...yeah. I have.
I'm not happy but that's not because of my body or whatever. It's things holding me back at the moment, finances, work, etc. and things that need to be sorted before I can let myself off the leash, as I need to be in good shape and healthy to do the things I want to do, and that's taking time to fix and learn how to care for my physical body. Not something I ever used to do really. Now I want to take care of it and get it into the best form possible. Amazing what a bit of self-esteem and confidence in one's skin can do for that. For the first time I am truly ready to "go get" what I want. I've always been a "go getter", but now I feel like a shark rather than a goldfish. I'm very hungry for all the things I've wanted.
It's only now in the last year and a half after a certain weight was lifted that I realize just how heavy that weight has always been. I don't even know how I carried it all these years. I suppose it's always like that, in the midst of stress and crisis, you don't always realize how much you are actually dealing with. Survival mechanism maybe. Take the load off and you'd never be able to pick it up again. A good thing hopefully I will never have to. But yeah, the scale of the problem and its effect on my life before has only just come home to me and it's beyond reckoning. If I felt at the start of life how I do now.... god knows where I would be now or what I would have achieved. It feels like picking up the smashed bits and super-gluing them all together again and hoping you can build something out of it. Something will be built anyway, as opposed to nothing, if I'd have carried on as I was before. Don't know what it will be but I can't just laze around sticking my head in the sand any more about the scariest ambitions. I HAVE to go chase the ones I've always wanted to or I will go crazy. There's no "no" or "I am giving up" option.
I can't tell if I feel like a kid again or what. Not quite, maybe. I feel out of time, like time stood still for me and rushed by for everyone else, they all have families and kids and established lives, and there's me living this weird Bohemian lifestyle chasing the metaphorical dragon. Maybe I'm just like that, maybe I belong to my whims and will never know that sort of life other people around me have. I have no doubt I'm like this at least in part because of my condition - it always inhibited a "normal life" in my case. There are trans people who managed to lead lives like everyone else but I just wasn't one of them. "It" inhibited that. Now that it's kind of gone, I'm left with the fact my mind is free, but my body will always be incomplete no matter what surgeries I get, etc. and that's just how I look at it. Others will disagree but a sense of completeness might be something I never achieve. if that's the case so be it, but I'll attempt to make the best of it anyway, unlearn my bad habits. There isn't an overarching sense of panacea, but I never expected there would be anyway. Transition wasn't supposed to solve all my problems, it was just supposed to make life bearable, and possibly allow me to discover my true self. It held no promises of nirvana or anything. So I'm happy. I can't ask for a whole lot more as it's already given me a new outlook and taken away most of my demons. More than I probably deserve.
Yeah, I've changed. I think I'll keep changing too. The only negative thing really is that I'm very aware of time. I suppose that happens as you begin to approach mid-life. I look young, my body does not feel old, but my soul feels like it's been through the mill. Some days it doesn't even register, but some days I feel a thousand years old and wonder how long I can keep playing the game for. I suppose I'll know when the time comes. But I miss the absence of cynicism and disappointment I had from the days before certain major life events took place... it's like how many times can you be disappointed in certain things, or in people, or in yourself before you just become fatally tired? I don't know. I wish I'd felt the way I do now back at that crucial age when the adult world was new to me. But, I don't. So I guess I'll have to have experience and cynicism along for the ride as unwilling companions and try to ignore them while I attempt to have a good time.
