Good morning, afternoon, evening or night where ever (and whenever) you might be reading this! My name is Kyla, I'm new here, and I am just beginning to start transitioning. I have realized for many years that I was female, but I was strong willed, stubborn, and trained from a young age through corporal punishment that I could ignore what I felt. Years ago, the cracks in the wall started appearing, and last month it finally fell.
It was a watershed moment. Since I was 12 I had been punishing my body for betraying me. After getting caught dressing, my mother cracked a yardstick over my legs, and my father took a belt to me when he got home. They didn't talk to me for days. I never dressed again. I rebelled against the one thing I could - me. I would play the most violent sports, do the most dangerous activities, ignore eating healthy and just "burning" my way through life. I realized that in many ways I was committing passive suicide day by day. In the beginning I was angry that my body was a boy, and so I tried to smash it, but in the process I wound up developing that same boy body, the barrel chest, the muscular arms and legs, and as I got further and further away from the girl inside, I grew more and more desolate in spirit. The less and less I looked like a girl, the more and more I convinced myself of the impossibility of my ever being me.
I realized last month, that *I* was the one that got myself into that position, and *I* could get myself out of it! I've begun a training program aimed at producing feminine curves (Rusty Moore's Visual Impact for Women) and I'm using the My Plate feature of LiveStrong to get my body into shape. I've begun to see a therapist to help me through the transitioning, and have researched all the steps I'll have to face. I have decided that since this is going to be a multi-year investment in me, I have the time to get into "my girlish figure" and that it's time I stop quietly killing myself and be me!
Rudolph Waldo Emerson said "Insist on yourself, never imitate." That's exactly what I'm going to do. The hurdles that I know I'm going to face can't possibly be worse than going back to the denial of me.
I know I sound like a transition cheerleader, naive and set up to get a swift kick, but I know that no matter what happens from this day forward, I'm getting healthy, and I am happier pursuing Me than ignoring Me.
