This is a bit controversial.  Many view GIS as some all oppressive all powerful inescapable force.  Others acknowledge its presence and do their best with what they've got.  Either way leads to transition.

It seems as if anytime something major happens in life, some long road that's being walked down no matter how good, one always looks back.

I'm finding myself, now and then, double crossing my mind.  The commitment is 100% to transition.  I know what'll happen if I don't, I'll just end up thinking about it until it gets worse and worse and I start taking steps to transition again.  Or worse, I end up doing something horrible to myself.  It's not that I'm unhappy with being a guy.  Well I am, but I'm not dying.  I'm not comfortable but I'm comfortable in the knowledge that I'm not hideous and I'm able to function as a member of society.  I may not be able to express myself and I may not be able to be who I want to be but whoever gets to do that, right?

I don't know what it will be like being a woman.  I tried as a kid(14) and it was good, very good.  But things are so different now from back then, I wouldn't be the same at all.  It's this chilly cold grip that takes hold of my stomach that starts ->-bleeped-<-ing with my head.  It's telling me that I have all this stuff right now in my life and I don't need to change it.  I just try to ignore it until I feel better and it's not on my mind.  Even though this is what I've lived for for so many years, I'm still just getting these aweful anxiety attacks.  I know if I were to talk with my therapist about it there's no way he'd let me continue therapy without putting me through a ton of crap and delaying it for years or something.

I want my life, I want it to be in my control and not running all over the place.  I want to be who I want to be, and I think that's all any of us want.

So why is it that my tail keeps running between my legs?

Boy, how I understand where you are, Kalt.  I'm sure I (and everyone else in this situation) will tell you that you're going to have to find that path that keeps you productive and happy and real.  I'm right smack dab in the middle of things, and I constantly have that voice in my head that will tell me "What on earth are you doing?  Don't you  think you could get a grip and just enjoy what you've got?"  After all, I like my life, my relationships, my job, my health -- just not my sex, and that last little detail just got more and more uncomfortable over the past couple of years until it was no longer discomfort, but pain, low-grade at first, then increasingly agonizing.

Most non TG people (at least those who give transsexualism any thought at all) assume that this is an issue of genitals or of physical appearance, but the great internal debates about identity and love and choice and pain and health are all mental, and I think it's fair to say that we all struggle mightily with those mental battles. 

I've been doing a lot of writing about my own fear, and of all the possible kinds of fear I have, I think the one that stops me in my tracks is that I'm afraid of being rejected and belittled by my friends and loved ones. I realize that I'm sort of afraid of change, but when I listed all the kinds of change I've had to deal with over course of my life, I realized that I had the psychological skills to handle change.  I thought I was afraid of making a commitment, but I listed all my accomplishments over the past year regarding my transsexualism, and I realized that I've been able to make progress and get things done.  But rejection is something that's out of my control, and I think that need to control things is probably what makes this particular fear so unnerving.  I've spent a masculine lifetime building controlling walls around myself, and as I dismantle them, I not only feel hugely liberated and alive, but I also feel quite frightened and vulnerable.

Stick in there, Kalt.

Joyce