issue is that you really struggle with asserting your boundaries.”  And I can see this.  I am relatively defenceless against the energetic onslaught.

Funnily enough, I have always taken some pride in being emotionally open to others.  Being able to put myself in their shoes, to feel them, and their perspective.  [The opposite of narcissism is empathy]. In relationships that have gone off the rails, the consequence of this has been getting hurt, perhaps more than is healthy.  But I have also come to understand that for me, that kind of emotional hurt is part of life and part of love, and so while it doesn’t feel good while it is happening, it is a pillar of how growth happens.  We recover stronger.

Today, I left home to go to another home, which is also energetically more hers than mine based on time spent.  But I am less worried about it, as it is a second home, and she has not spent so much time in it that the energy will be so marshalled against me.  I can already feel the house calling out to me, wondering which way to turn.  It is a little house, a cosy little place, and I shall look forward to being in it and feeling my strength return.  ‘Tis a twee little house down a rambling lane, but it is a magical place.  The spiritual energy is good and clean, and I look forward to basking in it for a while. Indeed, the second I walked out the door, I began to feel my spirits lift. It is amazing how someone can choke our spirit and we not even know it.

All this makes me realise that the family home is now just an idea, and it is not a place that I wish to return to.  Or even can.  It is time to begin thinking of the future.