I felt like I should write something here about why I chose to transition as I am, so um, here i go...
Escapism
My route to dealing with my gender issues was one that came through the path of mindfulness and unbiased observation. Prior to dealing with gender I spent years working on letting go of all the endless sources of suffering. My biggest struggle of letting go was the topic of creative escapism. I had saturated my life with time consuming creative projects to avoid silence. The path of letting go of this came through a gradual process of observing silence in my mind, identifying small issues that bother me and working on them, and gradually reducing the total time spent engaging in escapism.
The Tipping Point
Roughly two years ago I had reached a tipping point, I deleted all online accounts to mmo's and forums and pretty much everything I used, and when i wasnt eating or working etc, ended up spending a month in my room in the darkness meditating in silence. This marked a turning point where I gained control of my mind, and problem solving went into hyperspeed. I was changing so quickly I would have to spend hours updating those I'm closest to on who i currently am every time I spoke to them. Eventually as I sifted through two decades of repressed problems I reached the key subjects, sex, sexuality and gender.
The long path of acceptance
I began tackling my identity issues by eliminating my avoidance of accepting my sexuality, allowing myself to explore. I reached the conclusion that for me my emotional and intlectual connection is more important than sex or gender. That foundation formed a gateway to discover gender. Around this period a very close friend of mine came out to me in regards to being Intersex, this helped me heavily as it gave me a reason to discuss many topics that I have avoided. From this point on I began a process of researching the biology and science behind sex, gender, neurology and the endocrine system as a whole. I reset my perceptions of these topics according to unbiased mindful observation of the data I found. Following this I finally accepted that I was indeed supposed to have female biology.
Finding peace within
With all of the above combined with understandings of interconnectedness and a large core of the lifestyle wisdom taught by the Buddha, I had managed to cultivate a reset of sorts. I let go of entertainment as a whole, I let go of all kinds of pleasure seeking and mind altering substances such as alcohol msg and caffeine. I had eliminated all perception of boredom. I had eliminated irrational anger. I had successfully eliminated the majority of conditioning and successfully returned myself to that pure natural state we all experience as children. From this point out I am working on reconstructing who I am in an environment that successfully deals with all sources of stimulus instead of repressing things. Due to this I decided that it is important my whole transition, social physical and everything else must progress naturally at the rate biology changes. To this effort I grew out my hair, replaced clothing with neutral looking female items and soon I shall begin my true puberty on estrogen and other complimenting hormones.
What does the future hold?
So now I have decided this, told everyone that I need to tell and am about to begin hormones, what do I expect my future to contain?
Well, my current plan is to continue to gradually transition as the hormones do their work, I'm beginning electro Saturday, I shall update my legal identity and other things as society begins to perceive me diffrently. However more important of all, I want to use this true puberty of sorts to transition from my old body to my new body over the many years it takes to grow and change who I am at a natural pace to me. There are endless things for me to discover and I want to savor every single experience.
So no, there won't be a single date where I go from "guy mode" to full time, as that isn't how nature works. This is something that takes time, and how you deal with it defines who you become.
Things I'm currently contemplating
I am currently researching the history of human identity and how I care to currently define myself, my current state of mind is that everyone is unique and that you shouldn't try to categorize someones collective identity into parts, gender, personality, dress code etc. I would much rather get to know people through real time conversation and make no assumptions at all. I have posted various things regarding the history of such subjects and my evolving perception on that topic and I shall let you visit those threads and posts to find out more.
Olivia
Thank you for sharing your journey. Your investigation, progressive insight and path are quite inspirational. The deliberate nature of your enquiry and disciplined, almost spiritual approach really resonates. Your decision to pursue a gradual, adolescence like transition in terms of timing seems to make a whole lot of sense as normal transition to adult takes time and is progressive.
I wish you well and look forward to reading your further posts
Safe travels
Aisla
Sounds very familiar. I had a pretty similar path except for the peace finding part of it, since I don't have any kind of a spiritual side to myself. But yeah, my path has been extremely slow and will continue to be. I won't be making and social transitions, especially full time, until I feel that both my mind and my body are good and ready. When I do it, I want to do it right. I'm pretty sure I'll still be pretty not right, since one can't be without practise, but it's more about the mind for me. I need to feel ready.
I've been thinking about escapism a lot, actually. I had at least a decade that I spent on complete escapism mode and while it was necessary and did good for my mental health and helped me found my identity, sometimes I wonder if I did it for too long and spent too much time there. Maybe I would've woken up earlier had I spent more time in this world instead of others. But then again, maybe I wouldn't have woken up at all.
I still do escapism and I do explore my identity through both creating and reading fiction, especially web comics these days. But it feels healthier now than maybe before, because now I know why I'm exploring those sides of myself so much. And what's nice about it is that now I don't have to feel guilty about it, like I did before.
QuoteI do explore my identity through both creating and reading fiction, especially web comics these days. But it feels healthier now than maybe before, because now I know why I'm exploring those sides of myself so much. And what's nice about it is that now I don't have to feel guilty about it, like I did before.
The key part to remember when fighting a past of escapism like ours, is that when you do engage in activities such as creative writing and reading fiction, as long as your still setting aside time to deal with everything else in your life, you have a nice balance. The problem comes when you let the activity consume you completely, and all the other important things get put off.
Quote from: Olivia P on July 03, 2014, 05:48:56 AM
The key part to remember when fighting a past of escapism like ours, is that when you do engage in activities such as creative writing and reading fiction, as long as your still setting aside time to deal with everything else in your life, you have a nice balance. The problem comes when you let the activity consume you completely, and all the other important things get put off.
I don't think I ever isolated from the world, at least not for any extended periods of time. But what I think I did do was isolate from myself. Which in hindsight might be even worse.
But perhaps I should just concentrate on the good. I don't do it anymore and I'm on my way to the true me, both physically and mentally.
Yourself is part of your life, the most important part. Thats why its so important to pay attention to ourselves, and deal with things as our body requests us to.
very inspirational post, i like the way you lay it out for us to walk your steps and i feel that is what must of us who haven't found the inner peace yet should do.
would love to see what are the out comes of your study of history of gender are. i am doing my research too in those areas and they way i see transition changed after reading studies on gender. they way i see it is that people as all other living things evolve , but each one of us evolve differently. and since it is an evolution processes time is a huge factor in it. i agree with you that transition should happen on its own pace and should start from inner self first, but i guess as human we all tend to rush things and want to see quick results in the shortest time possible, and that is where trans* fail when rushing going full time. i am in my early stages of my journey to be true me, i am not trying to fit my self in any box ( MTF, FTM, Andro etc.) rather than finding my self within this journey. i have identified the issues that needs to be dealt with and i am dealing with them one at a time. as times it feels very slow and depressing but the results of closing the issues dealt with for good and not questioning them again is worth the time
thanks for your post it inspired me to rethink the process of transition and made me wanna tackle the inner peace issue as soon as i can .
sorry for the long post but just sharing my thoughts :)