Personally I love the experience, figuring out who you are how people react to your change how people curiously look. It might be because I'm a lot older and I look at it more as a medical experiment, but I'm having a blast with the added benefit of healing a deep wound.
I think its possible to figure out who you are and heals deep wounds without being trans.
For me its barely manageable curse at times.
Depending on how I am feeling at the time I go from seeing being trans* as both a fun challenge to get through and a cruse.
What I am trying to figure out if this is just the way I am or if it has anything to do that I also feel that my gender is fluid at times. it feels odd that my inner conscious gender will be female most of the time but my outerinner conscious gender shifts between male and female.
A friggin' lifetime quest I never signed for.
For years it was a hideous horrible curse. Then it became a manageable curse. Now it's just background noise and not even loud background noise anymore.
I could spend a lifetime thinking about it. Sometimes like this weekend I just have bad dysphoria and other times I feel great. I just go with the flow and make the best out of my life
Like waking in the morning with bright healthy sunshine entering my windows after too many days of dreary weather. Dani
well, I should say its been like a curse all my life , but HRT has been like the good witch breaking the wicked witches evil spell
HRT has been like the good witch breaking the wicked witches evil spell
Excellent, and for me the sunshine is the good witch.
It certainly is an intriguing challenge. It can certainly be a manageable curse. Luckily for me it is not an unmanageable curse
I think of it as a card game. I was dealt a crappy hand from birth so now I need to make do with the cards that I was given, sacrificing the ones that are of no use to me (unsupportive people) and getting new ones (new people in life). Sometimes, the old cards surprise me and help make my hand stronger (when they come around to being supportive).
I look at my life and the cards I was dealt like a beautiful mistake. Even though I went through male puberty, my skeletal structure remained pretty fem so the physical side of transition hasn't been too bad. But the mental part has been a crazy roller coaster. I'm a stronger person for all of the terrible things I've been through and gained a lot of wisdom from those "lost years" so to me that's the positive side to all of the hell I had to go through. But at the end of the day I still feel like I'm not fully out of the woods just yet since I really want bottom surgery and its the final step in my transition. Until then my perspective on myself of me being a beautiful mistake will remain. Since the biggest mistake the universe did to me has yet to be fixed.
This perspective is on myself only, it's not towards anyone.
Both, actually.
Intriguing challenge - that's one way to look at it. More like life gives you lemons, make lemonade?
Manageable curse - seems more accurate. I will after all be on medication the rest of my life. Surgery and pain too most likely. No ability to conceive as a woman (but I have kids already). The last one... I saw a video of a newborn clinging to his mom's face in the delivery room. That will never be me. Sure, my kids and I became very close in the NICU when they were born. I saw them before their mom actually, but it would never be the same as giving birth. That deeply hurts me inside.
Would have been WAY easier if I was just born female in both mind and body. Way, way easier. Oh well!
For 4+ decades I considered it a manageable curse until the depression became too encompassing. Told myself I need to learn to feel, something, anything again.
Now I'm at or beyond the intruiging challenge stage. I want to live like I always envisioned myself as being...a woman.
life has been quite challenging since I was 4 with this hidden storm raging inside never being appeased until HRT now I'm having so much fun seeing my body change to fit who I am.
A horrendous curse from hell is what it is. I suppose one day when my tale is told by others it may be intriguing.
Honestly, somedays are so miserable that I'm not sure what will become of me. I'm sure that after I begin to transition it will be better. With the misery however I do think of this experience as a blessing. Having this perspective and outlook that can only be had by a few feels very nice in a way.. And being the mystically minded person I am, I feel that being trans has a sacredness to it. Still, had I just been born female bodied, I'd be so happy.
I'm really proud that I've been able to transition and thrilled that I get to live as a woman. I also like that I can see life from both sides of the gender divide.
The main problem now is hair (too much of it some places, not enough others) and the pain and time it causes. In that way it's kind of been like a curse. Also, I miss the good parts of my marriage.
I simply view it as a birth defect. my gonads developed incorrectly and it made puberty go horribly wrong. that it has lead to misconceptions about my gender for most of my life is simply an unfortunate and time-consuming side effect to fix.
On a good day when I feel beautiful I feel like it's a blessing. I know I'm a better person for this. It becomes an intriguing challenge. On a bad day I feel it's a curse that I might be able to manage on a better day.
I see this whole extravaganza happening quite a lot on a more spiritual level as some have mentioned here. I'm learning a lot about myself, gender, and perception. I've had to process my feelings and thoughts much more systematically than if I'd just been a cis girl. I am much more aware and tolerant of different genders now than before I started processing this ordeal. Consequently, I feel I know a lot more about how I perceive things to be and I've become aware of how really unaware I am of others, their thoughts and their feelings.
But the physical is there too. I think I daydream off the challenges and problems that I would have to face in reality. This might be a blessing and a curse of my nature, too... It helps me put off misery that I feel I might otherwise have to drown in about the gap between my current and desired states. So really, the manageable curse is on the physical side: how do others perceive me and will I ever be gendered correctly? Sex I've sort of put off my mind for now and HRT helps with that.
currently, most like an unmanageable curse for me. Just tired of it.
On good days I'm glad I'm trans for the clarity and peace HRT has brought me. Testosterone was really messing me up, depression, anxiety.
On bad days, when the situation is weighing heavily on Sweety, I sit on the fence. What it's doing to my marriage is a curse, but the relative calm I can approach those days with is a blessing. Testosterone on my poor, beleaguered female brain led me to often make promises that were impossible to keep.
About 10 years back I realized I was poly and that made life really difficult for a while. I realized that a poly person CAN live monogamously and I've done so with enough motivation. When I realized I was trans I first looked back to that experience and soon realized that trans was a whole 'nother kettle of fish. This is not something you can ignore or put on a back burner and survive for very long.