For a long time in therapy, I felt like I was caught in some "issue of the week" trap. I always had several problems that I was grappling with, and in a session I would just talk about whichever one was troubling me the most. The next session, something else might be bothering me, and I would rant about that problem. It was just triage. No real continuity from session to session.
Gradually, I'm coming to accept that other people really do read me as male and that it's no mistake. I'm starting to see that after more than forty-five years of being called "she," it will take me time, perhaps several years, to get used to being called "he." And I know now--intellectually if not emotionally--that I deserve it as much as any man who was labeled a boy at birth. I've made mistakes and have hurt people, but who hasn't? I did the best I could with what I had. The only thing I can do now is learn to forgive myself and resolve to do better in the future.
Somehow, miraculously, I'm learning not to be so hard on myself. In order to begin learning that lesson, I needed someone, some one person--in this case, my therapist--to know me like no other human ever has, to see my flaws and accept me and even like me. I am learning to take his lead, to mirror his acceptance back at myself. It is working.
I'm starting to piece together all of the little weirdnesses in my childhood and adulthood, the strange ways that I coped over the years, the types of relationships I sought out, and how I managed (or, sometimes, mismanaged) those relationships. It has taken a long time and a lot of hard work, but I can see so many connections now. I can see reasons for how I was and what I did. Patterns have emerged. Continuity.
There is order in chaos. Sometimes we just need time and help to see it and make sense of it.
