I have some exciting news to share, but at the same time I have been
Reluctant to share it, but the effect of the news has been immediate and
significant on my life.
My spouse discovered a transperson in my local community who is married,
is a baptist pastor, who is in their 60s and who is successfully
managing their GD. This person reached a compromise with her wife to
live as make at work and with family, but she coul be female the rest of
the time.
I know this person because she is a big part of the local trans activism
groups and champions TDOR each year in November. I've heard some trans
people call her a "cross dresser" because we doesn't live full time but I
disagree.
My spouse believe this compromise could work for us.
It's strange that she is actually the one who presented this idea but
I'm certainly all for trying it out. There have been some unexpected
benefits though I wanted to share.
My attitude has improved dramatically. I don't feel so trapped anymore.
It almost feels like I was told I can transition but just be male for my
family. In other words I can be myself, but I still need to fulfill my
male roles. It's actually comforting. One of the effects is that I
haven't been shrinking as much from dysphoria when people call me "dad"
or "father". Instead I kind of own the titles now. It's like I'm playing
a role where that title is appropriate but in the end it's just a role,
like a job. It doesn't define me, it's just something I do.
This ability I'm gaining to separate my male role from my female life is
making me interested in gender specific things again believing they
will be less triggering and has renewed my interest in attending church.
I still have serious questions to have answered but at least going
doesn't seem like it will be as debilitating as it once was.
Why is this working??? Is it permanent or some kind of weird high I'm
on? I'm not sure but ill take advantage of it while it does.
I haven't even presented as female yet, but just t knowledge that I can when i want is somehow very relieving.
Thursday, October 24, 2013
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
Regret
Last night my mind wandered to a friend of mine, a very dear friend whom I loved with all my heart. She and I were sisters and struggled through the same trials. I met her when I was 19 when she was just 21. She met me through an online trans message board when both of us were beginning transition. She needed a place to stay for the night so she could attend her therapy appointment in Dallas. She herself lived in southern Oklahoma about 3 hours north so an overnight stay would relieve her of a lot of driving.
It wasn't long before we both found ourselves in Tulsa together. This wasn't planned and in fact happened quite accidentally, but we were delighted to find one another. We were two peas in a pod. We learned nearly everything together. We both went to college and had jobs as we transitioned, both commiserated when times were tough, and both chased boys and went to clubs together. We went through our highest highs and lowest lows together, and on the fateful night when my life was threatened, she was there to rescue me.
Of all of the trans people I ever met, she was the only one I found that was anything like me. At first we both attended trans community meetings, but the constant looks at us like we were two pieces of meat and indirect hostility toward the two "young ones" forced her away from them. I continued to attend, fascinated that people so different from myself and my friend, were also trans.
In time, I made my choice to de-transition despite her vehement objections while she stayed the course. Through the years we kept in contact. She had SRS and a BA, and I got super active in church. We both found our careers about the same time, and both married around the same time too. She adopted children, became a mother and had a family with her husband a few years after they married. That is when we lost contact.
We were so similar, yet how different our lives had become. She eventually achieved all I ever wanted while I made what I thought were the right choices for my eternity.
I was thinking of her, and the thoughts dredged up feelings, powerful feelings, and very old feelings of deep abiding regret. Last night I wept bitterly trying to bury my face in my pillow so as not to alarm or wake my sleeping spouse. I wept that I had lost touch with so dear a friend. I wept because I made the choice so long ago to end my transition and thought of the life I wanted and the life I could have had. I wept that I stopped transition so I could have a temple marriage and now would never have one. I wept for believing GID was a beatable mental illness only to learn it never was. I wept that I stopped my transition so I could find another path only to have that path (hormones) ripped away from me. I wept remembering my mother’s admonition that I may be making a mistake as she believed I would have been much happier had I remained female. I wept because, despite all the advice that had been offered to me regarding my dysphoria, I consistently made choices believing myself to be the exception, that I would somehow be saved from the pain. I wept that I married believing I could beat this, and in doing so inadvertently trapped an unaware soul in the hell that has been my fight with my dysphoria. I wept that I had a child, as male, and would never have my greatest dream, to be a mother.
But most of all I wept for something I could never have. Something none of us, trans or not, can ever have. I wept because I wanted “the past.”
I cannot have the past, nor can pining for it and feeling regret ever bring it back. I began to think about suicide in my grief for the first time in years last night. I realized though, that giving up my future was not worth the pain from my past.
What I can have is the future. What will I do to make sure my future is brighter than my past? What will I do to ensure that 10 years from now, I am not looking back at this day with regret for the choices I made or didn’t make?
I don’t know the answer, but I know regret is a powerful thing and it can motivate us to change our futures or it can mire us in bitterness about the past. I choose to have a better future. I will not let my lost opportunities cost me potential future happiness.
I’d be lying though if I said I’m not in pain. My feelings are powerful, and I fear for the future and what it holds and who I might hurt along the way (myself included).
Needing prayers right now,
Kate
It wasn't long before we both found ourselves in Tulsa together. This wasn't planned and in fact happened quite accidentally, but we were delighted to find one another. We were two peas in a pod. We learned nearly everything together. We both went to college and had jobs as we transitioned, both commiserated when times were tough, and both chased boys and went to clubs together. We went through our highest highs and lowest lows together, and on the fateful night when my life was threatened, she was there to rescue me.
Of all of the trans people I ever met, she was the only one I found that was anything like me. At first we both attended trans community meetings, but the constant looks at us like we were two pieces of meat and indirect hostility toward the two "young ones" forced her away from them. I continued to attend, fascinated that people so different from myself and my friend, were also trans.
In time, I made my choice to de-transition despite her vehement objections while she stayed the course. Through the years we kept in contact. She had SRS and a BA, and I got super active in church. We both found our careers about the same time, and both married around the same time too. She adopted children, became a mother and had a family with her husband a few years after they married. That is when we lost contact.
We were so similar, yet how different our lives had become. She eventually achieved all I ever wanted while I made what I thought were the right choices for my eternity.
I was thinking of her, and the thoughts dredged up feelings, powerful feelings, and very old feelings of deep abiding regret. Last night I wept bitterly trying to bury my face in my pillow so as not to alarm or wake my sleeping spouse. I wept that I had lost touch with so dear a friend. I wept because I made the choice so long ago to end my transition and thought of the life I wanted and the life I could have had. I wept that I stopped transition so I could have a temple marriage and now would never have one. I wept for believing GID was a beatable mental illness only to learn it never was. I wept that I stopped my transition so I could find another path only to have that path (hormones) ripped away from me. I wept remembering my mother’s admonition that I may be making a mistake as she believed I would have been much happier had I remained female. I wept because, despite all the advice that had been offered to me regarding my dysphoria, I consistently made choices believing myself to be the exception, that I would somehow be saved from the pain. I wept that I married believing I could beat this, and in doing so inadvertently trapped an unaware soul in the hell that has been my fight with my dysphoria. I wept that I had a child, as male, and would never have my greatest dream, to be a mother.
But most of all I wept for something I could never have. Something none of us, trans or not, can ever have. I wept because I wanted “the past.”
I cannot have the past, nor can pining for it and feeling regret ever bring it back. I began to think about suicide in my grief for the first time in years last night. I realized though, that giving up my future was not worth the pain from my past.
What I can have is the future. What will I do to make sure my future is brighter than my past? What will I do to ensure that 10 years from now, I am not looking back at this day with regret for the choices I made or didn’t make?
I don’t know the answer, but I know regret is a powerful thing and it can motivate us to change our futures or it can mire us in bitterness about the past. I choose to have a better future. I will not let my lost opportunities cost me potential future happiness.
I’d be lying though if I said I’m not in pain. My feelings are powerful, and I fear for the future and what it holds and who I might hurt along the way (myself included).
Needing prayers right now,
Kate
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
New Understandings and a New Start
I realize I am happiest when I am myself and I've felt like myself
again for a few days for the first time in a while. Numbing myself to the pain and shame has only
numbed me from being the person I love to be. I'm so grateful for some
wonderful friends who have texted me and talked to me on the phone from a
mailing list I adore. I hope they know that I love them very much.
I used to associate my extremely caring and kind side with my female side. I made primitive associations that I couldn't be that way and male at the same time (very sexist I know), however I've realized that it is when I am true to myself (which self happens to be associated with being female) that my true nature, the very caring and kind part, comes out. It isn't about "being a girl" that makes me want to hug the world, it is about "being myself" and believing I am okay.
I feel like the easiest explanation and one that helps me the most is to identify myself as a person with an intersexed condition. I have a biologically male body and I most likely have a biologically female brain (or at least female in the sexually dimorphic areas). I say "most likely" because I've never had my brain physically checked and likely won't in this lifetime, but if the research is to be believed concerning my condition, it is very likely my brain is female.
So what do I do about it? I'll own it. I won't just come out to people like in the past basically saying, "By the way, before you think you like me, I need you to know this terrible problem I have." That was a mistake, and though I've been out, I've still been treating it as a shameful part of me that made me unworthy of love.
I'm going to be me and not be ashamed of it. I won't just "admit" that I'm trans to others so they can get their hostilities out of the way up front, I'll own it, love myself for my differences, believe that they add to my character, and be able to more fully love those around me. This will in turn encourage them to love me back for being myself.
I had a long talk with my spouse tonight about this new understanding and she believes I am on to something with all of this. She says I haven't been the me she loved for a long time, and I believe it is because I have been shutting myself down (numbing myself) to deal with the pain of the dysphoria. Well no more.
I'm Kate, I was born with a male body, but there is nothing wrong with me.
Kate
I used to associate my extremely caring and kind side with my female side. I made primitive associations that I couldn't be that way and male at the same time (very sexist I know), however I've realized that it is when I am true to myself (which self happens to be associated with being female) that my true nature, the very caring and kind part, comes out. It isn't about "being a girl" that makes me want to hug the world, it is about "being myself" and believing I am okay.
I feel like the easiest explanation and one that helps me the most is to identify myself as a person with an intersexed condition. I have a biologically male body and I most likely have a biologically female brain (or at least female in the sexually dimorphic areas). I say "most likely" because I've never had my brain physically checked and likely won't in this lifetime, but if the research is to be believed concerning my condition, it is very likely my brain is female.
So what do I do about it? I'll own it. I won't just come out to people like in the past basically saying, "By the way, before you think you like me, I need you to know this terrible problem I have." That was a mistake, and though I've been out, I've still been treating it as a shameful part of me that made me unworthy of love.
I'm going to be me and not be ashamed of it. I won't just "admit" that I'm trans to others so they can get their hostilities out of the way up front, I'll own it, love myself for my differences, believe that they add to my character, and be able to more fully love those around me. This will in turn encourage them to love me back for being myself.
I had a long talk with my spouse tonight about this new understanding and she believes I am on to something with all of this. She says I haven't been the me she loved for a long time, and I believe it is because I have been shutting myself down (numbing myself) to deal with the pain of the dysphoria. Well no more.
I'm Kate, I was born with a male body, but there is nothing wrong with me.
Kate
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)