Susan's Place Transgender Resources

I've seen this term becoming myself or true to myself or I can finally be myself.

I used to speak this way also some time ago, when I was beginning transition. Now it seems so strange and foreign to me. How are we ever anyone other than ourselves?

If you speak this way, or did in the past, what do you mean when you say I am becoming myself?

Is this a split personality or something hidden in us when we speak like this? Do you consider this part of transition?

I would censor every movement I made, every word I spoke, every behavior I made to make sure it was male enough or that it at least didn't come off as feminine.  Every tendency that I had to be feminine was squelched and I am very feminine. For me to be my true self is not to censor myself and do what comes naturally to me. This male persona that I've hidden behind is of course a part me and I'm working on keeping the useful parts of it and leaving behind the rest.

Gotta cut this short, time to go to work.

I think of it more as a process - of becoming steadily more myself. Gender transition is a part, but only a part, of that process. My Buddhist teacher once said: it's not so much a question of becoming more oneself as of stopping trying to be anyone else :). Most people spend at least part of their lives trying to be other people they admire or want approval from, while they're growing up enough to discover their own identity.

As far as gender goes, my unconscious made a very firm decision at an early age to protect me from dangerous truth until it was safe to come out and be known. I have only recently had the unnerving (but at the same time completely natural-feeling) experience of, well, as if I woke up in my male body, realised I'd in some way been asleep in it for decades, and am now the one living in it, and it's the wrong shape. I don't feel as though I'm a different person exactly, but neither do I feel like the same person. This definitely feels like a very significant stage in a journey into myself, which wants to manifest itself in outward changes to reflect that.

But I don't feel that I wasn't myself until now, just that there was a long period of stealth before it was safe to come out to myself about this particular aspect.

I can say that when I was younger, I was obsessively buying clothes that I hated and felt disgusting in, trying to "be a girl". I hated myself for it, hated forcing my voice higher than it was naturally, and everything else that went along with it. Since I came to terms with all this, I've dropped every act I ever had and have been completely myself. It's a lot easier, and it makes me not want to off myself.

I think it's a bit like being the tin man in Oz. That at first everything creaky and moving is a real effort, but with some practice and a bunch of oil, movement becomes smooth and possible.

The whole point of life it seems is the act of becoming one's self, and discovering who that self actually is.  Every day we grow, and learn, and become more of who we are, even now.  But for us it often means throwing off the shackles of living a lie foisted upon us by well-meaning others who nonetheless could never understand what it was that we cruelly suffered.

Yes we are always ourselves, and I feel that the person I am now, Ms. Chloe -. -------, was destined from birth to become who she is, who I am.  Some of us just get there through a more circuitous path than others lol  :)

For me, that saying has become something I use to simplify things.  For those who have no idea what it's like when birth gender and brain gender are in conflict, this is such a foreign concept you could spend days, weeks, months and even years trying to help them wrap their head around it.  The "being myself" terminology is a concept a lot of people can relate to and understand.

My mental nature feels like it's buried under mental filters of some kind to try to fit into what my life is physically, and my body is a misdeveloped shell..."becoming myself" entails to me that the filters are gone so that the personality speaking its desire can finally live directly in my life and the physical body won't be such a mismatch. ^^ That's what I mean when I say it...

i've conditioned myself to act like others do, now i'm trying to become my own person. i'll stop second-guessing and blocking myself, so more of who i naturally am gets out.
Sure i am myself right now too. it's how i would act if i was born as the wrong sex (which i was :P), so i am basically already being myself. but that's just one of my traits that i'm using to hide everything else about me, and i want to reveal all of myself, to others AND me.

Maybe it means we're getting closer to death. Finally people can come to the funeral and say, "Doesn't he look like himself?" or, "Doesn't she look like herself?"

I know... I'm being negative.

It's a difficult one, I still feel like me and don't really feel that I act much differently. It's nice to finally feel as though I'm being honest with myself and the world about who I am though. :)

For me it meant that I was no longer going to I put my feelings and needs aside and try to please everyone else by living up to what others expected of me... Society is so hypocritical... Your told to just be yourself and as soon as you do your told it's wrong and everyone's going to shape and mold you into what they want... Well screw that

I basically got tired of putting on a stupid act for everyone else and decided to be the person I am

I transitioned so long ago that that particular phrase had not yet been coined LOL!

As a child/youngster unable to effectively pass for male, I was so repressed that I didn't have any idea who or what I was, well except for a few glimpses of some possibilities from the time I spend living en femme. Within a couple of years following transition/SRS I looked back and marvelled! I couldn't believe how radically different I was - WAY beyond anything I had ever imaged or dared to dream!

I DID become myself - I just had no idea ahead of time what kind of person I would be.

here's the main idea, being true to yourself is something you have to do regularly. transitioning is one thing that allows me to be true to myself, but society makes that a very hard thing by keeping male/female seperate. with the idea they are two seperate creatures, one having nothing to do with the other. becoming yourself is always a work in progress, since our surroundings change all the time, we need to change and adapt along with them the best way we know how.

I've lived my false male persona for a long time and when I could finally drop it I really did finally live my life as me and it's totally wonderful.

Teresa

To realise that life is a play, and that you're an actor playing a role. Becoming yourself is taking off the costume, throwing away the script and learning to ad lib. :)

when I was young around the age I felt as though I was understanding myself on the inside I felt that I was more feminine, I was really close to my mum, I hated hanging out with my brothers who were mean to me. I'd rather play in my mums wardrobe and just be quiet basically.

Then at some point people around me such as family, friends and school told me I was a boy and treated me like a boy yet I didn't like it and it didn't feel like ME.

Over time I bought into this idea of what people told me, I had to deny and bury my own sense of self in the realms of gender and take on the roles of what others wanted and expected of me. I played along. My conscious mind convinced my subconscious of this which was the most horrible part because it's such a differcult thing to undo.

Then with time I felt that I couldn't go on doing this, I was fake I wasn't reaching my full potential and I wasn't being true to myself. So......... I had to decide, to break out of that false mold and become my true self.

When I was younger, I learned quick to never show emotion, good or bad.  It was a defense mechanism.  The whole "Big boys don't cry" crap.

Now I am freer to just be me.  If I am crying, people assume "that poor woman", not "stupid ->-bleeped-<-".  Yes I am only changing the packaging, but that in its self is being me.

Hey, as it just happened the last 2 days I picked up email conversations with some former acquaintances. First reaction? "You sound different" second "you sound more at ease".
The person does NOT know about my transition as yet. (Got to go EASY not to scare the poor guy).
Now if I'd try and recover my "old self" for the sake of his comfort (the way he knew me) the old tension and pussy-footing would have to start again. It is this NOT-being-yourself in a nut shell. Also the GID thing you eventually can't take any longer. It's your old act, the  trying to please expectations of your sex but at cross purposes with your brain-gender. I refuse to go back there, i.e. not-being-myself.
When I had to do it for some identification purposes, really only half-hearted as is went, it so freaked me out I had 2 major break-down that followed. Actually a full on GID attack. The price for not being "myself" only for a pretty short while yet it made me freak afterwards.
Hope this makes sense.
Axelle

For me it's expressing a part of me that never was expressed. I always was comfortable about myself but didn't know that I was trans for years. It's been a wonderful revelation because I feel so much more comfortable.

Gennee  


:)

Quote from: gennee on May 25, 2011, 10:37:50 AM
For me it's expressing a part of me that never was expressed. I always was comfortable about myself but didn't know that I was trans for years. It's been a wonderful revelation because I feel so much more comfortable.

Gennee  


:)

I could not have said it better myself.

Kia Ora Valerie,

Somewhat deep but...............

::) Peeling away the layers of the socially constructed [but "self" generated] illusion that "I" misguidedly allowed to accumulate over the years, to expose the truth that lies within/beneath...

Metta Zenda :)

It is hard to measure someone's dysphoria,but I can say mine for sure hit me like a train. I held up for years hidding myself in a person who wans't me, and when I couldn't take it anymore, I developed panic disorder AND depression major at the same time in the course of a month.

So for me, when I say I became myself  it is totally literal. I'm sure I was going to die pretty quick if I continued to follow that path, because in the attempt to block my feminine self I almost destroyed myself.

I always had an image in my mind of who I really was. As I grew up my body changed in ways that made it nothing like my self image. Transitioning has meant realizing my original self image as closely as possible. It's funny this topic should come up because lately I often think of where I'm at in life right now and how astonishing it is that the person here now is the same person who ten years ago was lost and misguided, living in an incongruent male shell with a male name.

I'm busy unpacking the emotional baggage of the past two decades of hiding. Every time I rediscover something, it seems new to those around me. But I can't do it all at once, even if I wanted to, so it's still a becoming process rather than just I am.

Quote from: Helena on May 24, 2011, 04:20:41 PM
To become one's self, first you must know one's self. transition is the artful journey of knowing and accepting one's self rather than hiding it, denying it or shouting at it until you think it's gone away.

But seriously, every one of us has transitioned multiple times through our lives...we become ourselves multiple times throughout our lives because who we are now is always who we are.

Beautifully said, Helena.  Absolutely agree.

:)   Lacey