Quote from: Miss Lux on March 25, 2017, 01:49:45 AMI am petite -5'3, I am not supermodel gorgeous but I can say I am pretty... I am very passable and have been living stealth for a very long time.... It can be a very lonely life... Hard to develop real new friendships...You'll be always hiding a part of u....
"Always hiding a part of u..."
...it doesn't feel that way to me. I am female. This is my basic truth, and it's confirmed by the world every day. To me, invoking a trans narrative would get in the way of that. It would
hide who I am. Now, do agree with Inarasarah that it
shouldn't get in the way of that? Yes. It shouldn't matter. But it does, because most people are so rooted in biological essentialism. So it goes.
I wonder, though, if the issue of "narrative" is that it's so wrapped up in the ritual of transition itself -- we have to tell all kinds of people a trans narrative to get the treatments we need to live our lives correctly. And transition itself typically takes several years. We spend a lot of time thinking about it, planning it, dealing with emotional fallout, what have you. It kind of reminds me of college, how insular it can be. Letting go of the narrative is very much like letting go of college upon graduation.
I haven't had issues with loneliness. I make friends pretty easily, and I know how to develop a relationship over time with people whose company I truly enjoy. Or a lover, for that matter. I've just had to get out in the world, be gregarious, be myself. It's kind of like moving to a new country -- it can be lonely at first, yes, but after a few months that just wasn't the case anymore.
QuoteU really would have to cut off people and friends from your life bec they'll talk with or without ill motives, intentional or accidental....
In this respect I was really lucky. I did not have a particularly large set of friends outside of church, and none of them were all that interested in my transitioning. So these were people I was going to lose anyways.
But where I really got lucky was with my parents and sister, all of whom lived in a different city than me. By the time transition had come to a close, and I was preparing to practice non-disclosure, I made it very clear what the protocol was going to be if they wanted to keep me in their lives. And to their unending credit, they complied. To the point where I was able to have a lover meet them without incident. More importantly, it still makes for very smooth waters when I come home to visit; even in our day-to-day conversations, narrative non-disclosure is still the rule.
This is not a typical experience.
Even if I had lost everyone, though, there's no reason to be paranoid in relationships, intimate or otherwise. Yeah, at first it's normal to be paranoid, but after a year or two I got quite used to it.
A year or two.
Yeah, this still takes time.
