Quote from: learningtolive on June 15, 2013, 09:54:44 AM
I have to disagree with this to some degree. Sure it's hard to know for a fact whether it is definitely the right thing. Some people need to have more experience before they can assess for a fact that they are making the right choice. That I'm in agreement with. However, I think it is problematic to start hrt before knowing what you want to do. The problem with starting things like hrt without being fairly confident or certain of one's path is that you are making permanent changes to your body. Wouldn't you want to feel as confident as possible before doing that? I know this is something I thought about in great detail. Overall it was an easy decision, but not one I made very lightly. I guess I'll never fully know if this is the right choice until I live and experiences more as I go on. Yet, I feel confident in my decision and would never have gone forward and started hrt if I didn't. Everyone's different, but I really think people should be careful before starting to transition. It's not an easy path and should be avoided unless one needs it or really wants to do it. Maybe I'm a little too conservative with this, but I think that is the best way to go about it.
I think we are saying very much the same thing Learning to Live. Of course I was fairly sure I was doing the right thing when I started HRT but certain, definitely not. Based on my own experience, I also disagree with you completely about the permanent changes to the body, at least at first.
For example, I personally operated stop-go on HRT for the better part of two years before finally deciding that yes, I was going to go down this path. Among other things, this particular experience allows me to say with a relatively high degree of confidence that there is almost nothing irreversible about 3 - 4 months HRT. For example, during the 2 year stop and go period, I probably got to Tanner 2 and even Tanner 3 each time before stopping and every time I did this, the breast growth disappeared more or less completely within a few weeks. I may have damaged my fertility but, even if it mattered to me (it didn't), I would also be very dubious about that as I personally know someone who was on HRT for years before detransitioning and conceiving a child. Interestingly, this person retransitioned again several years later which also sort of shows that for many people, "deciding" on transition is anything but black and white.
In your own case, reading all of your posts, I am tempted to say that yes, you probably are very conservative or at least cautious in the way you go about things and I have no problem with that. I am actually pretty cautious too in my own way but beyond a certain point, which is no doubt different for all of us, I believe experience always beats theorizing.
In my own case, having been born a biological male with little to no visible evidence that anything was amiss (there was some though..), having lived most of my life as a male, including fathering three kids, even now I have difficulty saying "I am a woman" in the way Cindy says it.
This is probably also down to five years university studies in life sciences which make me very conscious of the some of the intrinsic biological differences between males and females. I always have a little voice in the back of my mind telling me that I can never "be a woman" in the same way as a genetic female can live this reality.
However, I can say without any doubt that I have always
identified very strongly with everything feminine and this from as early as I can remember. Like so many others , I had to repress this feeling for years, letting nothing show to others, but it never went away and got considerably stronger as I hit my mid-forties.
Following a divorce from my first wife, I had the space necessary to explore this feeling a lot more and between practical experimentation concerning my identity and vastly improved access to information regarding GID , I gradually gained much deeper understanding and acceptance of who I was and what I could actually do about it. Just to make things clear and how cautious I was, I regained my freedom end 1999 and didn't start HRT until 2008.
Even then though, as explained above, when I started HRT, it was at least as much about confirming my gut feeling as it was about any certainty that I was making the right decision. Among others, this partially explains why I went back and forwards a few times but there were also just the practical issues raised by so many others here ie. trying to live with breasts while still operating completely as a guy in all aspects of my life.
Interestingly, several years of HRT has strongly reinforced my feeling of "being a woman". Apart from the obvious physical changes, the way I perceive things has changed quite radically over the last few years . I listen far more, am far more sensitive and emotional and my tastes have evolved considerably in areas from food I like to eat through to choices for entertainment and the activities I engage in to stay fit.
All of this leaves me with the impression that, with HRT, my brain is being rewired little by little. The good thing is that I am much happier with the persona who has emerged from this process than the persona I presented as prior to starting this journey.
Also, as an aside comment, living this experience through my own body has left me more skeptical than ever about the idea that social conditioning is the only driver behind gender behaviours...
All of that was about the certainty of "being a woman before you transition". On top of my conviction that for most of us, such certainty can only come through practical experience, there are loads of other practical issues which will influence the decision to take the plunge or not: family, friends, job etc...The constraints we are facing on such issues are also very different. For me, job security is now the biggest issue, but it is almost a life or death issue so that also gives pause for thought.
At the end though, some day or another, in spite of all the uncertainty, to find out if transitioning is right for you, there is simply no alternative to taking the plunge and testing the ground.
On that particular subject, did I pick up in one of your recent posts that you will be coming out to your mother tomorrow? If yes, while I am pretty
"certain" 
that all will go fine, wishing you the very best of luck.
Bises
Donna
