This is something I very often feel. I often feel like I am the same exact person I have always been, but transitioning allowed me to gain more things that I did not have before.
For the most part I am still unhappy, but there are things I have to be grateful for and things to be proud of as well. I was wondering if anyone else here feels the same way?
Not so much changed as learned how to live fully? Realized that I can reach for what I want, not what everyone expects me to.
Hugs, Devlyn
I struggle with this one, it really depends on how you define yourself.
I am the same person, with broadly the same interests and values.
But my priorities are different and my decision making process and behaviours are very different to before.
I do spend some time pondering this topic, it's interesting to me [emoji5]
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Have I really changed who I am? No. Have I stopped pretending to be who I'm not? Yes. There in lies the power of transition for me. Stopping the hiding and pretending. Even if no one else accepts me for who I know I am it doesn't matter.
Yes, but not enough. I'm hoping I change more physically. If not, then at least I'm on a hair growth journey. I'm still perceived male by everyone but hrt has helped me and maybe even my confidence.
I'm not where I want to be yet, but that doesn't have to do with just hrt. Socially transitioning is a huge step and I need to feel ready physically. Also, changes in life happen all the time.
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Yes, not only do I "feel" I have changed, I see the change. More importantly, my brain seems to have finally found a home.
It's not like just putting on a costume, but more of a capture of something deep inside you. It's like opening a door and walking into a room where you finally feel at home. It's been amazing for me. I see my self in the mirror and I get this giant smile on my face, and I know I'm home. :) It's not perfect, but it's where I'm supposed to be.
There are times I certainly feel like I haven't changed and a very close friend has told me I haven't. But obviously I have in so many ways aside from my outward appearance. I am much more outgoing now and I don't hide my emotions. I am not constrained to only male centric activities. Lastly, I don't care about what others think of me, it's my life!
Judi
...yeah. I have.
I'm not happy but that's not because of my body or whatever. It's things holding me back at the moment, finances, work, etc. and things that need to be sorted before I can let myself off the leash, as I need to be in good shape and healthy to do the things I want to do, and that's taking time to fix and learn how to care for my physical body. Not something I ever used to do really. Now I want to take care of it and get it into the best form possible. Amazing what a bit of self-esteem and confidence in one's skin can do for that. For the first time I am truly ready to "go get" what I want. I've always been a "go getter", but now I feel like a shark rather than a goldfish. I'm very hungry for all the things I've wanted.
It's only now in the last year and a half after a certain weight was lifted that I realize just how heavy that weight has always been. I don't even know how I carried it all these years. I suppose it's always like that, in the midst of stress and crisis, you don't always realize how much you are actually dealing with. Survival mechanism maybe. Take the load off and you'd never be able to pick it up again. A good thing hopefully I will never have to. But yeah, the scale of the problem and its effect on my life before has only just come home to me and it's beyond reckoning. If I felt at the start of life how I do now.... god knows where I would be now or what I would have achieved. It feels like picking up the smashed bits and super-gluing them all together again and hoping you can build something out of it. Something will be built anyway, as opposed to nothing, if I'd have carried on as I was before. Don't know what it will be but I can't just laze around sticking my head in the sand any more about the scariest ambitions. I HAVE to go chase the ones I've always wanted to or I will go crazy. There's no "no" or "I am giving up" option.
I can't tell if I feel like a kid again or what. Not quite, maybe. I feel out of time, like time stood still for me and rushed by for everyone else, they all have families and kids and established lives, and there's me living this weird Bohemian lifestyle chasing the metaphorical dragon. Maybe I'm just like that, maybe I belong to my whims and will never know that sort of life other people around me have. I have no doubt I'm like this at least in part because of my condition - it always inhibited a "normal life" in my case. There are trans people who managed to lead lives like everyone else but I just wasn't one of them. "It" inhibited that. Now that it's kind of gone, I'm left with the fact my mind is free, but my body will always be incomplete no matter what surgeries I get, etc. and that's just how I look at it. Others will disagree but a sense of completeness might be something I never achieve. if that's the case so be it, but I'll attempt to make the best of it anyway, unlearn my bad habits. There isn't an overarching sense of panacea, but I never expected there would be anyway. Transition wasn't supposed to solve all my problems, it was just supposed to make life bearable, and possibly allow me to discover my true self. It held no promises of nirvana or anything. So I'm happy. I can't ask for a whole lot more as it's already given me a new outlook and taken away most of my demons. More than I probably deserve.
Yeah, I've changed. I think I'll keep changing too. The only negative thing really is that I'm very aware of time. I suppose that happens as you begin to approach mid-life. I look young, my body does not feel old, but my soul feels like it's been through the mill. Some days it doesn't even register, but some days I feel a thousand years old and wonder how long I can keep playing the game for. I suppose I'll know when the time comes. But I miss the absence of cynicism and disappointment I had from the days before certain major life events took place... it's like how many times can you be disappointed in certain things, or in people, or in yourself before you just become fatally tired? I don't know. I wish I'd felt the way I do now back at that crucial age when the adult world was new to me. But, I don't. So I guess I'll have to have experience and cynicism along for the ride as unwilling companions and try to ignore them while I attempt to have a good time.
I am still the same person I always was. In fact, I am much more that person, since I now feel free to be myself without self-censoring. As a consequence, I am much happer.
If you don't believe I am the same persoon, just ask my wife. She thinks I am just as annoying as ever! :D
Of course, how could I not have changed? Everything we experience changes us and transition is huge. Really, change is the point right? It was like I held my breath my entire life. My chest kept getting tighter, everything started to blur around the edges and more and more it took over my life until all I wanted, all I needed was to let that breath out. I don't know what I was before because most of it was a show and the rest was blurry. If nothing else being able to breathe changes the way I see and experience the world around me. Transition made me look inside and figure out what was me and what was not, being that honest with myself was not easy but it was worth it. Yes, it all changed me, hopefully for the better.
It also changed how I interact with the world and who I interact with. You know, I think that I could go on and on finding ways that I have changed. 🙂 Some other time perhaps.
I often do a lot of introspection to analyse and understand myself better. I also keep changing a lot over time in general so a constant upkeep with introspection is my way to keep track of and not lose myself. It is also a form of self-therapy that is very effective for me. But others tend to call it "over-thinking".
With that said, yes I've changed a lot since I began my transition. The more I've transitioned, the more male I've somehow been feeling. Or rather, I've become more and more connected to my male gender, as though I get closer to it and hold on to it tighter. I feel more together and less scattered, and have also become a lot more determined.
Early on in my transition I was a lot more feminine, shy, confused and felt more awkward around cis guys. I tried very hard to adapt male mannerisms and such, for passing but also to be taken seriously by others. I wondered if my gender was really completely male or not, and wanted an androgynous male body. But the more time that passed and the further I got into my transition, the more relaxed I got around cis guys and with how I carried myself. A certain confidence grew from and with that. Given more time and changes from testosterone, masculinity became more of a home to me that I felt comfortable in and that I resonated with. I no longer wanted an androgynous body but a distinctly male one. My attraction to other men also started to feel more gay/mlm than I could think of it as before.
In conclusion, I think me transitioning grounded me more and allowed me to find the man I always was somewhere within but didn't really dare to even dream of before. But then I'm still me and the same person as always, but just more of that same person. However I've also pondered over how much the testosterone might have changed my brain structure over time, since I've taken it for almost 6 years now. And how much that might have contributed to these changes that I've noticed.
Whenever I meet new people and tell them about myself, they always tell me I seem to be very unhappy. I do carry a lot of frustration and resentment in regards to my current situation in life and my other goals aside from transitioning still feel very far away and hard to reach which makes me mopey at times, but compared to how my life was up until 2-3 years ago, I'm very happy. Everything is relative, as it's said. I still have a long way to go until I can think of myself as actually satisfied with my life, but I'm definitely on my way to it and keep going.
At this point I've hit a bit of a roadblock in that I need to figure out a way to get started with my career of choice cause of having very limited opportunities for that where I live and it being a taboo kind of job that literally no one wants to help me with cause of some legally complicated aspects of it, so I'm completely on my own with that, and how to manage moving cause the biggest reason my life is on standstill is because of my location. That has me kinda realising I might have two huge and daunting life-changing decisions to make in one go with no way of knowing if it could even work out... So now I'm hesitating to make that plunge despite really wanting to. Where I'm at now I feel very stuck, but at the same time I also feel a lot more positive and bright about my future than I ever have before. And I've made a lot of positive and healthy changes to my life already, which has made me believe that it might actually be entirely possible for me to reach my goals in life that are not transition related. But oh boy, it's not gonna be easy, huh.
In short: I'm going in the right direction, but I started at the very bottom and it's gonna take me a while and lots of effort to even just reach above the edge of this deep ditch. So I'm not actually unhappy, I just look a little ragged from all the climbing!
I have not changed my core personality, it is the same as it always was and now is.
What has changed is my approach to my life and how I interact now as a female with males and other females.
I am more more free and unfettered to express my female feelings that I always have had.
With my parents and my family... and my old friends that knew me first before I transitioned, I have found nonacceptance that is obviously heartbreaking for me. No matter how I am treated I am very respectful to my parents and family and to my old friends... but I am not changing my new approach to my life to placate them, I have to live my life and be the person I now am.
Danielle
Quote from: Allison S on June 15, 2018, 06:40:52 PM
Yes, but not enough. I'm hoping I change more physically. If not, then at least I'm on a hair growth journey. I'm still perceived male by everyone but hrt has helped me and maybe even my confidence.
I'm not where I want to be yet, but that doesn't have to do with just hrt. Socially transitioning is a huge step and I need to feel ready physically. Also, changes in life happen all the time.
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I think this is an important point, having socially transitioned but still getting erections is a contradiction that is depressing
We all change. All the time. Every day, each one of us ends the day a little bit different to how we started it. Be that through knowledge, experience, understanding, emotion... life is fluid. Life is change.
Have I changed since discovering myself... yes. Undoubtedly. My mental and physical state have both changed drastically. My view of the world has shifted and changed repeatedly, based on the experiences, understanding and emotions I've had along the way. I'm not the same person I was before all this started. I don't think I would want to be.
But am I still me? Yes. Perhaps now more than ever. Perhaps that's the greatest change of all. Which is beautifully paradoxical. :)
I'm at the very beginning of a journey I should have let myself start 30 years ago but didn't. I think everyone is different to begin with but just the little things I do for myself toward the goal all seem to accentuate the who of "Who I am" rather than change me. Fact is, I've always been me. the only thing that's changed is now I can see it.
Don't know if that is an answer to your question or not. Hopefully it is. I confuse myself a lot. Ha Ha
<3,
Erin
Quote from: ErinJohnson on June 20, 2018, 02:16:25 PM
I'm at the very beginning of a journey I should have let myself start 30 years ago but didn't. I think everyone is different to begin with but just the little things I do for myself toward the goal all seem to accentuate the who of "Who I am" rather than change me. Fact is, I've always been me. the only thing that's changed is now I can see it.
Don't know if that is an answer to your question or not. Hopefully it is. I confuse myself a lot. Ha Ha
<3,
Erin
I did exactly the same thing. After decades of avoiding myself and pretending I feel that transition allows me to be authentically myself. I'm not changing (well physically yes) but mentally I'm just accepting who I've always been in the first place.
Quote from: CosmicJoke on June 15, 2018, 05:20:51 PM
This is something I very often feel. I often feel like I am the same exact person I have always been, but transitioning allowed me to gain more things that I did not have before.
For the most part I am still unhappy, but there are things I have to be grateful for and things to be proud of as well. I was wondering if anyone else here feels the same way?
I have times I'm very sad, that I look in the mirror & see ugliness but fortunately those times are .. a lot less lately. Mostly I see a tall, elegant, beautiful woman looking back.
Doesn't mean life isn't hard still, that I don't have regrets... that I don't live in constant pain. Life is more though than just being comfortable. Its what we do with the time we're given that makes the most difference in ours & others lives.
I think we run the risk too of getting too self absorbed and cutting off social ties.. this is not a good philosophy in my opinion. Its very important to strengthen any friendships you can, if at all. We all know how rare..few & far between that is for so many of us. Something I strive to improve every day :)
On the outside, yes. On the inside, no.
I just started all of this a month ago and im not even remotely out yet, but therapy has really opened my mind and really returned my confidence, before I was literally coasting through life with no purpose, going through the motions without any real reason. Now I feel Like I have a reason, a goal, something that can take me out of this false life into a more real one. Im still me, i still enjoying all the stuff i like to do, but now I actually FEEL like im enjoying it instead of being dead on the inside thinking I should be enjoying this.
Its changed me for the better I think and i've only taken a few steps on this thousand mile journey.
I think in some ways I have. Certainly I am a bit more emotional...instead of getting angry I will start to cry. This usually happens when I am dealing with my partner's angst about my transition and she says something hurtful or simply something I feel bad about.
In truth though, I wish I could change a bit more than I have. Mentally more so than physically. I can't imagine stopping my transition at this point but at the same time I don't really recognize myself, I don't feel like I know myself, and I haven't a clue where I am going with the rest of my life.
My career sort of tanked during the recession, then I switched careers only to find out I hate doing what I thought I loved and now I feel like this odd duck with skills that are obsolete or in a field that I hate. I can't imagine finding a decent job at this point in my life...being trans doesn't really help.
Quote from: generalchaos34 on June 20, 2018, 11:26:00 PM
I just started all of this a month ago and im not even remotely out yet, but therapy has really opened my mind and really returned my confidence, before I was literally coasting through life with no purpose, going through the motions without any real reason. Now I feel Like I have a reason, a goal, something that can take me out of this false life into a more real one. Im still me, i still enjoying all the stuff i like to do, but now I actually FEEL like im enjoying it instead of being dead on the inside thinking I should be enjoying this.
Its changed me for the better I think and i've only taken a few steps on this thousand mile journey.
This sums it up for me although I started 8 months ago with therapy and then HRT 4 months ago.
Previously I was just existing just letting each day pass with no purpose and suffering depression primarily due to living a false life.
I feel I am changing gradually which I accept. I have more interest in life in general, am more relaxed, have less aggravation and emotionally and socially a better person.
I am beginning to live!
Pamela
Physically, yes. Mentally, no too sure.
I was never emotional, fairly lazy, and a pretty anti-social homebody. Now I find myself getting happy and sad tears every once in a while. I am still pretty lazy. And also still the anti-social homebody. I still play with the same toys (LEGO nerd), and I still enjoy working on cars.
I have been on HRT for 5 months. And out to friends and family for over 8 months.
I feel as I am holding back changes due to not being full time. I am not out at work. That is the last step to being full time. I have a masculine career that I enjoy. There are females in my line of work, but they are few and far between.
I am still waiting for the "flood gate" moment of change. So far it has only been a trickle.
Quote from: CosmicJoke on June 15, 2018, 05:20:51 PM
This is something I very often feel. I often feel like I am the same exact person I have always been, but transitioning allowed me to gain more things that I did not have before.
For the most part I am still unhappy, but there are things I have to be grateful for and things to be proud of as well. I was wondering if anyone else here feels the same way?
I have gone through many steps in my transition to living full time as the woman I am now.
What I am at my core is a superset of what I was before.
[This diagram is from Wikipedia's page on Subset https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subset](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b0/Venn_A_subset_B.svg/150px-Venn_A_subset_B.svg.png)
The person I am now (B) does include the person I allowed myself and others to see when I constrained my life to presenting and behaving as a male (A) in public. Transition has enabled me to expand who I am and how I experience the world, so (B) is now much larger than it was before transition. I have changed and discarded some of my past behaviors as part of my transition, mostly ones that existed to support male presentation and fitting into male patterns of behavior.
I truly feel like I'm on my second life journey. My plans to transition at work (in 2017) were discarded after I received a very good early retirement bonus offer in June of 2016. So I retired and started the last major step in my transition (living 24/7).
I am enjoying life more now than I ever have. I truly feel that I am living in the best time of my life.
Is life perfect? __LL NO!
Is it wonderful?
Absolutely Yes! I choose to be visible in the world and I accept that my stature will distinguish me from 99% of the females. I have the body of an out of shape retired football player (~6'4", barrel chest, wide shoulders, hips smaller than shoulders and more than 300 lbs of mass). I can't even hide in a women's basket ball team ::) Like it or not, I am a Transgender Woman that must be an activist (no bull horn or signs needed) because I choose to be active in the world and I do stand out.
I still enjoy most of the hobbies and activities that I enjoyed previously. I now enjoy additional activities and I have changed the priority of my activities. Being social and conversing or doing activities together with other people is now at a much higher priority than hobbies and activities that I do by myself. Reaching out to other transgender people and couples in my area is especially important to me now.
I have made the choice to seek out the positive in my life. I am working to get back into practicing Mindfulness which I find really helps me deal with various challenges that I face. I'm quickly approaching 62 and the male side of my lineage is not known for longevity, so I am working on improving my health (I actually care about living now) and try to find some joy in each day.
I have been very fortunate and I am grateful that all of my friends have accepted my choice and many have stated they like the "new" me even better. Last Year my wife and I renewed our Wedding Vows where she took me as her wife in front of our friends and many of the Esprit Conference attendees. We have been together for 40 years and have now been married for 28 years.
-Cindi
I felt like this as well. I grew and changed throughout my entire life and that I'd what lead me to realizing I am transgender. The assumptions and ideas about myself are what changed, and in shedding this I have changed. My interaction and expression has changed. But formative experiences and personality traits have stayed stable.
Quote from: krobinson103 on June 15, 2018, 05:45:59 PM
Have I really changed who I am? No. Have I stopped pretending to be who I'm not? Yes. There in lies the power of transition for me. Stopping the hiding and pretending. Even if no one else accepts me for who I know I am it doesn't matter.
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