Sorry for the personal question, I just like to try and understand things. I started because it was either jumping off my apartment building or living what was left of the time I have on this planet naturally, but it's a lot more complicated than that. I've lived with this twisted burden since I was 4. My whole life has been so severely affected by this condition every conscious waking moment for 60 years. Because of how society has been I wasn't able to get the help I needed which prevented my being shown the proper path I could of taken. thankfully things are slowly changing. The opportunity presented itself 13 months ago and I chose to save my life. I've wanted to be a woman since consciousness at 4 years old. I've lived my life the best I could with Christ's loving hand. I'm sorry for this rant, but I need to get it out to people who can understand. I need to let this burden out and be the woman I've always been.(disclaimer: sorry for bringing my personal belief system into the dialogue ,it's just a part of me. this question is not in any way intended to cause harm, if said question is misinterpreted in any fashion other then a benign search for helpful information I am truly sorry.) thanks for letting me rant I truly appreciate it.
Stephanie you are one of our queens of nicely provocative questions. As I understand the question you are asking why we transition and whether we felt we had to or wanted to? If that's correct, my answer is that I had too and then wanted to. Yes there are choices. Like living in some tormented mental hell or getting real about being ourselves. I firmly believe dysphoria is persistent and progressive. It never got any better but only stronger for me until I got into therapy and transition.
A much happier girl is my result.
I transitioned because it felt like the right thing to do. I remember trying super hard to see myself as a guy when I was older but I couldn't. I just remember seeing this woman always pop up in my head that I felt like I was supposed to be.
it was either transition or suicide for me..Living as that fake person was killing me, I couldn't continue to lie myself. In my situation I knew when I was really young, I was just terrified of facing that truth for so long due to a bunch of factors like my machismo culture, teachers, peers and so on. I guess that's what hurts the most for me is that I wasn't completely ignorant of my situation and yet I continued to deny until I ultimately broke down and finally decided I needed to transition or choose the other option, which isn't much of an option.
I knew what I was so many years ago but did not know there was a viable solution so I manned it out my whole life. But when I knew the option available, in a relativly safe healthhy solution, I still tried to man it out but the angst became progressivly worse. I had to take that step and begin HRT or begin to have serious psychological problems. Today I am so much at peace with myself and will have my srs in April next year. Never would consider suicide its not in my dna.
StephanieC,
For me its knowing that if I do not transition soon, then I know I will live many years with regret and sorrow for what I should have done. I have went into cardiac arrest a few times as I have a severe heart condition that constantly reminds me that life can be taken away at the drop of a dime. I realized that life really is to short and unpredictable and that day, when it inevitably comes, that I close my eyes for the last time I do not want the last thought to be I never became the women I was meant to become. I have been lucky so far and am very grateful. Sometimes I just look into the sky or stare at the stars and laugh and say "Not today life, not today...." Always be kind, everyone has a story :) This is my conviction....
Sorry so grim,
-Iliana mtf
I just wonder why it takes some so long to figure things out and then stop with the denial.
Quote from: Lady_Oracle on December 01, 2014, 10:01:18 PM
it was either transition or suicide for me..Living as that fake person was killing me, I couldn't continue to lie myself. In my situation I knew when I was really young, I was just terrified of facing that truth for so long due to a bunch of factors like my machismo culture, teachers, peers and so on. I guess that's what hurts the most for me is that I wasn't completely ignorant of my situation and yet I continued to deny until I ultimately broke down and finally decided I needed to transition or choose the other option, which isn't much of an option.
Latina, too? I understand the machismo part lol Never really gave a ->-bleeped-<- though
I personally never identified with anything, until I was about 32. I just didn't know. I ran into so much problems being a male, because I could not be like other males. I discovered I wasn't one, because of trying too hard. It never came natural. I did not consciously try to be male from a woman points of view, I actually thought or convinced myself I was one. Until everything became so extremely complex, that I could only shatter. In retrospect I can say that there were many signs in my childhood. But I was simply in denial, and maybe even ignorant.
There are a great many factors that kept me from transitioning when I was younger, too many to go into without delving into my life story. Suffice to say that some people can't simply figure things out and move forward. I started when I was at a point where I could.
It was that or put a bullet in my heart and I want to see the new Hobbit and Star Wars movies too much for that.
Quote from: Susan522 on December 01, 2014, 10:41:05 PM
I just wonder why it takes some so long to figure things out and then stop with the denial.
Quote from: Wynternight on December 01, 2014, 11:53:18 PM
There are a great many factors that kept me from transitioning when I was younger, too many to go into without delving into my life story. Suffice to say that some people can't simply figure things out and move forward.
Hmmm....Well. I guess that will have to suffice.
It was mostly because I was depressed when I saw women just being themselves and being happy.
My story, to a point is similar to your Stephanie... I knew I was a girl by the time I was 6... but didn't know where to go, was to scared to tell mum and dad... its just a phase... I always wanted to be the Damsel in distress when playing with my brothers... Used to shave my legs around 6... must have seen mum do it, or something on TV... In hindsight would have been thrown into the Looney bin. Today, very different story (wish I'd been born in last 30 years, but then again I might not be who I am :-\)
So here I am about the same age, needing to fully transition, I do not want to spend the rest of my life in wrong physical body... why has it taken so long to get here?
So many reasons, probably all meaningful at the time, but meaningless now, because in doing so I will damage kids and grandkids lives and after 40 odd years of marriage completely alienate my partner... I will be rejected by all, I am sure... Then I need to confidently pass as a woman
So not quite there yet, working out the final steps.... Sure will be turning my back on a lot, but I can't contemplate not being a women for the rest of my life!
L Katy
I'd not identified as a gender untill this year. I think a big part of it became clear after breaking up with my last GF. We both really enjoyed each others company but it became obvious over time our connection was more like best friends then lovers. That made me think over all my previous relationships and realise that it's never worked out because I despise being referred to as a man/BF and I'm not sexually attracted to women. From there I knew I wanted to transition to be more feminine but still hadn't accepted yet that I was transsexual, it was only after a month or so of dressing the part full time that it then clicked and I said I'm female and it then became a need to transition. My ex is now the most supportive person in my transitioning and having her as my best friend, being able to be so open and enjoy girly things together has already made me feel finally find my true self has been 1000% worthwhile, not to mention how nice it is to not actually just enjoy being around crowds of people and not feel anxious in just talking to anyone, I was so much more reserved before. I know I'm not seen as genetically female but I rarely get a bad reaction from anyone and am afforded the correct pronouns and courtesies when I make my chosen gender clear to see. Maybe I'm just really naive and just can't read between the lines and yes sometimes I cry and wonder just how much people actually accept me but I know I feel so much more accepted now then I ever did before... Sorry I think I went off track 'hugsies' xx
Quote from: ImagineKate on December 02, 2014, 04:25:14 AM
It was mostly because I was depressed when I saw women just being themselves and being happy.
Must admit this is a me too... mainly over last 10 years as my drive has gotten stronger.... its really painful right now not being able to be one...
L Katy
Quote from: katrinaw on December 02, 2014, 07:20:55 AM
Must admit this is a me too... mainly over last 10 years as my drive has gotten stronger.... its really painful right now not being able to be one...
L Katy
Yeah well this was part of the tipping point. I have always known. Gotten caught CDing a few times. Encouraged to and enabled to CD by a couple of cousins/aunts who said I looked pretty good as a girl, even tying a curtain up and pretending it was my long hair lol.
For me, it was the cumulative effect of spending quarter of century playing a role I was sick to death of. A role that made me feel completely imprisoned and made me want to die, and each passing year, it became a bit tougher - from the surrender of androgyny at puberty, through to the drugs and alcohol I used to numb myself, to the relationships that had no option other than to fail because I could never be open about my feelings to a partner, the self-hate and feeling that I was just a psycho because that's what the loud and obnoxious transphobic elements of society drill into you and reinforce by only presenting transgender people in a bitterly negative light....
All of that. All of that pain and pressure; it just built up and built up, and it got to the point where I knew that if I didn't start to transition, I was not going to live much longer. Thanks to circumstances that have nothing to do w/ gender, my life collapsed over the course of this year, to the point where the life I am living and the person I am now only bears a tangental similarity to where I was at this time a year ago.
My biggest crutch in dealing with all this has been my transition. Having the guts to finally make the change has likely saved my life a few times over the course of this year, because when it felt like EVERYTHING else was lost, I finally had hope. :)
Transition, Want or Need? It began as need, but is now embraced. To explain: My life was never bad. I've always had enough. I've lived, travelled, loved, walked, run, ridden across three continents. I've studied, read, acted, built, lit, destroyed, wept, laughed, drank, drugged, learned, forgot, rejected and been rejected. I have been bullied, beaten, arrested, released, won and lost. I have stood up to hate without fear because I hoped I would die.
All of it vanity, all except for the last two years fundamentally alone. I have been at rock festivals, surrounded by music and people, alone. I have danced in clubs, sung songs, made love to both men and women, alone. Solitude was my mantra; Isolation my muse. I have felt lonely, angry, different and afraid virtually every day of my life. I have died in my soul, only to be reborn and to weep at the resurrection. I have silently cried, sometimes with a smile on my face.
I have held and loved babies. I have played with dogs. I have befriended cats, horses, alpacas, and sheep. I have knit friendships and rent the fabric of loving care. For me that is dysphoria. That is what knowing that you are fundamentally wrong, but refusing to acknowledge, even to yourself much less psychiatrists and psychologists, who who are. That is the bullet proof persona of the dying.
Finally I could bear no more and began to seek, as the final meander before I found death by my own hand, the truth about who I was. I did not want to finally embrace the peace and stillness of oblivion without finding and getting to know that spark of the infinite that I sensed was present. I began to look for Julie.
I love her. She is light and she is hope. She could not have been saved without Susan's; She would not exist without HRT; She could not continue to evolve without my lovers here. It is not the venue, it is the people and the chemistry. It is the selfless giving of time and love by people who only know me through prose. It is finding a home where loneliness loses its authority, and its attraction. I have much to do, I have work to be done and I need no longer do it alone, sequestered within battlements of my own making.
Fair Winds,
Julie
overall, ive been able to do decently for myself. sure im not making much, but ive always had bills covered, been able to afford whatever i wanted, and still have money left over. no family ofcourse though. had multiple things i could fall back on, and plans. and yet, even though my life was going very well for someone in their 20's compared to most people, i was miserable. hating my body, and myself. feeling completely out of place and unable to be myself and act as i truely want without facing ridicule. i dont feel i can be myself as i am now physically. ive always identified more feminine, and never really cared for being a guy. ive always wished i could be a girl instead, and used online games as a outlet to express myself in a mostly anonymous enviroment.
id been able to keep it handled through games, and by generally keeping myself so busy that i had no opportunity to think about it. till i had my accident where i ended up with almost 4 months, with nothing to do, but think about things. where everything that had just been building up little by little over the last 10-15 years. all of a sudden the floodgates were let open and i realized i had to do something. it felt like as i am now, i am a shell of who i actually am supposed to be just going through the motions, and some part of me, the part id been keeping down below, who i truely am, was going to die if i didnt do something about it.
so for me, after realizing what it was id been feeling for so long, and having the opportunity to explore myself during those months. i quickly realized it was a need to switch before who i truly am goes from being buried in hiding, to no longer existing.
Ohhhh what a lovely question. Topics like these is why i'm here in the first place. : ] Ever sense I was little I felt something was wrong. I always had dreams of my self as a girl rather then a boy and when I was about 6 years old I would get into my sisters clothing when my mother was sleeping and she was at school. I never had many friends at school and when I did it was hard for me to keep them because I couldn't be my self around then. When I entered my teen age years it was the worst and horrific thing ever. Seeing the cis woman get more and more beautiful was a hard thing to take and it worsen my depression. when I got to 11 grade is when I started home schooling. Latter that year around late November I told my mother I always felt like a woman and want to die or change. So the same day the word got out to my brother, sister and father and well and they wanted nothing to do with me for about a month . The idea started to absorb after about a month and my Brother, sister and mother became supportive of my choice to live the rest of my days as a woman. It took my father probly a year to see I was serious about it and come around to love me again. The following Summer I changed my name to Ademie and was enjoying life as a woman :) (Pre hrt still) After the summer was over I got my first job in a deli with some wonderful ladys. Only the boss knew I was transgender as I have told her in my interview. I was very slim at the time with a very soft voice and a nice face shape. So as far as I could tell no one questioned that I wasn't a cis female. :) But any ways I worked that job for a little over a year and started Hrt my 11th month into the job. I got my first boyfriend 2 months into hrt. He was a real nice man but we had little in common so I broke it off. Plus he smoked like 3 packs a day and I hate smoking... yuck! After that we are pretty much to current date and on the 4th on December is my 3rd full month on the lady pill <3
Thanks for reading and have a lovely day,
Ademie ^- ^
Well, Stephanie, I knew something was not quite right by the time I was 4. That was in the late 50's, so you are quite familiar with the time period we are talking about, and what the prevailing attitudes were. Compound that with the fact that I was living in a small industrial town, far away from any major cities where there might have been (although I doubt it) some acceptance of my peculiar state. Somehow I figured out, at that tender age, that I should not share my problem with anyone. I lived in fear for the next fifty years. I had several brushes with suicide. I suffered from anxiety. I refused to acknowledge that I am trans. Eventually, it came to a head when a marriage councellor suggested that I should seek the help of a psychologist for my depression. I unloaded and was diagnosed. No denying it any further. I lived with the diagnosis for three years (or so) before I started to lose it badly. I broke down, and rather ungracefully came out to my wife. I told her that I needed to start HRT or I would die. Within a week of correcting my hormone balance, Ellie emerged and saved me. It wasn't really a question of want, it was required, necessary, my destiny.
@Julie Blair: you been walking around in my head again Julie? ;)
I think mine was precipitated by a combination of things: being with my best friend during the battle she fought and lost with cancer, shortly thereafter followed by finding myself on the gurney waiting to go into the OR for my own cancer surgery. During the wait I did the clichéd yet obligatory reassessment of my life. It's been pretty good...but...I found that I wasn't looking forward to the 20 or so years I'd have if we beat the cancer. I felt like they'd just be more dreary, dishonest, envious, yearning, drab years, and I realized I honestly didn't care if they ended sooner. Actually, sooner sounded better.
So here I am. And I'm feeling excited about those 20 years...along with a smidge of delicious terror. Alive is good.
what complicated my problem was that I was an extremely shy and extremely introverted , even if electrodes and tooth pics under the finger nails were used I wouldn't of spilled the beans. and that lasted into adulthood and by that time I had other problems burying my condition deeper
Quote from: JulieBlair on December 02, 2014, 09:31:48 AM
Transition, Want or Need? It began need, but is now embraced. To explain: My life was never bad. I've always had enough. I've lived, travelled, loved, walked, run, ridden across three continents. I've studied, read, acted, built, lit, destroyed, wept, laughed, drank, drugged, learned, forgot, rejected and been rejected. I have been bullied, beaten, arrested, released, won and lost. I have stood up to hate without fear because I hoped I would die.
All of it vanity, all except for the last two years fundamentally alone. I have been at rock festivals, surrounded by music and people, alone. I have danced in clubs, sung songs, made love to both men and women, alone. Solitude was may mantra; Isolation my muse. I have felt lonely, angry, different and afraid virtually every day of my life. I have died in my soul, only to be reborn and to weep at the resurrection. I have silently cried, sometimes with a smile on my face.
I have held and loved babies. I have played with dogs. I have befriended cats, horses, alpacas, and sheep. I have knit friendships and rent the fabric of loving care. For me that is dysphoria. That is what knowing that you are fundamentally wrong, but refusing to acknowledge, even to yourself much less psychiatrists and psychologists, who who are. That is the bullet proof persona of the dying.
Finally I could bear no more and began to seek, as the final meander before I found death by my own hand, the truth about who I was. I did not want to finally embrace the peace and stillness of oblivion without finding and getting to know that spark of the infinite that I sensed was present. I began to look for Julie.
I love her. She is light and she is hope. She could not have been saved without Susan's; She would not exist without HRT; She could not continue to evolve without my lovers here. It is not the venue, it is the people and the chemistry. It is the selfless giving of time and love by people who only know me through prose. It is finding a home where loneliness loses its authority, and its attraction. I have much to do, I have work to be done and I need no longer do it alone, sequestered within battlements of my own making.
Fair Winds,
Julie
Very beautifully articulated Julie x
After reading all the previous posts, it seems to me that that the simple short answer to the "why" is clearly "need". I also get the feeling that the reason that some of us are able to get through all the confusion, denial and societal pressures to conform...is the ability to accept and confront our own personal reality.
I can certainly understand the utter terror and fear. After all, I went through it too. Perhaps it is because I was born into an Old World culture in an age just barely emerging from the indescribable wreckage and utter destruction of WWII...and still managed to confront and overcome and defeat my demons, that I believe that it is not so much a question of courage, or availability of knowledge or resources, but a question of intense personal need and integrity. I think it boils down to a question of being honest with ourselves and those around us.
Quote from: stephaniec on December 02, 2014, 10:52:24 AM
what complicated my problem was that I was an extremely shy and extremely introverted , even if electrodes and tooth pics under the finger nails were used I wouldn't of spilled the beans. and that lasted into adulthood and by that time I had other problems burying my condition deeper
That description fits me well too. When I realized what is my problem, I also realized that it is not "normal".
So I denied everything that could be associated with anything feminine, although I could not really foul anyone but myself. Even when my parents asked me about it I denied everything, I did not want to talk about it. I wanted it to go away, but it didn't. By the time I was 12 I learned to suppress my emotions long enough to not let anyone see me cry, ever.
I tried to man up, with limited success. In the last years of primary school I started to learn a lot about trans things, and I started to over-analyze myself and my problems. I tried to stay away from my emotions regarding transition and concentrate on the rational side of things. I did all this to find a category which does not require transition and I convinced myself a lot of times that I don't need to go through the transition because I don't really need it will and it not make my life better. It was hell, I was depressed, without motivation and every time those feelings came back, it was worse. I distracted myself as much as I could and I was successful, because I'm not finished with transition even now, 18 years later.
Long story short, my life from that point on was a constant identity-crisis and even now it is sometimes hard for me to not over-analyze myself.
I came to the conclusion that it really does not matter what category I fit in, I should do what makes me happy and not what society thinks I should do.
If it would be necessary I would probably survive without transitioning but I would become a zombie slowly. Surviving is not enough for me anymore, I want to be happy, and it seems that can be achieved easier if I listen to my heart and transition to female.
I had a medical condition. Transition is the required treatment. Patient is much happier and healthier now. Pretty much it.
First I I felt the desire to transition, but only in a very vague way, these continued only as background notions as my mental self protection measures were too strong. After a good deal of attempts to look directly at them, the idea began to take on a less threatning standpoint which allowed a more in depth study of myself. It was somewhere in this timeframe that I decided to give hrt a chance, knowing I could reverse this coarse if needed. I was hit squarely between the eyes with a new understanding, and this could only come from seeing contrast for the first time. What I mean by that is the hormone therapy allowed two views, the old and now the new. Oddly enough this did not happen suddenly, it was only after a few injection cycles that toward the end, when the estrogen level dropped, the contrast was sharp. I now had my answer. From this point on I knew it was not just desire or need, it is a have to thing, with no room for compromise. Dani
Quote from: TSJasmine on December 01, 2014, 11:16:44 PM
Latina, too? I understand the machismo part lol Never really gave a ->-bleeped-<- though
Yep I'm puerto rican :) cause of that culture I was thrown into sexist environments, pressure to be manly from my family, basically it just made me too afraid to come out and with my teachers in elementary school enforcing gender roles, it just made my fears even bigger. I wish I had been stronger back then because I of would of started transition much sooner and wouldn't have lost so many years to my depression.
Seemed like something fun to do and I needed a hobby
But seriously, I just had an epiphany that it was better to be hated for who I am than loved for who I am not. Turns out I didn't have to make that choice and I'm loved (possibly even more) for being who I am.
I need to.
i spent most of my life with a static-y background noise in my head, killing myself slowly trying to be something i wasn't. Literally i saw no future that wasn't me strolling into the woods and eating a Smith & Wesson sandwhich by the time i hit 40.
After i realized that everything i had been suppressing, all the static noise was the real me, " i " became " I "
Like a painted over glass window, i's view cracked and partly shattered away, and I knew right away where I needed to go, where I needed to be, because I do have a future, I do have a life to live.
I'm going to take a hammer to whats left of that window, and escape..
The moment for me basically came when I found out about discount SRS surgeries in Thailand.
My whole life, I'd told myself that it wasn't worth it, that $30,000 was just too much. Dropping that number into the low $10,000 range, though, when I found out about Chettawut and Sanguan and the Samui clinic suddenly SERIOUSLY got me thinking about it for the first time, because for the first time it was financially feasible for me.
I was on the Eunuch Archive at the time, mainly surrounded by men who desired to be castrated or penectomized. So I asked the following question "what's the biggest thing stopping you?" I was shocked when everyone else's responses were completely in the realm of "financial / can't afford it" or "not sure if I really want it or not," and "sexual concerns (afraid of loss of sensation afterward.)" I was expecting more people to be, like me, afraid of what their family would think, or afraid of not carrying on the family legacy due to reproduction now being impossible, or afraid of social ridicule. I was the only one. And that was when I realized, I've known that I wanted to be a girl since I was 13 years old, nonstop. The only thing that had EVER stopped me was that I was afraid of what other people would think.
That was the moment where I decided that, for the first time in my life, I was going to do something for myself. I was going to take life by the reigns and do a trial with chemical castration to see if I really would be okay with having no T in my system long-term, and thus if surgery was right for me or not. And, well, because of looking up that information on chem-castration, that was how I found about about HRT. And because I found out about HRT, I started researching the effects. And as I researched the effects, I stumbled onto this site's "before and after" topic for the first time, and then onto Youtube transition timelines. And that was when, for the first time in my life, I realized that transition was possible. I'd kept myself from it for so many years because I believed it was impossible, that I was just too big and too masculine to ever pass, but now I was proven wrong. And with that, I immediately started HRT, went into therapy, and started working toward transition.
And, well, here I am almost exactly 2 years later.
Once I found out that transition was really was possible, that I really could be female, NOTHING could have stopped me.
Transition was not something I considered because of early childhood conditioning. Growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, I felt different, cross dressed, wanted to be a girl, but was repeatedly told that only "perverts" and sick people did that. I didn't think I was sick and I didn't want to be called a pervert so I forced it down... until I couldn't anymore. And along the way there were over 30 years of unlearning the crap that was shoveled into my head as a child.
Once enough of that crap was gone, and when I finally reached the point of planning my own suicide, I knew I had to do something or end it all. So I did something, the only thing I could do - I transitioned.
I knew i was a women at about 12 but tried to deny it for the next 6 years. Nearly everyday of those 6 years i'd have thoughts of being a women or a voice that would torment me about not looking like the other girls, it become so bad i had i wasn't able to concentrate in school. Next came the feeling to die so I was left with the choices of transition or die, I chose to transition and I haven't been happier ;D.
Quote from: Jessica Merriman on December 02, 2014, 01:10:00 PM
I had a medical condition. Transition is the required treatment. Patient is much happier and healthier now. Pretty much it.
Snappy and to the point. I like it! :)
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
wanting it as my whole life I felt I'd never fit in society once. I thought a lot about myself and after being ill from the shock.The puzzle pieces finally begun to fall together. I accepted it and know it won't get better if I don't take action. Why live life being sad, only getting more sad when that ONE day WILL come :)
My reason to transition is simple: I am at peace. This process has been long and hard for me, as if forces have been keeping from pursuing my true self outwardly all these years. I choose to transition over depression.
Simple: to be happy, for once. (not getting beaten up for being a queer or asked if I'm a boy or girl was just a good side effect. I call it my half life. It'll hopefully be longer than a half unless i die decades younger than average.
So it really does come down to transition or die...slowly.
Quote from: Susan522 on December 02, 2014, 06:39:05 PM
So it really does come down to transition or die...slowly.
Pretty much. Die slowly or die quickly.
I "chose" to LIVE..Happily and authentically. What took you guys so long? >:-) >:-)
Quote from: Susan522 on December 02, 2014, 06:39:05 PM
So it really does come down to transition or die...slowly.
It wouldn't have been slow for me. It would have been fast, loud, and bloody. I had a plan and the means to carry it out.
Sometimes I just wonder if any of it is worth it. I just feel I can't win for losing. When I read the stories in this community they help me strive for what I truly feel is the right thing and that's living as female. I appreciate each of you here. I've felt this way for a long time and if there is going to be any relief then I have to start my transition.
Rikki
thanks for all the honesty it's good to know we share so much
Quote from: Wynternight on December 02, 2014, 07:23:30 PM
It wouldn't have been slow for me. It would have been fast, loud, and bloody. I had a plan and the means to carry it out.
That certainly is a dark and horrid thought. I am glad you found a better way. Either way, fast or slow, death is not the answer.