now what?

[arbon]

When I had the big mental-emotional crash from GD I was 38 /39. I started down the transition road at 40.

now 46. got some things fixed - id, srs, boobs. Trach shave.
more or less accepted in the community. As what I am not really sure anymore.

I did not loose everything but I lost a lot. Being alone every night in a drafty room above a garage reminds me.


I had to go through all of it, I never felt like there was much choice.
There is not much inner / outer gender conflict like there used to be. That part is alright.
But I have been very depressed since surgery, I have been struggling with it a lot. I even started drinking again after 21 years of being sober. That is not good.
Its like the last 7 -8 years all consumed getting to this point - pushed by something I could not understand. And realizing everything before is gone - he is gone, all those years invested trying to make it work as a male, living that lie in shame and fear.
I'm afraid I'm going to end up being alone the rest of my life and I don't see any kind of decent future for myself.
It kinda feels like I am forty six years old and now is when my life is to restart and get on the right track finally but I am to tired to do it.
Some of the women here used to say that transition really begins after surgery. Maybe they were right in a way about that.
I'm trying to start my life out of the rubble of my old life, as a 46 year old not really passable transsexual wanna be just a woman (which will always be just out of reach). I have absolutely no desire or need to be transgender, transsexual, trans anything. I just want to be the woman I am, but, don't know, is it ever really possible?

[Angela Campbell]

I dunno. I went through some post op depression too. Maybe it's normal. For years my focus was on transition, and now I am stuck with little to focus on. Kinda like losing an old friend. I am looking for new goals now. Not sure what yet. I rarely get involved with trans stuff, with the exception of here anymore either. Just doesn't interest me now.

I'll find some way to rebuild, I lost almost everything due to the expense, but somehow it's worth it.

by the way, I think you look fine, pass well, and pretty at that.

[GabbiSophia]

I hate to read this and this is how I see the future for me. I wish there was magic wand for us ....not for the purpose transition or not .. To just be free of the burden.

Arbon my heart goes to out to you and I know they are just words but I hope the best for you.

[Frances]

It may not begin after surgery (as it's kind of optional), but it begins after all the "changing" is done, when the focus becomes one's place in society, relationships, and the personal meaning of one's life.

"What do I do now?" is the most important question for a post-transitioned person. And it can only be truly answered when the question "when is my next electrolysis appointment" becomes irrelevant.

[stefan37]

I worry about that myself. We put so much energy into the physical transition. It becomes a major distraction. We attempt to integrate and to an extent many of us have some measure of success. So it's natural that after putting the majority of our energy into the physical realm, we are left with a vacuum after those procedures are complete.

It's also very common to experience some form of depression after major surgery. You have undergone a very invasive procedure and the healing has been difficult.
Recovery from surgery is difficult under the best circumstances, let alone with complications. Stay strong, seek therapy and concentrate all your energy into integrating into society. You've come so far, they have so much farther to go. Stay with it. You will be successful.

[emma5410]

"Now what". i know that question so well. I had my surgery in February and was lucky to not have any complications. In the last few months I have had a lot of depression. During the worst of it I considered suicide, detransitioning and quitting my well paid job. Things have settled down a little lately but I still feel strange. I can't really think of any other word for it. I am either about to come apart at the seams or something very positive is about to happen.

i do not have any friends or social life. I am trying to build a life. I have started going to concerts and exhibitions on my own. i have joined an online dating site and had some positive responses. I have been upfront about being TS. It is not a trans dating site but I am still very suspicious of anyone who contacts me. I pass okay but I do not think I am at all attractive. There are plenty of attractive women on the site so why are these men contacting me.

I really do not know what the future holds or whether I will be around to see it.

[LeaP]

I have my own version of this: "What then?" It became a topic in therapy as early as starting ADs. After all, I KNEW how to function depressed and angry. What the heck do I know about being normal? Truthfully, there have been plenty of times when I didn't quite know what to do or how to react.

The question of the quality of post transition life – if not its actual content – has made me wonder often. It's odd. On one hand, I always felt like I didn't really exist anyway. Yet I wonder how I will continue without being driven and defined by the things that have served as proxies for my identity to-date.

I don't know. One inference I could take from some of the responses is that one kind of alienation and loneliness is substituted for another. That's depressing. Even considering that I function pretty well severely depressed, the idea that it would be depression arising from authenticity rather than inauthenticity is a little distressing. Doesn't that render the exercise rather pointless?

I'm already getting a dose of this. Because my GD is largely gone, I am not unhappy these days. (The phrasing is intentional.) But I don't DO anything. I don't feel as though I have ever been self motivated by anything other then escapism. I don't feel the need to escape so much anymore. But that doesn't mean I know how to dive into life, either.

[Badtranny]

I think about this quite a bit.

This nondescript feeling of malaise that seems to get a grip on all of us during this thing.

I cycled through various stages of depression for most of my life including times when I really had nothing to be depressed about. (sound familiar?) Hadn't seriously considered suicide since I was a kid, but I used to joke about it a lot. Transition definitely cured all of that. Coming out of that infernal closet was truly one of the best decisions I've ever made.

Now what?

Well, about a year after I changed my name, my career started to do a slow motion crumble and that was an emotionally devastating experience. I'm lucky though, I was able to plant some seeds over the last 20 years that finally sprouted and today was my first day at a dream job for people in my field. Just a couple of months ago, I honestly didn't know what I was going to do with the rest of my life. My transition literally turned everything upside down and I can tell you for sure during that first year, that I was doing just fine at work. I even wrote a blog post about how great my company was. This is a rough game. What about a relationship? Being single is epidemic among women of a certain age. Almost every friend I have (het, les, or trans) is single and looking. I haven't had a date in prolly 2 years. I just don't wanna deal with it.

Now what?

You do the same thing you've always done. You pull it together and you show up. Sometimes just showing up is enough.

[Kaitlyn Michele]

I don't feel as though I have ever been self motivated by anything other then escapism.

Very well said..my self motivation was single tracked... its so sad...not an hour (literally not an hour) could go by without me thinking of the next time i could be alone and either express myself or imagine i was expressing myself...this went on for 40 years..

i never felt motivation for anything that was beneficial to me until transition... i just pretended to care... woo hoo I got the big deal!!!! woo hoo we won!!! i can say i enjoyed moments and felt ups and downs for sure...but they didn't touch me or resonate with me...they had no power to get me through the next day...

i will echo others... there is no choice..

don't go through everything you've done and waste it... we all have so much to learn about ourselves after we transition... i hope we can all do our best to thrive and find our own places..

i look at it in this way... as a man, it was never ever gonna happen... transition is no guarantee of anything, but it gives me my chance to feel like the worthwhile and productive person i've been my whole life..

[Nicole Erin]

I guess for folks in their 40's the mind set of "now what?" is pretty common. Mid-life crisis.
I doubt it effects TS any more than anyone else really.
I am 40 and go through the whole "Now what?" but it is nothing to do with gender. I imagine some TS thing being a woman is going to be more fun than what it is. But no, we still have to work for next to nothing like most folks, still have to deal with people in our lives moving on, and maybe longing for the good old days.

With dating and being single, yeah it bites after a certain age. Looks are fast fading, one has a ton of baggage, and yet people have too high of standards for what they will date.

For some trans women, things are never enough. Never good enough. No amount of passability, acceptance, etc. There is always something they wish for and tend to focus on that. At some point you have to quit obsessing.
I guess that is part of what makes a lot of TS "woman" is that things are never enough. Everything is perfect "except"... and that becomes the focus.

[Abby Kae]

Threads like this, as I'm just starting out, scare the crap out of me.

My whole life, I've struggled with not knowing who I am or what I was meant to be. Now that I know who I am, I'm just left with questioning what I'm meant to be. Many of the books I've read have a small chapter on the post transition "what now", but it's usually a very short one and barely helpful. To hear from so many of you that this is a widespread struggle, well, it's frightening.

It seems as if there's a need out there. A need to help TS folks figure out what's next, what comes after all is said and done.

Is that a job for a therapist? A life coach? Or is it just something we each need to discover on our own?

[Kaitlyn Michele]

my perspective is that you can look at this from a completely different side...

prior to transition, if i said "now what?"...i'd say "who cares, not me"...

now I care, that is all things considered a wonderful thing..perhaps its a way to shorthand what transition really means (at least to me)

[LeaP]

Erin, I don't think perfectionism or chasing unrealistic goals have anything to do with it. Nor is it mid-life crisis. It just feels like a profound cluelessness to me, along with the malaise Misty describes.

I keep trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to analogize the ugly duckling story to being trans when talking with non-trans people. In the story, the poor ugly duckling is depressed, rejected, and generally at its wits end because it doesn't fit in with the other ducks. Then it discovers that it is a baby swan and will grow into something beautiful and magnificent. Happy ending, tears all around, end of story. In the real world, of course, most orphaned baby animals are not only rejected by other species, but by their own. They typically die of starvation or are killed.

Well, being trans is sort of like being the ugly duckling. Except that, unlike the story, the end doesn't involve tears of welcome and living happily ever after. Fortunately ... my opinion on this point varies from day-to-day ... the end doesn't involve dying most of the time, either. Nope. You simply find out you traded being an ugly, pariah duck for being an ugly, pariah swan. I need to apologize here - we are not literally ugly. We are merely seen that way by the cis swans. The ducks, of course, are thrilled to be rid of us.

Life goes on. Time to be a swan. Off you swim into Swan Lake. Crap. Open water… Not used to that… Hey, they're all swimming around in pairs. Where's the flock? So you swim into the reeds and shallows. THAT got you quite a look. Next, you try to swim up to one of those pairs to say hello. YOW, that was quite a nip on the butt! How about hanging out on shore? Huh, every time I walk up, everyone goes swimming. Weird. Finally, you spot a bunch of familiar looking ducks off in a corner of the lake. They aren't moving around at all and you figure you can just slip in and take a breather for a while.

BOOM!!!


"Al, look here. It wasn't a black duck at all, it's some kind of weird swan thing."

"It sure fooled me, Bob."

"Me too. Now what? We're not supposed to kill swans!"

"Don't worry, no one's gonna care. Good thing you got it, Bob. Gotta keep the gene pool clean."

"Yeah, you're right. It was asking for it anyway… Should've never been where it was."

Now right about this point, your audience is looking at you, completely appalled. If they got the point (questionable), you will get all kinds of assurances. Naturally, were you recording them as they walked away, you would hear a completely different story, but that's another, well, story. Even more unlikely is the possibility that one of the women with whom you are talking will offer to take you shopping to address your abysmal taste in fashion. Oh well! Ignorance is bliss! Off to the mall…

[gonegirl]

All of us who have transitioned are dealing with issues that are different from our past lives. It is very much a case of trading one set of problems for another. Some people who have transitioned retain large portions of their old life, but it's not common.

Analogies don't mean much when you can't find a job in your expert field because you're just too different, or your ex spouse resents your equal right to child custody and split of assets and makes sure you feel the pain, or friends who committed to supporting you through transition never showed up. Add to that, income issues (I'm going from $120 p/hr to $12), post surgery depression, complications with healing, and general stress and depression from dealing with all of the aforementioned, then it's no wonder that we advise to be very, very sure of your motives to transition before pulling the pin. Having an intimate and lasting relationship is another whole ballgame.

I'd do it again though, not that I had much choice in the matter. I am living my own life now, which is all we really ever wanted, right?

[PaulaQ]

Do you have any others in your local community you can reach out to, Theresa? It's really hard to go this alone, and I have a sense that you are really isolated out there.

[Debb]

I am loving this thread!

Arbon: I am sorry if that hurts. I truly am; I mean no unkindness by it.

It's just that this thread is a catalyst for me to start thinking, <before> I complete transitioning, what comes afterward. My therapist and I have discussed it already a bit, because as she tells me, you are not just trans; you are you, and part of you is the transsexual. There are so many other things about yourself.

I am fortunate to have to think about these doubts now. I know, it will be different if/when I complete transition; I will have other problems, problems that I am not expecting right now .. but it is always good to be able to keep in mind.

I appreciate everyone's input here. Thank you all.

[GabbiSophia]

I am not sure how to love this thread ... that baffles me ... this scares the crap out me because I do not want this yet it seems the only way. It's either that or I may end up going off the deep end for real. This reality bites and so does the next one from what I can read. Being an outcast my whole life just to become an outcast again? Not sure I will ever love that thought.

[PretzelGirl]

Theresa, it is hard to go through a major life event or two. It is harder to have additional change along with it. Give yourself room to let it get in the rear view mirror enough so you can breathe. Remember, if you need me, I will come up. Just call. Don't let hope get away from you. It will be okay.

[Leah Lynn]

I think that it's the intensity of the focus we put on the transition. Complete a step, there's another step to take on this journey. Each step a milestone to the individual. Once completed, there is nothing to focus on, nothing to achieve. Much like a professional, an architect for instance (my uncle comes to mind here). His world revolved around his business. When a project was completed, there would be another one to work on. This was his life. When he sold his business, he retired. Suddenly there was nothing to focus on. He had no hobbies, his beloved architecture was his hobby as well as his livelihood. In about six months, he committed suicide. There was nothing else in his life to move his focus to.

Is this what we are facing? Suddenly there is a major void because there is no longer that goal to strive for? Do we maybe need to split our focus and enjoy something else part of the time? Turn down the intensity and take it one day at a time? Plan ahead, somehow, to have something else to turn our attention to when we reach that goal?

I'm a truck driver, not a psychologist. I have lived 64 years, and I've seen plenty. Just one person's observations. Take it for what it's worth, and that ain't much.

Leah