Sometimes I will act like a turtle in my mind, my head receding back into my shell. It's my "safe place." There I try to work things out, but often, am even more terrified. In my shell I am exposed to the real me. I can't fight it. I can't make it go away. When I face myself, I fear myself. My body, a complete humiliation to me, is the most intimate part of myself besides my mind. Often I find myself extending far away from my personal being, so far outside of myself that I can barely make out my own body. I like to have my head up in the clouds where my personhood is so small that I cannot identify it. There I am glad, because I cannot see my female features and be ashamed of them. At the same time, being up there is making my life difficult. I can't see where I'm going. I keep running into things. I keep getting lost. I keep loosing grip on reality. When I bring myself back down to Earth, again I must face myself. So then I just keep looking straight ahead. I won't look at myself. If I do, I'll feel that pain and humiliation again. Even if no one else sees it, I know it's there. And I often can't help but think that by presenting as male I am lying to everyone; yes, I am a male in my being, in my mind... but not in my body. By presenting as male, I am telling a half-truth; the half they don't know about is that I am 100% female in my body. Often, I can't help but feel a little guilt over that.
Disassociation is one of the methods I use to cope. My coping methods include a lot of things. I try to positively encourage myself and reassure myself that my gender identity is valid... I've felt this way for such a long time. I can't imagine that it's a lie. It's who I am. As long as I remember to be true to myself, I can be secure in my own mind. But still, my body bothers me. As I type those tiny, but still large enough to annoy me breasts jiggle. My period started this morning, and the toilet water was red. I was horrified by that color, that sensation. Something, as usual, felt wrong about it. I felt that twinge of the fight-or-flight response, that I was somehow damaged and had to protect myself. That I was a wounded soldier who had to take refuge. The sensation of wiping that red slime from my genitals is almost my feelings represented with real imagery; I feel like my male parts were cut off and this is the wound that bleeds every month to represent that loss.
Realizing I was transgender was an opening to finding new ways to cope. I started accepting my masculinity and expressing it. At the same time, I had to fight the naturally forced femininity that my body's form takes. It feels like a constant battle, and if I push hard enough, there is equilibrium between the two forces. I hope that one day the masculine self can take over physically and mentally, fighting off the natural female mannerisms, emotions, and characteristics that don't feel part of me. It is fairly difficult having to wage war with the instincts caused by having estrogen in my body; that my mind does not want to live life that way, but the chemical messengers released by my ovaries tell me otherwise. It's like a bird fighting flight or a fish wishing to live on land. I feel as though I am defying very strong forces of nature. At the same time, I know that my condition is natural, caused by environmental effects. The transgender population grows as our planet becomes more overpopulated. In a way, I feel that nature wants us to be sterilized in order to protect the human race. I'm not thrilled about the idea; so badly do I want to be a father, but I can live with it and raise and adopted child.
I started participating in more masculine activities. Working out, building houses with Habitat for Humanity, fixing cars, learning about mechanics, and even fantasizing over the
beautiful motorcycle I want... I started taking pride in the desires I used to hide from myself because I was ashamed to have them. For once, I was happy to be me. I was happy that deep down I was a boy who would be blossoming into a young man... My puberty, quite delayed and synthetic, will still get to happen. It's a dream come true. In a way, it is a miracle and it is like magic-- that a man who is trapped in a woman's body can restore his external manhood. Never before had I dreamed that could ever happen. What, then, did transition give me? Something I hadn't ever honesty felt; hope. Never before did I really understand the meaning of the word. Not until I had something to hope for.
But that hope sometimes diminishes. I am but 5'3" and this morning I weight out at 79.2 lbs. I gained a pound this week. But the differences between the male and female body are often astonishing. My body, being abnormally small for a female, would have to make drastic changes to be even in sight of average for a male. These mannequins help express the vast difference I feel when I look at my body verses a male's body. Obviously they are a great deal exaggerrated; the "perfect" look, in the eyes of the media, but I simply mean the shapes, especially that bit of meat under then man's arms that comes down to his wast... I am proud to say that my lower half looks far more like his than the female's but my upperhalf looks very much like hers, with smaller breasts on my body.
I had to learn to make myself see my own body more masculinely. I'd stand naked in front of a mirror and try to pick out portions of my body that I liked. I found that my back looks quite masculine, from the muscles on my shoulders and such. That without breasts, I could pass as male, just a really skinny one. That I was proud of. I put something in front of my chest (a wash cloth, probably) that covered only my breasts. Just removing that one part made me look astonishingly male, and I was absolutely thrilled. For the first time in my life I could be intimate with my own body and take pride in it. If only those damn sacks of ugly were gone. Fortunately for me, I am certain that I will be able to change that and really take pride in my upper half. My bottom half, however, is a completely different story. Coping with it involves the use of tools; packing. If I didn't pack, I think I would feel quite dysphoric on a regular basis. Packing helps act as a substitute, and if it weren't there, I well... would probably put something there. If for some reason I couldn't, I very likely would agonize over it. I learned that an inanimate object as a substitute can be a very important thing, whereas before I used to think that packing was a ridiculous idea.
For a long time coping for me involved escapism. I was completely obsessed with the original
Saturday Night Live cast, and I would watch a lot of their work. I was hardly "at home" in my mind, always off somewhere else, skipping through fields of alfalfa with John Belushi or something. It took me some time to realize that I was living in a past I hadn't even lived, and that I was ignoring the present. During the time of my life where I was completely isolated from reality, my real life diminished. Friendships crumbled, my grades suffered, my health started to disintegrate. It was around that time I said, "Frack this. I'm going to start cross dressing." I must say that presenting as male in public greatly increased my confidence and self esteem. People finally acknowledged the boy inside of me who had been trying to break out for so many years. I finally feel like I can live my life instead of putting it on hold. I still feel that I cannot be intimate with people, because my personal boundaries are quite large, but I can currently live life as a somewhat happy bachelor, his happiness driven by the hope that I will soon start my transition.
My feelings are somewhat different from yours, Arch, but I can relate to disassociation.
