After sitting for like 10 minutes thinking of an appropriate subject line, that's all I've got.
*takes a breath*
Hi. I've used this forum before as a way to essentially calm myself or ease fears from a read-only position, but I figured that I should get around to making a proper account and saying hi now that I've begun HRT and my anxiety level fluctuates back and forth between "Ok, I've totally got this, everything's fine" to "ooooh my god what have I done, I haven't thought this out well enough, I should try again in like a decade or 3". Currently terrified ^_^ ...... (just keep smiling and no one will know you're panicking...)
So with the full front-loading of Awkward set up, I'll get right into it. I was raised Catholic, and even after my mother switched churches, it was a very standard Christian upbringing, on top of a normality-centric household that will lead to you hearing some wildly differing views coming out me. Certain things are jsut too ingrained in me not to come up regularly, like a persistent, creeping habit of self reprimanding. But if 10+ years of questioning didnt rid me of any doubts about who I am, then I figure I'll just have to live with it if I want to be true to myself.
I'm not nearly so self-affirmed as I see so many other people in hte transgender community, so I often fell into the thought process that I should jsut enjoy myself online, but leave the "Real World" for suppressing myself and jsut living as I had been. Afterall, it wasn't that hard to jsut exist day in and day out. I mena, I kept reading about people who knew from a young age, or people that suffer from a distinct dissonance between mind and body, but in truth, I was never particularly aware of that bothering me on that kind of level, so it was easy to doubt myself. I didn't even know that someone COULD feel differently about themselves like that until the concept of Transgender was introduced to me in an online fetish forum of all places. But once I had a grasp of hte concept, well... some things I'd passed off as "Huh, I wonder what that feels better", or why I was more comfortable being mistaken for a girl online... all of that started to make a creepy kind of sense to me. So I experimented.
I really started finding myself in online role playing games. I could explore aspects of myself and embody them in different characters. It allowed me to really understand just how much more comfortable it was to allow myself to present a female presence online, and eventually I was just always female and unfiltered online. I felt like I was being a truer Me than I was in the real world since I didn't have to worry about what people saw or who they knew me to be already. Online, where I could be anyone, I was free to actually be Me. And that started a decade long (sizably procrastinated >_>) journey of self discovery and introspection that eventually brought me to where I was jsut a few years ago. I realized then that I wouldn't be really happy with myself to just say "Well I know who I am, and can at least be like that online". I talked it over with a friend and knew that I needed to pursue transitioning. The more I thought about just using prosthetics or cross dressing, the more I knew I'd never be happy with that, and that I had to go further. However fear and doubt surrounding how I was going to talk about this to family, or deal with such a judgmental and exclusionary world kept me from moving beyond jsut Making My Choice for over 3 years.
But I finally took my first REAL step (or what I viewed as a real step) back in November. As the numbers came in and the fear crept higher in me that Trump might jsut be the next president, I made a choice. IT was a do or die moment for me. I knew that if I didn't make some forward progress, and instead, used the potential horrors to say "Well I really shouldn't think about transitioning if Trump's in charge and may potential strip me of any rights just as I'll be needing them most" that I would be convincing myself to procrastinate forever. I would be essentially choosing to hide under a rock forever and blame the world for being scary. So I did the most terrifying thing I could do. I drafted a 2 page letter and posted it on facebook. Up until that point, 4 people in the world knew about me, and only one of them knew jsut how set I was on transitioning. I made the choice to post to facebook in order to give everyone I knew at the time (family wasn't linked to that account) a choice to accept me or walk away. The truth was, it wasn't courage that got me to post that, it was fear. I knew that if I didn't get that post out of hte way now, and people started rejecting me mid-transition, that it would decimate any courage I had manged to build up, and I'd potentially be stuck mid-transition, too scared to move forward anymore, but too far in to just back out and pretend I never tried to begin with. So I had to get it out of hte way ASAP. But I've come to realize that he choice I ultimately made was "Do I use legitimate reasoning and fear to remain hidden and have an easier life at the cost of cutting myself off from who I am?" or "Do I use the most terrifying time possible to prove to myself that I'm not just talk." And I choose to move forward, praying that if I just jumped off the clift, the momentum I gained would keep me from stopping when I came to those big scary moments like making an appointment to see a doctor to talk about HRT for hte first time.
And know I'm here. I've come out on facebook, and to the 3 members of my immediate family, my mother and two sisters. I've done physicals and an evaluation and started HRT almost 2 weeks ago now. I feel relieved, and genuinely happy, excited for what's coming, but also super anxious and scared of the big events like talking to the rest of the family (grandparents, uncle's family, and aunt's family all live close by and interact on regular basis like a big family. They are all super Catholic.), eventually coming out at work, when or if I get to being androgynous enough to have to make a choice on which bathroom to use in a pinch, and the one that's got me really concerned... how long I can hide my transition from the general public. See, I'm incredibly self conscious and would rather try to hide myself until I think I could pass, THEN hope and pray that I pass. I know I shouldn;t need the world around me to validate who I am, but... with the hard time I have in the first place... I do in some small way need to world to see me as female in order for me to finally convince myself that it's ok for me to feel female. I mean there's no denying how I feel, but I'm not confident enough to validate myself to the world like the people I see online and on TV. As week as that makes me feel, I do need the world to take me as female as face value in order to feel like I'm justified in defending myself to others, you know?
So that it. That's me. A big bundle of complexes and insecurities trying desperate to keep my head above water while intentionally swimming into the big waves and praying I don't just drown. I'm far more likely to sit and lurk in the corner of hte forum, nibbling on the useful information and maybe poking my head out now and then, with posts being few and far between, but I know that I'll need to ask questions specific to my circumstances and seek friendly advice from people here that have gone through things already, so when that time comes, please be patient with me.
