MTF in need of help

[Rachel]

I have my 1st appointment for informend consent in 6 days. I tried to move it up but they are booked. They are an informed consent location in Philadelphia. I really need to talk to them.

One 12/12/12 I admitted to myself I am transgender ( at age 50). A liftime of payback is rushing into my brain. I surrendered to my feminine self on 1/5/2013 ( scheduled the appointment at the LTGB center). I hate my male self for all the pain I inflicted upon myself and others and for my inability to be honest. I am responsible for this mess ( my head is throbbing and emotions are on the surface).

What triggered the bomb to go off? My wife asked me why I  never iniated sex. Was she ugly? I reassured he she was beautiful but I could not tell her why I could not iniate sex. This bothered me. I started writhing down my history and then a flood of things came in. Volumes of things I surpressed. Refused to remember, did not happen if I could not remember. I looked over what I wrote and thought. I am a complete fraud, chicken and transgender.

In the past I had coping mechanism to substatute for the female side of me. I ( huge embarrassment) after puberty masterbated and fanticized I was a woman and was satisfying men in every way possible. There were thoughts throughout the day but I allowed an outlet at night and re-directed the day thoughts for later. Lots of other things I could expand on but they would be a bit graphic.

I have had a headach since 12/12/2012, now my stomach hurts almost costantly for the past 2 days. I can not sleep much and all  I can think about is coming to terms with my past, present and future. In the past three days driving home, Wednesday I was in a pure state of panic, Thursaday and Friday I cried. My drive is 1.5 hours and cried the whole time. Work is turning into a very difficult place to concentrate and I think 25% of the time about my MTF conflict. What is happening?

I took my daughter and her friend to the movies and when I came home I almost told my wife I am transgender. I chickeded out. I am so lame.

My wife and daughter are my life and I love them and would not ever want to hurt them. I love where I work and really believe what I do counts toward the final effort and we collectively do amazing things for others. I would be crushed if I lost one of the three yet the potential of all three, not to mention the embarressment of others finding out I am female. I am in hell ( can't fight back the tears).

I think I need to tell everyone, wife, daughter, work and family ASAP. Things are getting worse every day.

I think I need HRT but that scarres the hell out of me. Add a sex change and I am over the top. Voice, breasts cloths make-up, find another job, divorce and lose my daughter. Life will not be worth living. Yet I am drawn to admit who I am, stop the pain and get some quiet.

I will try to explaine the battle inside of me. I surrendered to my feminine self ( Cynthia) and apologized many time to her ho all the years of pain I caused her. She is extreamly creative, bright, very sensitive, loving, nurturing, quick witted and the reason I have been successful. The male personna has anger, hatrid, supresses creativeness, is very competive and mean. I can not control the internal feeling of male sub-rage running unabated inside of me. I am numb and unfeeling.


I have been reading the different posts for about a month and perhaps someone can provide some insight. I do not know what dysphoria is, do I have it? Is there hope for me? How do you cope.

[Devlyn]

Hi Cynthia, welcome to Susan's Place! You've come to the right place for help. First, you are a unique person, no one else is like you. Now for the shocker, there's nothing in your post I haven't read before. We know the road you're on, and we understand. Hugs, Devlyn

[spacial]

Not everyone goes for the full transision.

To what extent do you feel you need to go to begin to settle down?

[Rachel]

I found the a LGBT center that has a large Trans* population and support base. I chose them because I really need their advise. I think dropping the testosterone to start and see what will come of it. I have read that estrogen on a very low dose can bring about a great calming effect and not bring about quick changes. Although there are 2 issues, 1) the feminine effects will show up eventually and 2) the estrogen and total acceptance can being about a desire for a full transiton. In reality the feminine effects are desired by me but the family and work will have issues and I have no guts.

I would do anything right now to get calm and relief. I need to be honest with my family(now) and work( later). The lie is difficult to accept and looking in their faces brings about the desire to tell them. I associate them with my issue now. My ability to transfer has backfired. 

Everything I put down in the past I am not intensly attracted to. I love the smell of perfume on me ( small amount). I smell the women perfumes at work and now I really want to have it on me and to the same strength. I want to be included cloths shoping with my Wife and Daughter ( image of lead brick). I shaved my arm pits, chest and belly, wow! I will never stop shaving my pits.

[TanaSilver]

Cynthia, I will post more, but you and I are very, very similar. You are in the place I was about a year ago. If you'd like to email me, go ahead, but I will post again later to you when I have a moment to do so.

Take care hun

[Rachel]

Thank you. I welcome all advise.

I have a feeling there are those who traveled my road and perhaps their past will be my future. I am going to listen to some feminine afformation recordings and try to calm down. I would love to get some sleep. Writing down my feelings ( newto me) and having some people show support has helped a lot. My biggest fear would be I was not "normal". Perhaps I need to reset my baseline of associations.

[spacial]

Cynthia.

I'm sure TanaSilver will be very supportive.

But if I may correct you on one point. The medicine most start with is a testosterone blocker. Which will be determined by a Dr. Estrogen comes later.

Whatever you do, please do so with the support of a registered Dr.

[cynthialee]

Welcome to the family hun.
I don't come here much anymore but your post caught my eye.
The people here are for the most part worth your time to listen to and take to heart. The main mission here is to get you to the other side safe, sane and healthy.
Listen to the advice you get here.

Remember that transition is a marathon and not a race.

Here are three little rules I was given to get through my transition and the initial apointments to start the process:
1. Show up.
2. Do not worry.
3. Bring your sense of humor.

get those three down and figure out the rest as you go

[TanaSilver]

Cynthia, you have my full sympathy. No one can really understand what it's like to have decades of repression lifted unless they have experienced it themselves. It really is hell. You've had a dam holding back the waters your whole life, but suddenly it's gone and the waters are coming at you with overwhelming force.

I so totally understand the need to tell someone close to you, and right away. By now, you may have already done so. I'm glad you've located local resources. My strong advice for you would be to find a gender therapist ASAP. Although you may approach that first meeting with trepidation, the relief you will feel at spilling your guts to a sympathetic individual is enormous. I was shaking at my first therapy session, but I walked out a different person.

You may be feeling all kinds of things right now: guilt at how you've lived your life, regret over not doing something earlier, foolishness for the lies you've told yourself over the years, anguish at what this will do to your family, urgency realizing you want action and want it NOW ... the list goes on and on. Please realize that this issue was not created overnight, and it won't be resolved overnight either. That is a good thing, and not a bad thing. You need time to make the right choices.

You may want to tell your wife, but please do so with extreme caution and sensitivity. You may want to explode with everything, a full reveal. Keep in mind that things we consider all and the same, they will view piece by piece. In other words, you may want to tell her how you've felt your whole life, the feelings you've kept hidden, how you want to go on hormones, how you may want to transition, how you feel like a woman, how you feel when you see her doing "womanly" things, etc. To you, this all may be part of a single package, to her, each and every item is a hammer blow to the head. If you do tell your wife, I would suggest starting very gently and parceling information out over time, giving her a chance to digest it. I don't know what kind of relationship you have with your wife, but rushing this can easily derail your marriage. It is possible to come through this with a satisfactory resolution for yourself while still retaining your family and marriage, and maybe even making it stronger.

I think you've come to the right place. This site is full of people who know exactly how you feel. I have been where you are, and I am still there in many respects, even 14+ months later. I have a long way to go, but at this point I don't regret anything I've done over the past year, although I could have made some very, very serious errors, which is why I'm writing this to you now.

Again, I strongly advise you to seek out a therapist. If you need help with advice on how to approach your wife, just speak up, many, many people here have been there and there are right ways to do it and wrong ways to do it.

Take care hun, and have hope. You've already done one of the hardest things, just admitting the truth

Love,
Tana

[Cindy]

Hi Cynthia,

First congratulations, even though you may not feel like them! When we finally face ourselves it can be utterly terrifying. No idea where to go what to ask what to do. Yes the thoughts become self consuming. It is a sort of past trauma shock. You have allowed you to be liberated from the shackles and you are flexing your girl brain wondering where the geex I have been for fifty years.


You will calm down and this place will help as Devlyn said there is nothing in your story that is in the least bit unusual, you sound very normal, and any of us have walked the path.

And many of us are still walking.

The fears can almost be listed in the GID Fact Book. (must write it Mmmm).

Losing family
Losing friends
Losing the job
People not understanding
People laughing at you.
Looking like a guy in a dress.

Losing the home
The first thoughts can all be listed under one main heading: Losing.

Ok reality check. You may lose some things. BUT you will also gain.

The first thing you gain is YOU.
You've already gained a whole new family. Hi

Every step we gain, subtle things, big things, tears sometimes. Hugs always.

I'm a full time MtF and I've just turned 60. My story is so well known that a quick search will introduce you to the crazy world of Cindy and what she has been through.

But what have I lost and what have I gained?

Lost? Nothing.

Gained? Everything.

And I mean that totally truthfully.

No it hasn't been easy and my friends here have held my hand and comforted me when I thought Hell was breaking over me and the only way to go was death.

But my friends, such an almost shallow word for my brothers and sisters here who are parked in my heart as my life long friends, pulled me through.

We are here for you as well.

So settle down. Get your thoughts together and off we go.

Cindy

[justmeinoz]

Hi and welcome.  A lot of us here have been through a similar situation and survived, and thrived. 
You have already come out to yourself, the hardest of all to do. 
Be guided by your therapist who can help you to find the questions you need to ask yourself, and the best answers.  There is no one right path, just what works best for you.

Karen.

[Henna]

Hello Cynthia and welcome from the other side of the pond 

Be gentle to yourself and also to other people around you. Take the time to be who you are and explore yourself more. There really isn't any hurry to jump into everything immediately. It will just feel overwhelming and it made at least me feel just worse. Do what you want and be what you want to be, now, rather than worry what you will be a year from now.

I can really relate to feeling physically sick and emotions going up and down like in a roller coaster when you finally reach to the station so to speak, where you have to look back and think why didn't I do something before, why I did this to myself. I arrived to that "station" too sometime ago. It feels bad, but it does get better, just as long as you are not too hard for yourself.

You will hear people saying to you, that be who you are and be true to yourself. I didn't really get it at first but as time goes by it starts to make more sense.

[Elspeth]

I need to be honest with my family(now) and work( later). The lie is difficult to accept and looking in their faces brings about the desire to tell them. I associate them with my issue now.

While my story is different, our ages are similar, and at least some of our practical timing is too.

One practical thing I'd like to add to all the good advice so far... consider working with your therapist on planning how to come out to your spouse and others. They may be able to suggest strategies and a process that won't simply be an impulsive act that could backfire.

You feel a sense of guilt about hiding for so long, which is understandable. You may also feel some urge to punish yourself, which could lead to a coming out that might be more confusing and counterproductive than necessary. I don't imagine there is a perfect way to do this, but I know mine (which happened decades ago, long, long before the divorce) was far from the best because it was an impulsive and barely planned act on my part, done alone and without advice from others, unless one counted the selective messaging I pulled from transgender forums in a different part of the last century, messages I wildly reframed to create a coming out that was shocking to my partner at the time, and didn't help her come to grips with  what was going on for me.  Keep in mind that she obviously cares enough about you to see that you are hurting. Be truthful, but find a way that will not make it easy for her to imagine that you are doing this to hurt her or manipulate her.

Strategize with a therapist. You might even want to ask your therapist if there is some way she or he can help with this, by doing it in a couple's session, for instance.

I'm getting a bit of a second chance in this as I try to support my trans son, who has already come out to his mom, and is getting therapy openly, with her full knowledge and material support. My ex is still not at peace with or fully accepting of my son's declared identity, but the two of us have been managing to communicate this time around a lot more clearly, and she is willing and more able to do things like have her own session with a gender therapist to get up to speed on things that my son assumes she understands, but that I've confirmed to my satisfaction that she really doesn't. She has a tendency, that she also had with me, to turn the discussion to herself, and to shut off attempts to further clarify things... this tends to lead to some poor communication on both sides, and her persistence in assuming she knows what was going on in my son's head at various points, when she's never had a very full or open discussion with him about those times and how they were for him at a subjective level.

I have lots of examples of this, but they're mostly irrelevant to your own situation.  Where they are relevant is that it's practically universal that intimate partners tend to have fantasies about their partners that make it hard to see what is really going on for that partner, and understanding that one's partner has her own issues, anxieties and so on (like her fear that you find her unappealing) that aren't the other partner's fault or even responsibility, is something most have to cope with eventually, and in the case of couples where at least one of them is trans, that only tends to be amplified several times over.

[MeghanAndrews]

Hi Cynthia,
It sounds like you are going through a lot and that's understandable from what you describe. It sounds like you are talking about the Mazzoni Center. They are great there btw. I'd encourage you to seek therapy and try to find some clarity through working through all of your feelings and determining what exactly you'd like to do. I also understand that feeling of wanting to tell everyone to release the weight you feel.

Remember, once you utter the words that you are trans, you can never, ever take them back. Think through that, especially with loved ones and your work. I'd encourage you to really figure out where you want to go and what's important to you with transition before you start telling everyone. There's a lot of support out there, and here, but remember that you need to carve your own path and find what's right for you. Don't feel too restricted by narrative, create your own. What would you hope to get with transition and is that possible given your life circumstance? That's important to think about too.

I think just coming to terms with how you are feeling is a big, big step. Are you keeping a blog or journal, anonymously, even here, where you can just type out all of your thoughts to get them out and explore them. When you go to Mazzoni, make sure you look into sliding scale therapy and see if you can find someone to talk to. I'm sure they have a lot of compassionate people who will help you synthesize your thoughts and guide you in the right direction for yourself...or at least ask you questions to help you figure that out. Good luck, ok?    Meghan

[Zumbagirl]

I agree with others that the hardest part is coming out to yourself and admtting who you really are. Once you accept yourself, then the next part is what you do with it. That will mark the start of your own personal journey and however far it takes you. You set your own goals, your own limits and decide how much you are willing to trade in exchange for that. This process isn't only losses, it may happen, it may not. I could never put a price on my own freedom from the gender trap that I was living in. I sacrificed a lot, but I gained so so much in the end. Despite the hardships and losses it was still worth it and I wouldn't trade being me with anyone else in the world.

[Rachel]

Thank you for all the wonderful advise. Take aways:

Definately keep the appointments,
Get therapy ( I need that most definately),
Ask about sliding scale (need to find out about),
Write down my thoughts in a journal for later use,
Go slow, get advise about who and how to come out,
Wife - when I come out, do so in manageble informational portions,
Work, save for a much later discussion,
I am sane and but overwhelmed and unable to process information at the rate it is coming to me and I can not stop the input.
I have no answers but just questions I can not answer,

The people here are special, I felt the love and understanding coming through to me. I really need your help and I can not express my gratitude adequitely to express how much this means to me. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I was definately very emotional last night.  I was able to get 2-3 hours of sleep last night and I was able to talk to myself for 3 hours while driving this morning ( just a little emotional at times, maybe a little more than a little).

Headache still here and stomach is like someone grabbed it in their fist.

Corrections,
Yes I wanted to say anti-t,
Yes, Mazzoni Center, figured they must be doing something right if they have a large TG program.

[aleon515]

I'm ftm but we are about the same age (more or less). I just figured this out one day in May (or so). I first thought I was genderqueer and then realized I am ftm. I am pre-transition in most respects (not out at work--so that's a huge amt of time right there) but dress (which is much easier for us guys) and so on. Everything I did to make me more masculine made me feel better and better. I am seeing a gender therapist. At first I thought he might help me get over this silly notion, but actually it was quite the opposite! I was not emotional and sad but I felt very anxious 24/7. Therapy helped to lower the anxiety as did action. Coming out to people made me very anxious until I learned the 1 minute version vs the 30 min. one. ("hello, I'm trans. How are you? LOL ). Now I feel less anxious. Anyway it was like that with everything-- before every change I'd feel huge amt of anxiety, and when I'd actually do something I'd feel less.

BTW, love the support groups.

Hang in there.

--Jay

[Ampersand]

 Cynthia, I know I cannot possibly comprehend what you are going through right now. But I want to help you. I just wish I could hug you, and make all the tears go away. I've been openly trans for 3 years, and yet I still chicken out sometimes when people refer to me as the wrong gender. It feels so... wrong to me when I'm adressed as female. But I'm too afraid of the ridicule to correct them. I'm FTM, but I understand something similar to what you are going through. I have only expierienced a different version of what you are going through. I was going through a couple years were I repressed my true self. Those come back to bite me in the butt alot... but hey. Those are mistakes and they make life sweeter when we experience success and all that good stuff. Still, you're alot older than me, and you're obviously very strong. I could never even begin to fathom what you are going through right now. You must be such a strong woman. Don't give up. But I want you to know, that we all are here to support you. We love you, don't worry. c: Please, we only want you to feel good, happy, safe, and secure.
Hope this helps.

[Rachel]

Thank you for your support and understanding, it really helps.

Strong, no, not at all. I realize my developement is stunted due to my inability to deal with my reality. Also, my inability to deal with my reality controls me. I realize I need to take control of my life and be me ( much simplier said than done).

I awoke this morning with just a hint of a headach. Realizing I need to slooooow down and get help 1st prior to comig out has helped amazingly. That bit of advise saved me.

When I was in college I was anorexic. I am 6'2" and I went down to 145 lbs, I thought I looked fantastic and wanted to go much lower. This may sound silly but I had a 4.0 and faced with a potential B drove me to contemplate suicide. I picked out the building, time and the ledge. I got really sick for 1 week and on the other end I gave up having to be perfect at school. I graduated with a 3.08 and much less nurodic. (Then I was wearing jordach jeans, shaved my legs and crotch and wore pantihose, just remembered, wow!). Engineering school was way easier than dealing with me inside.

I have the ability to block out ( complete ) and I use it. I need to learn to unblock out and feel. I want to feel so bad.

I think about being a woman every second of the day. I need to be me. I will gain the strength and ability to to express myself. 

This is me    hugs

[dohtao]

I'm 53 and told my wife of 8 years about a week ago. She seems cool with it but I wonder.