Manly Men

I've never liked them. Manly men seem like an evolutionary relic that ought to be thrown away. Then again, I'm not one for feminine men, either. How about... toned down men? Men who don't base everything in their lives on being a man. It seems women often say, "Half of your thinking is from your other head." I've never wanted to be one of those men; I've always condemned those kinds of men. But women can be similar; it's just not as  cliché. Men can also be vulgar, competitive, aggressive, and many other adjectives that you often don't want to be downwind of. These things I've hated and hated for so much of my life, and even worse, seen in myself.

And now I hear that I have very low testosterone. Not just low testosterone - very low testosterone. Average testosterone for someone my age is probably 600-800 ng/dL (I'm just guessing), and 300-400 is on the problematically low in most men. So what's very low? 200 is at the bottom of average for a guy in his forties. Is mine 100? Less? What's very low, and should I be worried? I have a lot of 'female' disorders - fibromyalgia, bipolar, my suspected borderline (yet to be confirmed)... Could this be due to low testosterone? If I get testosterone replacement therapy, will I be like the guy on House and start having aggressive, angry outbursts (aside from the times that I do that already)? I mean, I'm not as chipper and unrealistically happy as the guy on House... but doesn't that mean that the possible outcome might be worse? What caused the low testosterone?

Testosterone... I've always disliked it... It's what makes men all of the aforementioned things I just... get a headache to think about. But then I'm told that it's a big problem not to have it. It's unhealthy with it, and it's unhealthy without it. But then it can be healthy with it, and occasionally healthy without a lot of it. I'm not healthy. I don't have a lot of it. So that must mean that I need more of it. Or maybe I'm screwed up regardless. Not trying to get more testosterone just seems stupid, though. Not trying a possible avenue that just might help with... something, seems stupid. I hope I don't need it - or that it isn't the cause of a problem - but the truth is... I just don't know. Maybe I'm just stubborn with my views (actually, I know I am.)

I can't imagine my life without problems, and to think that something that might be wrong with me could be solved... it makes my mind go, 'Cannot compute.' It's like a glitch. A brain fart. It's ironically scary to me. I told my psychologist that I often desire chaos. I think about dropping my meds and falling back into that chaos, but I never do it. I come back to reality and think rationally - I won't do it. I remember how unbearable it was, and how much better my life is without that chaos (even if it's still most certainly far from ideal.) But perhaps I'm still in some of that chaos - or a new chaos - and hearing about this low testosterone - very low testosterone - might threaten that chaos. That second paragraph really shows it. Those thoughts - cyclical, long tangent of thoughts - are characteristic of anxiety. The run on sentences, parenthetical dashes, scattered thoughts. Most people would probably hear about this and feel relieved in some way that issues they had been having could potentially be solved. Perhaps I just have to wait a bit longer to let it kick in.

Testosterone... Maybe I should just stop thinking and wait and see what happens. So... we'll see, I guess.