I'm going through a real whirlwind of emotions lately. I finally filed for my name change and have no idea how long it will take until I get a court date set. I've recently become clothing obsessed and have been looking at and experimenting with other clothes even though I've always worn men's clothes, I've never worn anything outside of band shirts and army pants. I put on the 3 dress shirts I have with a tie to try to decide which would be the best one to wear to court when the time comes. And I was so proud of myself and how I looked, and my friends told me that I look sharp, masculine, and manly. And I feel so incredibly high with the major social changes and the way I relate to others and everything, and yet I feel so incredibly low thinking back on how embarrassed I am that I ever tried to fit into some sort of idea of female. I'm embarrassed about how I've acted in the past at times, because I was trying to fit in, in some small way trying to be something close to what everyone else wanted me to be. And then I stumble across videos from some other transguys that I haven't seen before and they're talking about how their family was supportive and recognized their identity issues and clothing preferences and let them be who they are. And I have already gone through years of being angry about my childhood and had gotten over it, and it feels like it's getting stirred back up because there's so much more depth to the situation than I had previously realized. That being how I was raised, I wasn't allowed to be my own individual person. I was told that I had no choice at all, that you do as you are told, and that's just the way life is. But I'm getting angry all over again because my entire identity was flat out denied to me!!! It was "You HAVE to wear pink, you HAVE to wear dresses, this is NOT optional, you are a GIRL so you HAVE to!" And I'm glad I'm starting to break free from those chains, but still it's like how can you do that to your kid? How can you flat out deny who they are and tell them that they have absolutely no choice in life?  I can't wait to have it all said and done, hormones, surgery, gender marker, everything. This is who I am!!

/end vent

I feel you.  It was and is the same with me.  The pain of being denied an identity for the majority of my life never does go away.  However it does become manageable when I focus on my new life and all the progress I have made.  Both in my transition and in my emotional and social development.  I can go out and interact with large groups of people.  Before I couldn't even conceive of doing that. 

It's a whole new gorgeous world.  Life is for the living my dear.  Live in the moment.  Learn from the past and move on

Quote from: Squirrel698 on February 09, 2012, 02:59:25 PM
I feel you.  It was and is the same with me.  The pain of being denied an identity for the majority of my life never does go away.  However it does become manageable when I focus on my new life and all the progress I have made.  Both in my transition and in my emotional and social development.  I can go out and interact with large groups of people.  Before I couldn't even conceive of doing that. 

It's a whole new gorgeous world.  Life is for the living my dear.  Live in the moment.  Learn from the past and move on

+1

I think a lot of folks hold on to painful childhood memories, I know I do. It used to feel like I would never get over some of the things that I had to go through from the time I was just knee high. But I have, I am alive, and I am taking control of my life to make it into what I want. Like Squirrel said, it's okay to learn from those memories. Use this time to enjoy life and think about how wonderful it will be in the future. It's normal to mourn childhood trauma, but let those experiences help you grown and propel you forward, not hold you back.

I went through this too. Like Squirrel and Ayden said, it's normal to hurt or mourn but you have to find ways to live with it and move on. Heavy stuff can break your momentum and keep you from being who you want to be, if you let it.

Right there with you. Through high school I was pressured so heavily to conform that I almost lost myself entirely, contemplated suicide heavily, and assumed an identity that was not me. Every day was a lie, I was being deceitful, and yet those are the days much of my family is most proud of me for. I often feel a tinge of envy for those who were allowed to be themselves too. But it's okay, we've had to work hard to get here, but we HAVE gotten here, and the fact that we were able to overcome all of that is a big feat in itself! You're a strong person for being able to dig yourself out of that hole. Keep it up!

During coming out and transition, a lot of crap can get stirred up that you thought you put to rest. I seem to have an abnormally high load of baggage, so it's taking me years to sort it all out. I was so good at repressing, you see. That usually only works up to a point. For me, once I started to lose my power to control all of that, the whole mess started tumbling out faster than I could deal with it.

As my therapist would say, this is normal. Unpleasant, but normal.

My situation in my childhood was I had an accepting, open-minded mother and a close-minded, discriminative father. Unfortunately I hardly got to see my Mum when I was younger and I lived with my Dad, so pretty much every hint of non-binary gender expression I attempted to do was pretty much questioned and/or frowned upon. It's like the opportunity to live in an environment was being dangled in front of me, but I couldn't move to that environment because of my Mum's work load. Eventually I did, and things began to fall into place. As soon as you can separate yourself from the oppression you experienced in the past, things will always be much easier. It is very easy to look back on older, harsher times in your transition with anger or sadness, but the real achievement is being able to tell yourself that you made it through, and you're moving forward.

I hope your name change goes swiftly.

So many of us have had to be our own advocates even as children.  It hurts me to see others whose parents suppressed their young spirits and failed to nurture what should have been a happy childhood.  Take care to find the good in your present - the bad of the past has hurt you enough.

Quote from: thefire on February 09, 2012, 02:29:09 PM
I'm going through a real whirlwind of emotions lately. I finally filed for my name change and have no idea how long it will take until I get a court date set. I've recently become clothing obsessed and have been looking at and experimenting with other clothes even though I've always worn men's clothes, I've never worn anything outside of band shirts and army pants. I put on the 3 dress shirts I have with a tie to try to decide which would be the best one to wear to court when the time comes. And I was so proud of myself and how I looked, and my friends told me that I look sharp, masculine, and manly. And I feel so incredibly high with the major social changes and the way I relate to others and everything, and yet I feel so incredibly low thinking back on how embarrassed I am that I ever tried to fit into some sort of idea of female. I'm embarrassed about how I've acted in the past at times, because I was trying to fit in, in some small way trying to be something close to what everyone else wanted me to be. And then I stumble across videos from some other transguys that I haven't seen before and they're talking about how their family was supportive and recognized their identity issues and clothing preferences and let them be who they are. And I have already gone through years of being angry about my childhood and had gotten over it, and it feels like it's getting stirred back up because there's so much more depth to the situation than I had previously realized. That being how I was raised, I wasn't allowed to be my own individual person. I was told that I had no choice at all, that you do as you are told, and that's just the way life is. But I'm getting angry all over again because my entire identity was flat out denied to me!!! It was "You HAVE to wear pink, you HAVE to wear dresses, this is NOT optional, you are a GIRL so you HAVE to!" And I'm glad I'm starting to break free from those chains, but still it's like how can you do that to your kid? How can you flat out deny who they are and tell them that they have absolutely no choice in life?  I can't wait to have it all said and done, hormones, surgery, gender marker, everything. This is who I am!!

/end vent

sadly many famelys are like that, it always get me so angry to see when parrents threath there children like some sort of design doll for there own plesure, but mostly there themself is too blind to reconize it.

True confession time. I have been angry at my mother for a long time. When I was younger, I wanted to deal with all of that because it was sapping my strength and making me feel guilty. It's not healthy to be angry all the time.

So I tried therapy, yet again, and got a bad therapist who had me all tangled up. I stopped seeing him and dealt with the problem on my own. Got to a point of neutrality. I mostly understood why my mother was the way she was, and I decided I felt neutral toward her. No more anger.

That worked for about a decade and a half, up till coming out/transition, and then it all came out again. I realized that for some fifteen years, I had only been repressing my true feelings and lying to myself.

My mother was not a good mother. Make no mistake about that. But she wasn't really a monster. So now I wonder how much of my anger and resentment spring from my being trans and from being seen as the daughter made in her image and all of that.

I fully came out to myself three and a half years ago. I started transition three years ago. I am still angry. I am still figuring out exactly why. I am still trying to find a way to put all of this behind me.

I hope your arc doesn't take so long, but just know that this stuff can be very complicated, especially if you've hidden things from yourself for a long time.