Do you ever feel cheated? Be honest.

[Nero]

Good morning guys and dolls.

Do you ever feel cheated? Because of our condition? Does it ever hurt? Do you ever feel angry?

Do you ever hurt (even for a moment) about the dreams you will never realize?
Dreams that for the most part are gender-based?
Things you always wanted so much, that natal members of your gender take for granted?

I do not dwell on the things I can never have, but every once in a while, I will get these pains in my gut, pains for the dreams, goals, and passions of a little boy who could never fulfill them.

Optimists need not reply.
No brilliant philosophical musings on why I shouldn't feel this way, please.
Spare me from the stomach churning happy endings, just this one post.


Nero

[Blanche]

Used to feel that way before transition.  Not anymore.  I lead a very successful life & my depression has vanished.  I have got my moments like all ppl but it is normal to feel sadness when there is reason to. The frosting of my cake would be genital surgery.  I am contemplating a date in 2008.  I want to think that after that day my sad days will be part of a bad dream.

[Elizabeth]

Nero,

I used to be very angry about it. I definitely had the "why me?" syndrome. I had to let all that go so I could be happy. There is nothing I can do about it, this is who I am, so wasting any more time on it is pointless. I live my life as the person I want to be, that is the best I can right now.

Love always,
Elizabeth

[Christo]

no more bro.  days are gettin better & better for me.  I aint complainin'.  cant have some things but thats life.  nobody got everythin' aint that right?.  I got love & I'm cool with waht I got.  thats enough for me. wanna win the lotery jackpot but thats up to da dude upstairs. 

[Yvonne]

I used to cry my eyes out when they injected me with testosterone to accelerate my male sex characteristics.  I'd spend days in my room feeling betrayed and very angry about the irony in my life.  I couldn't speak up as I was sure my parents wouldn't understand.  I didn't want to cause them anymore pain.  Having an intersexed child who had to go through rigorous surgeries in infancy and testosterone shots during puberty mustn't be easy for any parent.  They also felt cheated but I absorbed their pain as well as mine.  It wasn't easy but managed until the day I decided to speak up and tell them that they were making a horrid mistake.  I don't feel cheated anymore because everything in my life makes sense now.

[Dennis]

Sorry Nero, another "stomach-churning happy ending" here. I like who I am and I like my life.

Dennis

[cindianna_jones]

I used to feel cheated Nero.  All the time.  I'd sit and day dream about all the "what ifs".  "Why me, God?" filled my prayers night and day. You know what I'm talking about.  Many years after GRS, I will admit that I do think about those things from time to time.  It's not all that often, but once in a while it will pop up.

There are dreams that I will never realize.  They are mostly family related concerning my children.  But, there are many dreams that have been realized, and many wonderful things have come my way which I could never conceptualize before.  The net result is quite positive.

Cindi

[lisagurl]

I take responsibility for all my shortcomings no metaphysical force controls my life. Failure is just another step toward success.

[LynnER]

I have to fight hard most days not to be a miserable wretch....

I cryed my eyes out for over a week when the realization hit that Id never be a mother... It drives me nuts that I cant find a decent boyfriend cuz of this... The general discrimination, and all the physical and mental scaring that has been inflicted upon me by others because of this.....  I do my freaking best not to be too negitive about things...  take steps one day at a time... little goals... cuz if I take a step back and look at the big picture I might just loose it again....

[Sheila]

Before I started on my journey, I felt cheated everyday of my life. Once I found out that I can do something about it, my life started to turn. I had to throw out the anchor as I was about to leave people I love in the dust. Now that I have fully transitioned, the way I feel, I don't think about lost pleasures or unhappiness, I look at the future and what I want to do for myself and my wife. No, I'm still in the transition as I feel you never stop, but I feel that way whether or not you are trans. Life is an evolution of growing and we just have to keep up.
When I think that I have been cheated I look at my life and think that I would have never met my wife and had the joys of being a parent and some of the other things that I have been through. I don't go to the what if phrase, cause that will make you wonder in a fantasy world. Dreaming is good but to mix the two reality and dreams, it really doesn't come out the way you would want it. There will always be something that you missed. This is my opinion.
Sheila

[Melissa]

Another person who used to feel cheated, but not anymore.  You can't let anything stop you from achieving your dreams.  You need to just go after those things that are so dear to us.  Just remember the first part of the serenity prayer:

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

I interpret that as: Change as many things to your favor as you can, accept those things you can't change (such as the inability to birth a child), and don't waste the time and energy trying to change things that are not possible to change.  Sometimes for the things that can't be changed though, there are acceptable alternatives (such as adopting a child).

With my life, even after transition I still felt cheated from a number of things, but I have been achieving those things and experiences (or a suitable equivalent) and that list has become so small that I no longer feel cheated.  For instance, I felt cheated that I was never able to  be female during my teenage years, but with the musical I've been doing, I work with a lot of teenage girls now and even discuss makeup (mostly in regards to stage makeup, but it can apply to everyday makeup too).  I feel like I am now living that lost part of my life.  It was a suitable alternative that I inadvertently discovered, but which I found very fulfilling. 

Heck, even last night *I* was giving a young GG (around age 18) some makeup pointers (which she wasn't aware of because she had a very naturally feminine face).  Which I found to be very ironic, but she was trying to change her features to look more masculine for the part she was playing and so I was coming up with ideas (mostly by emulating the features that TS are trying to rid themselves of).  I just told her I like to study people, so that's why I knew some the differences.  But I'm a quick study, plus I had color experience with web design and learned a bunch off the internet and from other GGs, not to mention that I still experiment with makeup to figure out how to achieve certain looks.

So, even though I previously felt cheated out of a female childhood, I'm still able to achieve all the aspects of it that I felt i missed out on.  Just remember, life has a way of giving you what you need in time.  Sometimes you have to find those things yourself and sometimes you just need to wait for them to come to you.

[Nero]

Failure is just another step toward success.

True.

I take responsibility for all my shortcomings no metaphysical force controls my life.

What do you mean? You take responsibility for never being able to have some experiences natal women have?
For being denied children from your own body?
For dreaming as a girl about all the normal things little girls dream about that were stolen from you?
Those are the things I wanted. And they are by no means trivial or superfluous things.
It's apparent from reading this thread, that these things -  these gender-based things natal men and women take for granted, mean more to some than others.
And it is NOT my responsibility or failure that I will never have them.
If I ended up the most successful man on the planet, I would still forever feel cheated and forever feel pain for this.


Posted on: August 31, 2007, 01:40:02 PM

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Just when you thought you were safe...

[Kate]

Do you ever feel cheated? Because of our condition? Does it ever hurt? Do you ever feel angry?

Yes. Very.

Spare me from the stomach churning happy endings, just this one post.

I'm not offering any. I've said before that this is the one thing I just cannot seem to get past, no matter HOW "successful" my transition may end up. I fear that what I *really* need to fix this is to have been BORN a (genetic) girl... and that all this "transition" stuff is never going to be enough for me.

The tragic irony seems to be that the more I allow myself to accept the fact that I AM a girl... the more I need to have BEEN one, and not a transitioned male.

We'll see.

~Kate~

[Kimberly]

not a transitioned male.

Are you sure that is any different from a girl who grew up with boy socialization, with a broken body, etc. Or said another way, do you really think you have right to claim 'male' at all? The further along I go the more I realize that I was never truly a boy. ... Oh well.


As for cheated? No, not really. I knew this was a possibility when I started this life and... it sucks but ^*shrug* so what, lives are short. Enjoy it.
Besides, for WHY I am, this is worth it.

An no, this isn't any fun at all.

[Butterfly]

I would have loved to have a history as a girl, but I realize it's also pointless to fret about something that "would have been".  I now try to focus on the things I have control over & make every moment of my days worth living.  I figure that I'm a lucky woman to be where I'm today despite having born male.  I know that I have had it better than most peeps in my situation & I'm grateful for it.  Life could be a lot worse, and the thought of this keeps me going.

[Nero]

damn right i feel cheated.

sorry, i dont have a particularly happy outlook tonight.

no need to apologize, my dear. happy people make me nauseous.

[tinkerbell]

Hmmmm...the only thing I will always regret is my inability to give birth to my own child.  Yeah I know, I can always adopt, but it isn't the same, is it?.  As far as everything else is concerned, I have no complaints really.  I mean, yeah, I endured my share of misery when I was growing up, but I feel that somehow, life is compensating me for all those years of pain.

I feel very, very, very lucky to be "me" in body and mind at last.  SRS has definitely opened up my horizons in so many different ways.  I now feel that I can do anything I want and succeed at it.  Beautiful changes are happening in my life nowadays and although I have lost a few dear people and things along the way, I am also finding so much more because of those loses  


tink

[LostInTime]

Nope, do not feel cheated at all. I was meant to walk alone and not everyone gets that fairytale ending in life. I have accepted my lot and that has relieved a lot of the "What If?" thing that used to run across my mind at times.

[Nicole]

sometimes yes, like when my friends talk about things that happened to them as girls as a kid.

The big one is the "never gonna have a kid" thing.
I don't really want one, but would love the option of having one, carrying one and caring for one as its mother.

Most of the time I love life, but there are times when i feel cheated on the little things

[Nero]

sometimes yes, like when my friends talk about things that happened to them as girls as a kid.

The big one is the "never gonna have a kid" thing.
I don't really want one, but would love the option of having one, carrying one and caring for one as its mother.

Most of the time I love life, but there are times when i feel cheated on the little things

And I just want to remind everyone that giving birth, breastfeeding are, I'm sure, amazing experiences that, in some way, inform your relationship with your child throughout life. But they only last a very short period of time. I'm an adoptive parent of a child I love more than my life itself and I can tell you there are many ways in which you profoundly bond with a child (not always fun or easy, but amazing).

In many ways I see a deeper relationship between myself and my daughter than some of her other friends of hers and their birth parents. We've been through a lot more... adoption (which is a trauma at it's core), dealing with leaving her birth country, abandonment, divorce, my gender transition, some of her health issues. These are all things that, when you get through them with a strong relationship create a tremendous connection and understanding of each other. And it's created a deep experience of each other as people, not just our mommy and daughter roles. Yes, I sorely miss not being able to give birth to her and to have held her as an infant, but don't believe that you're going to somehow 'miss out' by parenting a child who isn't related to you biologically. If you want it bad enough, there's a lot of parenting and love you can give to a child.

XO,
Gina M.

True. And really you gals' situation is the same for the natal women out there who are barren. It's the same sorrow, because the instinct to bear young is so strong in females. Sometimes I wonder why this body was wasted on me, when so many women needed it so much more than I do.