I was with three friends.  They were trying to get me to attend a Christmas Eve service with them but I was reluctant, mostly out of shyness.  Finally my best male friend said to the others: "After all those years she finally came out of her shell and she won't even go to a friggen Christmas Eve service!"  (I guess I'm going. )

His exasperationhelped me see it as he sees it.  I like his view that transition was a coming out of a shell.  In this way of thinking I am not changing from one thing to another but am opening up, being released.  I had often said that it was like letting the cage door swing open, but I was still viewing it as change (male to female) rather than a coming out of the male shell to being truly me.

- Kate

That's wonderful Kate.

Have a lovely time. You have some valuable friends there.

I think of it as being like Jacob Marley (from Scrooge and Marley) and walking around in chains all your life.
Eventually you just throw them all off.

Throw off the chains and be free young lady.  Be free.

and here I thought I was a hatchling.

Thats awesome , congrats!

and yes its a release imo :]

I'm free to be me, finally.

I don't consider it a change, though it was a big one.  And I have changed.  But it is more of being released to be myself.


Jay

Neither - it was just a slightly medically assisted part of my growing up and maturing into what I am.

I do like that analogy.  Several people have told me they're amazed at how quickly I'm proceeding - in just six months I've gone from pretty much nothing to passing pretty successfully in public.  I've had the thought that after being so repressed all my life, once that door was even slightly open, it's like all that pent-up energy suddenly being released, and the floodgates are open.  You can't then shut the gates against the flow, it's just too powerful.

Quote from: K8 on December 24, 2010, 05:59:09 PM
I was with three friends.  They were trying to get me to attend a Christmas Eve service with them but I was reluctant, mostly out of shyness.  Finally my best male friend said to the others: "After all those years she finally came out of her shell and she won't even go to a friggen Christmas Eve service!"  (I guess I'm going. )

His exasperationhelped me see it as he sees it.  I like his view that transition was a coming out of a shell.  In this way of thinking I am not changing from one thing to another but am opening up, being released.  I had often said that it was like letting the cage door swing open, but I was still viewing it as change (male to female) rather than a coming out of the male shell to being truly me.

- Kate

I agree in that what I experience is release. too  At first I got that release when transitioning.  By transitioning people around me knew how I felt and I became free from the heavy burden I bore of GID.  Later and now today, I feel the same release just because I can be open about myself.  I haven't transitioned anymore, but I feel the same because everyone knows what it is I am.  In fact, the only time I feel burdened is when I'm around someone who is important to me but who does not know.

The best analogy I have come up with is:

It is as if I was born and raised in Auschwitz - it was all I had ever known. Living part time en femme here and there was like looking through the fence - just a hint that there was something different.  SRS/transition was like being liberated. I had not been able to really comprehend what freedom was until I had it.

What I heard about the comments from my little home town when people heard what happened to me made me laugh: "Well it's about time she figured it out!" and "Well now that makes sense!" LOL! Apparently I wasn't fooling anyone .....