Quote from: Carlita on June 19, 2012, 08:40:02 AM
Been there, thought that!! I remember a few years ago, I went to see someone at the Charing Cross hospital in London, which is the UK centre for transgender patients ... So I was talking to her, telling her my story and she was just listening, taking it all in, letting me say my piece. Eventually I stopped and said, "I'm sorry, but I keep waiting for you to interrupt me and tell me that I'm talking nonsense.'
She looked startled: 'Why would I want to do that? I spend all my time dealing with gender disorders.'
'I don't know,' I said. 'It's just that I keep thinking you're about to tell me that I've made a big mistake and I'm not really transsexual at all.'
She smiled and said, 'That hadn't occurred to me for a moment. Of course you are!'
I'd spent years when I was younger, being told I was just imagining things or fantasizing: the whole, 'it's just a passing phase' nonsense. Then I spent many more years telling myself that it wasn't real. And then, just to be told I was TS, and to have it completely accepted ... Just a wonderful, wonderful moment of validation.
I hope you have a moment like that, too. And I'm sure you will. Because from everything you've written, you're in this particular club too ...
Whew!
You really have made me feel validated with your story and your wish for me to have a moment like you did. Kadri and Sephira, thanks for your insight and encouragement as well! Hugs to each and every person who has responded to me so far! I think transition will be slow for me, and I don't expect it to be easy, especially because of the specific life circumstances I am working within. I have always been a person with a history of eventually living up to a challenge or facing my fears, but doing it in my own time. I played the game of running from my problems and other things early in my life and it all caught up to me just about two years before my HS graduation.
Quoteby Kadri: I was incredibly confused when I started out, and everywhere I turned I encountered people's life stories that didn't fit with mine at all and made me feel inauthentic and wrong, especially those of the first trans people I met. I had no idea for years what was wrong with me inside and why I felt the way I did. (Phew, I wasn't a weird screwed-up pervert after all. I was just transsexual!)
Until I spent a lot of time thinking, I started asking myself why I went and put myself through all the hell I have, and why I gave in to my various fears. I asked myself why it is worth hiding my identity and feeling bad or feeling like a coward, or whatever else in the negative emotional realm. I wasn't raised like that, and then I remembered this has to be the abused child inside me still cowering at the past abusers whom I took that power from long ago.
In another thread recently, I commented on a past relationship I had with someone I was in love with and also mentioned having been raised in the LGBT community which came with severe bullying by my peers. The bullying eventually became so bad that I became suicidal, but I was smart enough and mentally together enough to seek emergency help before I could act on doing myself in.
What killed me (metaphorically speaking) during the bullying all those years ago, was knowing my peers were right on track about my "queer" identity if you wish to call it that, and I didn't have the courage or the will to tell them they were right, and I should have done so because I wonder now if it would have shut them up and I wonder what kind of shocked look they would have had on their faces. I now also wonder if maybe I was smart after all in that specific situation since it may have only added fuel to their fire and may have possibly motivated someone to kill me.
That is all in the past now, and I sat down today and made a list of all of the issues in my life that I need to take care of including this GID issue. I also read the locked thread about people who sometimes de-transition. I won't re-open that can again, but I saw some people who made good points there. My goal on that list? "Make a reasonable, realistic plan that is manageable and measurable for dealing with each item".
I will soon be looking into my local GID clinics and if they accept my insurance (I have state medical aid and Medicare). The thing about my list of issues is that they are all tied into this identity being repressed by me, myself, and I. I have been using my life dreams, my drive to do well, and life achievements as a way of burying all of this. I keep busy with stuff so I can avoid issues. I need to realize that is unhealthy and destructive and take responsibility for it.
