Hi Virginia, thank you for your response. I believe that your response helps for me to have more of an understanding. I always try to ask questions with respect, and I do my best not to judge anyone for who they are and the decisions they make. But it does help to have a better understanding.
I have been living full time in my preferred gender for nine years and had the surgery 4 years ago. I was living in Ontario at the time I began my transitioning, and the surgery was *not* covered by provincial health insurance back then. The cost for surgery was prohibitive on the meager salary I was making as a social worker. Here in Canada the wages for a provincial employee doing social work are mostly underpaid and overworked. But I loved my job and I love working with people especially those in need.
Anyway what it boils down to is that I had pretty well given up on the chance of ever getting the surgery, so I had pretty well resigned myself to the fact that in all probability, I would be living the rest of my life incomplete, so I better get over it. Who the hell would be any wiser anyway unless they looked in my pants, and only one person ever saw my personal parts down there was my JP. To the rest of the world they didn't have to know.
Having resigned to the fact that I may never get the surgery helped much in allowing myself to accept myself the way I was, basically a female with a deformity between her legs. I may very well have lived the rest of my life content with that if an unexpected source of intervention to allow for surgery hadn't come along. This allowed for one more final change in my life that brought me closer to completion and have since rewritten my past only by switching the gender roles.
The point is that I had accepted myself the way I was, and decided it was time to move on with my life as complete a female as I could be. Any similarities?
Cindy