I like to look at it a bit differently than suicide or transition.  When weighing all the costs and burdens of transition, if that life is more optimal than one without transition then I'm choosing transition.

I also agree that many coping mechanisms are so destructive that they can be considered suicide slowly.

Kieran,

You are thinking in absolutes, and gender can be more fluid than that.
Let's disregard the logistics of transition for a moment - can you truthfully and honestly state what gender you identify as?  If you are not sure, then for starters, time talking with someone qualified is needed.

Once you know where you stand, only then should you think about what you should do.

Many here jump straight into transition.  Others wade in slowly, trying one thing at a time to see if they are headed in the right direction.  There's no right or wrong way about it.  The one thing in common is that a smooth transition is a carefully planned one regardless of how one goes about it.

Good luck in your explorations of self. 

Quote from: ashley_thomas on August 21, 2014, 07:41:12 AM
I like to look at it a bit differently than suicide or transition.  When weighing all the costs and burdens of transition, if that life is more optimal than one without transition then I'm choosing transition.

Yeah that makes sense to me too. Think I've just been a bit scared that some seem to be saying transition is so bad that the only action its preferable to is suicide.

Quote from: luna nyanLet's disregard the logistics of transition for a moment - can you truthfully and honestly state what gender you identify as?  If you are not sure, then for starters, time talking with someone qualified is needed.

No, I'm not really sure. I certainly like the idea of looking and (in some respects) behaving like a woman and I hate the idea of being thought of as a man. But does that mean I identify as a woman? That is something I'm hesitant to say. Like you say, I really need to speak to a therapist!

QuoteGood luck in your explorations of self.

Thanks!

I never got to the point of being suicidal but I have gotten to the point of wanting to cut "it" off a few times.

Waiting for suicide is too far because some people will get that far and succeed.

Early intervention is always best, but everyone has their own schedule.

Quote from: Kieran on August 21, 2014, 09:24:31 AM
Yeah that makes sense to me too. Think I've just been a bit scared that some seem to be saying transition is so bad that the only action its preferable to is suicide.

Transition isn't good or bad it just is.  My experience is that it is hard, tremendously difficult actually.  But if you find that reinventing your life, core identifications, risking everything to become who you are is easy, I wonder if you're paying attention.  I think the reason so many of us wait until it is a crisis is simply fear.  Fear of loss, fear of failure, fear of just being a freak, and being the point of cautionary tales.

I have two thoughts on that. 
1. At least in my case I'm just not that big a deal to most of the people in my life.  Family and friends sure, but most people when I went full time were almost annoyingly passe. The relationships I have lost pale to those I've gained.  The fears of economic insecurity proved overstated.  Turns out I do fine with less.
2. Living authentically is its own reward.  I am growing, useful, and usually filled with joy.  I think more deeply and with more compassion.  It isn't just hormones either, it is living life on life's terms and reveling in discovery.

For now at least I look to the future with optimism rather than dread.  I live in color rather than shades of gray.  And I wouldn't have it any other way.

Fair Winds and Calm Seas,
Julie

One thing I learned these past few years wrestling with the trans beast is never to think in terms of absolutes. I fell victim to that decades ago seeing transition as an all or nothing situation. Which, if your dysphoria is bad enough, is the same as transition or die. Which yes, it is a fairly common trait. Most of my TG support group members felt that way. I guess since my dysphoria never felt that bad to me the only resolution I saw was no transition. Just do what you can to survive.

While I have demonstrated one can 'Survive' for decades it is not a route I would advise. You slowly die inside rather than just simply getting it over with. So why did I make myself suffer so much? Binary thinking.

Just what is transitioning? Simply put, making a change. I am not living full time as a female yet I feel that I have transitioned. Learning about myself. Learning to feel at ease being me. With self acceptance came many other great gifts. After a couple of years I achieved my life long dream of being seen as and accepted as a woman.  For sure a major transition in many ways from the person I was 7 years ago.

There have been dark times too when the devil sitting on the other shoulder got my attention. Today I hardly ever hear anything but a far off whisper. Certainly not anything I feel I must work at to hear better.

To this day my big personal question / doubt is over will living full time as a woman bring more happiness and joy into my life than I have now? Will my fears, both real and imagined, control my life like before? Or, will I face up to the fears as I have been doing to find and keep joy in my life?

Yeah the dying slowly thing - I avoided the moment a lot by dreaming of transition or avoiding trans feelings - even when awesome fun times were to be had.  Missing life, missing moments were a big part of my decision.

I used to believe you had to be suicidal to be "really trans" or make transition worthwhile... and it nearly scared me out of doing one of the best things in my life. (I also didn't decide I wanted to transition until I was 32, and I was a cis guy before that. My story is a pretty uncommon one compared to the standard trans narrative.)

I transitioned because I thought I'd be happ*ier,* not because I was utterly miserable and suicidal as it was. And I ended up deciding to take it one step at a time, literally. Instead of saying I was going to transition fully, I'd think about the next thing I wanted to do (ear piercing, women's panties, whatever) and whether it'd make me more happy. Then I'd try it, and if I did indeed feel better, I'd think about the next thing, and so on. But I wasn't deathly depressed as a guy, and I wish I'd never listened to the people who said you had to be hardcore suffering in order to "qualify" or "deserve" to transition.

I had GRS a couple years ago, so I think I'm really trans.

I'm one step at a time too, but my feet keep moving.  I was in therapy for over a year before I decided to start taking hormones and I'm still on low doses, though they are very effective. It was a bunch of small steps before that for years and years.  I think I've proven it enough but I'm staying with the same speed setting, one step at a time.

When someone says it's either "transition or suicide", they are committing two phallacious ratiocinations. A) Composition - That something true (suicidal thoughts) of a part of a whole (transpeople) is true for the whole as well, which is false; and B) False dichotomy - transition or suicide, without taking into account that there could be a neutral option, actually various and as in everything, there's shades of grey, it's not all black or white.

Trans experience varies a lot. I have to agree with everyone who said you have to do what is right for you.  It is very difficult, but it doesn't mean everyone will experience it the same way. Not everyone fully transitions, some just make some changes and adjust. Others go for it all at once because they need to. Some experiences don't invalidate others. We are just as varied as snowflakes, really! Like everything, there's a lot of different colors and tastes. You just have to find a place where you'll feel comfortable.

Quote from: JulieBlair on August 22, 2014, 11:01:00 AM
I think the reason so many of us wait until it is a crisis is simply fear.  Fear of loss, fear of failure, fear of just being a freak, and being the point of cautionary tales.

Yes, I think you're probably right there. At any rate, I'm glad you're in a happier place now 

Quote from: JoanneBOne thing I learned these past few years wrestling with the trans beast is never to think in terms of absolutes.

Yes, I think that is something I've been guilty of. Baby steps could be the answer.

Jenna Marie, that's very interesting that you're a bit like me in only beginning to question these things in your adulthood and you were similarly scared by the "really trans" type thinking. Glad it worked out for you

Thanks for everyone's responses. I think (aprt from the fact I really need to see a therapist!), what I take away from all this is that if it's not "do or die" than small steps may be the answer. And it may lead to full transition or it may not, but either way it's a journey at least worth beginning

I think i said a lot about my thoughts about suicide an "transition". May tendencies goes in another way than most transgender-ways ...

About 2 years ago i had the choice between transitioning and keeping my old life. I never had suicide thoughts before, even in my old life. I was very unhappy and unsatisfied, so i decide to go my way and transitioning ... now more than 2 years later i ask myseld what the "holy grail" transition is? WHAT is transition and WHAT happens there? Maybe i can wear a skirt today, people see me as a woman ... but am I a woman? My body and my appearance say NO to me. So, WHAT is transition? Is transition to taking hormones? Am i another person because i'm getting some medicine?

Of course, hormones cant do miracles but most of the informations about transitioning based on the fact the people gettig hormones and "become a woman". So, NO - thats not true and i believed in this fact before starting. I always saw that wonderfull timelines in the web, on youtube and said "yeah, its true - these little hormones can do miracles" ... but they only can do it when you are young enough and have good genetics. Its a lottery and nobody said it to me BEFORE transitioning. Its a game that much people lose. I still looking at timeslines and always think "why you dont geeting these results" ...

All in all I'm here today and know i never will reach my target because i was stupid.
Its very hard and definitly a fact for a suicide!

Galaxy,
Hormones did not make me a woman, and they cannot.  All they can do is help align my body to become how I always knew it ought to be.  I have always been a woman.  Women are born, not made.  I was  born a woman with a penis.  It happens. Some men are born with vaginas.  That also happens.  It is a tragedy and what transition can address.

What hormones, therapy, friends, and the wonderful people here have done for me is to help me look, feel, act, assume the mantle of the girl I have always been.  But they did not and cannot do more.  To become a woman is to do drag.  To realize the woman within is to transition. 

That for some people the effects are so profound as for them to become indistinguishable from genetic women is wonderful.  That's not my story, and not what I expected going in.  I don't look like a cis girl, but I do look much more like the woman I have always seen in the mirror, and for me that is enough.

To live authenticity is enough.  To live without feeling wrong and dirty is enough.  To live my life with wonderful and amazing friends and fellow travelers is an astonishing bonus.

You are not stupid.  If you have come this far, you have changed profoundly and are becoming real, becoming authentic.  Please don't despair because you don't look like some imaginary dream, but see yourself as beautiful and feminine.  If you see her, she will become real.  You are beautiful and worthy of happiness and love, embrace who you are, lift your eyes to the horizon, and proclaim your identity to yourself and to the world.  It is remarkable, but the world will see you as you see yourself.


Peace
Julie

   Julie ,  eloquent as always, you are so right and have that beautiful gift to express it in words.When I hit the wall it was because my inner woman wanted out and would not accept anything else.I choose LIFE and she lead the way thank God, for I had always known I was different but like many others was to much a coward to do anything. Now the hologram of a man is almost gone and life is beautiful and everything is how it should have been many decades ago I am truly happy for once in my long life.I made the leap of faith and have reaped nothing but kindness and respect in return, life is good and I am glad I am still here to live it.  Hugs and Love  Patty

For me personally, suicide has not been an option since 99 or so, and that metric would have kept me from being allowed to access hormones and name change etc. For me it was a choice between transition and extreme dysfunction and dishonesty. I felt I had no choice because I was deeply uncomfortable and I was teaching my kid that it was better to lie than to be oneself, but everybody has their own circumstances.

I understand that guidelines and rules and assumptions have to exist, but I don't really think it's fair for any of us to clearly define another person's identity.

This has been mentioned, but I feel like it's important to say that I've always been the same person. I transitioned to make the pieces fit better, but transition wasn't a simple line that I crossed to go be someone else on the other side. And I'll never know whether or not transition saved my life.

i like a lot of what's said here.

It seems to me that the idea that you 'have to' be suicidal to be trans is a relic from an earlier era, when psychologists basically just assumed that transsexuals were crazy, and thus would only "let" them transition if they were a "true" transsexual. aka, hyper-feminine, attracted to men, known you were a girl since you were 2, suicidal, etc...

even up to recently in a lot of places, you wouldn't be able to transition unless you were this sort of person, or else you had to pretend to be ... which totally defeats the purpose of transition, which to me is all about being authentic.

This is an interesting question and it's one I often pondered.

I can't really say if I'd have committed suicide if I stayed female. I'm stubborn, and I'd probably have found a way to begrudgingly get through this life. But...I think what it really came down to was that with the way I was unable to adjust to my female body, I was sort of a walking dead person. I'm a strong believer that you can be spiritually dead, and emotionally dead, and that's just what I was. I did try everything I could to be happy as a girl first, because transition IS really hard. I'm 2 years in, socially everything's fine and surgery is on the way, but the truth is that the struggles of transition never go away unless you can find a way to be 100%, without a question, stealth. Because there's always ignorance, there's always people who won't treat you like a normal human being, and it is hard.

Regardless, I am still better off because I actually feel chemically balanced, and I feel happy now that my body has settled comfortably to male. I can say though, if there was a way I could have been happy as female, and not felt like I was just trudging through, I'd have stayed a girl and forsaken the crap I have to deal with as a trans person.

A few years ago, I had come to the point in my life when the risks of transitioning became far greater than "being stuck like this forever". I heard a lot of folks in our position can't live with the pain and some don't make it. And, there's times when I too, have almost given up hope. I don't know what keeps me going. If it's biblical and there's some kind of force or spirit that drives us or that I have convinced myself that I am important to this world... I can't say.

Can slow self destruction really be considered suicide? I do know what I said earlier But I am starting to be concerned with this myself at times. Maybe I ma a hypocrite. Sometimes I feel like it.

If you haven't been at that crossroad then you'll never truly understand what transition or suicide really means, empathy can only take you so far into true understanding. It does seem like a relic phrase from the old days where the support systems just weren't there for people to "easily" transition and society was VERY different from what it is today let alone with the ability to connect with others that we have now and to really transition back then you pretty much had to be at your limit, cornered with no option out...ect. Today things are much better for transgender people in all of those aspects which means for a lot of us we don't ever get that far into the abyss before we decide to transition.

Never take it lightly like a person is saying that just for sympathy or for attention. That could have been it for them, but they made it through that moment of despair, getting over their fears that pushed them to this point and facing the complete uncertainty of the unknown. We don't know how many of our brothers and sisters over the years didn't make it past that point, even in todays society we still don't know. 

***********Trigger Warning ahead************

For me it was transition or suicide and I tried and tried to NOT be transgender because I live in the south and the thought of coming out and transitioning scared me to the core.  Fear about being who I was, was cemented into my conscious because of a really bad experience in my life when I was 5 years old and was threatened to be murdered by an adult if in his words "If you little fword freak ever comes to my house and plays with my daughter I will kill you, cut your body up into pieces and feed you to the coyotes in the desert" I lived in Las Vegas at that time and what he said dug a very deep hole in my soul to throw my true feelings into. If this parent reacts to me like this then all parents will and I have to hide being like that from them, is what I learned early on. Back to being in the south from my early teens to present where nearly everyone that I knew always said very awful and hateful things towards LGBT people including my own family. Not to say we are rednecks by any means but intolerance and being uneducated about LGBT issues leads to that kind of thinking. I did every guy activity possible, got rejected by just about every girl I ever tried to go out with and did my best to be a guy's guy but I could never escape my true feelings about myself no matter how much I tried to suppress them out of fear that I had built up for years.
When I finally accepted who I was almost a year ago I had gotten to the point of giving up, no matter how much I tired I kept getting more and more depressed with each attempt to shut my feelings up and it overwhelmed me. A few pounds more of force is all it would have taken and I'd have been gone forever but what ever supernatural force that exists in this world stopped me by flashing images of all my family, friends, co-workers all crying at my funeral wondering why I killed myself out of the blue. Which was true as at that point I NEVER showed signs of really being in trouble other than to my most inner immediate of family but they were scared themselves to ask why I was getting so down, I could put on the happy face for everyone else but them. It was in that moment of just a few minutes that all of this went down and I luckily made it past the suicide or transition cliché and decided that the only thing I could do then was transition even though that scared me more than taking the not so easy way out. 
What was really sad in that moment is that I didn't reach out to anyone for help and I desperately needed help back then. I am very glad that I did make it through that moment because once I did get the help that I needed I knew that this path was actually going to be better than I had ever thought for me and looking back at the last year of my life I can attest to the validity of that statement. Things are MUCH better in every way now minus my immediate family situation which will just take time for it to all work out. I am living full time now, I'm actually happy and I can actually smile for the first time ever and it NOT be a fake smile. A year ago I could NEVER say I was actually happy and mean it let alone smile.