Need and Want

[LeaP]

TS responses only, please.

Life seems like a series of barriers. I find myself in a position of deep ambiguity when it comes to change and challenging the next barrier.

One way this manifests itself is a constant "really want, really don't want" or "need but don't want" or "don't need but do want" types of conflicts. I have said in the past that I can't tell the difference between need and want anymore. Someone recently noted that need and want can co-exist, however, and just maybe they should. I went through this push-pull in the run-up to starting HRT. I desperately needed it and I just as desperately - and simultaneously - did and didn't want it … Except when I did… Except when I didn't.

The HRT conflict disappeared with the final commitment to the decision itself. On the way to the doctor's office, as it happened. HRT has been life-changing and almost all positive.

It has been replaced with a similar push–pull conflict over transition. There are times when I really, really don't want to transition. ... Except when I do ... Except when I don't ... At one time, this conflict seemed like was 100% about fear. I don't feel much of that fear anymore - but still have the conflict! Still, transition just seems… logical. It addresses a real need.

But choice seems to have assumed a role, too. And there's a mystery in that.

Need is relatively easy for me to identify. Having fought through the overlay of the constructed male persona to find an intact female core, it's a live or die proposition (whether construed literally or figuratively). [Warning - it gets a little metaphysical from here ... ]. Peeling away layer after layer of understanding, however, I've arrived at a place where I finally experience me AS me, meaning directly, as opposed to experiencing life through the proxy perceptions of the constructed persona. Me. I am. Pure self-consciousness.

Gender seems to be a layer above this, though still intrinsic, along with many other characteristics. So what have I discovered – my agency? I'm not sure, but this base level of awareness is where choice seems to originate. But it neither negates nor complements the need that arises from gender. It's independent.

So this is what I think: I have found I have the freedom to truly choose whether to transition. I also have found my need to transition is actually an independent consideration. Oddly, I don't believe the awareness of choice eliminates the possibility of being driven to transition, either! Rather, they coexist. Meaning its not so much that need and want can coexist as it is that need and choice can coexist.

So in the end, the ambiguity - the feeling of the push and pull - may be unavoidable. I really haven't decided that yet. It did serve the purpose of making me examine my motives at a deeper level. I do know that I dislike that type of conflict, because it suggests or introduces doubt, and the last thing I want in such an important decision is unease over apparent doubt.

The flipside to the conflict over the discovery of free choice in the face of need is my unease, or unwillingness, to let myself off the hook on the basis of need alone. This, too, manifests frequently. With HRT, for example, one might hope that starting will either validate or invalidate one's transsexuality ... and that can be used as sort of an excuse for one's subsequent actions ... as if the decisions really aren't.

The theme of choice versus need comes up at home (e.g., with my wife insisting I'm choosing what I am doing). The first time it did, I raised it in my next therapy session, really to sort of protest my wife's assertion. I was not let off the hook. In fact, I got it back from my therapist point-blank – that I truly am choosing and I am responsible. That was a long time ago. It floored me then and has been on my mind ever since.

But i think I'm finally getting to the root of the conflict. Need is need. One may be driven or not. Wanting vs not wanting are aspects of wavering in choice. I'm coming to believe that the wavering is the last aspect of the fight, that I'm still hoping to be let off the hook, so I cannot be held responsible. Unfortunately, that is deeply irresponsible.

If you have slogged through this to the end, my questions are these:

Do you (or did you) feel this push and pull and were you conflicted over it?

What is your view of the roles of choice and responsibility in transition?

[Kaitlyn Michele]

Yes i struggled deeply with this...sobbing was big part of it...also i constantly masturbated...i thought this meant that i was maybe just doing this as a sexual fantasy, and that caused deep shame and conflict inside me..

In the end, it was not a choice.. i waited until it was no longer a choice...thats how i solved it..how did i know it was not a choice?? well i just knew, and there was literally zero doubt in my mind..
my "choice" felt instinctual...it was made so deep inside me that one day it simply occured to me that i was transitioning...not that i decided to transition, that i was transitioning...and it never went back the other way
i kept taking slow steps..including hrt, and then finally there was no question in my mind...

also remember that as you consider morality and responsibility that they are relative terms, difficult to define and impossible to quantify...

is it responsible or not to make unkeepable promises to a wife? to add 5 or 10 more years to your wifes investment into your maleness?? work at your job when your mind is elsewhere all day every day? what was i teaching my kids if I can't stand up for the truth of my life?? (fwiw...it turns out my oldest daughter is lesbian and came out recently...imagine how much better she felt about that seeing how her dad and mom handled all this)

in my opinion, its the isolation and emptiness that creeps up on you that makes life impossible...in desperation to stay married, i read a book about love languages...the concept was "What fills your cup? what fills her cup?"
to me my life was a cup that sprung a leak and ultimately had no bottom...so i had nothing to drink...ever...no matter how much love, how much responsibility, how much sharing i did...nothing made me feel alive...everything that should have filled my cup just fell right out the bottom...its worse than sad..its empty...


in my lizard brain, i think i'd urge you to eliminate this conflict...your wife calls it a choice...ok its a choice...so what.. does calling it not a choice get you anything that is valuable to you?? i don't think so...
so from here on its a choice...as time goes on if your choice is between muddling through in this state of mind, staying married, keeping the head down at work and just being status quo vs transition then so be it....


another way to approach it is that your thinking is one of the big roots in the "don't transition unless you have to" tree
as long as you feel there is a choice..you are going to have to deal with your own internal dialogue around right/wrong, shame, etc....if it precludes moving on, then don't move on...make that "decision", and let the chips fall...its a very responsible and reasonable "choice" to make and it will inform your future...

[ReneeT]

Lea,

I am not sure that I entirely follow your thought process here, but if i read between the lines, i sense that at once you are both conflicted (scared maybe) about transitioning and resolved. For me, the confliction is more emotion than intellect, and the resolve is more intellect than emotion. I think this is human nature, and comes into play for any major life decision. Only you can know where your balance between conflict and resolve lies, and likely it will evolve over time. I am experiencing greater conlict these days, but that is due to what is outide me, not within. My resolve comes from within and, while i routinely exam it, it has never faltered. Most nights i go to sleep sad at my losses, but every morning i awake absolutely certain that i am on the right path. Have you found your balance between conflict and resolve? Your actions and posts suggest to me that you have

[Inna]

Amazing within the writing is the fact of spiritual growth within the gender struggle. I have experienced that heightened awareness of intrinsic core, perhaps soul, under the layers of consciousness.
I too have experienced the yin and yang of need and want overlapping and opposing with brute force often ending up in defeat and loss of direction. Only when I finally gave in to the power at will, the path inevitable, allowing the wind of change to sweep me up and carry me whenever, wherever, only then did life begin to have meaning and amongst pain and anguish, I could see the faint light of serenity.
In fact I have turned off intellectual reasoning, giving my self to the universal current, my motto "take me where you shall" after all after suicide attempts I really had nothing to lose!
Now, I am flowing within this vast river of truth, surrounded with feeling of immense direction however, not a path of my own choosing but humble follower of what shall be!

[stefan37]

To answer your questions in a broad sense I have lots of conflicting thoughts. Not so much as do I want to transition, but what effect will transitioning have on my family, friends and professional life. And I guess we all have those fears when we decide to pursue this path. I know this is the right path for me. I also feel the pain of my wife’s fears and the anguish she is experiencing. At this time I am comfortable where I am. My face is somewhat cleared, I have been on E for about 6 months and the positive effects have been of great benefit to my mental state. My anxiety went from a level 10 to 0. I am enjoying the positive events that have led to my being in the best mental and physical shape in my entire life. At 56 that is no small event. So in light of the above statements I feel the push pull you mention and the conflicts it entails. But I also know in my heart what I need to do to continue.

That brings me to the second issue of choice and responsibility. We all tend to say we have no choice or at least some of do. I tell my wife I have no choice, but that is not entirely correct. We all have choices. I have the choice to not do anything and my mental health will diminish. I have the choice to stay where I am and try to please those close to me. I do not believe this will be sufficient for me to sustain, The last choice I can make is to follow my heart and transition to extent my finances and health will allow. The last choice is the choice I believe will bring me the inner peace I seek. I do no know if I will be happier transitioning and losing my wife and family, but I do believe it will calm the discomfort I am experiencing. I have to take responsibility for whatever decision I make.
For me that means making sure my wife is comfortable financially and to do what I need to do to make my business successful. I will not abandon her to transition. I will do everything in my power to help her but I will transition although it may be at a slower pace than I may desire.

The thing I am finding out is you can not rush it. There is only so fast you can clear your facial hair, hormones can only work so fast to effect physical change, Socialization takes time, voice changes, name change etc.. etc.. . I am at that point now., I am running out of funds for facial hair removal, hormones are still working, I dress and act as I feel, my hair is cut in as feminine shape as it can be, yet I am almost always seen as male. At this point it does not bother me much as there isn’t much I can do about it. It kinda feels like the wind has died down I am not quite in irons, but need to bear off a bit to catch the wind. I do know there will be light at the end of the tunnel and it may take longer than I may wish but hopefully those close to me can make the transition to accept me.
I guess we could go flat out pedal to the metal and leave a scorched earth behind alienating all those close to us that may offer valuable support if allowed to go at a slower pace. And in the end it may come to that anyway; however I will know in my heart I did everything I could to make those close to me comfortable.

[LeaP]

I think it reduces to this:

You either have a need for transition or you do not. That needs to be determined on its own merits, using whatever criteria each individual find relevant. I don't want to get mired down in the details of what that should consist of, things like intensity, costs, risks, weightings etc. The point is to come to a decision on raw need.

If you accept the decision (either way), no issue. If you are conflicted about the need, however, it must be treated as a separate issue. If you do not, you are abandoning responsibility for the direction you take, besides muddling the need question itself.

I agree with the comment that if one is conflicted, they should not proceed. My point on responsibility is that need itself does not relieve you of the responsibility of choosing. I suppose a simpler way of putting it is that if one is determined they need to transition then they really ought to choose to transition. Waiting to have the situation forced hurts everyone and benefits no one. That's just as true for someone who transitions, needed to, but let circumstances force them, as it is for the person who never transitions, needs to, and sits on the fence endlessly wringing their hands.

Renée, I do know what the balance between conflict and resolve is. Resolve follows from affirmatively choosing what need dictates. If you are asking, on the other hand, whether I know if I need to transition or not, the answer is I do not know. And from that I conclude my "want to", "don't want to" dance is distracting and irrelevant. I need to take the emotion out of it.

Kaitlyn, I'm not sure we disagree. By your own description, you did choose. The process by which you did it doesn't really matter. An analogy is making decisions by consensus versus fiat. Both are valid ways of making decisions. You also happen to be self-aware enough to distinguish between "simple" emotional conflicts versus conflict over the decision itself. The emotional conflicts, family issues, and workout continued well beyond your transition. It sounds as though your basic decision never wavered, though.

As you know, I decided upfront to lose the all or nothing framework due to being overwhelmed emotionally. I never took the position that this meant there wouldn't have to be decisions, however.

With apologies to all the religious absolutists who may be reading, I agree that morality and responsibility are relative. I have to live with myself, though.

There is only one good decision - choosing to do what you need to do.

There are two bad decisions: not deciding at all, or choosing not to do what you ought to do.

[Jorja]

Doesn’t life just suck when we have to put on the big girl panties and make decisions?

There is a huge difference between wanting what you want and needing what you want, and both are just emotional states that you need to be aware of. If you are on the path toward attracting what you want, you must be careful not to allow yourself to slip into the negative emotional state of neediness. There is a horrible and vicious mindset among humans that many of the things we have we need when in reality, there are only a few things we actually need and the rest are things we want. There is nothing wrong with wanting, however, allowing yourself to believe that you need something will only stop you from getting it.

Need causes us to become attached to a specific idea or outcome. Becoming attached to anything always causes emotional distress. When we try to cling to something we put ourselves in a position that allows us to get hurt when that thing goes away. We have to be mindful of our neediness and clinginess to everything in life. Need pushes things away and causes unwanted heartache and sorrow in our lives.

Lea, you know exactly what you want and need in your life. Look into your heart and mind then make a decision. If it is a wrong decision, who says you can’t change your mind? After all, it is a woman’s prerogative to change her mind.

[Kaitlyn Michele]

i think looking at it as a decision with right or wrong answers is counterproductive to your own well being.

i agree that i chose...we may have to define what chooses really means....i go back to my old Hobson's choice...

from wiki..".A Hobson's choice is a free choice in which only one option is offered. As a person may refuse to take that option, the choice is therefore between taking the option or not; "take it or leave it". The phrase is said to originate with Thomas Hobson (1544–1631), a livery stable owner in Cambridge, England. To rotate the use of his horses, he offered customers the choice of either taking the horse in the stall nearest the door or taking none at all."

i like this concept for us because your choice is to take the life you were given, or none at all... that's how i can best describe my memory of what gender dysphoria felt like... if you don't feel that way its much harder to know in advance that transition will improve your quality of life..

...BUT the big rub is that if i had to bet, i'd bet that at some point in the future, if you take none at all, you will regret it in a fundamental way ...one thought that plagued me (altho in hindsight i'm glad i had it) was laying on my death bed, or hearing the diagnosis (you have xx months to live) and feeling that i had wasted my life.

..it was a very specific thought...and it was informative to me in a powerful way...it was a glimpse of my truth... the part of me that wanted to not transition had no answer for this!! it is patently obvious that no matter what else is going on in my life...it is unacceptable to me to "regret having lived"... its the one thought that i remember that drove my "choice"...

a couple other things...

my wife left me... that is a huge difference!!! she left because she had lost her husband, and she felt this way even before i even hinted at a transition or started HRT...i was holding all this in and it destoyed my marraige...i admit bias here, but i can't imagine a wife being happy being married to one of us as we struggle through this...so i often think that we are not doing our wives any favors by clinging to a marraige.....especially if the husband gets more and more unhappy...

second, I was VERY careful about things, and my decisions were thought out in every way.. ..i saved up money, and put money away for kids college...i feared work and transition, so i took a leave and ultimately chose to semi-retire or downsize my work life...i was very deferential to my wife's and kids needs...only my transition was unnegotiable...i suffer the him's and he's, and i am delighted to continue to be their dad...that was a choice i made and it helped them get through it...and it helped me feel better about the issues caused by my transition.

what i'm pointing out here is that we can easily get bogged down in the internal dialogue of right and wrong.....its very easy to say we are wrong to transition because of a wife and kids...its also easy to say, sorry i had to transition as a matter of life and death..

but the outcome is what matters...and its alot more nuanced, and there are lots of practical tangible things you can do to CHANGE the possible outcomes and impact what you can and can't live with (which is really each our bottom lines)

[Michelle.M]

Doesn’t life just suck when we have to put on the big girl panties and make decisions?

I had a very verbose response coming together in my brain, but that really says it all.

One may indeed have a NEED to transition. But unless she CHOOSES to do so nothing happens. Need and choice are not mutually exclusive; in this case, they're linked.

[LeaP]

...

There is a huge difference between wanting what you want and needing what you want, and both are just emotional states that you need to be aware of. ... There is a horrible and vicious mindset among humans that many of the things we have we need when in reality, there are only a few things we actually need and the rest are things we want. There is nothing wrong with wanting, however, allowing yourself to believe that you need something will only stop you from getting it.

Need causes us to become attached to a specific idea or outcome. Becoming attached to anything always causes emotional distress. When we try to cling to something we put ourselves in a position that allows us to get hurt when that thing goes away. We have to be mindful of our neediness and clinginess to everything in life. Need pushes things away and causes unwanted heartache and sorrow in our lives.
...

Jorga, While I understand what you're saying in a general sense, I can't quite wrap my head around its implications in this context. I accept that people overestimate need. I except that neediness itself is a problem in exactly the way you described. But surely, in this context, one should have an idea of actual transition need – forget neediness in the clinging and destructive sense.

I don't know, maybe choice is on my mind a lot lately because the topic comes up so often at home. Being aware of the aspect of free will in this, yet being unable to answer the need question in a way that makes sense to people is what led me down this path of reasoning.

The question has come up another threads. One that I recall pointed out that many are able to delay transition for years, the implication being that need wasn't absolute – and maybe not even compelling. There are a number of ways of approaching that problem, not the least of which is correcting the conceptual confusion of need with compulsion. I have been around the block on those sorts of discussions. "I need to do this. No you don't, comes the reply. How can you say that?… Because you haven't done it yet." It's tautological. Better analogies are people needing to live independent lives when they grow up, people having a fundamental need for companionship, to have families, et cetera. You can survive without these, but at the expense of giving up precious aspects of a fulfilled life. And, of course, exactly which of those things matter, and how much, is individualized.

The nature of transsexuality – one's sex being wrong, is so fundamental that non-transsexuals can't understand questioning it, feeling a disconnect, or understand the implications for one's quality of life. That's a truism often expressed here that is actually true, as you know! It's also why people go down the path of rationalizing, of turning it into a cost-benefit exercise, and so on.

I suppose you're right – I know what I need. I feel a moral obligation to be able to explain it, though. Kathryn and I have exchanged some correspondence related to the assessment of intensity in the transsexual population, which is the psych profession's answer to the question, based on clinical experience. It's useful. Maybe it's the best that can be done. But it feels spectacularly unsatisfying because it actually doesn't explain anything.


...
...BUT the big rub is that if i had to bet, i'd bet that at some point in the future, if you take none at all, you will regret it in a fundamental way ...one thought that plagued me (altho in hindsight i'm glad i had it) was laying on my death bed, or hearing the diagnosis (you have xx months to live) and feeling that i had wasted my life. ...

... there are lots of practical tangible things you can do to CHANGE the possible outcomes and impact what you can and can't live with (which is really each our bottom lines)

I already have this regret, Kaitlyn.

I'm not sure what you mean about changing possible outcomes. Can you expand on this?

[KellyJameson]

There may be something that will help with this. It is a realization and in my opinion an undeniable truth, but a truth that must be found not accepted as truth just because others claim it.

You will have to search for it in your own mind.

"I've arrived at a place where I finally experience me AS me, meaning directly, as opposed to experiencing life through the proxy perceptions of the constructed persona. Me. I am. Pure self-consciousness."

The truth is found by considering the implications of this!

You were not yet born into life until you reached this point. This seems difficult to accept because you had a physical birth but that does not mean that you came into being. You were put on "hold"

Everything before this point has meaining for you but you were living a meaningless life from the sense of not "being" In my opinion this is critical to understand.

From this place you are now just starting to live as you so you are an adult experiencing what it is to be "infant" "Toddler" "Child" ect....up to adult.

This will require time as you "feel your way through life"

As an adult you think you have choice but this is to some degree an illusion because as this new born inside you grows this life will require more and more to give expression to itself.

This growing female child inside you may grow frustrated by being confined in a vessel that does not express her.

How much frustration you experience will be unique to you but I would be surprised if you escape it completely.

The tension between need and choice is the tension between the need of the female child who wants and needs to grow and the choice of the adult that is the womb she is growing inside.

In a sense you as the you that has existed is now a surrogate for the life growing inside you as the "me" that you have found who now lives.

If she demands to be born physically into the world nothing will be able to resist these birth pains.

The problem with a female brain/mind is the vessel can be very constricting for the expression of self. Extremely constricting for some !

You will know if this is happening because you will feel like you are being "held back" and something in you is being suffocated.

This sense of suffocation is you "as the female child growing" so demanding more.

The female child will want to continue growing into a woman. She will want to have friends. She wil want a life that belongs only to her.She may try to destroy anything that stands in her way because she has lost so much time already.

Soon she will take over your body. It is like being possessed and I could feel this struggle between me as the conscious self that "thinks" and this other self that "is" which is the true self I buried.

The hormones lets this person out. It is like using a key in a lock that uncages her.

The mind is a physical expression that does not just live in the brain but the whole body. Your body/brain as mind must follow her as long as you allow her (you) to remain free.

It is very difficult to compartmentalize yourself into mind separate from body, which is what we are forced to do by birth circumstances.

The taste of freedom from being unlocked from her cage that the hormones freed her from may result in the extremely strong desire for more freedom that changing the body will require.

You have a life inside of you that may insist on being born that only changing your body will allow so she can break free from the constraits that have bound her and run wild.

I did not want to change my body but this life spirit, this vital energy inside me demanded it.

The body kept her chained up and as she grew she was getting seriously pissed off about it and to strong to control so choice became a moot point.

There will always be you that "came before" but at some point you will accept that this person is just along for the ride and hardly matters at all any more.

It is like a merging of two souls into one.

Every man and woman carry both the masculine and feminine energy. But I think that to the degree you carry that pure energy of the feminine, it must find its expression in the physical vessel that is meant to house it otherwise the energy as "life force" is constricted in its expression and you feel "unborn"

[LeaP]

Kelly, that was an extraordinary description. The only thing I would change is that I have experienced this sense of myself before – in childhood, though not with the same level of conceptual abstraction, obviously. That came to a somewhat abrupt end around age 12. But I feel now as I felt before puberty in several ways. This is far more than a casual observation, it is something that I feel directly and intensely often throughout the day. It's a remarkable feeling. As part of it is physical, I imagine its something akin to what a phantom limb feels like. I certainly don't look as I did then, though I often feel exactly what my face and expression was at that time, as one example.

[StephanieC]

I don't necessarily see this as one "do or do not" decision. I see transition as a series of smaller decisions which may prolong the process, not necessarily stopping. Regardless of what I'd like, there is no magic switch.

[KellyJameson]

"But I feel now as I felt before puberty in several ways. This is far more than a casual observation, it is something that I feel directly and intensely often throughout the day. It's a remarkable feeling. As part of it is physical, I imagine its something akin to what a phantom limb feels like"

There she is right there. There is your true self. Puberty attacks the female brain when there is not body alignment.

Puberty almost destroyed my mind and I was lucky because I had low levels of T.

I was trapped in my head and doing everything I could think of to escape but avoided addiction because I was already trying to not lose myself and addiction made me afraid to lose myself even more. It was like I was disappearing and I was frantic to protect what was left of me.

I came out of puberty with CPTSD it was so traumatic. It almost killed me.

Sometimes I want to kick myself because now in hindsight it is so obvious. All the clues were right out in the open but I kept trying to "fix my brain" by turning it into something it is not.

I insisted that my problems could be solved psychologically and I could think myself out of it. My reasoning was that the brain is plastic and I could mold myself into anything I wanted if I could find that "magic pill" while "me" kept tapping on my shoulder and saying

"here I am, please notice me and give me life."

I am a ferociously stubborn person but with all my effort to remold myself by "not being what I was born to be" I accomplished zero and just wasted time.

It is like holding a beach ball under water. It constantly wants to pop back up and you constantly are pushing it back down while everyone else is living their lives. Totally pointless

[Badtranny]

Once I realized that I was very likely transsexual, I made the decision that I was NOT going to ruin my life with a crazy transition. I wasn't going to risk my career and I certainly didn't want to be humiliated. My thought was I'd lived with these feelings my whole life and I've been okay so I can just keep on keepin' on. Then something amazing happened (really bad car wreck) and I was forced to face the fact that my life could have ended right then. My life could have ended without ever having really lived. I was lucky because I was literally shaken awake by life and that's when I decided that I wasn't going to waste another minute.

Two months later I was getting lipo. By that summer I had a therapist, a doctor, and some laser appointments. By the end of the year I was on HRT and starting electrolysis. Today (3 years later) I am fully transitioned and eight months into RLE.

I wish everyone could have a terrible car accident that they walk away from. It really puts things into perspective.

[Kaitlyn Michele]

I wish everyone could have a terrible car accident that they walk away from. It really puts things into perspective.

In 1988 I drunk drove my car into a telephone pole...the pole snapped in half and crushed my car but I kept going. I hit a hill kind of sideways and the weight of the pole caused my car to flip sideways and then upside down. I went face first through the windsheield but the speed was low enough that only my head went through.

I was found in the car and the police told the medics I was dead. I wasn't and they suctioned the blood out of my mouth and I got my first helicopter ride to a hospital. I woke up with my parents at my bedside the net day. I was incubated and cathetered.

Incredibly I had no broken bones..no head injury. Just 100s of stitches in my head and face including putting my upper lip back together!!!

This shocked me too!!! What a wake up call. But it didn't cause me to figure myself out,...I was so compartmentalized. I recall seeing my swollen scarred face for the first time, and I remember thinking. Now I will never look like a girl.in a way I felt relief and I pushed all my trans issues away

Soi lost a lot of weight stopped drinking. and got married!!!!!

[Badtranny]

So I lost a lot of weight stopped drinking. and got married!!!!!

Yeah, that's pretty much the OPPOSITE of what I'm talking about. :-)

[stefan37]

I actually started transitioning about 3 years ago but I did actually realize what I was doing until after I started therapy. I fell off a roof and fractured a vertebrae. I was lucky I was cleared to partake in whatever activity I wanted as long as i felt comfortable. Nine months later I had 9 inches of my sigmoid colon removed from diverticulitis. I guess at that point I started to not care what people thought of me. I started to wear colored nail polish, wear eye makeup and start carrying a bag. I believe I finally started to take a serious look at my mortality and made the decision to start being me and I lost the energy to constantly push my feelings onto the back burner. I have found that allowing myself to come forth has been both liberating and I have so much more positive energy to expend on living life. While I have had many fears in the past of the path I have taken,once I made the decision all those fears went away except for the fear of losing my wife and partner of over 33 years. Unfortunately that fear is becoming a reality. Despite the fact my relationship with my wife will no longer be what it was I can not deny the positive events that have transpired to confirm for me I am doing what is right for me to continue to live and not be checked out waiting to expire.

[Kaitlyn Michele]

Yeah, that's pretty much the OPPOSITE of what I'm talking about. :-)

I know, right? :doh:

SO i guess you started drinking, gained weight and transitioned? ahem

[Aprilrain]

I needed to transition so I made the decision to do so. I could have made the decision to NOT do so as I had in the past and prolonged my suffering for another five or ten or twenty years but the thought of being 50 something and transitioning (and I KNEW that it would happen) made me sick to my stomach. I had already wasted so much time and now I KNEW I had wasted time! There was no going back on that knowledge. Transition being inevitable, I figured why wait any longer.

[LeaP]

The interesting theme that's developing here is that need itself doesn't appear to have changed - only the building pressure from deferring it. Most seem to have a trigger that pushes them over the edge. I was laid off in 2008 and was out of work for a year. It was a horrendous descent into high stress and deep depression. We barely spoke that year as I drove myself on job search and otherwise isolated myself (and her). The gender-related issues came to the surface immediately after. My wife has brought this period up again and again as the start of what is going down now. Something broke through in that period that couldn't before.

[Kaitlyn Michele]

exactly....i believe "something" is akin to survival instinct ...i like the analogy of digging a very lonely private hole for yourself... ...and at some point it gets so deep you realize you are living in a hole and you fear that you can never get out...and that's the moment.. at that moment, everything changes...and it can take a long time to internalize what changed and what it means to you..

...for me it was two things..

first my wife started giving up on the marriage...but frankly i was in a mode of doing anything to save the marriage...ANYTHING...and i was making progress...

but at the same time, my boss of 20 years retired..and the new boss was totally and completely different, and he didnt "get me" or my style of getting things done...my position was executive level and it was a knives out time in our company due to these changes... The rub is that i was in a good position anyway, i was winning everyone over and i found out later that i was in line for a promotion...i actually kind of sensed that and that was what triggered it...

i was reinvesting in my marraige..i truly love my exwife, and i was reinvesting in my career....i beleive that something similar to a survival instinct kicked in and that was it...depression, then therapy, then figuring out my money situation, then hrt, then divorce, then leave the job, then transition... and that was that... its very predictable ...there is a group of people that are forever going to waver and will "never" transition, they'll just muddle through somehow..but even then i'd be surprised if later in life they don't hit the same wall

[LeaP]

...There was no going back on that knowledge. ...

This rings a bell with me and in fact was something I cited to Chelsea in her thread. You can't unknow the truth about yourself. It makes going backwards impossible and the status quo unbearable. In this case it also turned to conscious choice, reversing past decisions. You have a strong will.

[KellyJameson]

I think puberty triggers an existential crisis and life stressors add to the ongoing crisis.

Puberty strips the identity from you that was the natural expression of your brain and almost creates a type of schizophrenia or split personality.

From puberty on you live "with and in" an existential crisis until it is resolved by changing back.

I lived with a complete disconnect in my mind as a child and for me being a boy was just another type of girl. My mind had no problem ignoring the contradictions and I always saw the other boys as being "others" so foreign and dangerous but also fun and interesting (but from a emotional distance) because they were "different"

I psychologically stood outside the "group of boys" and studied them even if I was physically among them. I still do this with men and always will. I do not fear them but they are not "me" but the "others" who I'm curious about and enjoy because they are not "me"

It is impossible for me to bond with men the way men bond with each other, the whole idea of trying is ludicrous.

My comfort zone was very different between myself and girls who I would "let in" but the boys I kept outside that psychological comfort zone unless I experienced them as potential or possible "girls" without ever articulating in my own mind with words that I was doing this.

It was purely instinctive

This was very rare to find but I became better at looking for them as I got older and soon it was easy and I could tell within seconds of being around them.

It is really interesting how this causes a life long affect on how you interact with both sexes.

In my teens and early twenties, women consistently told me they have never met a "man" like me and of course I sensed somehow this was probably a bad thing because it was tied to my "weirdness" even though they liked it because they felt "comfortable and liked for themselves" but yet I could also see it made them apprehensive because they felt that something was "off"

It was like they experienced me as being both heterosexual and homosexual at the same time but it had nothing to do with sex but something else below that.

Everyone tells you what you are feeling and why, but it does not line up with your deepest experiences so adds to the confusion in your mind.

Cisgendered reality is nothing like Transsexual reality so I could not discover "reality" because no one could explain to me my "reality", only theirs

The world made no sense to me based on how others decribed it so I assumed I was mentally ill because if everyone else is "normal" and I'm different I must be the sick one "as abnormal."

Sexuality added incredibe complexity to understanding what I was and am because everyone keeps telling me gender and sexuality are separate, but somehow I believe they are interwoven like a strand of DNA with its parallel ladders as frame work.

Independant but yet influenced by each other, or two expressions of the same thing.

This is the next mystery and problem I must resolve in my own mind to continue on this path.

What am I sexually as the experience of my gender.

[StephanieC]

I wish everyone could have a terrible car accident that they walk away from. It really puts things into perspective.

My wife has suggested my increased transition activity was due to something similar. I was a passenger in a car accident in 2007 which wiped out half my face and led to my jaws being wired for three months. A couple of years later, I lost my father suddenly. And in high school I was in an school accident that led to my being given Last Rites. She's thinking these things had me consider how I wanted to live my life: she might be correct.

-stephani

[melissaK]

What a dialogue.

No regrets coyote.
I just get up, off, away.
I tried to run away myself
To run away, wrestle with my ego.
And with this flame you put here in this eskimo
In this hitcher
In this prisoner
of the fine white lines
of the free, free way.

Tomorrow is open and right now it seems to be,
more than enough to just be here today.
And I don't know what the future is holding in store,
I don't know where I'm going, and I'm not sure where I've been
Theres a spirit inside that guides me, a light that shines for me,
My life is worth the living, I don't need to see the end.