Warning, this is a bit long, and POTENTIAL trigger warning.

So over the last week or so, I've suddenly had tons of doubts crop up. I started to work through where the doubts are coming from, going wait, is this the wrong choice, am I not really trans? Then I'd try to imagine myself going back to living as a guy, and that was an, absolutely not. Haha. Each change, as my body and expression get more and more feminine, makes me feel so much better about myself and comfortable in my skin, so when I tried to imagine myself getting rid of these changes and going back to male gender expression, there was an immediate mental 'hell no'. So after really exploring (and also a good therapy session) where the doubts really come from is a place of being daunted by the whole process, and in turn going, am I ever gonna be happy with my body even when all is said and done or will I always see a man staring back at me in the mirror, analyzing every slightly masculine feature of my face and body?

Then I keep on looking back at missed opportunities of coming out and transitioning. I, like most of us on here, had my first bouts of strong gender dysphoria when I was young. When I was 10/11 years old, I had this long talk with my dad about how I was confused about my sexuality, and thought I might like guys (my parents are super hippie liberal and I was lucky that I grew up in a very progressive supportive environment). In that conversation, the 'thinking I'm supposed to be a girl' thing came up. But it was the late 90s and trans issues weren't so much at the fore. I myself sorta assumed that all gay men wanted to be female to some degree or another, and my dad probably assumed it was wrapped up in the gay thing. But I go, I hadn't started puberty yet at that point, if my parents or I had been more savvy, I probably could have stopped male puberty from happening and transitioned young and my body would have been mostly indistinguishable from cis girls.

Then by the time I was 16, I was still rather small and only 5'7" and at this point I knew for sure I wanted to be female, and I knew what trans was, and knew transition was a thing. But at the time I REALLY wanted to be a musical theatre actor, like most young queer kids :-P, and that was my biggest dream. But my voice had already changed (and fast), and I knew that I couldn't change my singing voice (and Yeson wasn't a thing back then). So I thought transition meant giving up a career in musical theatre, cause I'd never be able to play female roles. So I told myself I'd just find a way to manage it so I could pursue my dream (which I ended up losing interest in performing and becoming a writer and majoring in International Affairs... Go figure). At this point my dysphoria was so bad that I couldn't sleep unless I was dressed in female clothes. My mom found them and confronted me about it. Not in an antagonistic way, in a, "do you want to be a woman," honestly asking because if I said yes then we'd have the talk to make it happen. And I made up some stupid excuse for why there was women's clothes in my room. But if I had said yes, while I'd gone through SOME of male puberty, it hadn't been much and things woulda been way easier, and it woulda been closer to a cis girl.

When I was 18, I had my first boyfriend. At first it was great, but then dysphoria got super bad because I wanted to be a woman with a man. Sex was especially uncomfortable because I longed to be having sex as a woman. While we were dating I illegally ordered T-Blockers from Canada. I told myself that if we broke up I'd order estrogen and I was just gonna do it. We broke up, and I did. I took it for about two weeks and I started to get breast growth. I freaked out and stopped. At this point I was still was physically pretty feminine and things would have been easier.

Then at 24 I finally started seeing a gender therapist and told my parents I wanted to transition. I was all set to go on hormones and I freaked out, decided transition wasn't for me and abruptly stopped seeing the therapist. But at that point I still had a boyish body, very little upper body muscle mass, no male pattern body hair and that would have been an easier starting place.

Over the following year I went into SEVERE repression and tried to man up. This eventually led me to a nervous breakdown around December 2013. At that point I finally went, I don't have a choice. I need to do this, otherwise I don't know how much longer I can live. That said, I knew before I started, I needed to deal with a lot of the anxiety and internalized issues that led me to freak out or repress so many times, so that this could be a positive experience rather than an anxiety filled one.

Over the course of the previous attempts to transition I had come out to my parents and two of my closest friends, who had all been extremely supportive. I decided I wanted to be totally out before starting HRT, so slowly but surely I came out to my brothers, my close friends, and my extended family, before I finally wrote a big facebook status about it and changed the name and gender on my profile. Coming out went wonderfully and I started HRT on this past December 1st.

But a subtle shift had happened between ages 24 and 26. My body had changed from a boy body to a man body. My shoulders, chest and back had broadened significantly. I also got significantly hairier, and started to get chest hair and stomach hair in a way I never had before.

So now, almost four months in, as I try and remove body hair, and as I see the broadness of my upper body and hope eventually the hormones will reduce that, I keep on kicking myself going, why didn't I do this sooner? The mountain I have to climb would have been that much shorter, and my chances of having a body closer to female norms and proportions would have been way better. I see these photos of early 20s transitioners who look fantastic and have extremely feminine bodies and proportions, and I go, that was ALMOST me, if I hadn't freaked out. And I especially kick myself because it all came from me. I was one of the lucky ones who wasn't in an environment where I COULDN'T transition before now. I am exceedingly lucky. I had and have all the support in the world. And I know 26 in the grand scheme is still considered to be a young transitioner, and that many on here would say, you're young you have nothing to worry about, I wish I transitioned when I was 26, and I need to keep reminding myself of that.

NOW the point of all of this, and what going through all of this has mentally brought me to, is that something I need to work on with my therapist is to accept that I am never going to be a cis woman, ever. That ship sailed when I was born. And that I need to stop upholding a certain unattainable idea of what a woman should look like and comparing myself to it, because THAT'S when I feel daunted and when the doubts start to creep in, because the reality is I am never going to look like the other 5'5" petit women in my family, ever. But that doesn't mean I can't be attractive and that I'll never pass. And if I keep on upholding this idea, then of course I'm never going to be satisfied with my body even when all is said and done. I have a lot of work to do on the concept of self love.

Anyway, that's the end of my rant. Thanks for reading :-P.

Hi Dana,

First of all, I think you look absolutely great and pass without a doubt in your profile pic. And as you have already rightly said yourself, you are still very young and lucky to be transitioning in a supportive environment, and you need not uphold some unattainable idea of what a woman should look like. That last point is especially important because not keeping that in mind hurts not just trans women, but even cis women who are bombarded all the time with unrealistic 'ideals' of physical beauty propagated by the media and advertising.

If you look around, you will find that there might be many cis women who would do anything to look as good as you. But more important than what you look like is what you feel like from inside, and how comfortable you are with yourself and therefore with others. That is what makes one really happy, and that is the real beauty that someone who is really worth having in your life will surely notice. 

Don't worry at all about the past, instead look towards the future, for you have a life's worth of opportunities still waiting for you.

All the best, and take care
Cindy

I know you're not alone thinking about missed opportunities, my guess is that a pretty large fraction of us wish we had transitioned the moment we first knew we wanted to. This used to be a thought that kept me from really thinking about whether I could come out and be myself. I'd think about the feelings but tell myself, "No, if you were going to do this you needed to do it before X happened so now it's too late. Too bad."

Finally I realized how backward that was. The past is the past, and all we can control is what we do right now. So when I feel awkward now, or have worries about how much easier this would be if I were already done, I think ahead to where I'll be in a few years. I think about what she will be doing and thinking. And for her sake, I do NOT want her wishing she had only had the strength and courage to make the transition.

Something that helps me to drop the regret about the past, and honestly I think that's what has to be done with it because those negative thoughts do more harm than good, is to think about who I am today. Yes, I am still inhabiting a mostly male body and life. But aside from my discomfort with that, there is a lot that I am happy about. I like who I am inside, and that is the result of my life as I lived it. Had I been able to transition when I was 12 or 13 or even 25, I would have had a radically different life. In those alternate universes, I may be done with transition by now, but there is no way I would risk everything else about my life to have that.

Will you, or will I, or will any of us be happy when we look in the mirror? Who knows. But transgender people don't have a monopoly on unhappiness with our bodies. Since I know, and it sounds like you know, that returning to life as a male is a non-starter, there's really nothing to be gained by thinking too hard about whether we'll be happy with our appearance and presentation in the future. Instead, we need to begin learning to let go of our preconceptions of what we need to look like and act like in order to be happy. I don't think people become comfortable and happy with themselves by finding a way to look like they should nearly as often as by learning to love the way that they are.

For better or for worse, as you say, your chance to be a cis woman was gone before you were a functional organism. It would be super nice to be able to go back, to be able to pick out who we are born as. But nobody gets that privilege. Sometimes I get down about that, too, though. Other times, I feel pretty darn lucky to have been born trangender. I will get to live life as two genders, to experience "both sides" of the divide. Even in my cis-iest fantasies, I never for a moment want to forget my time as a male, actually.

So, anyway, I don't know if this is a helpful reply to your post, but it was some thoughts that you inspired. Thank you for sharing your experiences!

I had an environment, parents and early opportunities very similar to yours. I also ran and hid. Do I wish that for physical reasons I had just come out with it and transitioned in my teens? Yes, of course, and my folky parents and hippy/punk brother would have been right there for me. Was I emotionally mature enough? No. It took me until now, 36, to reach a point where I actually value myself. For me that is worth all the suffering. I am ready now. That means this is the right time. Do I have a lot to change that could have been prevented? Yes but that makes the freedom that seems to be coming with transition that much more special. I too had to finally accept that I will never be a cis female, and that was the most glorious moment! I fully accepted myself and realized that the body may take some work but the mind and soul are perfect. So I have no regrets. My soul is worth it, my life is worth it, the body can be dealt with. I can be happy!

Quote from: jeni on March 13, 2015, 11:17:20 AM

For better or for worse, as you say, your chance to be a cis woman was gone before you were a functional organism. It would be super nice to be able to go back, to be able to pick out who we are born as. But nobody gets that privilege. Sometimes I get down about that, too, though. Other times, I feel pretty darn lucky to have been born trangender. I will get to live life as two genders, to experience "both sides" of the divide. Even in my cis-iest fantasies, I never for a moment want to forget my time as a male, actually.

This says it all, this is the wisdom that can only come to us with the passage of time, with living life. Also, I love the word "cis-iest", it is trans-tastic!

Quote from: cindy16 on March 13, 2015, 11:14:14 AM
Hi Dana,

First of all, I think you look absolutely great and pass without a doubt in your profile pic. And as you have already rightly said yourself, you are still very young and lucky to be transitioning in a supportive environment, and you need not uphold some unattainable idea of what a woman should look like. That last point is especially important because not keeping that in mind hurts not just trans women, but even cis women who are bombarded all the time with unrealistic 'ideals' of physical beauty propagated by the media and advertising.

If you look around, you will find that there might be many cis women who would do anything to look as good as you. But more important than what you look like is what you feel like from inside, and how comfortable you are with yourself and therefore with others. That is what makes one really happy, and that is the real beauty that someone who is really worth having in your life will surely notice. 

Don't worry at all about the past, instead look towards the future, for you have a life's worth of opportunities still waiting for you.

All the best, and take care
Cindy

Thanks Cindy, I appreciate it.  And yeah, it's the gap between intellectually knowing something and letting yourself BELIEVE something, if that makes any sense. Everyone tells me I pass already, and these days in boy mode I often get gendered as female at first, but I don't see it myself or perceive myself that way.  Every so often I do see it and go, whoa, now I get it, but those are few and far between. For instance, a few days ago I was in boy mode, and I got ma'amed more than once.  I walked in to a lecture, carrying a men's messenger bag, and security had to check bags and such, and the security guard goes 'I need to check your purse.' So I go to use the bathroom (thank God for surprise gender neutral single person bathrooms), and I saw myself in the mirror and it was jarring for a second. How I was perceiving what I looked like to everyone else was not at all what I looked like. I snapped a photo:



But then I rationalize it and go, oh I can't ACTUALLY look like that. It must have been the lighting, or the angle, or the camera, etc. And yeah, also I know that most cis women aren't happy with their bodies either. Hell most cis men are not happy with their bodies. Part of it is all the women in my family are TIIIIINNNYYY. So at home, and around family, I feel like I'm a GIANT, which plays into all those doubts. And then I go out into the real world and I'm like... oh... there are PLENTY of women walking around who are my height give or take an inch. Also a close friend who's petite and has the kind of body I WISH I had, was like, I'm jealous, I wish I was your height and had your legs.

My best friend is about my height, and she's beautiful, the girl who walks into a bar and gets hit on by EEEVVVEERRRYYOOOONNNE. Also, she lost 185 lbs, so knows in a different sense how hard it is to make a drastic change and then begin to see yourself the way the rest of the world sees you. But she has said, you're gonna be hotter than me when all is said and done, and I'm kinda jealous about it. And intellectually, I KNOW I'm in a good place (I don't think I'm going to be hotter than her  , but I think I have the POTENTIAL to be a passable attractive woman).

I've been on HRT for only three and a half months.  And that first three months was low dose estrogen with no t-blockers from an endocrinologist who clearly didn't know what they were doing, and almost nothing physically changed in the first three months, nor did my levels when they were tested.  So I switched endos a little under a week ago, got put on a T-blocker and was told to keep on taking the low dose E in addition for now, got new bloodwork, and will start a different more full dose HRT regimen in about a week and a half now. So I also feel like I haven't REALLY started HRT yet, since again, the first three months left my estrogen levels only slightly elevated and my testosterone levels exactly the same. Because of that, I also can't really project how it's going to change my body. But it's that thing where when it comes to doubt and fear and anxiety, rationality doesn't factor in at all. Which is why I was saying, I have some more personal internal work to do, because I KNOW that all of this doubt and fear comes from me, no one else.

Quote from: jeni on March 13, 2015, 11:17:20 AM
I know you're not alone thinking about missed opportunities, my guess is that a pretty large fraction of us wish we had transitioned the moment we first knew we wanted to. This used to be a thought that kept me from really thinking about whether I could come out and be myself. I'd think about the feelings but tell myself, "No, if you were going to do this you needed to do it before X happened so now it's too late. Too bad."

Finally I realized how backward that was. The past is the past, and all we can control is what we do right now. So when I feel awkward now, or have worries about how much easier this would be if I were already done, I think ahead to where I'll be in a few years. I think about what she will be doing and thinking. And for her sake, I do NOT want her wishing she had only had the strength and courage to make the transition.

Yeah, I definitely had multiple instances of the, well that was your chance, and that ship sailed, so now it's too late and you can't do it. Then it was when I realized that I HAD to do it, that I was finally ready. My whole life was imploding. Not literally, but my entire emotional being revolved around gender dysphoria. It was a wall that was up in front of all of my personal and professional goals, and it got to a point where I went, the ONLY way I'm going to be able to live a happy and fulfilled life is if I'm a woman. Otherwise, I don't know how much longer I can last going on as I am... meaning it was a matter of time before suicide became a serious option to me.  Surrendering to the fact that there was no real choice in the matter anymore was actually extremely freeing for me. And yeah, again it's a, I do the what if's, and intellectually I know that I was not ready at any of the previous 'moments' that I missed. Clearly I wasn't. If I was, I would have done it. But in these moments it's hard sometimes not to play the what if game.

Quote from: Kellam on March 13, 2015, 11:45:00 AM
I had an environment, parents and early opportunities very similar to yours. I also ran and hid. Do I wish that for physical reasons I had just come out with it and transitioned in my teens? Yes, of course, and my folky parents and hippy/punk brother would have been right there for me. Was I emotionally mature enough? No. It took me until now, 36, to reach a point where I actually value myself. For me that is worth all the suffering. I am ready now. That means this is the right time. Do I have a lot to change that could have been prevented? Yes but that makes the freedom that seems to be coming with transition that much more special. I too had to finally accept that I will never be a cis female, and that was the most glorious moment! I fully accepted myself and realized that the body may take some work but the mind and soul are perfect. So I have no regrets. My soul is worth it, my life is worth it, the body can be dealt with. I can be happy!

Yup, this is what I'm realizing I need to do more work on. I had thought I had accepted that and gotten to a point where I was okay with that, but clearly I need to do more. Jealousy of cis women has been cropping up more and more often. That said, I even said from the get go, that I'd NEVER be able to do the 'stealth' thing.  And I don't mean I think I'd never be passable enough to go stealth, who knows on that front. I mean that being trans is part of who I am. Living pretending to be a man for 26 years has shaped part of who I am, and any future relationship (friends, work, romantic) is based off of trust, and honesty, and fully knowing the other person.  I'd never be able or willing to hide this part of my life, even though many straight men may find it problematic on the dating front. So I'd very much like to get to that point where I fully accept that I will never be cis and find the beauty in the uniqueness of being trans, and I do find my way sometimes, just not always. Usually these doubts pop into my head for a few hours, and then I can stop myself, get off the hamster wheel, and move on, and it doesn't bug me again for quite a bit. This has just been the most persistent it's been in quite some time. Fodder for therapy sessions haha.

Quote from: Dana88 on March 13, 2015, 01:33:22 PM
And yeah, it's the gap between intellectually knowing something and letting yourself BELIEVE something, if that makes any sense. Everyone tells me I pass already, and these days in boy mode I often get gendered as female at first, but I don't see it myself or perceive myself that way.  Every so often I do see it and go, whoa, now I get it, but those are few and far between. For instance, a few days ago I was in boy mode, and I got ma'amed more than once.  I walked in to a lecture, carrying a men's messenger bag, and security had to check bags and such, and the security guard goes 'I need to check your purse.' So I go to use the bathroom (thank God for surprise gender neutral single person bathrooms), and I saw myself in the mirror and it was jarring for a second. How I was perceiving what I looked like to everyone else was not at all what I looked like.

THAT right there is exactly what plagues us. And I'm saying this because I still deal with the same problem.

We know every single one of our flaws. We've spent so many years hating certain parts of our body that were too masculine, feeling trapped to the point where those features drove us to self-hatred, and so many years seeing our own body features and facial features in the mirror and associating those features as "male," that our own views of ourselves are always going to be skewed.

I'm post-transition and stealth. Not a single person sees me as anything other than a normal woman. (I've asked them. I've complained about my "mannish" face, large build, and nonexistent boobs/butt to them, and they immediately scoffed at me.)

We're our own worst enemies. And even when not a single other person in the world is seeing us as anything else but a normal woman, it takes a long time for our self-perception to catch up. I still get distorted images in my head a lot, where I'm obsessing about my "mannish" features. And it takes affirmation from other people, and it takes looking in the mirror every now and then, to reassure me that I don't look as bad as I think I do.

So yeah... I actually went through much the same that you did as a teenager... my mom found my journal where I had been spilling all of my transgender feelings into, she confronted me about it and said "and if you do want to be a female..." and I lied about it, claiming that it was just some sexual fetish to keep from admitting the truth, and because of that I went into deep denial and didn't come out of it again until I was 27. In that ensuing time, my face got more and more masculine, my hairline significantly receded, my body got more and more unfixably masculine. So I know forgiving yourself is hard. But you just have to relax, trust what other people see you as, trust that you're no less of a woman because of your life circumstances, and maybe take my friend Arianna's life-outlook to heart: "I'm doing the best I can with what I have to work with."

(Also, I had doubts throughout transition as well. Don't worry about those. Unless you're unhappy with the physical feminizing changes, and actually wish you could go back to being a guy, it's probably just fears of the unknown and internalized transphobia talking.)

Quote from: Carrie Liz on March 13, 2015, 02:22:06 PM
THAT right there is exactly what plagues us. And I'm saying this because I still deal with the same problem.

We know every single one of our flaws. We've spent so many years hating certain parts of our body that were too masculine, feeling trapped to the point where those features drove us to self-hatred, and so many years seeing our own body features and facial features in the mirror and associating those features as "male," that our own views of ourselves are always going to be skewed.

I'm post-transition and stealth. Not a single person sees me as anything other than a normal woman. (I've asked them. I've complained about my "mannish" face, large build, and nonexistent boobs/butt to them, and they immediately scoffed at me.)

We're our own worst enemies. And even when not a single other person in the world is seeing us as anything else but a normal woman, it takes a long time for our self-perception to catch up. I still get distorted images in my head a lot, where I'm obsessing about my "mannish" features. And it takes affirmation from other people, and it takes looking in the mirror every now and then, to reassure me that I don't look as bad as I think I do.

So yeah... I actually went through much the same that you did as a teenager... my mom found my journal where I had been spilling all of my transgender feelings into, she confronted me about it and said "and if you do want to be a female..." and I lied about it, claiming that it was just some sexual fetish to keep from admitting the truth, and because of that I went into deep denial and didn't come out of it again until I was 27. In that ensuing time, my face got more and more masculine, my hairline significantly receded, my body got more and more unfixably masculine. So I know forgiving yourself is hard. But you just have to relax, trust what other people see you as, trust that you're no less of a woman because of your life circumstances, and maybe take my friend Arianna's life-outlook to heart: "I'm doing the best I can with what I have to work with."

(Also, I had doubts throughout transition as well. Don't worry about those. Unless you're unhappy with the physical feminizing changes, and actually wish you could go back to being a guy, it's probably just fears of the unknown and internalized transphobia talking.)

Yup. EXACTLY. My best friend who I had mentioned before, who lost 185 lbs, was heavy the entire time we had been friends (we met when we were 11).  She was ALWAYS the girl who was made fun of for being fat.  When we were 21 and living together, by that point she had gotten to a dangerous size (well over 300 lbs), and finally went, <not allowed> it, I'm losing this weight.  I remember I was there.  We had ordered food, it came, she had gotten crap.  She looked down at it and said, you know what. No. She threw it out, ordered something healthy from somewhere else, and that was it.  It took her two and a half years, but she literally lost a person, and went from being a size 34 to now being a size 6. And now she's a fitness coach and is stunningly gorgeous and in fantastic shape.  But I remember, once she got to her goal, and she was this skinny fit person, it still took her a good two years to start to see herself the way other people did.  She would get hit on constantly in bars and she would rationalize it in various ways, because she was never THAT girl.  So in her head she was still the fat girl who always got made fun of that the boys were never interested in. 

So it's sorta like that, in that we have been trapped so long in a male body, that it's hard to imagine anyone seeing us as a woman, even when they do.  I mean, even people who knew me as a boy have been treating me as a woman and tell me now I already look more female than male. For example I'm in a writing fellowship, and there's always food.  The final play we read through had a lot to do with issues of gender and sexism.  After the meeting we always clean up.  So I start to clean, and the other women get up and also start cleaning stuff up.  Then the head of the program, who's also a woman, goes, 'hey boys, we just read a play about sexism, do you notice who's cleaning up?  The girls! Get up and help!'  And she was including me as part of 'the girls' since I was the first one to start cleaning.

And yeah, my mom later confessed to me, that she had seen that someone was visiting transgender message boards on the computer that my brothers and I shared all the way back when I was 12/13 years old. Seeing as that I was the one who was growing up playing pretty pretty princess with the female next door neighbor, and had already come out as gay, while my straight brothers were playing baseball, she thought it was a pretty safe bet that it was me :-P. When she found the clothes in my room it just confirmed it for her.

And yes, it's absolutely internalized transphobia. I love the changes that have been happening, and when I think about going back to being a guy, and being hairy, and muscular, and smelling like a guy again, and downstairs coming alive again, I feel like it'd be the plot of a horror movie :-P.  So I know that it's not because I'm not making the right choice, it's because of fear.

Reading this thread has been very illuminating.

Dana, although my situation is quite different from yours, I can totally relate to that gap between knowing something and believing something else. In my case, that battle in my mind is still about whether or not I need to transition. On one hand, my feelings are pretty clear about being female, and wanting to physically and socially transition to be perceived that way by everyone, but rationally, I just cannot convince myself that it's the only way out. Being married, identifying as mtf lesbian, and living in a patriarchal and largely homophobic and transphobic place, it seems like there is no rational reason to throw everything away and jump into the worst possible depths of the unknown. And dragging my wife along or leaving her behind in this decision, both of which seem like such bad options. But if I don't find a way out of this, the only other option is to wait until suicide becomes an option which is no longer scary enough.

About looks and 'passing', I am not too worried because I know I can begin to 'pass' at some point once I start transitioning. And I only want not to get clocked, else male attention isn't something I care at all about. But I can relate to your point about being taller than most people around you, not just cis females but even most cis males. That makes me re-think whether 'passing' will be as easy as I believe, but then I do know of at least a few cis women who are as tall or taller than me, so why not?

Anyway, coming back to your story, I think you are in a good place, and very early in your transition, so you have a lot to look forward to, and nothing to worry about.

Dana you look gorgeous, don't think you will have any passing problems...

As far as looking back and wishing, trust me I have done that so many times through my life, as is true for denial phases, but it's true forget the past and look forward. HRT will get rid of body hair, and reduce some body mass via fat redistribution... Remember Cis women come in all different shapes and sizes. You have age on your side and as long as you are comfortable with yourself you will not have any issues.

L Katy 

Quote from: katrinaw on March 14, 2015, 07:35:09 AM
Dana you look gorgeous, don't think you will have any passing problems...

As far as looking back and wishing, trust me I have done that so many times through my life, as is true for denial phases, but it's true forget the past and look forward. HRT will get rid of body hair, and reduce some body mass via fat redistribution... Remember Cis women come in all different shapes and sizes. You have age on your side and as long as you are comfortable with yourself you will not have any issues.

L Katy 

Thank you and thank all of you guys. I promise I'm usually not THIS much of a Debbie Downer. I'm always the one who bounces back when I'm down real fast. But this one just took a hold of me and wouldn't let go. Writing it out helped a lot. So thank you all for reading, and thank you all for the support. I'm feeling much better today :-).

Quote from: cindy16 on March 14, 2015, 05:37:11 AM
On one hand, my feelings are pretty clear about being female, and wanting to physically and socially transition to be perceived that way by everyone, but rationally, I just cannot convince myself that it's the only way out. Being married, identifying as mtf lesbian, and living in a patriarchal and largely homophobic and transphobic place, it seems like there is no rational reason to throw everything away and jump into the worst possible depths of the unknown.

Just picking one topic out of your insightful and thoughtful post, your talking about "rational" reasons reminds me of a common thread that comes up in my therapy sessions. I have a lot of internal conflict with my own emotions that arise because I tend to think about whether my feelings and desires are rational or not. As my therapist puts it, I hold myself up against a lot of "shoulds."

What he's helping me learn is that rationality is not the only basis for a decision, and even when it is, I often discount my own feelings when evaluating rationality. Maybe it's the scientist and engineer in me, but I feel like I try to remove myself from every scenario, then decide how to react "objectively." I'm trying to work on remembering that I'm important, too.

So, when I read the quoted section of your post, I guess I think you have described a lot of rational reasons why you should transition. You have also listed a few reasons why you should not. If you ignore all your own needs and desires about transition, then all that is left are the difficulties. So of course it feels like there's no reason to transition, but that's not really a rational judgment.

Another side is that humans tend to approach uncertainty with a very pessimistic view. We implicitly place far more value on avoiding loss than on enabling gain. So we think about how bad it will be if, say, lose the support of a good friend. But we discount things like how much stronger another relationship might become when we become comfortable in our own skin and able to truly open our hearts to another person. This also makes the status quo seem like the rational approach, but again the decision making is anything but rational.

I know those feels Dana and I was born in '88 too!

I wanted to come out when I was 13 or so and then regularly ever since but I always put it off. It is hard to get over those feelings of having missed out, of having done yourself a dis-service. You can do it though, I worked through it with a lot of introspection and talking with people I care about and who care about me. Since this works for me. Therapist or whatever like you have can prob get you there too. It got easier for me to let it go as I was on HRT for longer (I started Dec '13) and as I am becoming happier with who I am becoming. I don't obsess over it any more like I used to.

Jennifer, thanks for your reply. It is really thought-provoking.
But the way I see it is, these other negatives are also eventually going to affect my own feelings, so the rationale for transitioning doesn't seem to work out even then.

Anyway, the best approach I have as of now is to take it slow, and to test people's perceptions gently. See how they react to small changes in my appearance, for instance. That might help me figure out how much of negatives I may have to deal with.

I think I'll stop here. Let's not hijack Dana's thread.

Taking it slow sounds good to me, it's what I am doing, too. Relevant to this thread, I think it's a great way to chip away at the doubts a little bit at a time.

Quote from: cindy16 on March 15, 2015, 11:04:14 PM
Jennifer, thanks for your reply. It is really thought-provoking.
But the way I see it is, these other negatives are also eventually going to affect my own feelings, so the rationale for transitioning doesn't seem to work out even then.

Anyway, the best approach I have as of now is to take it slow, and to test people's perceptions gently. See how they react to small changes in my appearance, for instance. That might help me figure out how much of negatives I may have to deal with.

I think I'll stop here. Let's not hijack Dana's thread.

No worries! I just needed to vent a few days ago. Feeling way better now (partially thanks to you ladies) :-). So if this thread sparks important convo for someone else, feel free to hijack!

Thanks for starting this thread. It helps you vent, but it also helps us reflect more on what we ourselves may be going through.
And thanks for including me among the 'you ladies'. Still getting used to it...

Quote from: cindy16 on March 17, 2015, 03:16:26 PM
Thanks for starting this thread. It helps you vent, but it also helps us reflect more on what we ourselves may be going through.

I second this sentiment! I did a bunch of crying and identifying while reading this thread. It truly helped me feel normal.