major sacrifices in order to transition

[danielle28]

 are there any other ladies out there who made major sacrifices in order to transition? for instance I have decided to move all my stuff to a storage bin and sleep in my car for the next 90 days while  I save up money for my transition and to get out of debt. I am 10 days into doing that's already. I don't expect anyone to understand. I am doing what is necessary in order to clean my financial slate. I have never been more proud and happier than right now than. why? because for once I am doing what I need to do for me to move forward with my transition. I have a good job and have been able to make it work thus far. I was wondering if any other ladies have made sacrifices for their transition that they would like to share
to inspire others who may be struggling. I was living in an apartment that was extremely noisy and I couldn't get any sleep anyway. I actually get more sleep in my car then I got in my apartment. thank you ladies for continuing to inspire me  with all your sharing on this forum. danielle

[Jessica Merriman]

I lost a 16 year marriage and one child, my daughter. My son decided to stay with me and being Full Time in my presentation it was only awkward for him for about four days. He accepts me now and my parents have begrudgingly accepted me for the most part. I have not lost nearly as much as I thought I would, but money is tight. Since the divorce it has started to eat into my SRS fund, but it is not too bad yet. I have not lost nearly what some of the others here have though.

You have my admiration and respect which are two things I value a lot and don't just bestow on just anyone. What YOU are doing shows tremendous resolve, dedication and planning.  I think you will come out of this in great shape and have a happy life. Congrats on the extremes you are going to in order to be who you are inside!

[Hikari]

Sure, I get it. I decided to go drive a tractor trailer not because I wanted to, I never really enjoy driving anything larger than a van. Basically I know I needed more income than what I had, and I knew I could just not go home and sleep in the truck. I mean it isn't even that bad because you have a bed, and everything else, and if you never go home your dispatcher loves you as that means more work.

In the end I couldn't really do it as long as would be needed to really save up all the money I would need, I ended up doing that for less than a year, but now I rent a room for a reasonably low price and just go home on the weekends. Saving that money allowed me to do things I never thought I would be able to and allowed me to really change my lifestyle to a point where transition isn't some financial impossibility, it might take a couple of years still, but that is a million times closer than I was a mere two years ago.

I also rent a storage unit, even though I have a bedroom and car in addition to my truck, not sure when I will be able to use my stuff again, but when I do I want to legally be a woman using my stuff.

[barbie]

I am not afford to sacrifice anything, and I gave up transition several years ago.

Good luck!

barbie~~

[danielle28]

 Jessica thank you so much.  I don't have custody of my kids so.I am able to do this. when I do get them I take them to a hotel and we go swimming.that's always fun when it's cold. my kids live full time with their mother and I get them as my work schedule permits. I see them every week and am very close to them. its hard when you don't have the same work schedule every week that constantly changes between nights and days. I was fortunate to have an amicable divorce. my ex wife understand completely so we are able to make it work

[calico]

Hmm my sacrifice. I parted and sold a car that I had been working on building/making a local legend, pouring blood sweat tears and memories of friends and times that went on over a 8 year period to pay for my surgery. Sadly if I just focused I could have paid for the surgery many times over with the money that went into that car.  Do I miss it?  Yes, it was fun, exilerating, and some of the best times of my life.  Do I regret selling/parting it out?  Nope, I'd do it again,  if it came down to it because while it was fun it never gave me the one thing I needed most.....  Serenity for my soul

[suzifrommd]

are there any other ladies out there who made major sacrifices in order to transition?

I gave up a 20+ year marriage and the opportunity to live with my 16-year-old daughter. I feel both losses daily, but it was more than worth it for the opportunity to be me.

[Missy~rmdlm]

I lost my ex, and in a related way, my house. In another view it clarified who didn't belong in my life anyhow.

[stephaniec]

I'm a little more luckier I didn't have anything to begin with.

[Eva Marie]

I am early in transition but I am in the process of losing a 26 year marriage, and I expect to lose more as this process unfolds. In the last two years I have lost a house with a fully equipped garage full of tools, have run through my savings, have taken on a lot of debt, and now live a very modest life in a small apartment. I drive a 15 year old derelict car that's held together with spit & bubble gum.

With those losses come gains. I have gained the real me, and I have gained true happiness and I have made lots of new friends - life is good. If my soon to be ex-wife doesn't appreciate or want to be with the new, improved, happy, fabulous me then surely someone else will 

[LizMarie]

I lost a 35 year marriage, my eldest and youngest adult sons, and my grandchildren by those adult sons.

[big kim]

Had nothing to lose.

[Chic]

I have nothing of my own, but that's literally because I just recently became old enough to have a job and I don't think there are any real good places to work around here, so I don't bother.

I have a chance in life to prevent myself from losing anything. I've already taken the precaution of only dating extremely tolerant heterosexual men (my type) who are willing to wait for my transition and see only my personality. I'm not sexually attracted to women so I'll never have a wife.

My hope is that I find a straight/bi guy in college while I'm pre-op but living full-time as female on hormones. That way we can work together to buy a house, and once we get settled down we can start saving up for my SRS (which I'm sure he'd love very much).

[noleen111]

My old life... which included my parents...

All as I had to start my new life is my best friend and a nearly completed qualification and some female hormones starting their work.

I love my new life and it was worth it.. now I even have my mother back... she now loves having a daughter.. my father passed on before accepting his daughter.

[stephaniec]

my mother and father have passed, but I think they knew I was heading down this path because of my childhood cross dressing and behavior.  They always just let me be. I think though I'm going to lose my niece and nephews when I'm full time.

[Ms Grace]

I'll let you know after I tell my folks...I fully expect to be cut off (at least by my father) and cut out of the will.

[Joanna Dark]

Hmm. Well i got a job and lost it. But now I'm suing and have a major law firm behind me, so maybe I didn't lose after all. But I noticed that I did lose my testes. They seem to have vanished and now it looks like I have a vag in my underwear which is weird. Uh, I lost the ability to care about gender change fiction or erotica. I used to love that stuff and now have no use for it. Since, ya know, I'm living it.

Hmm, my brother doesn't seem very happy with me and we had a huge fight thru text messages. But he'll come around. My mom did. Basically.

So, I haven't lost much of anything. And I have stuff to lose. Things could get a lot worse. In fact, I think I have gained quite a lot like a great friend or ex-BF or future husband (he be really confused). So, all in all, it's greaaaat.

[Jill F]

This thread really got the waterworks going for me.  Apparently I've won the trans* lottery and I must admit that I have some major survivor's guilt issues. 

I had no idea what would happen to me after I bared myself to the world.   I was a nervous wreck for months.  Coming out to my wife was the first thing I did, and I know now that could have gone really badly.  In fact, had I known that the odds of my marriage surviving were something like 9 to 1 against, I probably would have tried to bottle it up (dark pun intended) even longer.  Maybe it's a good thing I wasn't doing much research back then.   My wife rocks, BTW.   

Telling family was hard as well.   Again, we had no idea how the parental units would take it.  They all run pretty conservative, except for my mother, who is fairly middle-of-the-road and has a PhD in microbiology.  Ironically, she probably took it the worst of all of them.   My wife didn't think her parents would take it well, and perhaps disinherit her from a small fortune, but they accepted me right away and were immediately happy for me.  My parents took some time to come around, but my brother and sister were completely nonchalant with it.  One of my sister's best friends from high school was MTF, so she already knew the drill.

So I guess I pretty much ended up with a best-case scenario.   I know I could have just as easily been dead or destitute, but you can't win if you don't play.  I guess it's a good thing I didn't realize until later that the game was a lot like Russian roulette...

Big hugs to all of you that got hit hard by the trans* wrecking ball.   

[Jenna Marie]

Jill : You hit the nail on the head with the phrase "survivor's guilt issues." I've never known what to call it before, but yeah, I feel the same way. I was *prepared* to lose everything... and lucked out unbelievably. I have never even been suicidal over being trans; I'm sometimes afraid to speak up (and only seeing you do so gave me the courage!) about this stuff because I feel so weird and bad that nothing terrible happened to me over it. Not that I'd *want* it to, but yeah.

[Sybil]

It's difficult to quantify what I've lost, because it feels like it was my fault. I spent 9 years holed up in my home, refusing to interact with anyone but my absolute closest of friends -- which dwindled down to two in the end. My contact with others became lesser and lesser as I both suspected a lack of acceptance and felt all too uncomfortable going out in the "wrong body."

About 6 years in, I started HRT. At the end of the 9th year, I got a job. I'm currently in year 10 and have saved $7,000 of my suspected $18,000 for FFS. It feels like it was my fault because I let fear and depression get the best of me. If I had taken the initiative the moment I stepped out of high school, I would have finished all respective surgeries and managed to get myself through school, leading a financially better life at this point. 9 years is a long time to remain idle. 9 years is what I feel like I gave up, and even though I can understand why I shied away from the world all that time, it still feels like it was my doing and I have no one else to blame.