Sinking in

Faith, in most cases it is garbage. There is no good reason to believe something without good evidence. In it's most common uses faith makes you blind, ignorant, and just flat out gullible. I don't have much faith, in fact I have no faith in it's common use. I have my own way of using it.

Faith to me is the counter to doubt. Doubt is assuming you're wrong without enough evidence, faith is assuming you're right. As I like to say, doubt is the tool of intelligence. In my opinion, doubt is the only true learning tool we have, we must doubt to find the truth if not we just assume. Doubt is the cornerstone of an inner dialogue. We tend to not make ourselves, our emotions, our actions the target of doubt, we operate mostly on faith in that regard. What I'm saying is correct, I'm doing the right thing, etc etc.

That isn't the case so much for me, and I would hazard to guess also not the case for many TG's. I was "trained" to doubt myself at a very young age. Not just my ability to do things mind you, that's bad enough, but I was forced to doubt my feelings, the very idea of who I am, my own thoughts and desires. How is it possible for me to be surrounded by thousands of people every day and not a single one can see the same me as I do? How is it everyone I know wants me to feel and act in ways that are not at all how I want to feel and act? I know now that obviously no one can see what I don't show them, but that's not how you feel about it as a teenager. It's not very hard to go from those sort of thoughts to "I'm not supposed to be alive.".

 I'm not here looking for pity, being a teenager is hard enough, but no one should have that level of self doubt in them. To not just think of suicide as stopping the pain or saving me from continuing, but also as erasing a mistake. Like whiting out my name on a page to put something proper in its place.

Faith is the only defense against that. I had no real "proof" I should go on or that I'm no worse, no less of a human being then anyone else. Faith is what I've been running on all of my life. Some ricocheting idea that there will be something better eventually. I had to build up as much faith as I could muster to tell my family. I had to have faith without sufficient evidence that I am doing the right thing. I had to convince myself that the doubt has done it's job, it has made me think of all the possible options. I have this one option left, transitioning, and it's time to try and do the thing I have feared the most in my life.

I find it puts me in a bit of a fog. Thinking more or less, just go through the motions until it becomes natural. "Fake it until you make it." as they say. Every now and then a thought breaks through the fog, "Is this really happening?"

Yeah, it is.

That question/answer is barely starting to sink in now. I'm very slowly starting to let the faith go, like holding feathers to the wind one at a time, and reluctantly letting it go after making sure it'll lift off safely. Each time I let some go I have to make sure doubt isn`t there waiting around the corner to fill it`s place. I feel like a magician making someone disappear behind a sheet to make someone else reappear. Only I`m raising the sheet very slowly and, well, I`m the only one watching, performing, and participating in the show.

That makes me wonder though, rhetorically, what do others see now while the sheet is down?