Just positing the question I'm sure most of us have asked ourselves at times:

Have you answered all of the hard questions, have you weighed all other options?

My answer: Good, bad, indifferent, "right," "wrong"... Yes. This is happening.

How do you conduct your reality checks? Do you have them anymore? Do you remember doing any? I'm a curious mind and I would like to know

For most of my life, I considered myself a cross-dresser, until I requested anti-androgens and a minimal dose of estrogen from my transgender-friendly GP over two years ago.  The difference in my mind and outlook improved so drastically I began to question whether I was in fact, only a cross-dresser.  Late last year I did a lot of soul-searching, reviewing my two less-than-successful attempts at marriage (first one failed and still married to the second, FYI) and looking back at the few long-term dating relationships I maintained.  In none of these situations did I feel my individual sexual and psychological needs were being satisfied.  One lady I dated briefly in the 1980s told me directly after we had sex, "you have a very feminine sensuality about you."  She was more accurate than she could ever really understand.

It was this time late last year I decided I was in fact a transsexual. I simply didn't understand the condition and myself nearly well enough to ever come to this conclusion earlier in life.  I made a personal commitment that I would do everything within my ability to become more female as my life continued.  I re-connected with my gender therapist, who I had not visited in almost eight years.  I re-visited my psychiatrist to insure I could obtain two referral letters for surgery.  I re-started electrolysis, this time on my lips and chin first.  All of these things were leading up to obtaining the surgery I currently have scheduled for June.  While this surgery is "only" an orchiectomy and not complete SRS/GRS, it's a major symbolic victory for me.  Testosterone will no longer be able to control my body, my life and my desires. The estrogen I currently take will hopefully continue to make positive changes in my body, mind and life.  I may or may not ever continue on to SRS/GRS, but that's a separate decision I might have to make in a few more years.

My therapist and I both agree I don't fit the classic definition of a MtF transsexual, in that it's never been a "transition or die" scenario for me, and I've never behaved as a feminine male.  But my recent actions and desires clearly satisfy the very female component of my psychology and personality.  She asked me several months ago how I felt about the discomfort of electrolysis on my upper lip.  I told her although it was financially a loss for me (it costs more than I make in gross salary per hour,) the psychological benefits were so significant that every uncomfortable ZAP! of the probe and the follow-up swelling and redness immensely outweighed the expense.  The week following orchiectomy I'll be flying to visit a different electrologist for a few days, during which he'll perform three-hour sessions morning and afternoon on my sideburns, cheeks, and neck.  My entire face will be red and swollen for several days after, but my face will be almost 80% clear of whiskers/beard.   It will be uncomfortable, it will be plainly apparent, but again it's absolutely worth it.

You might say I've done a little bit of soul-searching.   I've had a few more years to look back on and review, and it really made it a lot easier to decide.  I wish I could have made this decision many years earlier, but I just didn't know enough.

Oh yes, I had many...

On weighing the start of HRT, did I want to permanently relinquish my ability to have children?  Then a fertility test confirmed that half a decade of anorexia already took care of that for me: I was sterile.  Reality check passed.

One the spiritual front, were there lessons I was supposed to learn as a male that I won't learn as a female?  Is this a pattern from a past life that I'm repeating, thus ensuring its repetition in the future because of lessons not learned?  Then I realized that I spent this entire life not being true to myself about anything.  I never pursued my interests or ventured into the world or made a difference.  I tied it all back to the discomfort I felt with myself because of my gender issues.  So perhaps transition IS the lesson, learning to be true to myself at all costs so that my future relationships and endeavors are always genuine.  As for other lessons, I could learn them just as well as my true self than the fake one.  Reality check passed.

Would life ever feel normal again?  Could I ever hope to pass and simply walk around forgetting about who and what I am?  Well, after two months of full time, nobody has kicked up a fuss about me.  I had a little girl (maybe about 9 years old) talk to me in the restroom like I was just any other woman.  I've had store clerks give me the funniest looks you've ever seen (well, I'm sure most of YOU have seen them, just not the public at large) when I show them my as-of-yet unchanged ID.  Had one girl even ask if the person on my ID was my husband or boyfriend.  Then it happened a couple of days ago: I was out shopping and I simply forgot.  I walked through the aisles of clothes as if I owned the place, and not until I left the store did I realize my lack of self-awareness and pervasive thoughts about how others perceive me.  It was my first genuine experience as my full self.  Life really can be normal.  Reality check passed.

Don't get me wrong... I don't fool myself into thinking it's all going to be peaches and cream, but the sheer bliss of finally being myself renders increasingly unnecessary the constant dwelling on whether this is the right path.  In time, I hope those thoughts go away altogether.

over the last 5 decades I have had several reality checks.  I had partly transitioned 20 years and then detransitioned.  I could not see how I was ever going to be able to live full time.  I keep coming up with the dysphoria and could not bear it. That was a really big reality check.

The last suicide attempt was a wake up call.  Since then I have not looked back.  Now when ever I meet new people and do not get 'read', that is a reality check the other way.  I am meant to do this.

The one reality check for me was going on hormones. I knew I was something more than just a crossdresser but I didn't know what. Hormones became my acid test and after a few months there was no doubt. Everything else is just confirmation. Trying to take my hormones away from me is like trying to take a grizzly cub away from it's mother. The further I progress, the more I get to be me and the happier I am. The thought of going back and having to totally play the part of a man turns my stomach in knots and depresses me. Every little step is an "one way" arrow pointing toward womanhood, none of them point back. The only question right now is orchi or SRS but there are other things for me to consider and time to think about it.

Quote from: Caleb_ on April 30, 2011, 03:21:50 PM
I've been debating whether to post this, as it cuts rather close to the bone, but I'll do it in hopes that a reader might stumble along and find comfort in it.
It's exactly the same as me asking: if I was born cismale, would I have continued my interest in science and been so drawn to social justice work? I love social justice, but I am invariably drawn to it because of my experiences being perceived as a woman, as a lesbian, and now trans. My heart lies in social justice; my mind lies in science. It isn't a moral judgment against either discipline, simply a question.

At a young age, these questions weren't really in my mind, just a response. I didn't have the faculties or the words to come up with the analyses of my situation, so these next few are just experiences where my body and mind did not match.
Near the end of my high school years, dysphoria became unbearable. The signs were permeating every aspect of my existence. I would go to the bathroom and stuff my pants with toilet paper. Amongst other things, things that are a bit too dark to deal with or list here.

He will stop talking about himself in the third person now.

I am impress by  your courage and integrity. Your "bare bone" is so much like mine that if you are Caleb then I am Caleba. I do not know where you are or how old you are or how you look. But your past struggles and experience so parallel mine. Your hart on social justice and your mind in science, ah! a kindred spirit.

All the best,

Kate

I love these stories and the kinship they can create, please keep reflecting and posting. I'm planning to share more when I'm not limited by phone response 

Quote from: Caith on April 30, 2011, 12:53:10 PM
For most of my life, I considered myself a cross-dresser, until I requested anti-androgens and a minimal dose of estrogen from my transgender-friendly GP over two years ago.  The difference in my mind and outlook improved so drastically I began to question whether I was in fact, only a cross-dresser.  Late last year I did a lot of soul-searching, reviewing my two less-than-successful attempts at marriage (first one failed and still married to the second, FYI) and looking back at the few long-term dating relationships I maintained.  In none of these situations did I feel my individual sexual and psychological needs were being satisfied.  One lady I dated briefly in the 1980s told me directly after we had sex, "you have a very feminine sensuality about you."  She was more accurate than she could ever really understand.

It was this time late last year I decided I was in fact a transsexual. I simply didn't understand the condition and myself nearly well enough to ever come to this conclusion earlier in life.  I made a personal commitment that I would do everything within my ability to become more female as my life continued.  I re-connected with my gender therapist, who I had not visited in almost eight years.  I re-visited my psychiatrist to insure I could obtain two referral letters for surgery.  I re-started electrolysis, this time on my lips and chin first.  All of these things were leading up to obtaining the surgery I currently have scheduled for June.  While this surgery is "only" an orchiectomy and not complete SRS/GRS, it's a major symbolic victory for me.  Testosterone will no longer be able to control my body, my life and my desires. The estrogen I currently take will hopefully continue to make positive changes in my body, mind and life.  I may or may not ever continue on to SRS/GRS, but that's a separate decision I might have to make in a few more years.

My therapist and I both agree I don't fit the classic definition of a MtF transsexual, in that it's never been a "transition or die" scenario for me, and I've never behaved as a feminine male.  But my recent actions and desires clearly satisfy the very female component of my psychology and personality.  She asked me several months ago how I felt about the discomfort of electrolysis on my upper lip.  I told her although it was financially a loss for me (it costs more than I make in gross salary per hour,) the psychological benefits were so significant that every uncomfortable ZAP! of the probe and the follow-up swelling and redness immensely outweighed the expense.  The week following orchiectomy I'll be flying to visit a different electrologist for a few days, during which he'll perform three-hour sessions morning and afternoon on my sideburns, cheeks, and neck.  My entire face will be red and swollen for several days after, but my face will be almost 80% clear of whiskers/beard.   It will be uncomfortable, it will be plainly apparent, but again it's absolutely worth it.

You might say I've done a little bit of soul-searching.   I've had a few more years to look back on and review, and it really made it a lot easier to decide.  I wish I could have made this decision many years earlier, but I just didn't know enough.

Caith your story is quite simular to mine, I can TOTALY relate with the psychological feeling from hair removal.

Emma

I do this every day, this is whats stopping me from coming out.

Just when I am feeling good about myself and taking more steps to come out, BAM I start thinking logically, get real you can't do this, are you nuts?

One thing that helps me understand that I can't stop, is when I think of how my body, emotions, LIFE would revert back to HIM !

Shelly

  I'd say that the greatest reality check for me was planning my suicide.

  Although no one knew, I had been on HRT for 2 1/2 years; two months into hormones and I knew that I could never go back. There was a drive inside me that told me that I could do this.... that I really could start living as a woman and that it was right.. The roadblock was that I knew, by coming out, that I would destroy his life and, effectively, kill the person everyone around me knew.
  I planned it out.... I was going to hang myself from a tree in the woods and send a letter to the police so that no one in my family would be faced with finding me. My partner and kids would get a half million from my life insurance policy and I was better to everyone dead.

  Then reality hit.... my children would grow up without me. I decided that, even as a transsexual person, I could still be a parent and effect my kids' lives in  positive way.... there was a chance. The reality was that, dead, I would never have that opportunity. I made this decision on April 28, 2008.... I came out to my sister, crying hysterically, on April 29. The rest is history.

  Don't EVER let anyone tell you that you're selfish. The vast majority of people wake up in the morning, look in the mirror and they're okay with what they see.. You need to do this to survive.

I never had the inkling that I was going to grow up and be a woman when I was younger.  I was told I was a boy and that's what I believed.  But every time I looked in the mirror I saw the face of a girl.  I wondered why I looked like one and thought everyone was going to mistake me for a girl.  None of my friends had to worry about that sort of thing but the idea stuck with me.  The word transsexual had not been introduced to me yet so I didn't know what it meant.

Fast forward a few years, I began to realize that women were incredibly lucky because they actually got to be women.  But I was not one of the lucky ones.  I was convinced that all males felt like this.

Puberty hit.  It wasn't the painful experience of your textbook case.  I wanted to go through it.  Puberty was almost a competition.  Whose voice was going to change first?  Who would be able to grow a beard?  I didn't hit puberty until much later than everyone else so I felt like I was constantly playing catch up.  When changing in the gym I always thought it would have been easier to change in front of others were I a girl.  There was nothing wrong with my body, I just didn't want anyone to see "it."  I imagined thinking, "If I were a girl, there would be nothing there so I could change clothes more easily."

The reality check hit when I was in the Pitt Men's Glee Club.  We went to Europe in May and I felt like such an outsider.  I didn't feel like one of the guys.  I had been reasearching Gender Identity Disorder and began wishing I had it so I could actually be a woman.  But I "knew" I didn't have it because I was a man, and thought of myself as one.

It began to eat at me.  And then one day it hit me.  I realized I was, despite what my body shouted to everyone around me, a woman.  It felt absurd but comforting.  To know that I was what I so desperately thought I could never lifted a weight off my shoulders.  The moment I realized it, a sense of serenity came over me.  The pressure in my head subsided leaving me simply at ease.

That left me free to pursue transition.

I know I have posted this sort of background before. But I knew I was female as soon as I knew that boys and girls were different. I just thought I would transform at puberty. I told my parents when I was about 13. Didn't go down well. My elder sister helped me and would let me dress in her clothes, but I had to buy my own undies . Gang raped while presenting as female at sixteen. Suicide or live? Chose life. Made myself as educated as I could so I could escape. Escaped to Australia to save up for SRS, I was penniless, but I had a job. Met a woman who loved me and wasn't worried about my GID. Children were never an option, when I was raped I was effectively castrated, they didn't cut them off, but they stomped them.  We lived a great life, now I'm on HRT and living alone as Cindy, go to work in male clothes but increasingly I'm not fooling anyone, I certainly don't fool myself or people who know me.

I know who I am. I love who I am.
A reality check for me has been in meeting other girls who have not had my good-fortune.  That is always a reality check.  I'm so lucky that I have always been able to love, my emotions have always been female (or at least as long as I can think). Any chance of going back? No. Any desire to be male? No. Have I ever had any desire to be male? No. Biggest disappointments? That gets difficult and I won't go there, too many emotions; but no fear.
How 'far' do I want to go? To the end.

Hugs

Cindy

How many can I dig up?

I fell hopelessly in love at the age of 8, and I drew up a wedding gown, then marvelled at how pretty it was, wondering if I would ever get to wear something like that at my own wedding. Nonsense.

In one of my phases I was caught stealing my moms clothes, we were the same size, and she had the prettiest cocktail dresses. I sat in the bathroom afterwards and thought about how much I was going to miss by closeting myself and choosing to stay physically male.

My first two attempts at sex were incredible failures. I could only give pleasure, it was so weird. Whatever, I proposed to the girl a week later, I love her (my current S.O.) and wanted to keep her. I was 17 and diving into reality in the most emotionally destructive way possible. I knew I would one day transition, if I lived long enough. I figured I should try this life first. Transsexualism buried. Em could come out when she was forty.

270,000 wasted dollars later ( and 8 years), life was still a terribly distressing question with no answer.  Seeing no other options I came out, realized the implications, and put myself in
the hospital. Transsexualism surfaced, Em was PI**ED. (Of course I wasnt two people, I was living in two distinctly different realities, however)

I tried the androgyny / cd compromise, and that kind of worked for about two years. I still knew I would transition, it was just a matter of practicality now. When would be the best time? My older brother started going bald, my own facial hair finally became noticable even after a shave- unacceptable, it was time. I broke the news again, and the rest is all around here somewhere. I am simply not a man, never really was. So, no matter how hard this gets, I keep going. I can't imagine not doing this.

I've battled for years and years wondering who and what I truly was.

I don't remember much beyond my earliest of teens why this is I don't know, I do know that it's quite uncommon.... so can't really comment on thoughts and feelings I might have had prior to puberty hitting.

I can say that my teens were an absolute hell and that I would spend nearly every night crying myself to sleep because I didn't feel right.

This same time span I would beg and plead with 'God' (even as an Atheist who didn't really believe) to make me wake up a girl. A  quite common theme among trans people from what I understand.

As I got older I would go back and forth... am I trans... am I a cross dresser.. am I trans... am I a cross dresser.

Further adding to my confusion and I apologize if this is too much info, but I've always been a kinky sort... into things like BDSM... so even at times of extreme gender dysphoria... and there have been many, there was still always that little part of me in the back of my mind wondering if this was all just some perverted kink and if things like HRT and transition would be a big mistake.

Honestly have always wished I could simply turn my 'kinks' off, but they are hard wired into my brain. I have come to understand fully that they are unrelated in any way to my want and desire to transition, something that's always been there... just stronger at times than others.

It was only earlier this year when I finally came to terms with who I am.. I know in my heart and soul that I'm making the right decision working toward transition. Cross dressers don't cry themselves to sleep at night like I did night in and night out as a teen. I only wish I had been brave enough to talk to my parents about things back then, My mom who's sadly no longer with us (hey cancer sucks) and my father were/are very open minded and accepting people.

Had I been in touch with a gender therapist back then and had a confirmed diagnosis.. i could have been one of the lucky few that got to start HRT during my formidable teen years.

Regardless I look forward to my future. It's going to take some time, right now growing my hair out.. but it has a long ways to go. It might be long enough for something like a bob in six to seven months, if I decide to truly let it get long I'm in for a really long wait.. but that's okay. Starting laser hair removal the 16th of this month and have an HRT approval letter at the ready, simply going through the painstaking process of finding a doctor willing to work with me in the middle of the bible belt.

Life's good... and that's all the reality check I need, coming from a person who was hopeless enough for a good 15 straight years to have a bottle of pills in one hand and booze in the other on more than a few occasions during that time span.