When is it ok to be selfish?

[Lesley_Roberta]

I worry that I am not worthy.

My wife, she SHOULD be working, but she can't. She suffers from depression, it has made her disabled officially. Her health could be a lot better. I see her hands shake, and she has other afflictions that are clearly based on her nerves. I think it is all just her having to have dealt with me since 1994 and my fybromyalgia disability and all the rest of my life since then. I feel like I did this to her.

I look at my brother's life, and he has had to cope with two sons that became accidental fathers. And now he is coping with a mother in law and a father in law both dealing with cancer. His wife is an RN and actually works in a cancer ward of the hospital. But that has not made it easier on her all the same. He has a lot on his plate.

My sister, she's been under the stress of an incredibly nasty relationship from hell for several years. I could write a lot on this, but won't. I am glad I am not her.

I have seen others around me dealing with great health based hurdles, or horrible economic circumstances, or simply life taking to picking on them in some fashion.

And here I sit, I have a nice place to live (well I like it), and I eat well, (well I admit I think it is my skills as a shopper that matter, because I am not rolling in cash all the same), and I have the luxury items we all want, I have nice internet service. And I am able to indulge a few hobbies.
People would probably be inclined to respond with 'what the hell is your problem?'. And my problem is, I don't know.

I feel so much guilt from complaining, as if I simply have no right to do so.

But I am not happy. I just wish I could be happy.

Life has taken from me perhaps something that most people never really worry about.
I don't have dreams.
I never dream of anything any more. I've just given up trying.
I just can't seem to care if tomorrow comes.

I am constantly waiting, as they say, for the other shoe to drop, to be told something horrible like, my relationship is over.
The wife claims she is not going anywhere.
But after losing everything, so comprehensively, I feel like I just have nothing left any more.

I just wish to be able to dream again I suppose.
I am not sure I even know how to try any more.
And I am finding it hard to even feel deserving.

And when I add being transgender into the equation, well it seems like I have even lost out on being 'me'.

When is it ok to say I don't care about your problems, I am in need of something for me regardless of your difficulties?

Am I being selfish wishing to wear clothing I can relate to?
Is my wanting to look like a female asking for too much?
I'm ok leaving the anatomy alone so my wife can play with a male should she wish it. I am not my genitals, they are just there.
I just wish I could have a few things for me, but I wonder if I am being selfish.
Should I just consider my life acceptable? Should I just leave well enough alone and be thankful for what I have?

What I want is so little in most cases. I want to be addressed as if I was a woman. I realize I have been regarded as a male for a looooong time. I realize habits are not easy to break. Yes, I understand, being referred to as female might confuse people that don't know me and might never interact with me a second time. I walk into my mother's apartment building, and they will only see her as having a son visiting. I am not in a hurry to be unreasonable about gender based language.

But I would kill to be able to wear some earings I saw recently. Quartz earings that were fashioned to look like pink roses from Avon. I so wanted to order them. I'd love to be able to say 'you could get those for me for Valentines'. And I wonder how that day is going to go too. I love my wife more than life itself. But, I don't want something for Valentines that is all manly either. I want to be able to ask for things for my birthday that don't have to be carefully chosen to be gender safe selections. I'd love to get clothing that was 'me' oriented. I don't want to be given clothing that is so blatantly male. I need new shorts, I'd love them to be nice, pastel coloured, and not something tailor made for an old man.

I am so tired of denying myself, as if I was asking for too much, wanting the unreasonable, expecting things when I supposedly should already be grateful for what I have.

I look around, and yes, I am surrounded by a lot of 'things', but, there doesn't seem to be anything of 'me' in my possessions. They're all 'his' things.

I am not sure I am expressing this adequately, sorry for any confusion.
My other half, my male portion, he gets what he wants (sex) in the morning, and then he goes back in to the shadows and dumps me for the day. It leaves me in his world, but with no way to make any of it mine. I get a nice long hot bubble bath, lasts about 15 minutes, and then I might put on some perfume and go for a walk, but that is really all I get for me. It's just so little.

[Kevin Peña]

Well, yes, it's selfish to ask for anything, technically. That's just a dictionary definition. 

However, that's not to say it's bad. Wear what you want. It's no one's business.

[Johe]

Can you truly call it selfish for wanting - - no, needing to be...just you? I read your post, and I think that it is our personal selves that impose the restrictions on our happiness just as much as the world and its contributing factors. It sounds like you fear stretching out for that peace, piece of you. The other you, the real you. And that's okay; it's part of one process.

Just remember that you are worth everything in this world, and it includes every bit of jewelry, clothing choice, name. Whatever it is that can be, will be, and is...you.

[EmmaS]

I agree with the others, there is nothing wrong with being who you are, it's not dishonest or wrong, just be you

[Rachel]

I had two little periods I would describe as happy for a few hours recently. Both incidents occured after I spoke with therapists. I felt almost happy. Sounds strange but I waited for a shoe to drop and squash the happiness. Therapy is such a precious gift to yourself.

I drempt I was in Home Depot watching a tall Transgender person being followed and staired by guys. I awoke and said how can she do this. The person in Home Depot was me. The dream was black and white. The dream occured the night before the 2nd therapy session. I was so happy to dream because it has been a very many years since I remembered a dream. I used to dream in color many years ago.

My goal ( sounds odd) is to be healthy ( mentally ), happy and honest with others. I want to feel and share with others my presence, uniquenessas and who I really am. I want to express my life with those who will appreciate me and not just tolerate me. I want to have Trans friends and participate in GLBTQ events with my loved ones.

I am transitioning, mind, spirit and body( desire, but not right now). I have a long long way. I look forward to therapy next week. I look forward to being happy for a little while.

I repressed the female person in me. I promissed her the rest of my life ( tears rolling down my cheaks). She will exist in more than my twisted demented self depriocating mind. I think of MTF almost all the time and now welcome the change, I give up hiding.

Are you asking for too much, no. Good luck in your journey. We are hear for your support. I rely on Susan's place for help, advice and venting every day. You deserve to be happy. You deserve to express you any way you feel.

Hugs 

[Lesley_Roberta]

Thank you.

I don't wish to say more than that currently, but then that is what I needed to say

[JoanneB]

I worry that I am not worthy...

But I am not happy. I just wish I could be happy...

Life has taken from me perhaps something that most people never really worry about.
I don't have dreams.
I never dream of anything any more. I've just given up trying.
I just can't seem to care if tomorrow comes.
I just wish to be able to dream again I suppose.
I am not sure I even know how to try any more.
And I am finding it hard to even feel deserving....

And when I add being transgender into the equation, well it seems like I have even lost out on being 'me'.

I look around, and yes, I am surrounded by a lot of 'things', but, there doesn't seem to be anything of 'me' in my possessions. ...

Wow! This really sums up the past 30 years for me, especially the last 5 months  Perhaps even the past 40 plus years if you consider my "deer in the headlights" look my wife always got from me when asking what are my Hopes, Wishes, and Dreams. Just about all that flew out of my life by the age of 16 when I started hitting 6ft and going bald.

To make matters painfull for me there was a brief period of about a year where I had a glimmer of a dream, I got to see the promised land, I ran barefoot along the shores of the River Jordan. Realized my lifelong dream of being out in the real world as the real me, being seen as and accepted as a woman. Albeit not in a total RLE.

Then the other shoe dropped... As I should have expected it to. As my entire life experience has taught me to expect. Made all the worse how during my groups Christmas party it dawned on me how over 30 years of doing my best to live up to the role I chose to, used well proven tricks to bury half or more of my true being, that I lost my humanity in the process. So much so that I have even forgotten how to have fun  What role I was in made no difference. It is gone.

I am no more than a machine that wakes up every morning, goes to work, comes home, cook, clean and sleep. Whatever time left is filled with a never ending to-do list between taking care of two homes and working at holding together a long distance marriage. I dread the drives back and forth to see my wife. The drive itself, not seeing her. For 6 hours I am trapped in a steel box with only my thoughts and the occasional rush of adrenaline from some crazy on the interstate.

My inner pain mostly always was and is once again being stopped by the constant diversions, distractions, and occasional denials. Briefly that pain was replaced by joy and happiness until....

I was being selfish. The separation from my wife to be gainfully employed some 350 miles away afforded me the chance to once again look back at all the things that went wrong in my life many to most directly and indirectly due to being trans. I took the beast head on. Spent months looking for support in hillbilly country after moving from just across the river from NYC. Irony   

The separation also dredged up all of my wife's issues on abandonment, her Achilles heel. Over those same months she resorted to anger at me. Made all the easier not to argue with her when she said there was no need for me to make the drive. Her sense of loss of everything led to an even greater depression, and even more deterioration of her poor health. Though she always knew that I was a TG, she pegged me as just a CD. That was the only side she rarely saw and conversations from 30+ years earlier about praying everynight that I would wake up as a girl faded from memory. She felt betrayed when time came for me to tell her about going to a TG group. Though she was on the verge of suicide I needed to tell her. After 3 meetings I knew I needed to be there.

The following two years were an emotional rollercoaster for us both. Our relationship became renewed and grew even stronger in ways. Yet the road I was looking at only fed her sense of a future abandonment. Made all the worse by her knowing my history of dating TS's and meeting a beautiful member of my group, who also happened to be an engineer like I am.

The other show finally dropped when my wife called me on a Monday morning just as I pulled into the parking lot of work. The Monday following a TG group meeting. A month after the previous meeting when she called me just before the meeting to tell me of an overwhelming anxiety attack and worse. This call was again over anxiety and worse, she feared she was having a stroke and was heading off to the ER!

I was immediately consumed by guilt over what I had been doing, killing the one thing in my life that gave me meaning, a sense of purpose, and loved more than even myself. The fact that much of the anxiety came from adverse reactions to her meds I slowly came to adopt. But the guilt from me being selfish is still there front and center.

Me being selfish led to me not living up to all the commitments, and responsibilities that I agreed to. Me being selfish led to almost loosing the one thing that gives my life real meaning and some happiness. Loosing first emotionally and then physically.

Being selfish is OK when it's worth the cost.

In my case being selfish was and is not worth the price.

[JulieC.]

I'm a little torn from what I just read from Joanne and Lesley.  I can see how you feel selfish and part of me agrees.  I feel the same way at times too.  At least my wife has no underlying problems that need my help.  She would do quite well on her own...probably better than me.  Yet I also feel the guilt of what I may be doing to her.  And that is what I felt the most from both of you.  You both feel very guilty.  But are you really guilty of anything?  None of us choose to be trans and I think we just wanted a "normal" life.  Is it selfish to want to be yourself?  I don't think so.  Is it selfish to do it?  Maybe.  I don't feel I can pass judgement on that.  At least you both are trying to do your best for your spouses while trying to have a little of yourself.  I commend you both for that.  If you were truly selfish you would walk away with out a care and pursue you dream. 

When a dream is realized it is reality.  If you're losing sight of your dreams it's because you don't believe they can ever become true.  No one knows what the future will bring.  There is a way to keep your dream alive. 

[Lesley_Roberta]

To love and to hold, in sickness and in health, forsaking all others, dill death do us part. Well I am pretty sure that is how it was written. There might have been more and the grammar and punctuation might be slightly different.

I know she never agreed to unlimited sums of sex even if of a boring ordinary vanilla sort eh.
But you do NOT get married so you can have someone help with the chores.
It's not important to be married to enjoy eating dinner out together or enjoy watching a movie at the theatre.

I mean, I have done that plenty of times, and with men even

Marriage seems to really only become a serious matter to be resolved in court the second your goodies are playing with someone else's.

I am not the sort to drag religion into the matter. I have walked out on that portion of my life.
But I have told the wife, the words, the deal we made, the magnitude of my commitment hasn't altered.

I am indeed her's. She is definitely mine.

But who exactly did she marry? Did she marry a body, or did she marry a person?

I mean, I no longer have all the hair on top of my head. I would hate to be dumped for a loss of hair.
I am not the same shape I was in during the wedding, but admittedly, I want that weight and waist back, and I am fighting like hell to have it too. It would suck if I was to be ditched on account of my looking a bit rounded at the waist.
My health is sure not what it used to be. But we DID say in sickness and in health, so she can't hold my disability against me.
I don't hold it against HER, that she isn't a conveniently randy wench ready to mess around at the slightest opportunity It is not her fault depression has beaten up her sex drive.

So it does get vexing, that I can't claim to be just as good a person to be married to, if my outward appearance changes through clothing and other non permanent means like a wig. Regardless of my appearance, I am suppose to be the same person all the same.

I have mentioned to her, it is likely not relevant to tell me she doesn't wish to have lesbian sex, she might have already been having lesbian sex all along. I am just not forced to strap anything on. Surely there has to be a lesbian out there some where that would envy me for having the real thing to play with I don't mind thinking of myself as a lesbian stuck inside this body to some extent. I just don't have breasts to fondle.

Life has given me enough barriers to climb over in my day, I wish I could write a few of the gender based issues out of the picture without causing unneeded side effects in the process. I want to improve my life, not mangle it in new ways.

[Rachel]

Lesley_Robrta, I am in you shoes but you are ahead of me. I have exactly the same guilt of what I want verses the reaction to doing the actions. This sucks so bad; I do not want to hurt anyone let alone the one I love.

I am trying to be less unhappy, less depressed, less sick to my stomach, have less headached, sleep more, eat more ( lost 20 lbms in the last 6 weeks), think about something other the MTF. Anything would be better than this. I am in therapy and I need it so much to cope.

I went to a movie with my wife tonight and during the movie I thought about the hurt I will cause when I tell her. I looked at her face as she enjoyed the movie and wondered what my and her life will be like. I hate it when she cries. I will do anything to make her feel better.

I am open to her needs and will abide as we agree, anything will be better than nothing, so I tell myself. I so much want to experiance HRT when I am ready.

I feel your pain. My wife married ( unknown to her) a deceptive, secritive, lier, transgendered, bisexual person. This is me now. The future, I want to be honest and healthy. I want her to be my partner, with honesty and support. If she will have me I want to renew our vows. The risk is so high of losing everthing. When the words come out they can not be retracted.

[Lesley_Roberta]

"When the words come out they can not be retracted."

That is so utterly true. You can't unsay some things.

I have always been 100% honest with my wife, and to be sure I am not saying I like the idea, but, I am also wondering, would life be better if I had been more the liar a couple of times in my life.

But I'm an Aries, and we make lousy liars and are usually quite brutal with the truth. Friends around me are aware, never actually ask me a question you don't want answered totally honestly.

It has been my experience, that most of humanity, doesn't really want the truth. Because our lies, our illusions, our beliefs, rarely survive well in the face of the truth. The truth is indeed out there, but it is rarely anyone's friend.

My grief, is mainly I have spent a LOT more of my life than most will, stuck in text books, and I DO know a lot more truths than the average person, and it's a very heavy weight some days.

And it impacts my ability to be selfish, as I often know too much, the cost of anything I might do.

Ignorance is definitely bliss.

I let my mother know of my troubles one day, but I was crying out of control while doing it too. I doubt I'd still be alive right now if she had not told me none of it mattered, I was still her child. I wouldn't have been able to survive the rejection.
I simply can't justify some of my friends suddenly disappearing as being related to my being more open about my differences. but I also have no idea why they are gone either. They've been all sorts of people, religious, not religious, and in most cases I have known them for many years (and apparently not known them enough all the same).

In some cases I have just decided, to heck with them, I'd rather be alone, then have people around me that didn't want me as I really am.

I did though, get an email from one long time friend I don't see a lot of much any more due to distance. He said he liked me specifically because I was different. I suppose I'm a lot more different than he realized though

Some day I think it would be ultra cool if going out with the guys, I was to seem like one of the girls they were out with. No I am not into guys, but sitting next to one, it would be nice being mistaken as their date. It would be nice being able to dance with one of them, and not force them to look gay doing so. Of course, it is always nice finding a guy that can even dance in the first place