The joy of discovering my true self is slowly being overshadowed by reality. Overall it's better than the alternative. I totally get the jealousy of cis women. I would give anything to have what you have seems to be on a loop in my brain.

That's an open question as being trans means different things to different people.

When I first realized what it was I had become, I asked myself, "why me? why now?" at least a hundred times a day. At the time I had the love of a woman, thought I was happy but something was missing from my life. Eventually, I discovered what it was through counselling with a good therapist.

The why me stuff continued but has since gone. I have accepted who I am and I'm a lot happier now than I ever was. I no longer grapple with the 2 distinct personalities that had lived inside of my head as I am now at peace inside my head. I wasn't born a woman but she had been there for all of my life, I just didn't know what it was. It explained why I liked the softer, feminine side of things, fashions and preferred female company over males even for conversation.

I did "macho" things to try and keep my female side in check and it was successful until about 2009 when I began to experience severe inner turmoil. Each time I let her out to play, it was more and more difficult to put the genie back in the bottle. My former friends used to see a pretty woman and want to get her into bed, I just wanted to BE her!

Today, I don't have 2 personalities vying to be number one. I am me and I am a woman. The man inside of me has gone and he's never coming back nor would I want to be a man again.

I have surgically changed my body and I feel better looking in a mirror now. I enjoy choosing a day's clothing and accessories to make me look and feel special. I have unlimited freedom to dress as I please, to mix and match clothes that I could not have had as a man.

Is it easy? Hell no! At almost 6 feet, I endure stares, sometimes verbal hostility although rarely. I had one man ask his wife, "Did you see that? What the f*** was that?" That was on board a cruise liner but I do understand he was in his 70's, maybe 80's. At a car show a fellow looked at my chest and joked, "Forget your bra today?" I just said yes and let it go. I find older people seem to have difficulty accepting trans people but I'd never go back! I can't go back.

Being trans isn't for everyone. One has to be certain because coming out makes it so much harder to go back.

My life has changed a lot. The woman I love is my friend now. All long term plans scrapped, friends have abandoned me, some won't even look at me. I was forced to leave a volunteer position I enjoyed due to a disguised voice telling me not to return on my answering machine. If I knew who it was I would have confronted him but better to retreat and fight again another day when you can. I hate running scared from a coward but felt no option. It reminded me of the hell I endured in grade school at the hands of bullies.

Is it all worth it? yes, to me it is. It is my life now and I am more content than ever even considering what it has become.

I am thankful I discovered who I was before it was too late.

Love,
Clare

What do I really think?  I thought this would be easier.  I never thought people could be so ignorant and cruel.  I never though the opinions of others would mean so much to me.

I thought this would make me happy.  I thought this would make things better.  I thought this would heal my past wounds and fill the hole in my heart.  I thought I'd stop thinking of suicide everyday.

I thought wrong.

I still contemplate suicide, because I'm depressed and mentally unhealthy.  I'm still unhappy about what I don't have, because I'm a human.  I still carry my past wounds, because they've scarred over, and scars don't heal.  I still have a hole in my heart because I'm an addict.  No amount of love or family or happy living situation can change that.

What do I think about being trans?  I think it won't change who you are.  I think it changes nothing but your appearance.  I may look pretty now, but I'm still ugly on the inside. 

What do I think?  I think it's worth it.  After everything, and even though I have all my same problems, I at least like the way I look.  Everytime I see the stares, or overhear the comments, I have a voice, a woman's voice, loud and defiant in my head screaming "You didn't do this for them, honey!"

Transition doesn't change much.  It can be the shove you need to switch which societal team you play for, but it's still up to you to make the life you want for yourself

It is not for everyone. It takes grace, courage and a strong mind to be trans. Yes, after a year of HRT I am still doubting my decision to transition and there's no day where I'm pondering to stop it all together.

Honestly?  It sucks.  All I want is a simple life, but my karma keeps throwing complications at me.  And being trans is one big complication.  It doesn't help that all this stuff is buried under decades of brainwashing and cis-training, and I have to dig to unearth it.  And even then, I have to check each piece of evidence to see it it is the real me or some delusion.

If I make it out the other side still sane, it will be a sweet victory, but in the meantime...whew!

Blah blah blah, wisdom and perspective and knowledge of gender that is so unique, cis people can never hope to understand it.
I have no doubts or regrets and most of my unhappiness is unrelated to gender.
However, being trans is one of the few things that i would wish on all my enemies as the old saying goes.
......
......
......
But yeah, it sucks.

it blows......

Quote from: iKate on October 21, 2015, 07:48:27 AM
I hate it. Hate it hate it hate it hate it.

Mostly because I wish I could have a husband and children with him and be a mommy and live a simple life.

I debate going stealth constantly with myself.

I dread the surgeon's knife but I know I have at least two more.

I hate that I couldn't go to a girl's school as a teenager and have that social bond with other women.

And I hate that my BC will laugh at me and always say male.

I really don't mention Trans anything on Facebook on my own status. Some people know but a lot of them don't. I delete posts that mention my Trans status in an obvious way.

In real life I'm a woman with 3 kids. End of story.

What I do have as a woman of transgender experience:

People calling me by all manner of feminine pronouns and references. Even the b word and c word at times.

The ability to be admired by men and envied by some women.

No constant nagging by myself that I am in the wrong body.

The ability to wear (mostly) what I want.

What I don't have:

The ability to get pregnant and bear children. This kills me to the core. To me I don't really see myself as having the full 100% experience as a woman unless I have a uterus. I mean my gender dysphoria is managed to a good degree but it is not 100% gone.

Full social acceptance as a woman. Only if I don't tell people I'm trans do they fully treat me like a woman, fully. So I try not to make it the first thing people know about me.

The ability to have a normal family. Look, some people like being queer, loud and proud. That's great. I love those people. But that is not me. I really don't like the queer label at all. I just want to be done and over with transition so I can get on with my life and try to pick up the pieces.

The ability to be in a relationship with any man I want to. The dating pool is pretty small for me. I mean I get guys interested in me and I genuinely believe they are not trans attracted but I am not ready to date yet and I think that when I disclose most men will run far away. Either that or they will view me with an asterisk... there are encouraging signs like Keanu Reeves rumored to be dating a trans woman etc but I don't really know how it would work out for me.

So yeah that's how it is for me... I can try to live with it but I don't know, honestly.

Mostly, I feel the same way.

Being trans is complete bs. Gender goes to the level of a spiritual or religious experience. To be trans is to be soul sick.

Hate it.  I would rather be a cis man than a trans woman. 

A tormented existence that has caused me mental anguish, time fighting my inner demons, lots of money, legal changes and headaches, physical punishment on a barbaric level of medication, surgeries, and electronic hair removal. Yeah, what's not to like?

Plus now that I have been thrust into womanhood, I now experience guys staring at me, bittersweet I guess. I seem to have the look that they like. Although on the bright side, people are way nicer to me now that I look like an innocent young woman rather than a miltant hoodlum. But yes there is a bright side. After my first phase of FFS things magically changed from being just OK to having an overwhelming sense of peace.

But I'll tell ya what, trans people are some of the toughest goddamn individuals I have ever met. Who else has their skulls ground down (me), throats sliced (me), chests flattened, genitals reworked, just to have that peace? There's a price to being trans, some pay more than others though.

It is the most interesting thing about me.
Surviving it is my proudest acomplishment.
Thriving in spite of it is the blessing I am most thankful for in this life.

I can't be intimidated because I look everybody I meet straight in the eye and realize they could never have survived what I did.

Losing almost everything taught me I need nothing from anybody.
Getting most of it back showed me that hope against impossible odds is not futile.

I am lucky. I know it. I take time every day to acknowledge and be thankful for the immense privileges that have allowed my to life turn out this way. I think a lot these days about how I can make it easier for people that have been burdened with this thing that almost broke me. I see so much misery in this thread and I know I can't fix it, but I want to know how I can make it better.

ditto

Right now, Being Trans, or a better way to put it, wanting TO become trans, has opened my eyes in a lot of ways to becoming more comfortable to myself, in mind at least. Physically I've noticed I'm critiquing myself to every single fault, and I never realised how much I hate it all.

I'm unlucky to live in a small city with not much support structure, so what I thought would be easy to start slipping in to has become more of a fruitless search.

The thing I'm most scared of is how other people will percieve me, especially those I love most. I think being transgender is going to hurt for awhile, until the dust settles

It feels great that I can be myself, even if I can't be all of the time. Without knowing it for years, suppressing that side of me made me very unhappy (though it's definitely not the only source of my anxiety) and it's not surprising I felt much more confident when I came out to myself.

On the flipside, society has a patently ->-bleeped-<-ty way of treating people like us. It seems to be getting better, but there's a long way to go and sometimes peoples cruelty gets to me.

Quote from: Paige on October 21, 2015, 11:30:14 AM
Hi Stephanie,

My body doesn't match my brain, I despise what society has put me through because of this.  I despise the societal norms that says I just can't be me and I have to play my gender role according to certain rules.

I'm transgender with major body and testosterone dysphoria.  If I could I would change my body in a second.  I don't have a problem being me.  I have a real problem with society's view of me.

So basically I hate the idea of gender but have no problem with being transgender.

Does that make any sense?
Paige

I have to agree

"Why did the chicken cross the road?
Because transgender!"

Essentially, the whole notion of being trans is a punchline in my world.  I find it more amusing than good/bad.

Also, not trying to be all Freudian up in this thread, but I believe the people who 'hate' being trans would find some fault in themselves anyway, and the people who 'love' being trans are carefree, happy individuals regardless.  Loving yourself (especially being trans!) is a full-time job, folks.

Good thread as always, Ms. Stephanie!

Most of the time I don't really see anything that great about being trans. It can be expensive, painful, scary, and tiring. And after all the suffering and effort you put in to being brave and living your truth someone will slip up with your pronouns and you suspect that no one really sees you as you see yourself anyway.

That being said being trans is a million times better than pretending to be a gender that you aren't. There is great freedom and liberation in casting away the gendered roles and definitions society has given you and just being yourself, that is the best. Seeing my body change makes me happy, being able to wear a new dress down the street makes my heart skip a beat.

Whether you're cis or trans we all have suffering and obstacles to overcome. Everyone has baggage and struggles. Maybe none of it is good or bad. It's just stuff that can break us or help us to grow. Idk.

All my life I saw it as a curse, I saw my body as a curse, I saw my brain damage as a curse, I saw the lies my family told be as a curse. I had been diagnosed since I was 7, but my family tried so hard to FIX me, to HEAL me, but there was no healing that could be done, I knew I could transition and have surgery by the age of 10, but back then they only talked about adults so I thought I had to try and survive until I was 18. And as the years came by and my parents tried to fix me more and more and I learned how much they had lied to me, how many secrets they had kept from me, I felt cursed, isolated, unloved.

When I came out of the closet for the final time when I was 18,  their torture and abuse rose to new heights. It made me ashamed of being trans, it made me feel cursed and inherently a bad person for being trans, but transition was the only way to survive and when even the trans community turned on me they pushed me in the arms of Truescums and I became Queen Bee of the Truescums for many years.

I was so deeply stealth that I forgot to love myself, forgot to accept myself, feel pride for myself. Being trans was something that had to be kept secret, for the World would never love me, they'd abuse me, try to kill me, hate me, not give me equal chances in life. Being trans was a curse and no one was ever allowed to know about it.

But ever since I live in Brisbane (I'm 27 now) and started going out in Gay clubs and some of my new best friends are Drag Queens, they've taught me to love myself, to have pride about myself, to be happy about everything I achieved in life. I even walked in the Brisbane Gay Parade with a trans pride flag. Being Trans isn't a curse anymore, it's not something bad anymore, it's not something I have to hide at all times anymore. I am beautiful, my body is beautiful, my personality is beautiful and I deserve to be and to be loved and people do love me, not because I'm cis, not because I'm trans, but because I am who I am.

Life is music and all we need to do is dance xxx

I embrace being trans. My male life was full of pain trauma and addiction. My journey started 7 years ago when I got sober. I thought that was the answer but it just let me feel my feelings for the first time. So jump ahead to 1 year ago I opened up about one of the traumas in my life and that lead to the admitting who I was. While being transsexual isn't easy I've been through worse so I know I can make it. Plus its making me admit to parts of my person that have kept me stuck and is making me fix them. So I not only get to be the real me but a better me. So that's why I choose to embrace it.