Naivete

[LeaP]

Everyone is blindsided by their own ignorance at times. Lately, with the world seemingly turning upside-down, I've started realizing how very little I know about myself.

Depression: regardless from any hereditary or manic components, there's a reactive aspect that's less about chemistry and circumstances than it is about safety and even self-indulgence.

Misogyny and Transphobia: A stark realization regarding the nature of suppression is how appalled one is about the things you fight in yourself. Perhaps those of us to come to terms with things later are even worse. Who knows. I've prided myself on having a feminist and tolerant outlook. I find that it's not so simple. It's a variation of an old, old story - good for you, but for ME? Maybe I'm not so enlightened.

Cynicism: I'm a cynical smartass. Worldly outlook. Etc. In reality, I find I'm just hurt and petulant. Small. There's a very innocent naif at the core. Still. (Thank you, Inna, for helping me figure that one out and find words for it.)

Knowledge: I'm the smartest guy in the room who is in the process of discovering everything I thought I knew about myself is wrong or, minimally, can't be relied upon. The understanding of certain threads of my life have a different nature than I thought.

Anger: Not self-righteous at all. Defensive, defensive, defensive.

Control: I'm all about control. Usually in the form of minimizing my world to ensure I can control it. I've arrived at a point of finding I have very little, few real relationships, and no control whatsoever. Not of my circumstances, not of my emotions or mind. Certainly not of others. Illusion.

Gender: I had no notion of it as a child. I checked out completely as a teen. I suppressed it for the remainder of my life. Utterly suppressed. Oh, and labels (CD, TG, TS, TV, whatever)? Really, really stable, uh-huh, knew exactlly where all THAT stood.

Suppression and Memory: I don't think I ever *really* believed in suppression. Oh, I believed in pushing things aside, but not REAL suppression, the kind where one cannot recall, feel, or retrieve something, where one becomes something else. In a similar vein, I disbelieved in recovered memories. Guess again - I'm a textbook case for both.

Relationships and Sexuality: Not what I rationalized. 'Nuff said on the pubic forum.

Me, Me, Me: Although very introverted, I like to think I am sympathetic. I feel empathy. Still, it turns out that most of what I feel is based more on my own experiences than outward-focused empathy. Selfish.

It's a wonder that one can arrive at this age and be so utterly, completely, and totally clueless.

The thought that triggered this was actually my recent dreams thread. Several posted on the obvious nature of the dreams and the experience. That sort of stung a bit, because the disturbance I described is real, but after I re-read the OP, I felt sort of ridiculous for posting it. There's a subtle point here: it's not that what I'm experiencing isn't to be expected, given where I am in life with gender issues, or that the disturbance that I'm feeling (in this case over the dreams) isn't real. It's that it pointed out the self-blindness. In other words, it was an example of not being able to see the obvious. But this time, the responses crystalized the concept for me, hence this post.

Rather than Lea, sign me ...

Clueless

[elizabethamy]

lea,

every time i read one of your posts i feel as if you are channeling me, or I you. I managed to take what was once a fairly impressive set of talents and through systematic repression and self denial, to spiral downward to the point where I was not so genteely relieved of my employment in my mid 50s. so what did I do? I began to try to understand myself for the first time in my life.

You can sign me clueless, too, because that's the first time I ever thought about gender. THe first time I cross dressed. The first time I truly began to learn how to add 2+2. The journey's just beginning; the self discovery feels as empowering one day as it does looking into an abyss the next. My poor wife doesn't know what to say, what to believe, even as I struggle to be able to say where this journey is going.

So what is obvious? How does one ever know? I have in six months done enough research to get a Ph.D. in transgender studies, had I been doing it at a university. But I am so far away, still, from any idea of how one knows what is in one's heart, how one finally gets to where one is going, whether there is even a choice. We can choose to compromise -- on some level to continue at least some of the repression to save marriages and other relationships; or we can choose to leap into that abyss. Or maybe we have no choice at all.

When I first joined this site, I thought aprilrain and Julia in Pa were a little overdramatic in their language about reaching a point where it was kill themselves or transition. I'm not there now, or maybe ever, but now I totally understand what they are talking about.

No, Lea, you are not clueless. It's an ENTIRE LIFETIME of memories, experiences, shadows, comments, gestures, and dreams that has to be excavated before we late bloomers understand ourselves. Sometimes I think I am just brilliant to have been able to repress so much for so long. Other times I am truly sure that I'm the dumbest person on the planet not to see my gender issues for an entire lifetime.

THis is the hand we have been dealt, Lea. How we will play it -- and what other cards are yet to fall our way -- remains a mystery. At times I actually envy people like Jennifer Finney Boylan, who wrote so well about knowing since she was 3 that she was in the wrong body...I've never been a big fan of my body, but damn! Why didn't anyone tell me it might have been the Wrong One?

Okay, I'm rambling, Lea; I don't have any answers. I"m just telling you with all my heart that I think I know where you are and that you are oh so not alone.

Very surprised to be anyone's sister,

Elizabethamy!

[KellyJameson]

You are moving into the world of " letting go " living less in the past and future and more in the moment, becoming active not reactive. The poisons are leaving your body, that is why you are able to label them. A person cannot have a clue until they realize how clueless they are. A person cannot become truthful until they realize how deceitful they are. When you stop protecting yourself than you begin to learn that there is no reason to protect yourself, the mind stops fighting itself,stops trying to escape itself.

We enter into the world without choice, empty pages that the world writes on giving shape to a story that is ours but not us. Living in a fog but thinking we see clearly all the while reacting with defenses to keep ourself safe from the pain of past experiences and the expectation of more.

You are seeing your shadow,that hidden mind within a mind. This is only possible when you accept pain and that takes courage, not the courage of acting fearless but the courage of not acting fearless.

Being clueless is not a problem as long as there is foregiveness for being so. Anger at having wasted time or from feeling foolish or cowardly is still being part of the past. Being human is very messy but never pointless.

[LeaP]

When I first joined this site, I thought aprilrain and Julia in Pa were a little overdramatic in their language about reaching a point where it was kill themselves or transition. I'm not there now, or maybe ever, but now I totally understand what they are talking about.

No, Lea, you are not clueless. It's an ENTIRE LIFETIME of memories, experiences, shadows, comments, gestures, and dreams that has to be excavated before we late bloomers understand ourselves. Sometimes I think I am just brilliant to have been able to repress so much for so long. Other times I am truly sure that I'm the dumbest person on the planet not to see my gender issues for an entire lifetime.

Very surprised to be anyone's sister,


April and Julia - I hope you'll forgive me for speaking as if you weren't here.

I'm in no position to judge anyone here, especially those who have had the courage to transition. Recently, I've watched April put her life on display with FFS, followed in the last couple of days with a gut-wrenching post on being read in a restaurant. She held nothing back. I made the mistake once of correcting Julia who, contrary to reputation, was kind in replying. She became an instant friend and, in fact, is a gentle soul (ya, she carries a Glock, but she's still a gentle soul). So I don't mistake a no-nonsense attitude with other qualities. Personally, I need the no-nonsense attitude here. Nor is this a correction aimed at you! Rather, I want to offer one person's perspective on the value of giving up the judgements and starting to live in the open as have April and Julia. I'm grateful for the example.

Thank you for the sentiment that I'm not clueless. Unfortunately, I really am! LOL I have the sneaking suspicion that the members who have been here a while saw everything I'm experiencing coming at me a long time before I did! To be honest, it makes me feel kind of like an idiot. But I'm just going to keep on posting anyway.

Lea

[Rianna Humble]

I have the sneaking suspicion that the members who have been here a while saw everything I'm experiencing coming at me a long time before I did!

Yes, and there's even a name for that: 20/20 hindsight!

It is a lot easier to recognise in someone else what we have already experienced than to recognise it in our own lives before we experience it for ourselves.

Please don't beat yourself up because you didn't foresee some of the things you are going through - doing that never helped me at all, whereas the love and support I have received from people on these forums and elsewhere did even when I let it make me feel foolish.

[Kaitlyn Michele]

I have mentioned this a couple times..

I repressed my nature with brutal efficiency. I would see a crossdressed man on the street, and say "oh look...a crossdresser"... not a 2nd thought.,,In fact, if i did have a 2nd thought it was transphobic..ugh...
Then 2 seconds later i'd pass a woman and so desperately want to be her that i couldn't think for 20 minutes..then i'd go to my next meeting..

I could see an article on a transsexual.. I'd be transfixed on her story...obsessing over her, wishing i was her...and then five minutes later off to my next meeting...

i lay in a bathtub, with my mind racing in circles, plotting the time in the nebulous future when i would "switch" or perhaps i would buy an apartment and fake id and set myself up as a woman...i'd get out of the tub, shave and watch the football game..and it would never reach my conscious mind that i was a transsexual..a woman...

this is what it is really like...it boggles my mind how deeply inside my brain this whole other world existed...it's like i was in the twilight zone..

my own personal situation led me to an incremental solution, where i went step by step towards more feminine expression, to hrt, to even more expression...the more data i got , the more i realized i was doing what was right for me...
It was the actual events..go out, meeting people, HRT...it was stuff I DID that got me to figure it all out...and once i hit the ground it never ever occured to me even once that i was not a woman...thats how powerful it is when you let go.

this is why i harp constantly on people to "do stuff", and to get out of their heads... there is no solution there...

i feel for you Lea.. I know what you are going through..

[Kelsy]

Lea

Being free of self delusion, inflated ego, and self preserving but imprisoning lies is gut wretching prospect.
Transition forces you to face everything and the most difficult is facing our own weakness and cluelessness!
I would say that you are not as clueless as you might think!!

My therapist describes transition as deconstructing a life and persona. breaking it into pieces trashing the junk and rebuilding. Taking apart the fabricated protective shell and becoming real! Some of the most difficult things to let go of are illusions that were never true!

I listen intently to the advice of those who have been down this road and from what I'm learning from my own personal experience is that they deserve a lot of respect!

Kelsy

[Julia_in_Pa]

Lea,

As I read your posts my mind thought back to everything I went through and everything that was burnt away from my soul and mind in order to become who I am today.
You my dear sister will go through periods of very intense self loathing coupled with self preservation.
Self preservation is where all of these emotions about you and what your doing come together in a soup of turmoil and anger.
The fact that you are clueless shows that you are letting go of what needs to be burned away in order for you to be rebuilt into who and what you truly are.
Be clueless my sister but be clueless with your ear to the floor and your hand outreached for those that offer help, assistance and friendship.
You are exactly where you need to be and smart enough to ask where you are Lea.

Be well sister.


Julia

[LeaP]

You my dear sister will go through periods of very intense self loathing coupled with self preservation.


I'm already there. I thought I knew what self loathing was. It had gotten to the point where it was one of the drivers toward therapy. I *honestly* didn't think it would get worse, though. I had the opposite in mind! Wrong again! It's been a good day/bad day today, and it touches on self-image, dismay, and vulnerability. I'll be posting about it later.

Lea

[ReneeT]

I have mentioned this a couple times..

I repressed my nature with brutal efficiency. I would see a crossdressed man on the street, and say "oh look...a crossdresser"... not a 2nd thought.,,In fact, if i did have a 2nd thought it was transphobic..ugh...
Then 2 seconds later i'd pass a woman and so desperately want to be her that i couldn't think for 20 minutes..then i'd go to my next meeting..

I could see an article on a transsexual.. I'd be transfixed on her story...obsessing over her, wishing i was her...and then five minutes later off to my next meeting...

i lay in a bathtub, with my mind racing in circles, plotting the time in the nebulous future when i would "switch" or perhaps i would buy an apartment and fake id and set myself up as a woman...i'd get out of the tub, shave and watch the football game..and it would never reach my conscious mind that i was a transsexual..a woman...

this is what it is really like...it boggles my mind how deeply inside my brain this whole other world existed...it's like i was in the twilight zone..

my own personal situation led me to an incremental solution, where i went step by step towards more feminine expression, to hrt, to even more expression...the more data i got , the more i realized i was doing what was right for me...
It was the actual events..go out, meeting people, HRT...it was stuff I DID that got me to figure it all out...and once i hit the ground it never ever occured to me even once that i was not a woman...thats how powerful it is when you let go.

this is why i harp constantly on people to "do stuff", and to get out of their heads... there is no solution there...

i feel for you Lea.. I know what you are going through..

Kaitlyn, your words ring so true to me. I lived in a truly dual world, not conneecting who I really am with the thigs i would see and feel. This all changed when I began to experience first hand and to live my feelings. Once I stopped trying to feel what I was acting and started acting what I was feeling,my life came into much sharper focus. While this has certainly brought with it its share of pain and heartache, most of those are external and manageable, as opposed to internal and destructive

[Hope]

It sounds like you are doing good work, and coming up with a more real understanding of who you are. Good for you - it isn't easy stuff, but it does get easier.

[Aprilrain]

Just wait till you start HRT:devil:
I can't imagine having the understanding I hav now or even had a year ago an NOT be moveing forward. As scary as transition is the alternative is much darker.

[Inna]

Lea, thanks for your honesty and blunt nakedness, it moves me as it resonates with my path I had embraced not so long ago. When this realization came to me, however following my date with death, I felt like someone had just asked me to jump backwards of a ledge with no parachute, all he offered was that I truly believed that I will be OK. Well, I was in the position of "no going back", and at the time, life didn't mean anything anymore anyway, so I took the plunge, and yelled "Yauhweeeeee" on the way down.

I am still falling but yet, I am still here, there is something to that!