Anniversaries
As I post this message, it will be exactly one year since I finally surrendered to the knowledge I'd had since I was about nine years old. A series of events finally built the angst too high to hold back, and it cascaded into a total meltdown as I openly admitted to myself that, after fifty years of fighting, hiding, distracting, and fooling myself, it was no longer possible to deny it: I am transgender.
Fifty years of pain, shame, and sadness avalanched. It buried everything else in my life, casting it all into insignificance. Nothing else mattered other than alleviating the terrible ache for which I'd known the reason, but was too terrified to address for almost all my life.
The next morning I made a list of everything I wanted to accomplish. I knew it would take years and years to work through them all. But I knew that no matter how long it took, if I didn't do anything, I wouldn't be here on this planet much longer. My plans had been made. I had a song picked out to play at my funeral. Life as it was was no longer bearable.
Years and years of plans. But today is just one year. What I have accomplished in that year was completely inconceivable then. I am living full-time as my true self. I am experiencing physical changes that have me in awe of what is possible with magical chemicals. My name is changed: all significant records - federal, state, local, business - show my true name - and gender! I haven't been misgendered by strangers in a very long time now (other than one strange exception). All my family, friends, neighbors, business associates know who I am now, and not one single person has rejected me. Why? I have no idea. I'm nobody special. It's actually a source of some guilt as I see people I respect struggling with such rejection.
So much hard work. So much focus. So much accomplished. And now, with all that done, I find myself almost rudderless. Yes, there are significant things yet to be checked off - GCS, hair grafts, some FFS? But the pace has slowed to the point where I can no longer allow myself the luxury of the tunnel vision I experienced for the last year. It's disorienting. And it gives me time to doubt myself. If you follow my thread you know how I've been struggling lately.
All it takes, though, is the reminder to ask myself this question: Would I go back to the way things were?
No. Emphatically NO.
Like waves in a river lock, the ripples still have their peaks and valleys - but the water is rising. Life exists on a higher plane now. And once in a while my joy overflows, and washes all pain, past and present, out of my life.
There will be other very significant anniversaries. I'll celebrate them here as they arrive. But few will be as significant as finally admitting to myself who I am - and giving myself permission to act on it.
All of us here are on similar journeys. Those who have gone before, thank you for your guidance. Those who are close by, thank you for sharing the road with me. And those who are following, take hope - if I can do it, you surely can, too.
Just one year. Unbelievable...
Stephanie Rhapsody Bensinger, Female
