What was the spark, the impulse that made you start your transition where perhaps you said is now or never?

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It's a good question but a tough reply. For me, there were many issues I don't want to type out tonight. 

Simple answer. I got to the point where I could not go on living if I did not transition.

Failed suicide attempt and getting help.

I realized the damage to those around me from my death was likely as bad or worse than the damage from my coming out and wanting to transition.

the realisation I literally couldn't take any more time in the skin I was wearing?

But unfortunately it's never quite that easy.

Hello again Alex

This is a good question and one I am often asked or even more briefly "Why now?"

However it was not a spark or impulse with me. I have known I am transgender since the age of 4 but buried and suppressed for decades.

I had taken early retirement to look after my mother and she sadly passed in 2015 and I greatly mourned her (even though she never accepted my trans status). I took a few holidays/vacations but in 2016 my transgender situation became so dominant - not only thinking about it constantly but the depression and dysphoria was so intense - that I was forced to seek help by therapy in 2017 and subsequently HRT and I am publicly transitioning in Summer aged 64.

With hindsight I realize the obstacles had been removed; my working life was over and I could not have a family feud with my mother who loved me and who was infirm. On her death it was still NOT my intention to transition. However a year later things just turned out that transition was the only viable option to prevent a harder and pointless option of remaining painfully depressed for the rest of my life.

My intention now is to live 20 or even 30 years as a woman and to enjoy it!

Hugs

Pamela 

The thought of being transgender had crossed my mind many times, but I had always squashed it down. 

But then, about 4 years ago, I attended a convention where a trans woman scientist delivered the keynote talk.  It amazed me to see that a trans person could be out, in a public setting, and be totally accepted.  I listened carefully to the chatter in the lobby afterwards, and everyone was talking about her subject matter.  No one was talking about her.

That was a real eye-opener for me.  It was roughly the same time that Caitlyn Jenner was making headlines, so being trans was very much in the public eye.  I realized that times had changed, and that maybe I didn't need to keep suppressing the idea of being trans.

When I got home, I found Susan's Place, signed up, and began investigating.  And here I am.

For me it been a long gradual process spanning decades.  When I had a partner she figured out that was both strongly masculine and strongly feminine.  It a lot of ways, including appearance and diet, I was much more girly than she was!  She was quite accepting, so it wasn't "bottled up" and I could evolve at my own pace.  Except for her health issues, which took center stage, obviously.

My answer,

  When it hit home that bottling up my inner woman, was actually making me sick physically and spiritually. I had to come out, it was not easy turning and facing something so dramatic later in life. I ultimately survived and thrived, proving to myself in hindsight that I took the right course of actions.

C -

A miserably failed attempt at making it all go away after years of alternating between hiding my crossdressing and trying to make it go away.  Transition was always in my head, way back to when I first learned there was such a thing in my early teens. It was always something either in the future, something I didn't need to do, or something I didn't think I could do.

After my failed attempt at stuffing it down for ever, I knew I needed help to figure out why it wouldn't go away so I went to a therapist. She never said "yes,  you are trans" to me so I think it was actually talking about it to someone that eventually made me realize that I was trans. Once I knew that I knew why it was that I always wanted to be a girl. Realizing that yes, I really was trans and wanted to transition led me to figure out that I actually could and once that piece there, that I needed to try.

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I was so low and didn't know if I wanted to live.  I dealt with this my entire life and was hiding it and was so unhappy and very angry.  I knew I had to do one or the other.  I started talking with a therapist first to see if it would help.  She got me on the right path. 

Julie

For decades I dealt with growing anger and rage, I thought I was just a crossdresser with severe anger issues. There were many occasions when my rage was so intense that I considered taking my own life. On Dec 28, 2016, around 7:30 pm, I had an epiphany. After reading several stories here on Susan's Place one of them triggered a realization that the source of my anger was having to suppress who I was for all of these years. Suddenly I knew, and accepted, that I was transgender. My journey began that night.

There wasn't a huge event for me, nor were there any feelings of suicide, self-harm, or anything. It's just that I've had dysphoria for twenty years now, and recognized I was trans around 16 years ago. It's always been there all of these years. And it has been a daily thing since sometime in high school. I've kept myself from actively doing anything about it because I know it would upset my family.

Now, I can go into a lot of detail on this, because all of this is very fresh on my mind, just over the last five months:

What really pushed me after all of these years to seriously come out to my mom and start therapy with the intent of HRT, began early this year. As I said, no big event here, I just think it was a variety of things culminating. The first being: I moved to a new room in the house with my own bathroom (yay!), and that bathroom has huge mirrors facing me when I come out of the shower. I'd have this tendency to look at the mirror, and when I did that I would see my body and it made it would make me cringe and upset me every time. I had to take my towels off of their hanger (which is quite several feet away, with many steps closer to the mirror) and put them on the floor right in front of the shower, so I could get them on ASAP and not accidentally glance at the mirror beforehand.

I also used that silly FaceApp app. When I did, something really dawned on me. I had one picture feminized, and then I looked at it, and I realized that the feminized version - which to me, wasn't actually all of that feminized - was exactly how I saw myself internally, yet it was very different from what I actually looked like. The unfeminized picture really upsets me... And to think that's what I actually look like, and not the more androgynous face I always picture myself having really ate at me.

Perhaps we can blame FaceApp for that. Was it a mistake for me to use that app, or did it reveal something to me? (I don't usually look pictures of me, for obvious reasons).

I think what it really showed me was that now that I'm 30, my face is starting to age again and is becoming more masculine and it was at this point that I really thought I can't take it anymore, something absolutely must be done.

There's also hair loss, which has become quite dramatic since around last November/December. Additionally, my facial hair has become very aggressive over the last several years. I can't stand facial hair at all. I want it all to just vanish forever. The ability for me to sustain the belief that shaving every once in a while keeps it at bay enough has stopped. No matter how much I shave, it just isn't enough, and it grows back so fast. I can't control it anymore and it really upsets me.

Ultimately it was that feeling of urgency mentioned above that started this. I had heard that drinking spearmint tea could give some T blocker effects like softer skin and loss of libido. I decided to make myself drink a lot of it everyday even though I couldn't stand the taste of spearmint (I got used to it). It was after a couple of months of that, that I really stopped and thought about the fact that even if spearmint tea in of itself might not be harming me, I am feeling so pushed into a corner by all of this that I am willing to seek out these unproven, potentially harmful, alternative methods, and there's no telling when I might seek to take it further to something that might really harm me. At this point, it really began to stop feeling like something I could just set aside anymore. I had already proven to myself that I can't, that I'm going to hurt myself (through indirect means) if I can't get it (HRT) officially.

Even after coming back out to my mom, and setting up a therapy appointment, it was like over a month after and I was finding it hard to even make it there. Again, it's not a direct feeling of harming myself. It's something very hard to describe.

Also, I have to note that I've been dealing with some medical issues for over a year, and they have made it very hard for me to get around the house, go anywhere, work, etc. when they get really bad. This has given me literal depression at times, yet on top of that came this bout of gender dysphoria which I just couldn't ignore. My mom once asked me "Shouldn't we get this medical issue taken care of before getting started on therapy?" and I told her "No, it can't wait". The time came. I didn't want it to. I at least would have liked to be in working shape, making money regularly. But not anyone or anything could stop me from starting the therapy.

But even today, sitting here waiting for my next appointment where I get my HRT letter, I'm still trying to ask myself sincerely "Is this really what I need?", "Is my pain enough? Is it even actually real?". Dang, the mind is weird, I know what I've felt, but I still ask these questions (probably mostly because I haven't had a feeling of suicide/attempt or actual mental breakdown like many others here have).

This was my fourth attempt at transition.  Prior attempts took place in 1982, 1989, and 1999.

This one got real after my best friend killed himself by unintentionally slamming a Lamborghini into a tree at very high speed, and my having two instances of squamous cell skin cancer.

I knew time was running out.

The old methods of keeping the inner woman contained stopped working. She got too strong - instead of overcoming her - she overcame me.

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Quote from: TonyaW on April 27, 2019, 09:33:19 AM
Transition was always in my head, way back to when I first learned there was such a thing in my early teens. It was always something either in the future, something I didn't need to do, or something I didn't think I could do.

Realizing that yes, I really was trans and wanted to transition led me to figure out that I actually could and once that piece there, that I needed to try.

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I relate so much to this, Tonya. This was me precisely!

Hugs

Pamela  xx 

What did it for me was the fact my dad outed me as trans. He also made sure I knew it was ok and that he would be supportive.