Quote from: Charlie Nicki on September 01, 2018, 10:57:22 AM
How do you cope with these feelings?
I remove the prefix "Cis". That's how I cope with them. That's really the only way I cope with them. I don't like differentiating between how I have lived and how natal women have lived. I've done it. Yeesh have I done it. Like you, I've gone through the same gamut of emotion, of regrets, of wishing that my life could have been so different. Of realising that my life will be different, because of something that happened when I was born. Something I had no control over.
But I cope by trying to hold on to the understanding that different doesn't have to mean worse. Different doesn't have to make me anything less than anyone else. 7.2 billion people in the world. 7.2 billion different lives, different experiences. Different journeys through a sometimes messy, sometimes complicated, sometimes awesome existence.
I may not be Cis, but I am no less a woman than any other woman on the planet. I may not have the anatomy, but I have the psychology, the attitude, and perhaps most importantly of all, the emotional connection to who I am. That's what keeps me going. However I look, whatever I have to do, whatever I go through in life, that's the one constant. The one thing which doesn't change. And that's really how I cope with it. I may not have the same life as other women. I may not have
had the same life as other women. But other women don't have the same lives as other women, either. For all the similarities between people, there are just as many differences.
In all the ways that matter, I am as much me as if I'd been shoved out when I was born and the doc had said "Congratulations, it's a girl." That's what I try to hold on to, that's what keeps me going. The things that have happened in my life and the things I've had to deal with, I think they have happened for a reason. To make me who I am. The things I will have to deal with... no, they may sometimes not be what I want. Things may be painful, or confusing, or awkward... or awesome, or teach me something I never knew... but I believe stuff happens for a reason.
There was a time I wanted to be normal. But now I just want to be me. Someone once said to me that if you think someone is normal, you just haven't known them long enough, lol. And that's kinda true. Everyone is their own shade of unique. There's nothing wrong with that. Nothing at all. Coming to terms with that is what's let me come to terms with a lot of my feelings about how I was born, and how my life is likely to go.
That's how I cope with it.
