Page:Autobiography of an Androgyne 1918 book scan.djvu/84

54 believe. Nevertheless I was not finally convinced. A month later I stayed up all of one night in order to reconsider the question, desiring and purposing to convince myself of the sinfulness of an invert's harboring the suggestions of instinct to the slightest degree. I weighed carefully all the passages of sacred scripture bearing on the case, and finally determined to fight harder than ever to annihilate in myself all the movings of the sexual nature. In the following weeks, I occasionally did not leave my room all day, fasting, praying, and studying the scriptures.

During this winter of '91–'92, paroxysms of melancholia occasionally came upon me at night. When I felt their approach, I could not stand it to remain in my room, where I must be noiseless, but went out to a deserted spot in a large park near which I lived, where I would shriek repeatedly. All my muscles seemed to be rigid, and my fists were clinched. I would dig my finger-nails into my palms, and wave my arms wildly. Within a few minutes, my strength would be completely gone. I looked upon these paroxysms as fits of insanity, and feared I would become permanently and violently insane. I now attribute these attacks largely to unsatisfied, involuntary yearnings for the mate which Nature had designed me to have. If society had permitted me one, and I had been taught that it was right for me to have one, I would have been saved an enormous amount of suffering, as well as perhaps my subsequent career as a fairie.

About the middle of April came a characteristic