Boy, how I understand where you are, Kalt. I'm sure I (and everyone else in this situation) will tell you that you're going to have to find that path that keeps you productive and happy and real. I'm right smack dab in the middle of things, and I constantly have that voice in my head that will tell me "What on earth are you doing? Don't you think you could get a grip and just enjoy what you've got?" After all, I like my life, my relationships, my job, my health -- just not my sex, and that last little detail just got more and more uncomfortable over the past couple of years until it was no longer discomfort, but pain, low-grade at first, then increasingly agonizing.
Most non TG people (at least those who give transsexualism any thought at all) assume that this is an issue of genitals or of physical appearance, but the great internal debates about identity and love and choice and pain and health are all mental, and I think it's fair to say that we all struggle mightily with those mental battles.
I've been doing a lot of writing about my own fear, and of all the possible kinds of fear I have, I think the one that stops me in my tracks is that I'm afraid of being rejected and belittled by my friends and loved ones. I realize that I'm sort of afraid of change, but when I listed all the kinds of change I've had to deal with over course of my life, I realized that I had the psychological skills to handle change. I thought I was afraid of making a commitment, but I listed all my accomplishments over the past year regarding my transsexualism, and I realized that I've been able to make progress and get things done. But rejection is something that's out of my control, and I think that need to control things is probably what makes this particular fear so unnerving. I've spent a masculine lifetime building controlling walls around myself, and as I dismantle them, I not only feel hugely liberated and alive, but I also feel quite frightened and vulnerable.
Stick in there, Kalt.
Joyce
