A letter to my younger self

[patti.jean]

I have expressed here before that I facilitate a Gender Book Club at our local LGBT community center. The Book Clubs selection for June was “The Letter Q: Queer Writers' Notes to Their Younger Selves” The book is collection of 64 letters written by authors to their younger selves. As part of the discussion, the club is encouraging everyone, even if you have not been part of the book club, to give thought to writing a letter of advice to your younger self. So, I went first and this is my letter to my younger self that was published in the local LGBT newsletter.

Letter to my younger transgender self.
Inspired by the book “The Letter Q: Queer Writers' Notes to Their Younger Selves”
By: Patti

Where you are from does not determine who you will become. Where you have been does not determine where you are going. Being yourself will not be easy, you will try to suppress what you feel to find a world where you can fit in. You will be challenged with pushing aside guilt and shame. I wish I could tell you how to avoid being so hard on yourself, but there are no easy answers. It will take time to understand who you are and adjust to a world that believes in you.

Trying to fit into a mold that is not you, will always fail in some way. Be true to who you are. Being in a relationship while suppressing part of you, no matter how committed you are to fitting in and making it work only delays the inevitable. This is easy to say from where I am now, when all you want is to fit in, the harder you hold on, the more difficult and painful this becomes.

Explore, yes wonder to the fringes of what you feel and look around. This is where you will find solace in expressing yourself. Yes once again easy for me to say, I know this will require some tough decisions, maybe requiring you to distance you from people in your life, but these things have always been the price of being an explorer. You will discover a new and better world.

By the way, joining the Marine Core to become a man is going to be a great experience, but the becoming a man thing is not going to work. Some more advice; when you are in California stay in California! I will never understand why a Midwest farm “boy” was so quick to leave California and go back to Michigan. Going back to your hometown and your high school sweetheart, thinking you have changed, may work in a Bruce Springsteen song, but it is not meant for you. Sorry!

You will eventually find your way, I only hope, with my advice, your journey has less detours and takes less years then it took me.

[rocval2001]

Thank you for sharing Patti-Jean - I have thought of what a letter to my younger self would look like but never wrote it down.

[Stephaniew]

I wish I received a letter from the future... it would have been easier and less painful... if accepted who I was and started living as the female I was inside

[Beverley Sims]

Joining the Marine Core et al is great for personal development.

I think my service life helped me along the road to where I am now, admirably.

"Tar and Cement" by Verdelle Smith is the song that inspires me to move on and leave my home town.

As does the movie,"The Last Picture Show."

Nothing is constant but change.

[Kate Simmons]

My younger self would probably wonder just what the hell I was talking about.

[Hermana]

I would not have listened to my older self, for I "knew it all" when I was younger. I guess there are some of us who need to crash and burn before the lessons get learned...

Love

[Teresa]

Patti-Jean,
Being the same age we are both looking back at the same time span and it's so easy to write on the wall wise words that you hope a younger generation will pick up on and maybe not make too many bad mistakes .
I look back at my life and see it as a series of accidents, as a young person you go headlong into situations, some you've created and some others have thrown at you. Mostly luck is with you and you come through OK and when you don't hopefully you can still pick your self up, dust yourself down and give it another shot !
I was talking to my brother in law about some mistakes I'd made, he simply said we all make mistakes, we have to learn from them and move on, dwelling on then retrospectively is not going to change them. A bad mistake could lead you down a road with a happy ending ! It's life !!