I guess ultimately the question that one needs to answer is, who you are protecting yourself against. For example, I came to my current job as a woman, and I have been working there for 8 years now. Nobody knows anything about my transition or past before it and I keep it that way. I did what I did to live an authentic life not to wear the trans logo on my sleeves to my dying day. I figure what business is it of certain coworkers to poke into my life. But I guess I had to balance a social life with a life in complete isolation. Immediately after my transition I suppose I can say I lived one of those lives in isolation. I came to work, did my job, and went home. I never socialized with coworkers. I also alienated myself from nearly all of my family and broke off all contact with the past. But the longer I lived the more I realized that it didn't match who I was. I felt like a really free and liberated person because of my transition. That didn't mean I wanted to shout it at the top of my lungs, it just meant that instead of the shy inwardly focused person from years ago instead I was the social butterfly I always wanted to be. The more social I became the more I realized that covering my past could be seen as making me a "difficult to know" or "difficult to be friends with" type of person. We all know the type, distant, impersonal, lonely looking. That just wasn't me anymore.
What I found is that the more integrated into my sex I became the more I had to deal with everyday women life and conversations like childhood, long time female friends, etc. Women's world is much more complicated socially than where I came from and women don't keep secrets they pass them along from woman to woman 😉 So I wanted to adapt and fit in. If it meant I had to omit facts as was said in another post or perhaps cover up a few details about my life then so be it.
I just kept my focus on the fact that I did my transition to live an authentic woman life in a womans world in a womans body and I'm happy for that. Living with the "trans" thing was not anything I had considered or even remotely entertained. If I tell one person about my past then I just don't know who is connected to who. I tell a close friend I feel I can trust. She tells her friend who I didn't know is also friends with someone close at work and next it's all over work and one is stuck with the negative connotation that comes with the word "trans". Maybe for some people it's okay and they're happy with that but for me it isn't. So I have to omit here and fabricate there, then that's just fine by me. The only other alternative is a very quiet and yet lonely life.
