I have been stuck in my skin for 32 years now, which is more than enough time to learn to behave in ways appropriate for my birth gender. I never felt free, but I kept going with the flow. With all of this now finally coming to the surface, I can't help but feel like I've betrayed those close to me. I was never allowed to be myself so in a way my life has been a big lie. I had to pretend that I'm happy and satisfied with myself but that statement couldn't be farther from the truth. I am not happy in my skin. I do occasionally question my sanity and feel like I need to "purge" myself of all feminine feelings but these feeling will not go away. Every time I try, the urge comes back. I can somewhat compare the feeling to giving up smoking. If you smoke or have smoked before, you will know what I'm on about during the next few minutes. When I was struggling with smoking, there would be days or weeks when I would stop and think I'm done for good. For some reason though the feeling of wanting to smoke would always return and whenever it did, it was much stronger than before. The urge would be much more significant and would hit me more often which always resulted in more smoking. I can almost say that fighting your birth-assigned gender is similar. I've always known I had to do something, but the fear of hurting others, becoming a social outcast and the fear of never passing have all held me back. Occasionally something would happen that would make me question the validity of my feelings at which point I would try to "purge" myself of transgender thoughts. I would always think for the next hour or so that, yes I can do it and I could go on living a happy life in my male body. (Un)fortunately however the feelings always return and they return with more brute force. They are always stronger than before. Back to me being an impostor. On occasions my wife and I would end up in a department store together where I would witness her purchasing clothes or makeup or girly stuff in general. She would every now and then ask me for my advise. I always gave her my typical male attitude with me not really being able to decide what looks or smells better or simply making a funny face and pretending not to care. This of course couldn't be farther from the truth. I cared deeply and was hurting inside. Looking at people buying feminine items always caused great emotional disturbance inside me. This wasn't only while shopping of course. Being male requires you to hang out with other males and pretend that you are interested in looking at nude females and comment on their parts and physical attributes. I can't say that I'm not interested since I am sexually attracted to women, but I would really prefer to look at nicely dressed women, then get really angry and depressed...
Rant part 2.
So I finally came out to my older brother. We live on different continents but talk very often and I have quite a few clients in Europe whom I visit at least once a year, sometimes twice and of course I see my family when going as well. It actually went well, he was surprised but didn't have anything overly negative to say he was just worried because he isn't very well informed in transgender subjects and he has been a bit blinded by his deeply christian homophobe wife of 6 years. The only realized how uninformed he is when he asked me how on earth I could possibly be sexually attracted to my wife if this is how I feel. He totally doesn't get that part. So we finished our 2 hr long Skype chat with me feeling like 2 tons got lifted off my chest. Then next morning to my surprise, there is an a VERY long email from my sister in law. She is a psychologist and went on the attack, trying to convince me that this was probably brought on by me leaving the country of my birth at 18, my wife, current work stress and possibly even my circle of friends. It's funny because I have pointed out of course that these feelings have been with me as far as I can remember, but to that she just proceeded to explain how it is "normal" for kids to want to be the opposite gender because at that age we are not yet familiar with the "forever" concept. She of course tried to pin this on my wife as well whom she never actually met because we still don't have kids so how on earth could I possibly know that I'm really "not comfortable" in my male role and presentation.
Not only does she know the cause, but she proposed a solution as well; Sell my business because it's stressing me out, get divorced because I need a wife that would fit the biblical female image of the stay at home, pregnant, know your place kind of woman, go on a 6 month vacation, have some kids and these feelings will go away.
She's f***** nuts is what I think. It's strange that she can be so backwards as a psychologist. Thankfully she doesn't practice, she's a stay at home mom because her mission in life is to have 67 kids. I was only temporarily pissed of by her comments and mostly because she attacked my wife. I learned a few years ago not to take her too seriously when we were arguing about the existence of god because she doesn't seem to get how I can sit down with my wife and talk about problems if I don't believe in him.... (Arrogant. if god exist why is it a him?
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She was reciting a story of an 8 year old boy with an imaginary friend she had to deal with. According to her, at 8 you are too old for imaginary friends yet praying at 35 is OK.... That was when she lost all credibility at least in my eyes.
OK rant's over. It's a longish and possibly boring post but I have no one else to vent to at the moment.
