Reading a number of TG forums, one commonly sees great joy resulting from small personal advances, and great sadness as personal relationships are tested to breaking point, and still others who have it all in balance and enjoy their own level of socialising and getting out. But real pain is so often unexpressed.
I am at last, telling myself after 20odd yrs that I no longer accept the guilt and refuse to be boxed in by shame or non-acceptance. How I translate this into action is a process I am dealing with now, but it has been such a long hard road keeping my family at ease and myself caged. The effect on me has been disasterous. The recognised phases of guilt, self-loathing, and depression, culminated in me becoming mentally ill and cutting myself off from friends and society in general. The whole experience, looking back has been so very painful and so gradual. To come to terms with myself after all this time is a great relief, yet I still am not sure where I am headed with this new attitude. The next few days and weeks is yet another phase starting, but I know I was not far from being suicidal.
I have this picture now, of many men being in the same or similar unstated pain and desperation that I felt, putting on a brave face for the family but slowly, invisibly drying up inside.
Having put this into words, am I right in thinking there hundreds of men keeping it all together and dying just a tiny bit each day? Was my state so rare? How can we know? The thought that there are many like I was, is a terrible state of affairs and I now wonder if I can't somehow, do something, I don't know what, but help to break this illogical and brutal oppresion that so many hidden sufferers are feeling.
Helen Boyds' "My Husband Betty" has a section toward the end, which explains how "crossdressers" have alienated themselves from other groups, like gays, BDSM fetishists and even women. This has opened my eyes somewhat and I agree with a lot of her analasys.
My own suffering, was of course as a result of my own acceptance of social and family pressure and the depression feeds on itself if not addressed, so many of you will just scoff and say I let it happen. Well yes I did. Fair comment. But now I wish so much, I could help others in the same boat.
I wonder if we do anywhere near enough as an illogically "unacceptable" group. Surely we do our Grandchildren a diservice, "protecting" them from reality.
I'm just posting this as a heartfelt rant. It may not mean much, but I just had to air it.