Susan's Place Transgender Resources

I'm wondering how to stay positive when no one else around you is.

I'm starting to feel like a lot of the things I'm doing since i decided to transition, they would be pleased with if i was doing them as a girl.

like the thing that lead me to come out was my chest dysphoria, i had talked a lot about hating the size of my bust, and about having reduction surgery as a female. since i came out to a few people i had the motivation to loose weight and i dropped two cup sizes. I told my mother about it because I've got all these old bras that I've hardly worn and so I'm going to donate them + was wondering if we had anything to post them in. I'm 100% sure that if I'd done this a year ago as a 'girl' it would have been a cause for celebration, but today it was like I'd said something terrible and worrying because she knows it's connected to transitioning. i just wish someone could have once said something positive to me and not this kind of disappointed dread or like i'm just inconvenient.

i know everyone's 'grieving' (which is great for my suicidal ideation as it makes me feel a bit like I'm already dead :D ) but wouldn't it help them too try and see a positive side? I don't know how to explain to them that i'm doing this because i've been depressed for the last ten years without going into how bad i feel. i don't want to make them more sad and angry but i want to be taken seriously. i feel like someone going through a divorce in the twenties, like it's not to be talked about.

did anyone else feel this when they started their transition and how can you make it better? do i have to just wait it out?

Quote from: Peep on November 22, 2015, 05:57:57 PM
did anyone else feel this when they started their transition and how can you make it better? do i have to just wait it out?

"Get over and deal with it.." like everyone tells me. At least that's what I do. Sorry, I suck at alot of things in life, including advice. Yeah...

Yeah, and that's what I want to tell them to do, but apparently I can't? Is that a double standard or is that just me?

Also there are so many typos in my OP and the title, I really need to type slower. I'm sorry for being illiterate :P

I'm struggling with this as well. I guess I just have to get used to me only being happy for me.

Look at it like this. Your life is your story, and it's the only one I believe any of us get. You are authoring it the way you want, there's nothing wrong with striving for your own happiness, even if everyone else sees nothing in it. You are the star of your own show. Lose yourself in it.

Most people close to me either don't talk about it, or dread it happening. But I weighed up my options. What do I do - continue living my empty life as furniture for other people, or give my own happiness a shot. What do they have to offer me NOT to transition? Well one of them cares so much and is in contact so much they wouldn't know if I was dead or alive right now. And the other is someone I care deeply about but the cat's out of the bag now - they already know who I really am inside, and to continue without transitioning is to know that I am miserable. Even though it makes them miserable to think of it, they acknowledge that I have no choice, I have to do it or risk a lifetime of misery. So, there's not much on offer NOT to transition. If there were some substantial benefits to not transitioning, I might have considered it, but there isn't. Are there any for you, other than maintaining appearances for people who have sticks up their butts so far they simply ignore something which is clearly important to you?

All the people around you have their own lives with all their own stresses and self issues. Some of the things you change resonate with them and cause them to focus on their own issues. They don't like that. People don't like change. Everybody seems to want me to stay the same and never change anything. People put you into a category and then they are comfortable. Changing that is uncomfortable. I watch people's faces when they look at me. As changes happen it seems to get better over time until the next change. Lots to think about.

Quote from: Elis on November 23, 2015, 03:27:02 AM
I'm struggling with this as well. I guess I just have to get used to me only being happy for me.

Yup, same. A common theme.

Yeah i thought everyone would be the same, but it just annoys me that we have to put up with it at all

I'm aware - or thought I was aware - of the privileges i have and so i came out expecting full support because i've always had it in everything else i've done, and i guess it just makes me wonder why this is different. they shouldn't be worried because it'll cost them money, because we have the NHS to get us most of the way, and i've been paying for my binders etc with my own funds. they've always been pretty good at standing up to our extended family over other issues, so i didn't expect that to be a problem either. I just always really looked up to my parents + it's disappointing to not be as lucky as i thought i was :P

I just didn't realise how much of their expectations of me were tied to my body. I know that they don't care how i dress because I've worn masculine clothes before - I had a boyish phase and then a girly one - so why is the shape of the body underneath important?

I'm just so used to being able to share things that interest me or that i'm excited by but now everything's overshadowed by transitioning. my mother and I were close - we have a lot of shared interests in art + design and i guess she's afraid that might change (even though it hasn't so far and i don't think it will; i mean to look at it logically my favourite designers + artists are mostly men anyway...) but at the same time we already had conflicting interests that didn't get in the way of our relationship - like she's always been super feminine + into colour and patterns and I've been wearing only black for years haha

I don't know if i'm just naive but i didn't expect gender would be such a wall when socially i'm not even that different from my brothers - or my cis male boyfriend, who my parents love. He and i used to joke that we were actually the same person (gross i know). i suppose maybe people don't see the point of transitioning if nothing from their POV will actually change? maybe i need to emphasise my lack of social dysphoria more?

Quote from: T.K.G.W. on November 23, 2015, 08:38:49 AM
If there were some substantial benefits to not transitioning, I might have considered it, but there isn't. Are there any for you, other than maintaining appearances for people who have sticks up their butts so far they simply ignore something which is clearly important to you?

That's a good point, I hadn't thought of it that way around before. Although my mother did say that in ten years time i could end up completely alone if you through with it. I don't think she meant to include herself in that statement but it did sound like that, and then she was confused as to why that upset me.

I think part of my problem is that she and one of my brothers and I all have stress disorders, but because my brother is more outward with his (i.e. he punches walls and breaks things) and i've always been more inwards (hiding + harming myself instead of random objects) she relies on me to sort myself out while she tries to help him. i'm not saying i want the attention, because i don't + i don't want to add to her high stress levels, but it seems like she's privately stressing out about me anyway and won't listen to any of the positive sides that might make her feel better too.

My boyfriend is better in that he's generally a positive person and so my stuff brings him down to neutral instead of negative, and he's done some of his own research, but what he got from the stuff he read is that he's not allowed to be part of the decision making or my transition process and can't ask me not to do certain things (i don't know what he's been reading) and i had to repeat that I'm choosing to make him part of it, that I'm not going to leave him behind. I don't want to push him away or for him to think he has to 'set me free' so i'm wary of asking for more support?

the thing is that in many ways I'm doing this for them too because i don't think i could still be here without transitioning. i just don't think i can tell them that because it's so emotionally manipulative!

sorry for writing a novel but like i said i have literally no one else to whine about this stuff to

I was legally disowned. I was actively run out of my job. I was publicly humiliated with excommunication from the pulpit at church.

I moved. I told no one about my transition, my surgeries, etc, until I was fully done. Then I showed my Dad my new private parts. That put an end to all talk of what I was going to do.

I've also stayed in my new home state for over thirty years. I dread going home even for a visit. Oh, my family has long since come around and accepted me, but I really dislike going back to that bubble of fundamentalist thinking that is so pervasive in Utah.

I've built a life and it is pretty good. I've had many good times and some very bad times. But I've had a good life. I'm proud of my accomplishments and who I've become. That's what really counts to me.

Cindi

I came out full time 6 months ago... but every time I change something about me..
even a minor one.....its like starting all over again at step 1.. change does make people
uncomfortable.. but life goes on.. things workout... and I have no regrets..