This is a rambling thought, and I wonder if anyone has had a thought process like this:

Some have given up everything to be themselves. Some have given themselves up for the benefit of everyone else. Some alter their future paths to fit into their newly perceived gender roles. Some do what I plan: grind on and do what they want to in their new bodies and live incredibly fascinating lives in defiance of an entrenched transsexual stigmatism.

Before transition was possible, transsexual people lived as ghosts of themselves, I'm sure. They lived long and productive lives and were capable of producing moments of happiness and clarity that carried them through. This happened. I know it must have.

Since transition has become possible, we must answer this question everyday (perhaps silently, to ourselves) for everyone else: Is the price we pay worth the benefit?

This is the question at the absolute heart of my current conundrum. This is the question that exists whether or not we like it, and it defines transition as a choice in the eyes of the rest of society.

Really, this question has plagued me and my family for my entire life: At what price, progress?

I have decided that it will no longer be my obstacle. I will look you straight in the face and tell you: I give up my family, my male image, my membership in the male fraternity, my wife, my perceived normalcy, my LIFE. I will give up the relative ease of a male social existence, certainty that I will be in a loving lifelong relationship, being socially invisible, any position of authority attained in my previous gender, among many other things, to be myself. In defiance of the stigma you place upon me, I WILL thrive.

Does this make me selfish? Absolutely. But these are the gears of my brain. I realize I am being completely selfish by making this decision and it brings me shame. Unfortunately, I have no other self. If I had not made this decision, I would continue to not exist. People say: "transition or die," for me the saying goes: "transition or be a husk." Many people would rather die, and maybe one day death would have come for me in all its mercy. That thought pushes me to transition.

Thoughts?

I told my therapist today as I progress down this pathway I realize the worst case scenario is that I lose my job, I lose my friends/my family, everything.  Of course the tradeoff is that I get to be happy.  Its a price I'm willing to pay.

I agree with the assessment of transition or live as a husk.  Death is not an option for me to get out of this situation.  It's cowardly, and besides, I have too much to live for even if the cost of transition is high.  It's a hard thing, though, because up until now i've been happy keeping other people happy, or helping them out, usually leading up to a period of my life where i crash and burn.  It's taken another crash since I first had thoughts of being a woman to make me realize that there is no life in keeping other people happy at the expense of myself.  This leads into a hard issue, though, of breaking my past routines by making someone unhappy potentially to make myself happy.  I admits i've been having a lot of thoughts over that today, and it makes me a bit sick, but that's what has to happen.

Key: I have lived a life of selfless "servant leadership" as well. Making others happy, keeping myself tucked neatly away, muddling through. Others sometimes see me going through this with difficulty and question my intentions, but connecting with yourself after a lifetime of suppression is a daunting task, for instance, I am an intense, strong, beautiful woman. I can't jump from the male nothing to that in an instant. This is especially true because I have created obligations and loved ones.

Everything in its perfect time. As you take steps towards correcting yourself, becoming you, you can move closer to the viewpoints of what will be will be, and things happen for a reason. This feeling does not really exist for many of us.

It's a scary realization when it hits you for real, right Regan?

Quote from: EmmaM on March 03, 2011, 04:07:16 PM
Key: I have lived a life of selfless "servant leadership" as well. Making others happy, keeping myself tucked neatly away, muddling through. Others sometimes see me going through this with difficulty and question my intentions, but connecting with yourself after a lifetime of suppression is a daunting task. Especially when you have created obligations and loved ones.

Everything in its perfect time. As you take steps towards correcting yourself, becoming you, you can move closer to the viewpoints of what will be will be, and things happen for a reason. This feeling does not really exist for many of us.

It's a scary realization when it hits you for real, right Regan?

Hopefully.  It's selfish I know, but I almost feel that after all I've given, I should be entitled to some back, you know?  It's almost like, "Look at all the hell i've been through!  I want something for me now!"

you can't always get what you want but if you try sometime you just might find you get what you need oh yeaaaa

what you get from this may be shortlived or long but that depends on what you seek (want) and what you really need.

No matter what you do make sure no matter what you can go back and at least be able to say you got something positive you needed from this

because the things we want constantly change

Quote from: CalebLance on March 03, 2011, 04:22:19 PM
If anything, I will be giving my heart more fully, more completely than I ever did before. Transition benefits me more than anyone else now because it is something many in my life fear, but for those who make the choice to hang on, ultimately I will be able to give them more. As a brother, son, grandson, boyfriend, husband.

Ah, there is wisdom in there. This process is beginning to open me. Today I feel more at peace with this decision. I am going to shift focus to what benefit other people will derive from me soon in therapy.

M2MtF2FtM:

I am getting around to what I absolutely need more slowly. I know one thing for certain: I'm a Woman, and I know that that identity is what I need. I need HRT, and I need the social appearance. What I need to do to my body will unfold, but right now it looks like I'm in it for the whole ordeal. I like your style

Quote from: CalebLance on March 03, 2011, 04:22:19 PM
If anything, I will be giving my heart more fully, more completely than I ever did before. Transition benefits me more than anyone else now because it is something many in my life fear, but for those who make the choice to hang on, ultimately I will be able to give them more.

Transition is selfishness in the short term. There is a greater goal that ultimately leads to benefits for others as well as yourself. The people I interact with as a man have to deal with an angry miserable person. The people I interact with as a woman get to deal with a loving passionate person. Leaving behind the facade and being true to yourself is ultimately not a selfish act.

There was a comment made on another thread to the effect (I'm really paraphrasing here); there are people who commit suicide and those who give up but don't take their life, in effect they're both dead. Which causes more misery? It is the person who has to be grieved and is no longer there to help his family,  the one who stays living a lie in misery and making others suffer too or the one who risks losing everyone in their life but is true to themselves?

Quote from: M2MtF2FtM on March 03, 2011, 04:28:04 PM
you can't always get what you want but if you try sometime you just might find you get what you need oh yeaaaa

This pops into my head at least once a month. It helps me keep things in perspective.

I don't think that it's selfish to do what you think you need to do, or even what you want to do.  It becomes selfish when you start to believe that gives you the right to tell others how they must feel about it and deal with it.

Yep, there is a cost, I lost most things, but gained everything.


Stardust

Quote from: tekla on March 03, 2011, 05:54:23 PM
I don't think that it's selfish to do what you think you need to do, or even what you want to do.  It becomes selfish when you start to believe that gives you the right to tell others how they must feel about it and deal with it.

This has been the mantra behind the relative success of my coming out. I don't tell them how they should feel about it. They can deal with it however they like. This post is a result of those frequently posited hard to answer questions that occurred during the process of sharing  understanding.

This may not reflect the heart felt understanding of transsexualism another may have adopted, but I felt like I was insulting the intelligence of others as I told them I had NO choice. Of course I had a choice, the other choice was a great way to race my parents to the grave...

Wait. I'm forgetting my threshold. No. I do remember the thoughts of suicide. The prospect of transition kept me alive. Wow. I'm all over the map.

I apologize. Time to break from thread making for a while.

We may lose things and relationships.  But are those around us really happy when we are not.  Would they not rather have us happy to make themselves happy?

The only choice we have is whether or not to be happy.  That is all we have to decide.  If you decide to be happy, we transition and maybe lose things.  But do we not gain our sanity? 

And if we choice to not be happy is that really being selfish.  People would want to be happy, thus we need to be happy.

I don't see any choice in the matter, so for me the price is irrelevant. Then again I never had anything to lose anyway though. No family, job, position, privilege, circle of friends, etc that some do. Even if I did it wouldn't matter though. This is a war for our very survival, our right to exist, fought against all the hate and proliferated ignorance out there. I'm not about to surrender and be a slave. It isn't even about happiness for me, as that's pretty fleeting anyway. It's about not compromising on who I am. I'm not willing to pretend to be something fundamentally different just to make others feel more comfortable. It's not selfish, it's self-defense.

Call me crazy but I am going to try to keep it all.

Janet is right. The people who truly love us, and care about us, would want us to be happy...in the long run, when they see how happy transitioning has made us, they will be happy too. If they were not, then they did not love us unconditionally. If they didn't truly love us or care for us, then the hurt would be minimal.

I lost my home, family and way of life. It is the price I had to pay to be me, but it is also the only thing I could do to survive. I had reached that point. I sometimes struggle with the idea, is death really cowardly when it might save your loved ones the long term pain and embarrassment of your transition? A pain that might indeed outlast any you would cause by your passing. In any case, I have chosen to live. My son will have a parent instead of none. I was increasingly disagreeable so hopefully now that I am living for me instead of everyone else, I can lead a truly authentic and happy life. Maybe society sees it as selfish, but then again they have had the freedom to live their lives as they see fit and I never have.

My transition to full time has happened so fast that it has often felt like I was him one day and then her the next. It is nearly literally true and it can be disorienting. Lately I have also come to realize that there is a danger of trading his inhibitions for hers. In other words, before I tried to act the man by setting up limits for her and now I am struggling with what part of me in the past was female and what was male and should I inhibit that old "male" behavior. I am slowly starting to realize I am just me and have always been. He wasn't a real person. Just a set of controls and protocols I used to hide her. I am not a fully integrated person yet, but I am getting there.

The people that we lose because of transition are petty, superficial and selfish, with a temporary, conditional love. If that offends anyone it is because the truth hurts. There will always be ignorance about us but it will get better as a whole for us as society gradually becomes more informed. Until then...we'll keep having more stories like this than not.

Well as Jim Morrison sang, "No-one here gets out alive", so I might as well give it a go. 

I have reached the point where I am out to the people who matter most in my life, and they are supportive, so the rest can just take a flying .... at a galloping goose, as the saying goes.
I am starting to think about retirement plans, so although I don't believe I will have any problems where I work, I have an alternative in early retirement if neccessary.

So, yep it's worth the cost I reckon. 

Quote from: Melody Maia on March 04, 2011, 12:38:55 AM
My transition to full time has happened so fast that it has often felt like I was him one day and then her the next. It is nearly literally true and it can be disorienting. Lately I have also come to realize that there is a danger of trading his inhibitions for hers. In other words, before I tried to act the man by setting up limits for her and now I am struggling with what part of me in the past was female and what was male and should I inhibit that old "male" behavior. I am slowly starting to realize I am just me and have always been. He wasn't a real person. Just a set of controls and protocols I used to hide her. I am not a fully integrated person yet, but I am getting there.

I had just said almost that exact same thing to my therapist yesterday, that assuming reactions to my coming out, of course I play the male card well.  I've been hiding behind it for so long I've distanced myself in so many ways from the female I could have been(?).  There is alot to be said for being socialized in your target gender at a young age.  Its just like how kids learn foreign languages faster then adults.  I'd rather have been socialized as a female at six then at 36.

QuoteMy transition to full time has happened so fast that it has often felt like I was him one day and then her the next. It is nearly literally true and it can be disorienting. Lately I have also come to realize that there is a danger of trading his inhibitions for hers. In other words, before I tried to act the man by setting up limits for her and now I am struggling with what part of me in the past was female and what was male and should I inhibit that old "male" behavior. I am slowly starting to realize I am just me and have always been. He wasn't a real person. Just a set of controls and protocols I used to hide her. I am not a fully integrated person yet, but I am getting there.

This is quite insightful, Melody...it is something that never really crossed my mind but it is something that in ways applies to myself.