"You're not just going to wake up one day as a girl"

[BunnyBee]

I'm sorry that you are in such a bad place right now.  I wish I could give you a hug or somehow say something that would help or at least get you some ice cream.  I know you will come out of this so happy, I know that is hard for you to believe right now, but just hang in there, best you can 

[Ltl89]

Your post does actually shed a lot of light upon why you feel the way you do, hon. More than I'd hoped for, to be honest. Thank you, sincerely. And for the kind words, too. I see some of myself in you.

Rather than tell you what I think (you get enough of that here, lol), I would like to ask you another question. And... it may be a difficult one to consider, much less answer. But also it may... hmm... just shut up and ask it, Seph.

Do you think it's possible that, the anxiety you have about passing and actually having the opportunity to integrate fully as your true self... well... do you think a part of that stems not from the idea that you won't pass as female, or be accepted as such... but that your past coping methods have left an effect on you to where you're scared that not achieving these things will... hmm, how to put it... will feel like you tried everything and it wasn't enough for you? That it has to be all or nothing and you feel like this is a culmination of everything you can possibly do to make your life be the way you want it to be?

I don't know if that makes any sense. I guess what I'm asking is that whether the fear is more of a fear of failure in your own mind than a fear of other people's reactions. And as a result there's an almost unbearable amount of pressure you place upon yourself to get it right because you feel like you cannot afford to get it wrong.

Don't answer that if it makes you uncomfortable, hon. It's just that I notice the way you carry yourself here, and the things you contribute to making other people feel better, feel like they can do things... and I wonder if what you're afraid of isn't not being female enough for the rest of the world, but of not being female enough for the standards you set for yourself. And what that could mean for you.

I'm a big girl Seph, so don't fear hitting the hard questions,lol.

Passing is a HUGE concern of mine and I do care greatly about what others think, but it is also true that I want the perfect transition.  I've always had impossible standards that I place upon myself.  For example, I always worked hard to be an A student at all time and never an A- student (even though that wasn't always possible).  One of the reasons it's taking me forever to apply to grad school is I want the perfect application, despite the fact that there is no such and mine would clearly be less than adequate.   So, in a sense, yes this needs to go just right.  I'd be upset if I failed my own standards and didn't pass to a T.  There is truth behind the fact that I want this to go as perfectly as possible.  Not just in the eyes of others, but especially in my own eyes.  And I'm scared because I desperately want to transition, but I don't want to fail.  I don't want to be unpassable in any way.  For this reason I delay further and avoid making the progress I really want because I'm afraid of society and also afraid to confront what I've always delayed.  But at the same time, it's killing me to continue this.  It's never gone away and all my attempts coping have never pacified my feelings.  At the end of the day, I'm a girl and nothing can change that.  I would just like to start expressing myself as the real me and not worry so much about imperfections and screwups.  But I do.  And as a result, I don't live.  It's terrible.

On the other hand, I don't expect my transition to go perfect or for it to solve most of my feelings. I'll always have self confidence issues that will need to be worked on in other ways.  Being trans is just a part of who I am. Nor would transitioning be a culmination of everything I hope for.  Clearly, the self confidence issue, my small social life, my non-existing love life, and my career problems will not be solved in a huff with transitioning.  As much as I fantasize about what a wonderful life I could lead as female and finally be happy, I don't expect everything to go the way my dreams do nor do I believe it's the cure.  It isn't the answer for these problems even if it can help by boasting my self-confidence and making me feel better about myself.  However, I tend to also view transitioning in a very be all or nothing terms and it may not even help that aspect of my confidence problem.  I'm not considering transition to be the solution for everything, just simply for some of my problems.  So, in short, no I don't think it's a culmination to create my desired life as I need to do so much more than simply transition to make that possible. 

Sure,  I could try and solve these other issues and not transition as well, but that isn't going to make me happy.  For me, this is my path and what I need to do.  Honestly, if I could avoid it, I would have done so, but I can't.  I'd rather not continue if the rest of my life would be spent as male.  Even if it turns out less than what I hoped for in some respects, I truly believe it will get me closer to happiness.  I highly doubt I would come out of transition feeling that it wasn't enough for me to solve my problems because it isn't why I'm doing it.  My gender identity and body dysphoria is only a part of the equation.  Still, it's a big one that has left me empty and depressed for so long, I just want to face it and start feeling happier with myself and who I am.  And I can't see myself as anything other than a girl.  It pains me not to be true to myself and it's all I want. If I had the chance for a billion dollars or anything in the world, my choice would be to transition in a heartbeat.  The thing is I just hate the difficulties of this path and the uncertainties of it.  Yes, I want it to go perfect and it saddens me that it isn't possible.   Yet, at the same time, I realize that transitioning is something I need to do regardless of my fears and just hate my inability to take action.

[Sephirah]

All I would say to you, hon, is that sometimes it's the imperfections and screw ups which make one more genuine, not less. As trite as this may sound: you don't have to be perfect, you just have to be you. I don't think it's how close to perfection you can achieve something which makes people warm to you, and take you for who you are. I think it's likely more that you do the best you can, no matter what. Keep going when you don't think you can. To accept there are some variables that you have no control over and just make the most of the ones you do.

It's blatantly obvious from your posts that you know exactly what you need to do. And how to do it. But what's holding you back is a fear which paralyses you. I suspect this fear comes in part from something else, not related to gender. Which is part of the reason I asked these questions. I wonder if working on these fears will allow everything else to fall into place somewhat. To work on the pressure you place on yourself, you know? Where it comes from, and if there are ways you can alleviate some of that to enable you to move forward.

What is it about society which scares you hon? The unpredictability? Or... something else?

[Cindy]

Just some thoughts.

No two people can progress in the same way. There are no rules and no boundaries.

Oh as you may see I have stopped using the word 'transitioning' I haven't and I doubt that anyone has 'transitioned' I'm the same woman now as I was before, my physical and to some extent mental processes have changed.

My acceptance of myself has changed totally.

I have not been hit by a magic wand. I as you are doing, work at it, and it isn't a lot of fun sometimes. But the harder we work the luckier we get.

Maybe we are very similar in that I see a younger female version of myself in you. The fights I lost with myself I can see you are fighting now.

How your older sister can help I am unsure.

I was terrified at not passing. I was terrified that people at work would refer to me as that trannie Doc. My colleagues would make jokes behind my back.

I could face the insults to my face, but I wasn't sure if I could take the rumours and snide comments that slowly filtered back to me.

I could take a quick death but not one by a thousand cuts.

I cannot express how terrified I was.

{THIS MAY TRIGGER BEWARE PASS THIS PARAGRAPH

I have suffered my entire life from a traumatic rape. It still haunts me.

I thought I was going to repeat those feelings and emotions by going FT and facing people who would reject me, and most of all insult me was difficult and very triggering}

What then of the outcomes?

There were no trannie jokes.

There were some sick comments, that other people slapped down in a venomous manner, people were told in no uncertain term that I was a 'very courageous person'' to live my life. I'm unsure of that. Courage didn't come into it.

I have lost one colleague. He can't face me. Sadly he is now being ostracized by his colleagues.

I'm now trying to find a way to reach to him.

People in general?

OK I have a problem. I have the Love of my life Rebecca, my wife. She is totally disabled, she lives in care, she is physically totally ruined, mentally normal. She is a brain in a shell.

She knew about me of course before we married, we lived as sisters.

There is no way I can hurt her or let her be hurt. If I progressed would her carers take it out on her?

It was my greatest fear. I was careful and explained. The staff have been great. They love me and her and have no problems except.....

There are agency staff, temps who have never met me. I was in her room getting her into a wheelchair (it takes 3-4 people) . She pipes up. Oh XX this is my husband P. The reply was WTF woman, Gay marriage isn't allowed here. He was fired. I think I pass, and she now introduces me as her partner.

What am I saying?

It ain't as bad as you think. The worse case scenarios don't happen, you can do this and be happy.

And you will be!

[Donna Elvira]

   

I'm a big girl Seph, so don't fear hitting the hard questions,lol.

Passing is a HUGE concern of mine and I do care greatly about what others think, but it is also true that I want the perfect transition.  I've always had impossible standards that I place upon myself.  For example, I always worked hard to be an A student at all time and never an A- student (even though that wasn't always possible).  One of the reasons it's taking me forever to apply to grad school is I want the perfect application, despite the fact that there is no such and mine would clearly be less than adequate.   So, in a sense, yes this needs to go just right.  I'd be upset if I failed my own standards and didn't pass to a T.  There is truth behind the fact that I want this to go as perfectly as possible.  Not just in the eyes of others, but especially in my own eyes.  And I'm scared because I desperately want to transition, but I don't want to fail.  I don't want to be unpassable in any way.  For this reason I delay further and avoid making the progress I really want because I'm afraid of society and also afraid to confront what I've always delayed.  But at the same time, it's killing me to continue this.  It's never gone away and all my attempts coping have never pacified my feelings.  At the end of the day, I'm a girl and nothing can change that.  I would just like to start expressing myself as the real me and not worry so much about imperfections and screwups.  But I do.  And as a result, I don't live.  It's terrible.

Hi LtL,
Following a little disagreement we had a few weeks ago, I needed to stand back for a while and sort out a few of my own feelings, notably why I reacted the way I did to some of the things I was seeing.

With the last few posts on this thread I guess it's time to reappear as, in spite of what I said to you during that disagreement, I genuinely appreciate your remarkable honesty, how much  you contribute here  and most of all, I really feel for you.

Like Sephirah said in one of her excellent posts yesterday and today, I also certainly see some of who I was in your posts (BTW, maybe that's part of what I was reacting to a few weeks ago...), especially in what you say above.

All through my adolescence and most of my adult life, I was one of the most driven people you could run into. Everything I did, I had to be excellent at: from sport, to studies and work. As I was blessed by destiny with pretty good all around abilities I largely succeeded, always being among the top "performers" at anything I chose to do. There was no halfway house, if I decided to do it, I had to be among the best....and insure that others noticed it!  This BTW, didn't make me the most well liked person on the block, respected and maybe even admired yes, but really liked, apart from a couple of very close friends, no. 

I continued my life like this until 1996 (I was born in 1957) and in July of that year, I did a week long group psychotherapy that was sponsored by my employer of the time.  This very enlightened employer considered that to be a good manager of others, you first needed to understand yourself!

That week was a life changing event for me. There were 6 of us in the room for a week, all from different companies so no one knew us from before and we could leave at the end and never see each other again. There were two therapists with us, one playing bad cop and other playing good cop and between the two of them and feedback from the other participants, little by little, all the defenses came down.

The key learning for me that week was how much I didn't love myself, or even more explicitly, how much I felt I had never been loved by my mother. I managed to say those words on the third day of our week long session, and cried for hours after it, both during the session and when I got back to my hotel at the end of the day. Even writing this, remembering my feelings from that day, tears still come to my eyes.  Up until that day, I had never consciously been aware of that feeling in spite of it being at the heart of how I had lived my life up until then.

Among others, this deep rooted feeling of being unloved by one of the most important people in my life was the driver for me to always be among the top performers. I had a relentless need to prove my value and prove I was worthy of my mother's  love. 

I didn't bring up my gender issues during this session but am pretty convinced that in my own case at least, they are intimately linked with this feeling that I was not loved and not lovable.

I am not saying by any manner or means that you are in the same situation as I was but maybe you will still find some food for thought in this story.

Also, the good news is that after I understood this, I really did start to get far more control over my life. Three years later I had separated from my first wife, getting out of a very abusive relationship which I would never have gotten in to if I had had more self-esteem and self-love.

After that, I also finally started to accept my trans-identity, enough so to be able to openly discuss with my second wife when I met her in April 2005 and since then, in spite of some other major difficulties I have had to deal with, I think I have developed into a far more balanced and relaxed person, probably happier than at any time in my life. In spite of my transition, (or maybe a little because of it since it revealed far more vulnerability than people were used to seeing) I also get on far, far better with other people.

Sephirah hinted at the need to look at other issues beyond your GID to understand where you are now and maybe this contribution will provide you with some more material to help you know where to look.

Wishing you all very best.
Hugs
Donna

[Kristal]

There were some sick comments, that other people slapped down in a venomous manner, people were told in no uncertain term that I was a 'very courageous person'' to live my life. I'm unsure of that. Courage didn't come into it.

I see a lot of people calling trans folk "brave", and a lot of trans folk saying that they're not, that they're terrified. Well, they're right, we're not brave. We are courageous, however. Yes, there is a difference. What is this difference, you ask?



I made this about eight months ago when I was trying to describe why I preferred Luigi (the green one, for those of you not into video games) as a character. His brother Mario runs around fighting monsters without blinking an eye, and Luigi comes with him on these adventures despite being scared ->-bleeped-<-less. Because he doesn't let fear stop him from doing what needs to be done. His fear doesn't define him, and neither should yours. We trans folk may not be brave, but we do have courage, and that is a far more commendable trait.

[anjaq]

LTL, your descriptions sound extremely familiar to me. I could have written much of this when I was 23 and started transitioning. Including all the stuff about childhood and being a teenager and especially the lack of this "I am a girl" expression that people claim to be so typical for transsexuals. I think it is not because for some like us even at that age we are pretty much aware of the gender divide, the physical properties it is usually drawn at and that we clearly fall into a category that we do not like but thats how it is. For me it was like that, so I also did not really claim to be a girl but instead developed the concept that I basically wanted to be/become a girl instead.
A lot of the other things you said match my memory as well, so I think you are not at all an odd one out - which of course does not make things any easier though.

But as it often is with this background, there is that point where it just does not work anymore to keep going as a guy, IMO because the stoic male persona is incapable of reaching a certain potential. Its like.... running a male simulation on a female persona - as with all simulators, the full performance is only a fraction of what is possible. And at some stage when the requirements are rising and are not merely to be good at school anymore, it cannot do it. I could not do it - I could keep being good at school or college for a while but not in addition to that do a whole lot otherwise. And it broke down more often, i spent more and more time out of simulation mode in private and then oit became harder and harder to get back to a working simulation - it became even more stoic with time until with 23 it broke and I had to transition. I did not know what the heck I am going to end up with.
What I did was basically what I saw as the better of two choices which both did have its bad points but at least one of the choices looked like it had a lot more light in it and that was transitioning for me. So it was step by step really. I feared that I would be unpassable or ugly and maybe end up dead - but really I treid to stay in the moment. The decision became not to live as a functioning man or to be a beautiful woman but to do HRT or not, to have facial hair or not, to look into a more feminine face in the mirror or one that was less so, eventually to have SRS or to not have it - each decision at each step had its drawbacks and dangers, but for me each single decision was eventually clear and I felt that it was inevitable to make the decision the way I did and the sum of all of these was transition. I think it turned out well and in hindsight many of my older doubts cleared up as I saw how others think and by looking at myself from a distance in time.

A bad self image is not good and I still struggle with that as transition does not really solve that always. It made things better but not great. That is what some people will tell you - transition and SRS will not solve all your problems. And its true. But that does not change the fact trat for most of us transition still has to happen and that it can provide a fertile ground to deal with the other issues as well.

Oh as you may see I have stopped using the word 'transitioning' I haven't and I doubt that anyone has 'transitioned' I'm the same woman now as I was before, my physical and to some extent mental processes have changed.

I have to caution about that notion. All too often I have heard such or similar statements that somehow imply that little has changed in personality during transition. That one is "the same woman as before" or that one "was always a girl/woman" or that one "only corrected the body"... I think thats not that easy. I think that there definitely is a transition happening. At least in the experience of the one transitioning. Interestingly in hindsight one looks at it differently, maybe more as a discovery which then leads to the conclusion in hindsight that actually one always has been a woman. this is how I see it now too - I am who I am and I have not changed personality at 23, I just discovered myself, shed a stoic male simulation, I was in my mind a girl before and I remember all the dysphoria in a different way now, as a more clearly felt sense of being in the wrong kind of body back then. But that is NOW and I also remember how I felt and thought like in transition time and there was much more uncertainty and doubt and questioning going on. It was much more that "I want to be a girl" feeling than the "knowledge to actually be a girl". So really i think it should be recognized that during that time a lot happens to us and to how we experience life and transition and also to our memories and this process may at that time not be as clear cut as post-transition. And i think it is important that others in transition know that and dont think of post-transitioners as people who always had been solidly certain about everything they did to the degree that they even consider "transition" a word that should not be used.
It pained me a lot if post-ops told me that they "had always been a girl/woman before transition and nothing had changed except the body". I felt that if that is true and I am the same after transition as before in personality and identity, I would not be happy with that and this cast doubt on my decision to do it. But it was simply not true for me - my personality and identity developed and I discovered my buried self in me (which was as with LTL a teenage girl that got stuck not being able to develop). So I did develop and change a lot and became aware of my self and I was a different person post transition as before. Its not mutually exclusive though! As i said looking back I see that I was always the person who I am now, but I also realize that this person was buried under a huge pile of junk that became part of my persona pre transition and that transitioning was for me the phase in my life in which I got rid of a lot of this junk.

[Marina mtf]

I am very intrigued by this notion of male simulation because it fits my experience.

By my geek nature I think that I have been run a Male operating system on top of a female
hardware (the brain).

Of course it is different, and you are right, you won't have the same performance and the
host (the female self) is not visible.

---

The simulation can be pretty perfect, though. Probably my "intelligence" (I don't want to
flatter myself, but I think that I am "gifted" in this regard, probably because I am
a total failure in social contacts) has ruined me because it has allowed a fairly decent simulation
(almost in real time) of a male facade.

But all the simulations, eventually, show their nature. 

But is it possible to "undo" a simulation? That is another great problem, but
I think that uninstalling the male simulation is the hardest part in transition.

Transition is from M to F, but to reach F you have first to delete the M.

Otherwise it ends up like putting a lipstick on a pig, not too much female and not too much
"passable".

[A]

I think much of the difference in how one views transition is age (and type). When you transition at 40 years old, of course, you're gonna have had the time to actually live, to actually build yourself as a person. And naturally, you won't shed all of that because you transition. You're gonna stay roughly the same person, and indeed, you'll feel that you did nothing but adjust the shell so that it would suit the nut better (no, no idea why I came up with that nut analogy).

That fits with how most older transitioners seem to experience being transsexual, as a hard to explain inner feeling that they are female, an inner drive to live as a woman. You always "felt that way" inwardly, you feel, so basically you're only bringing your inside to the outside.

It's not so different from what you'll see more in younger transitioners, but there's that little important difference in how transition will often be seen as the only (or at least the most appropriate) way to live comfortably in society given one's personality. Basically, those people are unable to build themselves, to actually live their life, as they are. To those generally younger subjects, it is a much more major thing, I believe, since they're not adjusting their persona from someone who was relatively okay living and socializing for decades, but literally building it from scratch. More than in others, for those individuals, transition can be regarded as their life merely beginning, rather than it entering a new stage or it being a "second life".

Basically, for some (in which I'll include myself), running the "male operating system" and performing the simulation was never an option, and it only ended in error messages and utter failures. Transition to the female operating system isn't because it's more appropriate, it's because it's the only one compatible with the machine.

[Carrie Liz]

LTL, as you know, I've written a lot of posts myself about how I'm afraid to be flawed, and how I always had to be the best at everything otherwise I always felt like it wasn't even worth trying. And I had a huge complex about failure.

Over the past few days, I've been discovering something...

When I asked two of my close trans friends about how I could get over this feeling of inadequacy that comes to me whenever people stare at me, they said something very profound: "Why do you care? You're not transitioning for them, you're doing it for you."

Also, I kind of realized that the more I stood off and watched girls from a distance being jealous of them, the more I was always going to feel inadequate, feel like they had some special natural femininity that I didn't. That part of it can only come through practice... years of being around girls, years of identifying as one, and years of subconsciously copying their behavior.

True femininity through hormones takes YEARS. On this site we'd like to believe that it's only a few short months, but really, before one starts getting the same softness as a genetic female, this same "beautiful soft feminine perfection" that I'm sure both you and I are jealous of, it's years. I'm still not there yet, and I've been on hormones for almost 9 months. I was just talking to a friend yesterday who says that it took her FOUR YEARS before she started to truly feel comfortable going out and felt like she was where she needed to be in terms of body shape and skin texture and just feeling like a normal woman.

Transition is not an instantaneous thing. It takes a LONG time. You're not going to start learning until you start trying. And if you don't start trying, you're always just going to be sitting on the sidelines of life wishing that you could have these things that other people do.

So please, allow yourself to be flawed. It's okay. You're supposed to be flawed in the beginning. Comfort in your femaleness, and public confidence, and getting used to it, only comes through YEARS of practice. And yes, I really do mean years. Both of my trans friends my age have told me so. And they certainly are finally now at the point where they have the same comfort about themselves that genetic females have, so I trust them. This site makes it seem like people have perfect transitions in only a few months on hormones, but those are just completely unrealistic expectations. The ability to look like a girl does come quickly. Really accepting that you are one, though, and feeling "complete" and "normal," takes much longer, and it's something that you really can't see just from people's pictures.

[BunnyBee]

I think it is great to strive for perfection, but I just worry that if you need your first attempt to be perfect that it will hold you in place and keep you from taking those first steps, which won't be perfect btw.   I hope you can maybe look at your first strides toward being out as yourself as a first draft.  It doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to give you a starting point that you can refine and make better through time.

I am also afraid that if you get too discouraged by how things go on your first days, that that will hurt your progression too.  Van Gogh's first attempt at drawing was not to paint Starry Night.  It takes time and putting yourself out there and enduring disappointment and accepting and learning from feedback to achieve anything resembling perfection.   Actual perfection is a myth that doesn't exist in the real world anyway.

[Ltl89]

I felt the need to address another chapter to the story, my teenage years.  This is a very sensitive one, so I ask people not to pry or question too deeply about this.  While it may be a silly thing for some, it's a BIG deal to me.   I'm bringing it up because it may address another aspect of Seph's question which I avoided.   It probably is a huge part of the equation and addresses something that Seph (your new nickname) has talked about perfection and whether I fear a let down.  Please don't press me too far on this because it's a difficult aspect of my past and I'm just as much as a trans woman as everyone despite it.

For most of my life, I hated being trans and didn't understand it.  Yes, I came to believe I should have been female around 10ish, but I didn't necessarily see myself as one till I  knew what a transsexual was.  Because I was a really sheltered child and didn't have access to the internet till I was 18, I had no idea trans people existed.  All I knew about was rupaul and the Maury show's feature "is it a guy or a girl"  Despite the fact that I always believed I should be a girl and wanted to be one, I never thought that being trans was a real thing (until later of course).  In my head, I desperately wanted to be a girl, but wasn't really an authentic one.  As a result, I hated myself and hid my feelings, hoping that one day I could learn to be a boy and come to accept my circumstances.

In a way, I had a silly plan that would help me become a boy and get over my trans feelings.  See, I had that genital defect (please don't talk about this directly) which has always plagued me and caused me to feel different from other kids.   Even though I hated my genitals and always wished to have female parts, I felt like maybe correcting my problems and fixing my defect would make me feel more comfortable being  male and would lessen some of the body dysphoria.   Like maybe I would fix this and automatically learn to feel like a guy and want to live as one.  It's really dumb at the end of the day because identity is much more than our bodies and I desperately wanted to be a girl in every way possible, but I was a dumb kid.   So, eventually, I was able to have a corrective surgery and "fix" my genitals (it took forever for reasons that I will elaborate on in another post). After that, I realized that my dysphoria was still there and, in fact,  even worse.  I still wanted to be a girl and my magical cure didn't solve it.  Still, I tried to suppress it as best I can.  I made an attempt to be a "normal guy" then a "gay guy" (more suitable for me, lol) which I hated both and it led me to learn about my identity and come to slowly embrace it in steps.  I suppose in some ways,  I do fear that transitioning will never get rid of these feelings.  Much like my past surgery couldn't take away these feelings,  perhaps transitioning will only do so much to alleviate my body dysphoria and make me feel authentic.    One of the reasons I isolate every conceivable imperfection is that I hope for it to dissipate.   Much like the fact that I could never live up to the expectations of male due to physical flaws and socially being different,  perhaps I can't fully live up to my expectations as female.  At the end of the day, it's what I want, but I don't want to fail.  I need to live as female and am tired of running away from my identity, but I really want it to be as perfect as possible.  The feelings have never gone away no matter how hard I try.  I've always wanted to live like any other girl as well as look like one.   And for once, I would like to know how to feel pretty and confident in myself.   Like I said before, I still very much that 10 year old girl dressing up looking the mirror wondering when it will all become real, not knowing how to make it so or take away these feelings.

Having said that, there are some other factors at hand as well.  I don't think this is the only reason or perhaps the main issue behind my fear.  It's just a contributing factor. There is a lot of internal grief, but also external pressure. 

Thanks for all the responses, I'll do my best to answer the questions and take the suggestions into account.

[izzy]

I feel that you are being hard on yourself because the mental image of what you percieve yourself to be the ideal women and what you feel society will percieve you, you feel that you want to be perfect in every aspect of it. I think you will get there, it will just take time when you are comfortable with yourself, when the image of yourself overlaps what how others percieve you as. I am no where near your point of transitioning but I see where you coming from. Because I am hard on myself too because I get esteem from what other people tell me all the time.

[Ltl89]

All I would say to you, hon, is that sometimes it's the imperfections and screw ups which make one more genuine, not less. As trite as this may sound: you don't have to be perfect, you just have to be you. I don't think it's how close to perfection you can achieve something which makes people warm to you, and take you for who you are. I think it's likely more that you do the best you can, no matter what. Keep going when you don't think you can. To accept there are some variables that you have no control over and just make the most of the ones you do.

It's blatantly obvious from your posts that you know exactly what you need to do. And how to do it. But what's holding you back is a fear which paralyses you. I suspect this fear comes in part from something else, not related to gender. Which is part of the reason I asked these questions. I wonder if working on these fears will allow everything else to fall into place somewhat. To work on the pressure you place on yourself, you know? Where it comes from, and if there are ways you can alleviate some of that to enable you to move forward.

What is it about society which scares you hon? The unpredictability? Or... something else?

I don't have a full answer to this.  My past bullying probably has a lot to do with it.  I know what's it's like to be called names and harassed for not fitting in, especially with guys.  I've been called so many names in the book that I'm very scared of other people.   Truthfully, I've been on the receiving end of physical violence and been harassed for perceived differences.   "Oh you don't know how to play football", okay queer let's bully you and threaten violence against you.  Having your face thrown in a urinal because you're different.  That kind of bs.  But I also remember things like walking to my car after a particularly hard day at work and seeing the fog on my mirror with the word "->-bleeped-<-" written in big letters.  I got to cry on my way home.   Also, I know what it's like to be brought in the back office of a professional environment  someone and asked to close the door and explain who the hottest guy in the office.  But it's okay because that same individual gave me a dead flower one day since I was the "prettiest girl in the office". Usually, whenever people detect that I'm different, it doesn't turn out well.  So, I hide behind a stoic persona hoping that I won't be bullied.  Then again, I don't always do a good job.  I'm scared and don't want to be bullied or rejected again.  I want to fit in and just be normal and fear transitioning will be socially challenging.

[A]

Wow, I feel so sorry about the awful stuff you've been through. I guess I really was lucky, somehow, for how little I was bullied. Like, a tiny bit in primary school, and then exactly four short events in secondary school. I wonder if I was too much of a daze, or something, if I just didn't notice some of the bullying. Or maybe you just grew up among too many awful people. I mean, resorting to physical violence because, what, you don't like football is pretty extreme.

I think I was only subject to physical violence once, in primary school, when another child tried to decapitate me with half an old cardboard "for sale" sign (with obviously only minor wounds), to which I kindly cooperated because he asked me to. (I even had him stop for a bit so I could move aside my muffler that was making it ineffective, if you wanna have a laugh at how jello-soft a kid can be, haha.)

So, yeah, it's not a very useful post to you, but really, sorry that you had to deal with such awful people.

[Ltl89]

   
Hi LtL,
Following a little disagreement we had a few weeks ago, I needed to stand back for a while and sort out a few of my own feelings, notably why I reacted the way I did to some of the things I was seeing.

With the last few posts on this thread I guess it's time to reappear as, in spite of what I said to you during that disagreement, I genuinely appreciate your remarkable honesty, how much  you contribute here  and most of all, I really feel for you.

Like Sephirah said in one of her excellent posts yesterday and today, I also certainly see some of who I was in your posts (BTW, maybe that's part of what I was reacting to a few weeks ago...), especially in what you say above.

All through my adolescence and most of my adult life, I was one of the most driven people you could run into. Everything I did, I had to be excellent at: from sport, to studies and work. As I was blessed by destiny with pretty good all around abilities I largely succeeded, always being among the top "performers" at anything I chose to do. There was no halfway house, if I decided to do it, I had to be among the best....and insure that others noticed it!  This BTW, didn't make me the most well liked person on the block, respected and maybe even admired yes, but really liked, apart from a couple of very close friends, no. 

I continued my life like this until 1996 (I was born in 1957) and in July of that year, I did a week long group psychotherapy that was sponsored by my employer of the time.  This very enlightened employer considered that to be a good manager of others, you first needed to understand yourself!

That week was a life changing event for me. There were 6 of us in the room for a week, all from different companies so no one knew us from before and we could leave at the end and never see each other again. There were two therapists with us, one playing bad cop and other playing good cop and between the two of them and feedback from the other participants, little by little, all the defenses came down.

The key learning for me that week was how much I didn't love myself, or even more explicitly, how much I felt I had never been loved by my mother. I managed to say those words on the third day of our week long session, and cried for hours after it, both during the session and when I got back to my hotel at the end of the day. Even writing this, remembering my feelings from that day, tears still come to my eyes.  Up until that day, I had never consciously been aware of that feeling in spite of it being at the heart of how I had lived my life up until then.

Among others, this deep rooted feeling of being unloved by one of the most important people in my life was the driver for me to always be among the top performers. I had a relentless need to prove my value and prove I was worthy of my mother's  love. 

I didn't bring up my gender issues during this session but am pretty convinced that in my own case at least, they are intimately linked with this feeling that I was not loved and not lovable.

I am not saying by any manner or means that you are in the same situation as I was but maybe you will still find some food for thought in this story.

Also, the good news is that after I understood this, I really did start to get far more control over my life. Three years later I had separated from my first wife, getting out of a very abusive relationship which I would never have gotten in to if I had had more self-esteem and self-love.

After that, I also finally started to accept my trans-identity, enough so to be able to openly discuss with my second wife when I met her in April 2005 and since then, in spite of some other major difficulties I have had to deal with, I think I have developed into a far more balanced and relaxed person, probably happier than at any time in my life. In spite of my transition, (or maybe a little because of it since it revealed far more vulnerability than people were used to seeing) I also get on far, far better with other people.

Sephirah hinted at the need to look at other issues beyond your GID to understand where you are now and maybe this contribution will provide you with some more material to help you know where to look.

Wishing you all very best.
Hugs
Donna

Donna,

Everything is water under the bridge.  I take responsibility in my part as well and have since apologized.  There is no reason for friends to carry on with a petty grudge.  At least, I truly hope that will be the case.

As for your point, sure there are things holding me back, but what are they.  My past bullying, my body dysphoria.... or my family?  Since you are very aware of how special my mother is to me, you must realize this is a very difficult topic.  Like I said before, I'd take a bullet for my mom and she is my best friend in the whole world.  In my opinion she and my family are the best.  However, even the best, can have damaging effects whether they realize it or not.

Growing up in a very Italian family, shouting and fighting wasn't too uncommon in my house.  I can remember going to bed every night with the sounds of screaming because of some family dispute.  In many ways, the domineering nature of some of my family members had an impact on me.  As a kid, my TV was not to go past volume 2 and I would be checked up very frequently by a family member to ensure that I didn't dare raise it to the incredibly loud volume 3,lol.  The same was true for radio or anything else.  Even things like internet was really controlled and limited for me, until I got my first computer at age 18.  I was expected to follow the rules and not disobey.  In some ways, most kids experience this, so I don't take anything negative from it.  Besides, I have much more freedom nowadays.  And it wasn't always bad. For example, I always could experiement with music and listen to whatever I wanted, as long as I listened on my CD player. 

As for my mother, she is an amazing woman.  Still, there are times when she may have unintentionally hurt me.  My mom always wanted the best for me and saw me as her special "little boy".  Because she wanted me to have a good life, she would force me to do things that I hated like play on a baseball league and practice all the time.  I hated it and told her this, but that's what boys were supposed to do.  Hell, I even was forced to go to baseball camp which I was able to get out of due to a fractured arm (which I played with for a painful 3 days before I was excused).  Then again, she had no problem with my sister and I playing dressing up and pretending to be female celebrities when I was young.   So, she was a great mom and allowed my gender bending.  Though, things did change a bit as I got older, and I became more aware of the expected gender roles which is why I began to hide.

One thing that does really bother me is that she ignored my body dysphoria for most of my life.  As I said in the previous post, my mom was obviously aware of my genital defect, but she didn't like to discuss it at all.  Whenever I would ask my mom to see a doctor about the issue, she would just ignore it.  Like me, my mother was very good at avoiding the difficult stuff.  Why bring up something not worth discussing?  Even though she would always observe that I looked uncomfortable in my own skin and would tell me that she noticed that, she never wanted to address something that I wanted addressed.   While I never discussed my trans feelings with her until recently (out of fear and self loathing), I did constantly explain my intense dislike of my body and especially that area.  It took forever for her to listen and address this and call the proper professionals. That's something that does hurt till this day.

If there is one thing that I take umbrage with against my family, it's the denial.  The whole boys will be boys; except when they aren't.  There were so many signs around them, yet all I hear is were no signs and that this makes no sense.  It makes no sense to me and it both angers and hurts me at the same time.  It' especially annoying because I used to always hear things about what a different "boy" I was and all the suspicions that I was gay.  But when I came out as trans, "oh, never even suspected anything".

Does my family play a role?  I don't know.  Honestly, I don't.  But these are some of the frustrating things that I can think of off the top of my head that perhaps play a role.  But I don't know.

[izzy]

I feel quite terrible that you have been bullied this way. I think learningtolive, its a combination of everything in your life thats all lines up. I have the swiss cheese analong. When all the holes line up in place, everthing falls through. Getting validation from your mother might be part of the problem. Whenever you do something that you idenif with, you get reprimended and feel guilty about yourself doing it.

[Ltl89]

I see a lot of people calling trans folk "brave", and a lot of trans folk saying that they're not, that they're terrified. Well, they're right, we're not brave. We are courageous, however. Yes, there is a difference. What is this difference, you ask?



I made this about eight months ago when I was trying to describe why I preferred Luigi (the green one, for those of you not into video games) as a character. His brother Mario runs around fighting monsters without blinking an eye, and Luigi comes with him on these adventures despite being scared ->-bleeped-<-less. Because he doesn't let fear stop him from doing what needs to be done. His fear doesn't define him, and neither should yours. We trans folk may not be brave, but we do have courage, and that is a far more commendable trait.

I too have always preferred Luigi. I'm guessing it has to do with his green outfit.

LTL, your descriptions sound extremely familiar to me. I could have written much of this when I was 23 and started transitioning. Including all the stuff about childhood and being a teenager and especially the lack of this "I am a girl" expression that people claim to be so typical for transsexuals. I think it is not because for some like us even at that age we are pretty much aware of the gender divide, the physical properties it is usually drawn at and that we clearly fall into a category that we do not like but thats how it is. For me it was like that, so I also did not really claim to be a girl but instead developed the concept that I basically wanted to be/become a girl instead.
A lot of the other things you said match my memory as well, so I think you are not at all an odd one out - which of course does not make things any easier though.

But as it often is with this background, there is that point where it just does not work anymore to keep going as a guy, IMO because the stoic male persona is incapable of reaching a certain potential. Its like.... running a male simulation on a female persona - as with all simulators, the full performance is only a fraction of what is possible. And at some stage when the requirements are rising and are not merely to be good at school anymore, it cannot do it. I could not do it - I could keep being good at school or college for a while but not in addition to that do a whole lot otherwise. And it broke down more often, i spent more and more time out of simulation mode in private and then oit became harder and harder to get back to a working simulation - it became even more stoic with time until with 23 it broke and I had to transition. I did not know what the heck I am going to end up with.
What I did was basically what I saw as the better of two choices which both did have its bad points but at least one of the choices looked like it had a lot more light in it and that was transitioning for me. So it was step by step really. I feared that I would be unpassable or ugly and maybe end up dead - but really I treid to stay in the moment. The decision became not to live as a functioning man or to be a beautiful woman but to do HRT or not, to have facial hair or not, to look into a more feminine face in the mirror or one that was less so, eventually to have SRS or to not have it - each decision at each step had its drawbacks and dangers, but for me each single decision was eventually clear and I felt that it was inevitable to make the decision the way I did and the sum of all of these was transition. I think it turned out well and in hindsight many of my older doubts cleared up as I saw how others think and by looking at myself from a distance in time.

A bad self image is not good and I still struggle with that as transition does not really solve that always. It made things better but not great. That is what some people will tell you - transition and SRS will not solve all your problems. And its true. But that does not change the fact trat for most of us transition still has to happen and that it can provide a fertile ground to deal with the other issues as well.
I have to caution about that notion. All too often I have heard such or similar statements that somehow imply that little has changed in personality during transition. That one is "the same woman as before" or that one "was always a girl/woman" or that one "only corrected the body"... I think thats not that easy. I think that there definitely is a transition happening. At least in the experience of the one transitioning. Interestingly in hindsight one looks at it differently, maybe more as a discovery which then leads to the conclusion in hindsight that actually one always has been a woman. this is how I see it now too - I am who I am and I have not changed personality at 23, I just discovered myself, shed a stoic male simulation, I was in my mind a girl before and I remember all the dysphoria in a different way now, as a more clearly felt sense of being in the wrong kind of body back then. But that is NOW and I also remember how I felt and thought like in transition time and there was much more uncertainty and doubt and questioning going on. It was much more that "I want to be a girl" feeling than the "knowledge to actually be a girl". So really i think it should be recognized that during that time a lot happens to us and to how we experience life and transition and also to our memories and this process may at that time not be as clear cut as post-transition. And i think it is important that others in transition know that and dont think of post-transitioners as people who always had been solidly certain about everything they did to the degree that they even consider "transition" a word that should not be used.
It pained me a lot if post-ops told me that they "had always been a girl/woman before transition and nothing had changed except the body". I felt that if that is true and I am the same after transition as before in personality and identity, I would not be happy with that and this cast doubt on my decision to do it. But it was simply not true for me - my personality and identity developed and I discovered my buried self in me (which was as with LTL a teenage girl that got stuck not being able to develop). So I did develop and change a lot and became aware of my self and I was a different person post transition as before. Its not mutually exclusive though! As i said looking back I see that I was always the person who I am now, but I also realize that this person was buried under a huge pile of junk that became part of my persona pre transition and that transitioning was for me the phase in my life in which I got rid of a lot of this junk.

Thanks Anjaq.  The stoic male persona is much more of a put on because I really don't like being myself in public.  As you can see, when people detect me, it has had negative consequences.  I'm afraid to be myself and don't know how to do so without it having a negative response.  So I put on this shield and hope to blend in even though I hate how I do blend in.  The only people I ever felt comfortable to let my guard down around was my family and even that was only to an extent.  Still, I'm only so good at hiding and people who get to know me realize I'm not quite that stoic male.  It's hard to explain.  I act differently around different people.  Those who I feel I can trust get the real me, while others see the fearful put on that I hate and makes me feel sad.  I suppose I just have to learn to feel comfortable with me and not care about what others think of me.  Though, that is easier said then done.  I can't wait for me to feel comfortable being female and acting girly without fear.

I am very intrigued by this notion of male simulation because it fits my experience.

By my geek nature I think that I have been run a Male operating system on top of a female
hardware (the brain).

Of course it is different, and you are right, you won't have the same performance and the
host (the female self) is not visible.

---

The simulation can be pretty perfect, though. Probably my "intelligence" (I don't want to
flatter myself, but I think that I am "gifted" in this regard, probably because I am
a total failure in social contacts) has ruined me because it has allowed a fairly decent simulation
(almost in real time) of a male facade.

But all the simulations, eventually, show their nature. 

But is it possible to "undo" a simulation? That is another great problem, but
I think that uninstalling the male simulation is the hardest part in transition.

Transition is from M to F, but to reach F you have first to delete the M.

Otherwise it ends up like putting a lipstick on a pig, not too much female and not too much
"passable".

Lol.  I think you have a good point.  Is there an easy way to delete the M.  I'll make sure to program my brain.

[Ltl89]

LTL, as you know, I've written a lot of posts myself about how I'm afraid to be flawed, and how I always had to be the best at everything otherwise I always felt like it wasn't even worth trying. And I had a huge complex about failure.

Over the past few days, I've been discovering something...

When I asked two of my close trans friends about how I could get over this feeling of inadequacy that comes to me whenever people stare at me, they said something very profound: "Why do you care? You're not transitioning for them, you're doing it for you."

Also, I kind of realized that the more I stood off and watched girls from a distance being jealous of them, the more I was always going to feel inadequate, feel like they had some special natural femininity that I didn't. That part of it can only come through practice... years of being around girls, years of identifying as one, and years of subconsciously copying their behavior.

True femininity through hormones takes YEARS. On this site we'd like to believe that it's only a few short months, but really, before one starts getting the same softness as a genetic female, this same "beautiful soft feminine perfection" that I'm sure both you and I are jealous of, it's years. I'm still not there yet, and I've been on hormones for almost 9 months. I was just talking to a friend yesterday who says that it took her FOUR YEARS before she started to truly feel comfortable going out and felt like she was where she needed to be in terms of body shape and skin texture and just feeling like a normal woman.

Transition is not an instantaneous thing. It takes a LONG time. You're not going to start learning until you start trying. And if you don't start trying, you're always just going to be sitting on the sidelines of life wishing that you could have these things that other people do.

So please, allow yourself to be flawed. It's okay. You're supposed to be flawed in the beginning. Comfort in your femaleness, and public confidence, and getting used to it, only comes through YEARS of practice. And yes, I really do mean years. Both of my trans friends my age have told me so. And they certainly are finally now at the point where they have the same comfort about themselves that genetic females have, so I trust them. This site makes it seem like people have perfect transitions in only a few months on hormones, but those are just completely unrealistic expectations. The ability to look like a girl does come quickly. Really accepting that you are one, though, and feeling "complete" and "normal," takes much longer, and it's something that you really can't see just from people's pictures.

You're certainly right.  I just wish that I could except that it takes time, work and putting yourself out there.  All of these things scare me.

I think it is great to strive for perfection, but I just worry that if you need your first attempt to be perfect that it will hold you in place and keep you from taking those first steps, which won't be perfect btw.   I hope you can maybe look at your first strides toward being out as yourself as a first draft.  It doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to give you a starting point that you can refine and make better through time.

I am also afraid that if you get too discouraged by how things go on your first days, that that will hurt your progression too.  Van Gogh's first attempt at drawing was not to paint Starry Night.  It takes time and putting yourself out there and enduring disappointment and accepting and learning from feedback to achieve anything resembling perfection.   Actual perfection is a myth that doesn't exist in the real world anyway.

Great advice Jen.  You have a point.  This is what I'm trying to accept and overcome.

I feel that you are being hard on yourself because the mental image of what you percieve yourself to be the ideal women and what you feel society will percieve you, you feel that you want to be perfect in every aspect of it. I think you will get there, it will just take time when you are comfortable with yourself, when the image of yourself overlaps what how others percieve you as. I am no where near your point of transitioning but I see where you coming from. Because I am hard on myself too because I get esteem from what other people tell me all the time.

Yes, the opinions of others mean everything sometimes.  It's weird, but sometimes I can't help what others feel or say more than I care about my own feelings.  As a result, I hide myself away and try to meet expectations that I was never able to meet and be someone I'm not.  that's why I'm so used to repressing myself.

Wow, I feel so sorry about the awful stuff you've been through. I guess I really was lucky, somehow, for how little I was bullied. Like, a tiny bit in primary school, and then exactly four short events in secondary school. I wonder if I was too much of a daze, or something, if I just didn't notice some of the bullying. Or maybe you just grew up among too many awful people. I mean, resorting to physical violence because, what, you don't like football is pretty extreme.

I think I was only subject to physical violence once, in primary school, when another child tried to decapitate me with half an old cardboard "for sale" sign (with obviously only minor wounds), to which I kindly cooperated because he asked me to. (I even had him stop for a bit so I could move aside my muffler that was making it ineffective, if you wanna have a laugh at how jello-soft a kid can be, haha.)

So, yeah, it's not a very useful post to you, but really, sorry that you had to deal with such awful people.

It's not so bad.  Believe me, many have had it worse than I.  I almost feel stupid for complaining about my bullying because it isn't the be all and end all of bullying.  Nor was every aspect of my past was bad.  I have some great accomplishments of which I'm proud of.  It's just hard for me to express myself without fear of others.

I feel quite terrible that you have been bullied this way. I think learningtolive, its a combination of everything in your life thats all lines up. I have the swiss cheese analong. When all the holes line up in place, everthing falls through. Getting validation from your mother might be part of the problem. Whenever you do something that you idenif with, you get reprimended and feel guilty about yourself doing it.

Well, my mother has been getting a little better.  We have stopped fighting and have come to a "don't ask don't tell strategy".  Yeah, she won't change the pronouns whenever I ask and she tells me she doesn't want to here about anything related to my gender problems when I try to open up to her, but it is seriously better.  I'm considering doing family therapy with her as a way to work things out.  Maybe that will help.

[Donna Elvira]

Donna,

Everything is water under the bridge.  I take responsibility in my part as well and have since apologized.  There is no reason for friends to carry on with a petty grudge.  At least, I truly hope that will be the case.

As for your point, sure there are things holding me back, but what are they.  My past bullying, my body dysphoria.... or my family?  Since you are very aware of how special my mother is to me, you must realize this is a very difficult topic.  Like I said before, I'd take a bullet for my mom and she is my best friend in the whole world.  In my opinion she and my family are the best.  However, even the best, can have damaging effects whether they realize it or not.

Growing up in a very Italian family, shouting and fighting wasn't too uncommon in my house.  I can remember going to bed every night with the sounds of screaming because of some family dispute.  In many ways, the domineering nature of some of my family members had an impact on me.  As a kid, my TV was not to go past volume 2 and I would be checked up very frequently by a family member to ensure that I didn't dare raise it to the incredibly loud volume 3,lol.  The same was true for radio or anything else.  Even things like internet was really controlled and limited for me, until I got my first computer at age 18.  I was expected to follow the rules and not disobey.  In some ways, most kids experience this, so I don't take anything negative from it.  Besides, I have much more freedom nowadays.  And it wasn't always bad. For example, I always could experiement with music and listen to whatever I wanted, as long as I listened on my CD player. 

As for my mother, she is an amazing woman.  Still, there are times when she may have unintentionally hurt me.  My mom always wanted the best for me and saw me as her special "little boy".  Because she wanted me to have a good life, she would force me to do things that I hated like play on a baseball league and practice all the time.  I hated it and told her this, but that's what boys were supposed to do.  Hell, I even was forced to go to baseball camp which I was able to get out of due to a fractured arm (which I played with for a painful 3 days before I was excused).  Then again, she had no problem with my sister and I playing dressing up and pretending to be female celebrities when I was young.   So, she was a great mom and allowed my gender bending.  Though, things did change a bit as I got older, and I became more aware of the expected gender roles which is why I began to hide.

One thing that does really bother me is that she ignored my body dysphoria for most of my life.  As I said in the previous post, my mom was obviously aware of my genital defect, but she didn't like to discuss it at all.  Whenever I would ask my mom to see a doctor about the issue, she would just ignore it.  Like me, my mother was very good at avoiding the difficult stuff.  Why bring up something not worth discussing?  Even though she would always observe that I looked uncomfortable in my own skin and would tell me that she noticed that, she never wanted to address something that I wanted addressed.   While I never discussed my trans feelings with her until recently (out of fear and self loathing), I did constantly explain my intense dislike of my body and especially that area.  It took forever for her to listen and address this and call the proper professionals. That's something that does hurt till this day.

If there is one thing that I take umbrage with against my family, it's the denial.  The whole boys will be boys; except when they aren't.  There were so many signs around them, yet all I hear is were no signs and that this makes no sense.  It makes no sense to me and it both angers and hurts me at the same time.  It' especially annoying because I used to always hear things about what a different "boy" I was and all the suspicions that I was gay.  But when I came out as trans, "oh, never even suspected anything".

Does my family play a role?  I don't know.  Honestly, I don't.  But these are some of the frustrating things that I can think of off the top of my head that perhaps play a role.  But I don't know.

LtL,
I preferred to answer this by PM.
Take care!
Donna