Birth Certificate

[MelissaAnn]

I want to open up and talk about something that I've been thinking about for a little while and had a bit of a euphony about it. I have been transitioning now for the better part of 4 years and went full time 86 days after coming out. Once I had realized I didn't have a choice in who I was I knew it was time to do something about it and started my transition. All along the way I would tell anyone that would listen and myself that he was gone. He being the façade I built up over fifty years. This male persona that society expected from me. I was fooling myself that I was discarding him and he was gone forever.
On Friday February 2nd I went to my mail box and pulled out my mail. There were 10 days' worth of mail in my box because of a stay in the hospital. As I flipped through all of the envelops one of them caught my attention and I froze in the spot where I was. I had been expecting this piece of mail but not for a few more weeks. It was from the Illinois department of vital records.  Yes it came..! I excitedly opened the envelop and pulled out my updated birth certificate and read it. Here it was, the culmination of 4 years work. The tears of joy just streaked down my cheeks. This is so interesting because here is this piece of paper but this little piece has forever changed my life.
I wasn't expecting the flood of emotion that followed and the strongest emotion was grief and this left me confused. Why after all I just received my birth certificate which I have been dreaming of having all my life am I feeling grief? Why am I grieving? It suddenly hit me that he had been piece by piece removed from existence.  I know some of you might be thinking at this point that this is a good thing and it is but....
As much as I was trying to deny him, he is still a part of me. The core of who I am is still the same. That doesn't change. What changed was my ability to openly express who I have always been without having my mind constantly trying to betray my conscious actions of hiding who I am. The fear of being found out about was exhausting and there was a heavy toll being paid for always having walls up to protect me.
After thinking on what I was grieving about for a couple days I realized I was mourning his loss but why if he's still a part of me? Bear with me on this if you will and I'll try to explain it. I realized that each step of the way that as much as I have been denying him I have also been holding onto him. This is completely about letting go. After going full time it took me well over a year to dispose of his clothes. When I went to court to legally change my name I kept the court order out on my desk so I would still see it. Each step of the way as I unmasked I was still holding on to certain parts of my past. I needed him to be there.  It's as if when I started my transition I was a high speed train but I never unhooked the freight train I was pulling. I needed to know he was always around because, and this was the euphony, He is my hero...!
Here is a person that did everything in his power to protect me. He did things that went so against what he was always feeling. He struggled all of his life and fought against the ever present thoughts of suicide and was always pulling for me to come out. He developed a mask that the whole world saw and kept it on to save me. There were many passive attempts to end his life but would always yield to her inner voice and turn off the machine he just climbed in to repair it instead of hoping it would close on him and end it all. He brought me through everything and when it was time he stepped back and allowed Melissa to step forward and spread her wings.
He is still with me but with my birth certificate all records of him are gone. It's sort of forced me to let go of those little pieces I have been hanging on to and focus the external attention to an inner focus. He's still here, I just evolved into a better version of him. I am no longer mourning him. I celebrate him. I honor him. I respect him and will always cherish him.

[JillianC]

Congrats on the achievement Melissa, another lucky Illinoisan here who also had her birth certificate updated recently. 

Reading your post made me teary.  Through all the hate I have for him, I never thought of him as my protector.  Reading what you wrote really gave me pause to think.

Thanks for sharing.

[MelissaAnn]

Jillian
I agree with you about hating him. I mean I really loathed him and it wasn't till I opened that envelope and actually saw my new birth certificate that it hit my how much he really did for me. I wrote this piece as an image to him.

[bobbisue]

     As i read this post I have been printing the forms required to change my name and gender on my birth certificate last week I got the copy of my divorce from the court house it was the last paper I needed and had a new drivers licence picture taken tomorrow they go in the mail there is no need to go to court here so it will just be a wait at the mailbox from then
     Congrats on your legal status I too feel the same about him he has been my protector and a piece of him will live on in me

     bobbisue

[KathyLauren]

That is a brilliant piece of awareness, Melissa!  Well done!

That is exactly how I feel about my old self.  I don't hate him; I'm proud of him.  He protected me when I was not ready to face the world.  He did a good job of it, bequeathing to me a healthy body, a supportive partner, and comfortable living conditions in a safe community.  He couldn't have done better for me if he had known what he was doing.  Well, perhaps he could have retired from his role a little earlier, but I can't really fault him for that.  As it was, he stepped aside gracefully when I was ready to emerge.

He did right by me.  And he remains in me.

And congrats on the birth certificate.  Hopefully I can get mine in another year and a half.

[TR]

My good old male best friend me, is still protecting me. Supporting me and keeping me safe. He is often very sad however that he cannot do more to fulfil my full dream of a full transition. He has worked hard all his life to give me what he can, including GRS. And in my own way, I thank him with all my heart. We live as one but seperate minds, and I guess we always will. I will continue to dream that one day I can finally say "Goodbye" to him and thank him for being so kind and protecting me. Anyway.. Hard to explain..

I am still waiting on the UK Courts to decide on my Gender and Name changes. This happens on the 15th of this month, its been put back and back. I think they were waiting on the legal statement by the Australia Government to state that changes to the marriage Act have been moved into law.. I cried when they first refused my name changes. But they were bound by Australian laws.

All my Austrian documents have my new name. I am just waiting on the changes by the Tax office and that's about it.. My Aus Passport has my new name and gender as F.. All my other docs have my new name and it makes me feel very happy.. A great deal of thought went into my new names. For one, they are gender neutral since they are actually surnames.

Slowly but surly my old male me is slipping away. Only divided by the money it takes to make the final move. It took years to save up for my GRS, but FFS cost way more. I still consider myself to be one of the lucky ones. Its all very strange since when I was a young person, all I wanted to do is wear a dress. A psychiatrist asked me many years ago, when I first became aware that I was transgender. I replied.. "Since I was born".. Many parents thought I was a little girl. Even at primary school I was mistaken for a girl. I was a very pretty teen too.. The only real clue was my name..

A girlfriend of mine, committed suicide last week. Her funeral is on Friday.. I really do not want to go, I hate funerals.. She was just so pretty but found it hard to accept she was born male. She was the prettiest of us all.. I really thought she was a CiS gender female when I first met her. After my SRS, a few of use chipped in to boost her money to pay for her own GRS.. She too had her name knocked back by the UK Courts just a few days after I was. It was just another hit to her self-esteem.

Its hard to explain to some people just how important a name change is.. Our name is our identity. Its a major thing that defines us as female and for me, it helps with making me feel more feminine. So my name changes have have a huge difference to my own happiness..

TR...

[Lady Sarah]

Congrats on the life upgrade!

When mine was done, I just thought "here it is, and it's about damn time". My old self had just vaporized from the Earth. Nobody cared about him. He was just something that people used to get what they wanted, and attacked when they could not get what they wanted. Most people treated him like a waste of space. If he had been murdered, nobody would ever miss him.

Now, is a completely different story. When I got my birth certificate in the mail, that was the moment I knew there was no going back. I had escaped hell.

[TonyaW]

That is a brilliant piece of awareness, Melissa!  Well done!

That is exactly how I feel about my old self.  I don't hate him; I'm proud of him.  He protected me when I was not ready to face the world.  He did a good job of it, bequeathing to me a healthy body, a supportive partner, and comfortable living conditions in a safe community.  He couldn't have done better for me if he had known what he was doing.  Well, perhaps he could have retired from his role a little earlier, but I can't really fault him for that.  As it was, he stepped aside gracefully when I was ready to emerge.

He did right by me.  And he remains in me.

And congrats on the birth certificate.  Hopefully I can get mine in another year and a half.

I've been trying to figure out how to explain how I feel about and even how to refer to my pre-transition self. I like this way of thinking about it but it's not quite right for me.  I don't really want to think of it as separate people.  To me, I'm the same person, only at peace with myself and with much better clothes. 

Obviously my outward presentation has switched from male to female and it would be easy to refer to pre-transition me as him  and male. Other than the gender dysphoria which I hid pretty well, I had a generally happy life as a male. I lived as a male and tried to be male, but I wasn't, so I don't like saying "male me" and "female me". To me  saying it that way feels like I'm saying  that I was male. 

I'm not trying to erase my pre-transition life. Too much of it, 54 years, to try to forget about it if I wanted to.  There was plenty of good in it also wife, kids, and grandson mostly, so I don't want to anyway.
Beacuse of this, term dead name doesn't really fit for me.  Of course I don't want to be called by my old name anymore but l think I can handle my pre-transition self being referred to by it.

Maybe I just figured out how to refer to pre-transition me.


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[KathyLauren]

I like this way of thinking about it but it's not quite right for me.  I don't really want to think of it as separate people. 

To be honest, I don't think of "him" and "me" as separate people either.  The way I described it is more metaphorical than anything else.  I find it a useful technique for reminding myself not to be too hard on myself for "not getting it" in the past.

To me, I'm the same person, only at peace with myself and with much better clothes. 

Yes, me too.

[TonyaW]

To be honest, I don't think of "him" and "me" as separate people either.  The way I described it is more metaphorical than anything else.  I find it a useful technique for reminding myself not to be too hard on myself for "not getting it" in the past.Yes, me too.

Maybe it's semantics and shortcuts?

It's too long and cumbersome to say "when I was pretending to be male" or some such phrase.  I don't want to shorten that to "when I was male" because I wasn't male.    My soul or what have you, has always been female.  I think I'll be ok with "when I was Tim".  Tim was a transgender female that lived and or tried to live as a male.

Oh and congratulations, Melissa.  Have my hearing in about 5 weeks and looking forward to it. 

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[natalie.ashlyne]

Congratulations I am happy for you