Relapse

[Kokoro]

First, I'd like to start with an apology to everyone on this board. A couple of weeks ago I created a thread that stated my bell had gone off. This as it turns out, was not the case. For over a month, the longest I've ever been in female state of mind, I had an intense urge to transition there and then. However since then that feeling has subsided and I'm again fluctuating between male and female.

I understand that to true transsexuals when this bell goes off life becomes almost unbearable and it is permanent. There is no way to switch it off except for transition. I'm sorry for grouping myself with you guys who have obviously had it much, much harder especially when I asked for help with it and brushed aside the advice offered because I was too scared to truly face up to living as a girl. That should have been the give-away that I wasn't ready right there.

I'm just even more confused now since male tendencies and desires have resufraced and my female ones seem to be coming and going randomly. :sad:

[Kelly DeWinter]

Bell ? we have a bell now ? I'm not sure what that means. Do you have access to a gender thearapist ?

OK I read your other post, and I have an idea of what you are talking about.

I think before you make any decisions, realize you are under a lot of pressure right now, I have a son in college, and I can tell you no matter how well things go you still feel the pressure of getting good grades, what you will do after college, being transgendered is another layer. Make regular apointments with your therapist, If he/she will be able to guide you through this. You are not alone. I would proceed slowly, try dressing more feminie mayby before making drastic changes. Your therapist may reccomend hormone therapy or not. Read some of the other posts here. The topic of Transition is covered in other threads extensivly, and is quite informative.

Best wishes
Kelly

[Kaitlyn Michele]

Kokoro...

you horrible horrible person!!!!:heehee: ....kidding

the danger of using cliches to describe things about yourself is that they don't describe all the complexity and richness of the human condition..

that being said, i have always loved the bell rung analogy (or is a metaphor...english majors??)...i also like the horse is out of the gate comparison..

One thing i learned is that there are huge ups and downs...thinking one day or one week about transition 24/7, then you don't..thats totally cool...

i did this for years.. and i slowly realized that the times i was internally plotting to transition were when i felt the most emotionally and mentally healthy...i would make statements to myself like...I'm not transsexual because....or I can never transition because..... and over time i realized how unhealthy this was....

if you give it time, and if you keep your wits about you..you will figure it out...

and there is no need to apologize ...you are here to share your feelings as they happen..

[sandra-leigh]

Bell ? we have a bell now ?

" ... If I had a bell to ring,
I'd ring it all over this land!
[...]
It's the Hammer of Justice,
It's the Bell of Freee-dom, [...]"


"Oh, Puff, the magic dragon...."

(You can guess my generation ;-) )

[tanyalynn51]

Oh crap, there's a bell?? I am so in trouble. I agree with Kelly D. A therapist guided me to where I am at, so I hope you are going to one, or find one if you arent.

[Traci Elizabeth]

BELL? Is there a bell somewhere.

Could it be the Bell Tower in London?

:evilbegon:

[Inna]

Fact is Kokoro, that I don't think there is one distinct way of being a transsexual, just as there is no way to be just A Female or A Male. we all come in all different shapes, sizes and character. Some man are so feminine you would swear they are fem yet they aren't, some females are so butch you would swear they are lesbians yet they aren't. For most of us transsexuals, fact about being male is as real as the one about being female. There are only a handful of transsexuals who know 100% from birth they are female in entirety, for the rest, imbalance remains in tag of war, pulling toward femininity but often stalled by masculine past and tendencies inherent in upbringing.
Don't despair and don't label, go with the flow, allow to open up and embrace what comes.

[Stephanie Anne]

I understand that to true transsexuals when this bell goes off life becomes almost unbearable and it is permanent. There is no way to switch it off except for transition.

So not true. The best thing you can do is just give yourself time to find out who you really are. It took me 36 years and dozens of false starts to come to terms with my transition. I still have days I don't feel female and I have learned to embrace that. In a way, me accepting my duality has solidified my acceptance to transition to female.

It is a natural state of being trans and nothing you should feel sad over. If you don't transition, you don't transition but if you force it, you are only harming yourself.

[Melody Moore]

Hi Kokoro, first of all you don't have to apologise for anything or grouping yourself with other transsexuals on this forum.

The thing you need to understand about Gender Dysphoria is that it often comes & goes - especially at your age. Relapses are very common for transsexuals & that is why you should take Kelly's advice & work through your issues with a therapist. Please take my advice on this because if you don't it could actually destroy you. Let me tell you my story give you a good example of how relapses can affect you and how it nearly destroyed me.

I have had Gender Dysphoria sporadically affecting on a regular basis from about the age of 6 until I was 16, but then I managed to repress it - mainly because I was more worried about what my peers would think if they ever knew I liked to dress up as a girl. I studied martial arts from the age of 14 until the age of 16 because I use to get bullied & picked on a lot by my male peers. At the age of 15 I was considering a sex change, But then I virtually lost the plot for a couple of years and I immersed myself in a haze of drugs & alcohol from the age of 16 until I was almost 18. I got really desperate to pull out of the downward spiral I was in at the time & get my life back together after getting drunk one night & being raped by a gay man. So that become my motivation then to 'Man up & become a real man' who would never be butt-raped again.

So at the age of 18 I joined the Army & started abusing my body in different ways - all because I was trying very hard to mask the female that I knew existed was inside of me. I got tattoos & started working out a lot in the gym to try & bulk up with muscle that lead to a weight problem because it eventually turned to flab during my 30s when I really became depressed. During my mid 20s I had turned into a full-on adrenalin junkie with a death wish - I liked to fight but knew that was also wrong, so I did some of the craziest and most dangerous things you could ever imagine trying to prove to myself & the rest of the world I was one of the toughest guys on earth - its a miracle I didn't actually kill myself.

I really started becoming depressed over my gender issues from about the age of 26 when I was at my fittest physically - the Gender Dysphoria that I buried 10 years earlier resurfaced again. This happened in 1988 because my girlfriend at the time actually encouraged me to dress up as a female one night for a bit of fun. But what I seen in the mirror that night made me very scared & nervous because I really didn't want to have to deal with my gender issues again. So I dumped a very lovely girl a few days later because I started wondering if I was a boy or girl again? I stayed single after that for over a year and become a lone wolf & a player until I met another lady in 1989 and put her through hell because I didn't know who I was or what I really wanted with regards to a relationship. I dumped her after just a couple of months, but 6 months later in 1990 I got back together with her because I thought she would be someone who I could really settle down with & have a family with. I see now why I did this, it was also to prove to myself that I was a real man who would also make a good father.

It was during this relationship in 1993 at the age of 31 that I seen the first real signs of my pseudo-hermaphroditism that I was born with when my ex was nearing full-term pregnancy with our daughter. I experienced was a 'phantom pregnancy' - complete with a sore back, morning sickness, sore & swollen nipples & areolas then I actually started freaking lactating! WTF? :eek: Real men don't react like this?

But this was the most obvious physical sign that I was not like other men & was my first real indication that I born intersexed - but I chose to ignore it & never told anyone but my partner at the time. It's what happened next that was the scariest time in my life. A year later my partner and I split up and I became so depressed that I tried to take my own life. I actually succeeded but was revived later in hospital following a drug overdose and after someone else found me unconscious.

It took years of counselling, lots of medications & a new career as graphic artist in commercial off-set printing to get me out of the slump I was in - but I still hadnt confronted my gender issues head on. My time spent in psycho-therapy was spent dealing with lots of other issues (childhood sexual abuse & bullying etc) while the whole time I knew there was other issues over my gender that had to also be dealt with but I was still too scared to even bring up.

I managed to bury my gender issues again by immersing myself in my work which I loved for the next 5 years until the place where I was working shut down. After I lost my job I was determined not to let my gender dysphoria resurface & get the better of me so I went to college and immersed myself in IT studies then I started my own business and was working for myself.

This carried me through until 2000 when I met a lady and got married, however in 2004 I started to find myself getting severely depressed again and didn't really know why - I blamed a lot of it on having to deal with the stress of my business and finding myself in a bad marriage. But after the marriage ended in December 2005 I was left with some very serious health issues to deal with including a heart condition & a total breakdown of my immune system. My gender dysphoria was also slowly beginning to resurface again and by 2007 at the age of 45 I was cross-dressing again and struggling with the issue "Am I a male or am I female?" yet once again.

By 2008 I finally started to embrace my femininity rather than to keep fighting it. I was spending lots of time online learning about transsexualism and how to feminise. I still wasn't ready to come out to the world at this point - but I knew at this stage who I really was. I use to spend any time I had to myself living as a female whenever my house-mates weren't around & I dressed all the time as a female in the privacy of my own bedroom when they were around - I had managed to keep my true gender a secret for the next 2 years.

In November 2009 I met a lady who I started living with but I really did miss being able to dress up as a female & be my true self. I dropped lots of hints to my girlfriend, telling her about my cross-dressing as a child & feeling like a female lesbian trapped in a male body. I guess this was the Relationship of Confirmation really because it was here I realised what would happened to me if I kept living my life as a lie so I ended this relationship 6 months later in May 2010. We even did lots of girly things together, but she never realised I was a transsexual. I finally got enough courage & strength to finally come out to the world in June/July 2010. I started hormone therapy, treatment & counselling for my gender issues in August 2010. In September I rekindled my friendship with my girlfriend and now we are the best of friends as well as occasional lesbian lovers.

Finally after a lifetime of relapses, struggle & depression I finally have peace with my gender issues & really feel that I'm starting to live for the first time in my life. The fears that I held within about transitioning were completely unfounded. My only regret is not seeking help much sooner - but its better late than never as they say. :battingeyelashes:

[Louise C]

Don't beat yourself up Kokoro, this is why you come on to the forum isn't it? To seek advice and maybe give in return when you are able. Take it steady and don't be so quick to want to label yourself as one thing or another. I think Stephanie's advice is good - give yourself time.

[Hope]

Everyone has off days, and down times, and periods where you look in the mirror and think "what the hell do you think you are doing? Who do you think you are fooling?" And then by morning, or by morning of third day, or the next week, you will find yourself back where you were before, but with renewed vigor.

In my experience, one of these "down times" generally comes after I take another step... I think I scare my self, both by what I am doing, and how "right" it feels, and that makes me back off and recalculate (every bloody time) and then I again realize that - yes, this is who I am... and the merry-go-round speeds up a bit more...

I think that once you get to the place where you realize that you don't have to compare yourself to others, or follow any sort of pattern to get where you are going, it gets a lot easier.

[Freddy12]

Kokoro,
First of all, you have lots of folks here who want to be supportive.
There is no "one way" of going through life. If you someday need to transition, you will, hopefully come to that conclusion with help. There are times that individuals may feel the need to transition only to realize that they are not yet ready, ans may never be.
For some the realization may be like a bell beginning to ring, but that is not the case for everybody. Each individual is unique. Your road is different from my road. There is no need to apologize for the road you are going down. It is not a straight road. It wanders from East to West, from male to female. Some day it may start going straighter, East or West, but for now it wanders. Try to enjoy the journey. Life is a journey, not a destination.

[TerryTerri]

Turns out this thing called gender 'binary', where you are either male or female, is not very accurate for most. We all have male and female components to our personality and self. Opening up the doors to our own self-delusion about where and how we fit in this spectrum of gender is a long journey of self awarness and honesty. If we can help in any way for you to see and understand yourself and your gender components, we are here.
I am in the catagory of not always knowing that I was a girl inside a boy's body. Suicidal thoughts were what brought me to seeking the help I needed to understand myself and my gender. It has been a interesting, confusing and unique trudge to get to where I am today. I have much trudging in front of me also. I went through a vasalating between male and female. But, in the end, for me, the evidence of being a girl is just to overwhelming and undeniable. Even though at times I would still really like to. I assume at this point I will completely transition my life. In many ways that journey is in process. But, I am not full-time out to the 'public' at large as of yet. My journey is best characterized by taking a step, doing everything I can to avoid taking the next step. Then, when that doesn't work, I take the next step. Don't get me wrong, I am not regretful and resentful of being transgendered. I'm just a big sissy and the hurdles I have to jump scare the hell out of me usually. So, I take them with trepidation. However, since this journey has begun, life living inside my own skin has improved immensely. I can not remember a time in my life where it felt this good and natural living in my own skin. Each step I take increases that comfort and internal wholeness. The internal fracture is slowly but surely going away.
Anyway, wish you the best on your journey and don't hesitate to hang around here if we can help.

[Karen564]

Each step I take increases that comfort and internal wholeness. The internal fracture is slowly but surely going away.


That's phrased beautifully & sums it up for anyone that's starting to transition & has made the right choice to do so. ( I always advise small steps at 1st vs. jumping with both feet)
Once you Know it's the right path to start off with, the farther you come along in the transition process does heal those fractures one by one & does finally leave you feeling whole, as if we found that missing part we've been searching for all our life to fix & make us finally work right..

[Aprilrain]

The important think to remember is that Transitioning to any significant degree is huge and should be a slow process. Maybe you will maybe you won't maybe you need both. Girl at school boy at home for instance. There is no right or wrong but you don't want to make a decision you will regret. take it slow do boy stuff if that is how you feel right now see if you have significant disphoria with that and go from there. I'm pretty sure you said you had a therapist, be honest with them it is they only way they can help you. What ever you do try to find a support group if you haven't already. It is not good to isolate.

[Bree-asaurus]

I'm going to have to chime in here regarding the bell analogy (get it? haha... ahh.. uhh... sorry :D)

I don't think a bell ever went off for me. It was more of a gradual acceptance that I am never going to be who I was trying to be. When I first started thinking I might be trans, I started seeing a therapist. For several sessions I kept heading in the direction thinking I was trans. Then suddenly, I decided I wasn't trans and felt that way for a month. After that month of trying to hide from my true self, I see my therapist and tell him "So... maybe we can't rule out the trans thing." For me, I was much happier when I was accepting who I was, and I would get to my "normal" depressed self when I was trying to hide from myself and fit in as a guy.

If you're in the early stages of questioning who you are, you're going to go back and fourth. You're going to doubt yourself, and thats okay no matter where you fall on the spectrum. This gender identity stuff can be confusing, lol. It's a long road, but the more you accept who you are, whatever that may be, the happier you are going to be.

I wish you the best of luck and we'll all be here for you wherever you end up and however long it takes :-)

[Kokoro]

Thank you for the responses everyone. I won't make any more excuses or silly analogies.

It puts a lot of things in perspective, especially your circumstances Melody. I think I'm so far ingrained in the gender binary that I have to label everything and anything either male or female and seems to result in a kind self-fulfilling prophecy - I'm doing male-binary things/thinking male-binary things, therefore everything else I do must be male-binary- and that's where the problems start. I really should know better as well since I'm doing this sort of stuff (gender/labeling/masculinities/femininities etc.) for my sociology A-level at college.