By the time I was going on 28, and realized after my last attempt at a "substitute" for transitioning (believe it or not OCS in the Marine Corps - its a good thing I was physically washed out due to my shoulder not being 100% after the mega-dislocation it suffered when I was hit by a car while running, since I was freaking out over the expectation they had in OCS for you to be uber butch [I'd hoped to get away with being kind of sexless - wrong!!!!], and was heading towards a nervous breakdown), that there was nothing else that would work for me. After that realization, everything was geared towards money and a career that would get me not only to transition, but SRS. My biggest fear (especially after reading of accounts of people who experienced it), was of running out of money, and winding up permanently stalled out in a pre-op/non-op state.
By age 35 (in 1998), I was out of time. I was having too many days where I did very dangerous things that could get you killed, or going for runs along secluded parts of the Lake Michigan shoreline (when gender dysphoria was beyond painful for me), with the express purpose, of taking my running shoes off, and taking a one-way swim out into The Lake. I had several instances, when I stopped running for several minutes at a time, and stood a couple of feet from the water, struggling with myself over doing the act. Throw in occasionally crying myself to sleep, and listening to very dark songs that were almost like death anthems for me (a lyrical verse from Danzig's "Cantspeak" ["I Can't Dream, I Can't Cry, I Keep Thinking Of Suicide"] was in heavy rotation song-wise in my head), and I knew that I had to start transitioning (despite not having enough money to cover all of the costs to my satisfaction) or the chances were, that I wouldn't be alive by 2000.
