Urgency of transitioning

[jc02081]

I have encountered many stories of people who have stated that their need to transition was one of "life and death." While I can totally respect that, and certainly know of the depths of depression that can be felt as a result of feeling trapped in a body that does match that of one's inner being I still have a very strong desire not to be dead. In fact, I have always been terrified of death probably more than anything else. So, I am wondering with what sort of urgency everyone else views their need to transition... I know that personally I want very badly to transition, but there are very significant factors deterring me from doing so (mainly that I am not feminine looking and don't want to end up looking like some kind of gross monster; and secondly I feel like I will somehow "taint" my relationships with my family members)... Anyhow, if anyone else has similar concerns, or has some sort of insight into what my viewpoint is on this issue as far as where this might mean I land on the spectrum of transgenderness please voice your opinion. Thanks, JC.

[Nikki]

I think painting it as life or death depends on one's personal value system and current perspective on transition. Certainly when someone reaches the point they will commit suicide if they have to keep living in their birth sex that's a good time to transition. Some people transition when their expected happiness after transition is greater than their current happiness. Personally it's not much of a live or die situation I've wanted to die many times but the ability to commit suicide is just not part of who I am I have to keep fighting. For me it's escalating demands, with every little concession I make it takes a greater concession the next time to relieve the relentless pressure and the longer I resist a need the more urgent it becomes till it's not really a choice anymore. Fighting transition is sort of like trying to push a freight train against the engineer. When the engineer wants to go forward she will and good luck trying to regain any ground she's taken.

For most people the only real choice with transition is now or later with escalating urgency until later is no longer an option. The speed at which it plays out and how people express it varies but I think that's the basic deal for all of us.

[Kate]

So, I am wondering with what sort of urgency everyone else views their need to transition... I know that personally I want very badly to transition...

I really never "wanted" to do this exactly. It was more like... well, remember when you finally figured out what was up with the whole Santa Clause thing? Imagine trying to then go on believing the story, acting as if the story was true. You really can't, you KNOW the truth now, and you'd feel empty and stupid pretending that it's true anymore, right?

Well, even though I always knew about my GID, I kept seeing it as some sort of weird mental quirk for decades. But then it finally sorta just crashed in on me one day that no, it's REAL, it's not some "quirk," it's a FACT. And once I saw that, there was no going back, no way to go on as I had been. I didn't want to kill myself because of the pain, or as an act of frustration and anger... I just didn't care anymore. To go on living as a male was just totally empty, meaningless and absurd at that point.

I personally don't like the phrase, but there's an old cliche about how you don't transition to "become a woman," you transition because you "are a woman." It seems like once people see that... not just "accept" it, but I mean truly, deeply SEE it as it is... transition seems to become an inevitable consequence of that truth.

At least that's how it worked for me

~Kate~

[KarenLyn]

Kind of like Kate said. Once you know, you can't ignore it and have to go forward. For me, it was once I found out I could actually do something about it. I avoided looking at it most of my life. I knew I was supposed to be a girl but I could live with it until I found out it was possible to transition and have surgery to correct my defect.
That, coupled with clinical depression made it easy for me to attempt suicide. If I hadn't transitioned, I've no doubt I'd be dead now.
I traded one set of problems for another, but I don't regret my decision. I love my life now and while I still have depression, it's easier to work with.

Karen Lyn

[Just Mandy]

Kate described "the slide" to me... you do one thing and it feels so good your start to do more,
one things leads to another... and pretty soon you feel like there is no way to stop... to
me that is where the Urgency comes from.

Amanda

[Alyssa M.]

It's a good questions -- or at least, one I've thought of many times myself.

I've never been suicidal ... not quite. Very depressed, for lots of reasons, though gender being the most important. I've dealt with that. Mostly. It's not life or death for me. Well, for now. I'd really rather not let it get to that.

For me it doesn't get worse every day. It gets worse, that is, just not every day. Some days I just think to myself, "the hell with it, living as a guy isn't so bad, is it?" It's just that I have fewer and fewer of those days as time passes, and more and more days when I think, "Yeah, it's pretty much terrible, who am I kidding?" I see it pretty much the same way Nikki does I guess. A daily litany of little bruises to my soul, most not very painful in themselves, but that taken together become an increasingly heavy burden to carry. I do what I can to lessen the pain but it only works for a little while.

As far as the negatives go, I think you've barely scratched the surface. (But you know that, right?) Time, money, friends, work, health, the enormous amount of effort it takes ... it takes some major determination (of whatever sort and source) to even consider it. Where do you stand? -- well, who knows but you?

[Sandy]

For me it was a case of life or death.  Looking back at some of my written journal entries from that time, I think I should have been on suicide watch.  I was that desperate and despised myself and my life.

My chronic depression had been getting worse and worse and lasting longer and longer.  Finally I knew that if I didn't do something to save myself, I would do something to kill myself.

It was then I was forced to confront myself as to who and what I really was.  To come out of denial and face myself.  Then the light dawned, the door opened and the angels sang.

JC, I can't really say how your feelings might relate to being a transsexual.  It is true that many transsexuals transition because they really have no other choice.  But realize there is no objective test for being transsexual.  You are because you say you are.  It is a simple as that.  What matters is how you deal with that.  If you can continue your life with that realization and do not feel the need to make any other changes, then count yourself lucky.  If you can't then you need to give serious consideration to the changes in your life you may need to make.  In any case you need to see a therapist to help you come to terms with yourself and to help you deal with your changes.

-Sandy

[Mari]

Basicly for me transition is life or death... if i there was no way to transition,
like if i was born 100 or more years ago, well i wouldn't have comitted suicide
but i wouldn't have lived either! I would just exist. Leading pointless life.
The first time i even heard of just "sex change operation" was at age of 10.
But that was it; some operation... i didn't know of hormones or anything...
When I at age 15 first read about how the actual transition is done and how
profundly one can change i instantly knew i wanted it; for the first time there
was hope for me. Like: my dream at least has a chance of coming true.
And now after 5 years it is finally beginning (verry slowly, though) to come true.

I really want to live before i die so transition (with all its limitation) is at the momnet
only option for me

[lady amarant]

Life or Death. Not from suicide, though I've been close enough to that at times, but purely from apathy. I've been on a road to ruin for almost a decade, by turns doing my best to destroy my career, get myself killed doing all sorts of stupid things, or simply spending bouts of despair indulging in various types of self harm. I tried all sorts of things to lift myself out of it, from career-changes to moving to running away to Taiwan to getting married and divorced, but the ONLY thing that has worked has been acceptance of myself and my situation, and a determination to address it. This will probably sound really icy, but my attitude became something along the lines of: "I'm ready to die anyway. I might as well get over the self-loathing and bigotry I've internalised and transition. I can always still kill myself later."

~Simone.

[Hypatia]

For most people the only real choice with transition is now or later with escalating urgency until later is no longer an option. The speed at which it plays out and how people express it varies but I think that's the basic deal for all of us.

That's an excellent explanation of it, Nikki. I think you totally nailed it.

Posted on: April 22, 2008, 11:58:55 PM

Kate described "the slide" to me... you do one thing and it feels so good your start to do more,
one things leads to another... and pretty soon you feel like there is no way to stop... to
me that is where the Urgency comes from.

An analogy suggests itself to me:

Remember in 1989, when so many Communist governments were falling to popular liberation movements all of a sudden? I heard a political commentator on the radio saying when people live under a totalitarian regime that absolutely represses all their freedoms, it makes them passive and docile, since they see no hope of ever changing it. But once they're allowed a little freedom, it invigorates them to want more... demand more... until they have to take it all the way, nothing less will do. The way Gorbachev started allowing some civil liberties in the late '80s, according to this view, is what allowed the drive to dump Communism to begin snowballing.

Likewise, all the time that I kept telling myself that gender transition was impossible, I made no move in that direction, because I saw no hope. I'd hidden it deep inside me as a child because I was getting beaten up for being gender-nonconforming. I was as effectively controlled by the patriarchal gender terror system as if Russian tanks were enforcing it. But once I began to taste just a little glimpse of gender freedom, my personal Berlin Wall came down in short order.

And yeah, once I'd gotten partway there but found my way forward blocked by family opposition... I began to get more and more suicidal when it looked hopeless. I held off transition until I was seriously ready to kill myself, and then there was no more waiting for anyone's permission-- you just do it. The human instinct to survive just takes over.

[Kate]

my attitude became something along the lines of: "I'm ready to die anyway. I might as well get over the self-loathing and bigotry I've internalised and transition. I can always still kill myself later."

I began to get more and more suicidal when it looked hopeless. I held off transition until I was seriously ready to kill myself, and then there was no more waiting for anyone's permission-- you just do it. The human instinct to survive just takes over.

Exactly the same for me.

What I found really surprising though was I was NOT suicidal before this. I was never self-destructive. I don't drink, smoke or do drugs. I never engaged in reckless, deathwish-type behaviour. I never self-mutilated. I have no history of suicide attempts. Nothing like that.... ever.

But when whatever it was snapped inside me two years+ ago... that was it for me. End of the road. The suicidal mood wasn't raging at the world or because the pain had become unbearable - it was just that life had no meaning anymore. No matter how seemingly great my life was, it became meaningless to me if lived and experienced in the context of a male. I was mostly just TIRED. There was nowhere to go except either check out permanently... or try the road less traveled and see where it led.

And apparently, it leads back home

~Kate~

[Just Mandy]

What I found really surprising though was I was NOT suicidal before this. I was never self-destructive. I don't drink, smoke or do drugs. I never engaged in reckless, deathwish-type behaviour. I never self-mutilated. I have no history of suicide attempts. Nothing like that.... ever.

But when whatever it was snapped inside me two years+ ago... that was it for me. End of the road. The suicidal mood wasn't raging at the world or because the pain had become unbearable - it was just that life had no meaning anymore. No matter how seemingly great my life was, it became meaningless to me if lived and experienced in the context of a male. I was mostly just TIRED. There was nowhere to go except either check out permanently... or try the road less traveled and see where it led.

I can relate to what you wrote Kate and had a somewhat similar experience except I was suicidal as a teen and then around 30-35. In my thirties though I never came close to the point that I did as a teen, just depression. But I have done some extreme "death-wish" type things that may be related I don't know. But like you life had no meaning, I was just being... I never smiled, I never laughed, there was no joy in anything, there was no life.

Amanda

[Janet_Girl]

I myself have tried the suicide route. I bear the scar on my wrist.  It is a reminder that I am who I am.  It serves as my symbol of the desperation that I felt and that I will not go there again.  I need to transition for me, no one else.

I like what kate said about the slide, I have now pushed off and I am going to love the ride.



Janet

[Lori]

Who the hell WANTS to transition?? I sure don't.

[Just Mandy]

Who the hell WANTS to transition?? I sure don't.

Are you saying you HAVE to not WANT to?

Amanda

[Hypatia]

Who the hell WANTS to transition?? I sure don't.

Are you saying you HAVE to not WANT to?

How did you derive that meaning from her post? I didn't read it that way at all. I don't see where she said anything about what you "have to" do. She was just making a statement about how she feels.

[deviousxen]

My urgency is based on the idea that I'm only going to go downhill from here. I'm relatively young (19), but fear any possible further development, like with my voice.

I also have this intense will inside of me that just feels like its right. It wants to get it over with kind of. I never look at my body unless I'm in the bath, and whenever I see it, I instantly feel disconnected. The hair used to disgust me, but now it just makes me disconnected. I hate that. My depression gets worse whenever I think about it, and the small changes that have taken place already, I like very much. I like caring about people more because I don't make as many stupid mistakes with them, and I like the hair not growing back in like... 2 days. I like the way I smell. I feel more like myself with my sexuality. I'm reluctant to get off of this track because it makes me feel better. Of course, I'm extremely worried about how my family will accept me, and how art school will go when people think of me as a freak. There exists this one thread I hold in a friend, which always tells me it will be okay, because she'll like me no matter how weird I am. My brother, and Dad... Not as much I don't think. I love them, but know deep down that they'll think of me as a freak. I'm already a dip->-bleeped-<- embarrassment to them, and my mom and I have constant love-hate. I have almost no one left who are supportive. I'm trying to change that, of course, by making my friendships with a couple people I trust better by telling them, but It still scares me a bit. Its like my brain just... Avoids the subject. Is that normal? Do peoples heads just switch off to avoid fear and go forward? I feel like my life at this point is as easily described as slowly going in a cold swimming pool slowly versus just jumping into it. Its almost like I don't know or care whether I go into the deep end or shallow, but its still the same unavoidable pool. Thats probably somewhat a typical. It might just be a fear of current SRS technology though, cause part of me wants to wait until it improves... It just feels like I've gotten to these huge life decisions, and rather than make them one or the other, I'm just floating down the stream in a tube waiting which way the current takes me.

I hate not feeling like myself. Thats one reason why its urgent. I don't know how far I will go either, which is another thing which scares me, but if I stopped right now, I'd feel like going back to this lie, and I can't stand even thinking about that.

I really want a gender therapist, but my family has no money, and my mom doesn't seem to understand my urgency. The second I get into a college, I'm pushing it on her again. 

[Just Mandy]

How did you derive that meaning from her post? I didn't read it that way at all. I don't see where she said anything about what you "have to" do. She was just making a statement about how she feels.

That is why I asked... I did not understand...  if your transitioning and you don't WANT to" what is the other reason? Because you
feel compelled (HAVE to) to? Or is there something else?

Amanda

[Kate]

Who the hell WANTS to transition?? I sure don't.

If I knew THEN what I know NOW... I'd "want" to. Not because of the results; but rather because it was a pretty darn amazing, wonderous experience. I'm almost... ALMOST... sad that it's now come(ing) to an end.

~Kate~

[Just Mandy]

If I knew THEN what I know NOW... I'd "want" to. Not because of the results; but rather because it was a pretty darn amazing, wonderous experience. I'm almost... ALMOST... sad that it's now come(ing) to an end.

That's another reason I was confused... I WANT to transition ... I just don't WANT to hurt others
in the process.

Amanda