Rambling...

[Jasmine.m]

My therapist suggested that I start to explore my personality a bit more. I guess I've been confused about it for so long that I'm not quite sure who's who anymore. I mean, I know I'm me, I'm always me, but there's always this anxiety around everything. I wonder what life would like without it? A few recent posts here got me thinking... Maybe writing things down and reading them later will help; I don't know.

So now, here I am. For most of my life, I always felt like I was girl and that I would just have to bear the reality that I wasn't. For a while, I tried to repress that and only be a boy. Then for a while, I thought maybe I had two different personalities, one girl and one boy. So I let her out and named her and explored what she was all about, but I always made sure that she was not me. Over time, I realized that was nonsense. She is me and I am her. I simply am who I am. I can't be any less feminine as a boy than I can be any more masculine as a girl!

In my late teens, I was quite an outspoken person, but then as I moved into my twenties and so on I became less and less... I suppose that's what college really taught me; to be successful, one must conform. I graduated, got a job, and began working. Things went well for a few years, but then slowly, starting about four years ago, I started losing the ability to keep up the charade. I went from an ordinary 'guy' to a 'metrosexual' to the very, very effeminate person I am today (which, I suppose, most people assume is 'gay'). 

Around the time I started giving in to the fem feelings, I decided to talk to someone. It didn't really help me at all and I gave up. In my mind, I gave myself a time limit of five years. If I still had these feelings, if I just couldn't take it anymore, I would take some sort of action. At the time, five years seemed so far off. Ha ha!! That was about four years ago. As I mentioned above, I have only gotten much, much for fem in that time. The feelings are so strong!! So this year, I started talking to a different therapist. She's given me a path, but has not given me the okay to take that path (yet)...  I feel like I've started the so-called ball rolling and I feel like it's something I can't stop and honestly... I don't even know that I want to try.

So, I'm nervous and excited and confused and certain. I have so many questions and so few answers. I have so much to loose and yet everything to gain. I guess... After re-reading this, I can see that either way, boy or girl, I'm quite a mess!!

[jennajane]

Hi Jasmine, I think we are in similar places in our lives.  Last year on my 32nd birthday I was engaged to be married to the most amazing girl I ever met.  But there was still a big hole in my life and it was then that I decided to take action.  I became involved in the trans community in my town and made a few friends.  I started seeing a therapist and in the fall enrolled in gender program at the hospital which oversees the transition process and helps one come to a decision if that is the best decision for them.  I now feel that with "the ball rolling" in my life, I can't stop it either, nor do I want to.  I am so eager to start the next step (HRT), but the program I am in wants me to wait until spring or fall.  I think I can make it until spring.  I know I am in the early stages, but everything feels so right these day.  Mostly coming out to my friends and family has removed so much of the isolation/shame/loneliness that have surrounded my life as long as remember. 

I noticed in another post that you practice yoga, me, I'm a bit of a junky.  These days, I do 6-7 practices a week in a heated studio.  I have made lots of friends at the studio, including the owner, and they are all showing me lots of support through the transition process.  I give lots of the clarity I have found in my life and my new direction to the meditative aspects of my asana practice.

Anyway, I enjoyed reading your ramblings, you are not alone.
jenna!

[Melissa M]

All I can say is WOW!!!  I can so relate to this, that I have read it and re-read it and reread it again.  I can not believe how I can identify to this.  I use to write things down all the time, and then one day, some idiot found my journel and turned it into the authorities, and low and behold, I have the police at my door taking me into custody and brought down to the local mental health institution.  That was it for my writing things down.  Never again will I ever do that.  Same went for me with therapists.  I went to one, and she told me to open up, to explore my feelings, be me.  So I did, and next thing I know, once more I wind up in this glass bubble with no clothing on, and placed in observation for 72 hours with only a mattress to sleep on.  Really hard for me now to open up to anyone, and I don't trust people.  Yet I know, if I ever want to pursue this fully, i have no choice...  

I have lived both lives, male, and female.  I have done just about everything that I can think of in this lifetime, and yet....I just want to be me, who ever the hell that is.  Though I know who that is, I can not even dream at this time on how to be that, or to even achieve my goals....loneliness can be a real drag....   So I am glad to have found this community.