Courage?

[Angela Campbell]

I have been told lately how brave I am, how much courage I have shown in transitioning. It doesn't feel that way though. It feels more like I was courageous before when I pretended to be a man, and just kind of ran out of steam and gave up.

It is more like I just let go and allowed it to happen rather than fight it. I really could not take one more day as a man, so is it really courage that was driving me? Does it matter that I was scared out of my mind at times and felt trapped with no choice but to do this? When it is true that I still am sometimes?

Does the person who is drafted and sent off to war really show courage? Wouldn't it have been more courageous to just put all this aside, forget my selfish needs and just do what the entire world expected of me?

Courage? No.

[PaulaQ]

>> Wouldn't it have been more courageous to just put all this aside, forget my selfish needs and just do what the entire world expected of me?

NO!!!!

The arbitrary and cruel demands of an uncaring world are the ultimate in selfishness. You should live a hellish existence so that someone who crosses paths with you might now have to ponder how you came to be as you are now? That's just insanity! The world is full of shallow, selfish people, people who are afraid to be who they really are, and instead conform.

No hon, courage is standing up and being yourself in the face of billions of people who try to tell you that you are wrong. Your courage is telling them NO!

[Nigella]

...
No hon, courage is standing up and being yourself in the face of billions of people who try to tell you that you are wrong. Your courage is telling them NO!

Maybe not billions, but certainly those who knew you before your transition and know you afterwards

[Angela Campbell]

But I didn't tell them no....I just kind of snuck around their back......did it while the billions were not looking.

[LeaP]

I don't know, Angie. Seems to me that most people who have analyzed the concept of courage have come up with two explanations for people who stick their necks out: people who do things because they are damn fools, and people who do things they have to regardless of their fear.

You're not a damn fool, so yes, it is courage, whether it feels like the Hollywood version or not.

[arbon]

I felt a lot like you did and did not see it as courage or anything like that. It seemed more like there was not a lot of choice in the matter and I was simply saving myself - like running out of a burning building.

But as time has gone by and I look back there were a lot of times I did have to act despite my fear. Going to the water park with my daughter and her friends, being out in my swim suit around a couple thousand people knowing how unpassable I was - that was pretty intense. Or going to work every day for a year and a half knowing how despised I was and how I was going to be treated each day but I had to face it when I really just wanted to stay home and hide and cry. Kept going beck to the local grocery store where the checkers at first liked to laugh at me - kept doing it anyway till they stopped they are all nice to me now. Sitting on the stand in front of a judge and courtroom full of people in jerome idaho explaining my marriage......lots of times I was scared to death and still did what I needed to do.

When people say that about me now, that I am courageous or brave, I accept it and can see it a little bit better. I had to walk through a lot of fears.

[Annaliese]

No you are just a girl, that is doing what needed to be done. To rescue a person how was drowning that person just happen to be you.

[Barbie Anne]

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the pressing on in spite of it.

[PaulaQ]

Honey, doing it while they ain't watchin' ain't cowardice, it's just good sense. That you did it at all as scared as you were is why it's courage!

[Angela Campbell]

like running out of a burning building.



exactly....except I think I may have set the fire, and it isn't even my building, and others were in there.

[I Am Paula]

Angela, I think a big part of it is that we come out to people, and they just don't know what else to say. They are looking for something positive, but 'nice tits' just isn't the right thing. You have so much courage, and how brave of you, are rhetorical. To the cis gendered person saying it, they are probably thinking how deep and poignant that comment must be, to us it's just 'Have a nice day', and should be taken in the good spirit it was meant. It also implies acceptance, and that can't be bad.

[Badtranny]

I've used the burning building analogy but I've been re-thinking it.

We're not running out of a burning building, we're jumping a good 12 feet from a burning building onto a fireman's ladder.

[Rianna Humble]

I don't like ladders! Always scared I'll fall off :eek:

[gonegirl]

Misty - can I come over to your building? There weren't any cute firemen at my one.

[Chickhe]

Many people spend their entire lives wishing they could have lived... I think it take courage to decide to change.

[Angela Campbell]

I've used the burning building analogy but I've been re-thinking it.

We're not running out of a burning building, we're jumping a good 12 feet from a burning building onto a fireman's ladder.


I don't like ladders! Always scared I'll fall off :eek:

Maybe if they had one of those trampoline thingies? I always wanted to jump onto one of those. I wonder if the fireman would let me wear his hat? Or ride in his truck?

I guess I cannot consider this as courage because I was really afraid not to.

[BOBBI G.]

Girl, we must be sisters from different mothers and fathers. Your look at life is amazing. Goals seem similar, we just are taking different paths to get there

I didn't follow the normal path in my life, nor as to my transitioning. There are three or four drummers in my head and I never know which one will be playing for me at any time. I started my evolution by coming out to my whole world first. This was due to economics, nothing else, and appearance was the least of my future expenses. I can handle hostility and rejection. I am now happier than I ever remember. The VA has been a godsend for me. I now have Medical and psychological staff with me and I am well on my journey to womanhood.

The " you are courageous (brave) " was something my Brain crusher said quite a while ago. I explained to her this can't be courage; I'm just accepting me as me. It took courage to be who I was not. As my life continues through this evolution I am now quite comfortable being just me.

That is who I have been, am, and always be, The container is really the only change I'm making.

And if the world can't accept it, yet, their loss.

Bobbi

[gonegirl]

There are many very courageous people on this forum, as anyone who has hung out around here for a while will realize. They are also very humble, which is probably not so much a character trait as it is an experiential lesson in life. Dealing with being transexual and everything that entails (and it means everything single thing in your life) is quite a humbling experience.

[Angela Campbell]

The thing I am exploring is how it makes me feel. It does not make me feel courageous at all. What it does is it tells me the person saying it - usually a cisgender person and almost always female - is attempting to show me support while at the same time showing that they have little or no understanding at all.

It is saying " I think it is something I would never do, but I am not going to trash you for doing so, and would like to say something to make you feel better, while at the same time give no promises on how I will feel later."

So how does this make me feel? I am not sure. Sometimes I like it a lot and it renews my view of the person. Sometimes it just seems like someone going through the motions. It is always better than telling me I am ruining my life or going to hell now. It is a little acceptance from someone who wants to accept this but not sure they really know how, which is better than complete non acceptance.

Outside of other trans people I do not think real acceptance exists if they know you transitioned or are planning to. It is not their fault because to accept it requires some understanding and if you have not been here you simply cannot ever understand. Maybe to them the act of doing something so far outside their understanding is truly an act of courage.

Then again I have been told I had courage because I eat escargot.

[LeaP]

Dealing with being transexual and everything that entails (and it means everything single thing in your life) is quite a humbling experience.

A good beating will do that ...

[arbon]

Real courage was with my wife and daughter, instead of running for the exit they have stuck it out and had to face most of the same crap i did.

[Rachel Smith]

Very funny Lea.

I am among the survival group. I buried it, I fought it (even tried marriage), I hid it and when I could do all those things no more I had no choice but to transition or die and now having tried both transition is a much better option. So no I don't feel courageous, not one iota. The people I think are courageous in all this are the people that are OK with me after transition just as they were before.
Sometimes I feel like an elephant in the room that no one will talk directly to about it but rather wait until the elephant goes to look for peanuts then talk about the elephant but learn nothing other then the elephant was hungry.

[emma5410]

When people say we are brave they are only seeing one side. They only see us transitioning, they can not understand what drives us to it.
Courage is doing something you fear when you have the option not to. Most of us do not have a choice.
There have been times when suicide seemed a better option but I lacked the courage to do that so carried on living a life that felt unbearable. I am glad I did.

[I Am Paula]

Angela's quote-
"Outside of other trans people I do not think real acceptance exists if they know you transitioned or are planning to. It is not their fault because to accept it requires some understanding and if you have not been here you simply cannot ever understand. Maybe to them the act of doing something so far outside their understanding is truly an act of courage."
I think we can be accepted unconditionally, but we cannot be understood. Nobody, no matter how well read, or even having lived with a TS, can ever understand what we have gone through, or are about to. Likewise, we cannot understand what it is to be cis gendered. We have lived the part, but it was a façade.

[vikki2020]

Real courage was with my wife and daughter, instead of running for the exit they have stuck it out and had to face most of the same crap i did.

yeah.Amen! What I've been through, took no courage--it was something I wanted. But, I have been told the same thing,m and I take it as support, and a compliment.