Rekindling Vulnerability

I want to start this one by saying nothing I say here is indicative of transgender people in general, this is just how things happened to me specifically. And there is a point, eventually

I can pinpoint the feeling I had that started the hiding of my gender to myself. It started when I was in my teens, exactly when, I can't pinpoint, neither can I pinpoint the exact circumstance. How it started though was a thought, "Why can't boys and girls do/say/want the same thing?"

After being made fun of enough times for doing/saying/wanting things that were typically reserved for girls, I started trying to reason out why it was ok for me to want to. Strangely, language plays a part, I often used words that "only girls used" like "beautiful, lovely, dear, honey (when referring to others)" and had it pointed out to me a few times that only girls said that. I also started taking notice to what other people could "get away with" and found there was a pattern. I also found I didn't fit that pattern, and I had to explain to myself why I didn't. An example that sticks out in my memory is how often I was called a girl, and how I secretly, desperately, wanted to be called a girl but could never let anyone know, I always had to act offended when it happened. I think if at this point I had any knowledge of transgender culture I would have started making sense of it in a different way, but I didn't.

I used my desires backwards. Instead of acting on them, I used them to help me hide who I was even more. As if from a bad joke, I took everything I wanted and did the opposite. I took cues from men and women around me, building my 'shell' as perfectly as I could. My therapist, who knows me pretty close to best these days, tells me I'm obviously an observer of life, and of people. I used that, or became that I'm not sure, for the reason of hiding myself. I'd see what a man would do, compare it to what I would do and make adjustments as necessary, the same with women.

I created a world in which what I wanted didn't matter at all. In the recent past, since my transition, I've thought that it was simply not being a woman that made me so bitter. What I'm seeing now is it was everything I did to myself that made me angry and depressed all of the time. People say "oh I never get what I want." and they are not being that literal. I truthfully never got what I want because I wouldn't let myself have it in fear of giving myself away. I don't mean I didn't get a car, or a certain girl I wanted to date or something so big as that. I mean I didn't act the way I felt, I didn't say the words I wanted to say, I didn't express feelings I wanted to express, fundamental things that people do as they please so often they don't even consider them. I considered them, every passing second.

Who would want to live like that? Truly getting to do nothing at all that you want to do. This of course made the more tangible things hit me even harder, and that would cause the release of anger at those around me.

After I figured out I wanted to be a woman, even if only in my fantasies, that became the most powerful thing I would simultaneously hate and want. It would eat at me how much I wanted to be a woman. Not only did I want to, I thought I never could. I looked up things in desperation trying to find a way to transition, even thought I didn't know what "transition" meant at that point, I didn't even know that that was what I was trying to do. It seemed I had nothing but roadblocks that made it impossible, yet another thing I wanted and couldn't get.

Over time this wore down my ability to have any passion for anything. Why want something, anything, when you feel like you can never have anything you wanted. That was how I trained myself to think over the years. I remember the last day I had passion, the day I squashed what was left of it in an attempt to rid myself of the hurt of disappointment. I was on my bed in an apartment I was sharing with my brother. I'm not sure if he was home or not at the time, I just remember laying on my bed, hating myself for wanting to be a woman, hating myself for wanting it because I 'knew' I could never have it. Hating myself for breaking my own rule of not wanting things I can't get. Hating how it had been an ongoing desire for many years and all it ever did was leave me unfulfilled. I decided then, after a river of tears, to never think about it again, I would never try to look up how I could transition, never let myself be consumed by the thought of being a woman, never let myself slip out of this 'man-shell' I created for myself because it all brought me nothing but pain.

The irony of it all was I told myself then, "I will live to regret this decision I'm making right now." and I was completely right. After my two days off work I wrote about previously, I've started to become more honest about my feelings, and more direct with my questions to myself. I see now how I cut myself off from the world around me that night. I let go of any passion I had, of any desires I had. I wanted nothing after that, I just did things I thought I should do, or were expected of me. This is also why I act as if everything is happening to someone else, because in my mind, everything was happening ot someone else, it was happening to the character I made to present to the rest of the world.

The most damaging part of this is with the loss of passion, the loss of connection to the world, the feeling of everything happening to someone else, I lost my ability to love. I guess I shouldn't say love. What I lost was the desire to attach myself to someone. To let myself be vulnerable and let the possibility of getting hurt happen. That may be painful for some people in my life to read, but it is something I'm coming to terms with myself. I couldn't let myself become attached because that involves wanting someone, and if there is anything I learned in my life, things and acts are far easier to obtain in life then people, and I couldn't let myself want anything, I certainly couldn't let myself want the second most difficult thing in my life to get, my transition being the first. There is no greater pain then thinking you have someone to love you forever and letting them into your heart just to lose them forever instead.

It has taken the last few days of acceptance and honest questioning for me to start to come to terms with what I have done to myself. None of it was really conscious, other then that day in my apartment on my bed. I crave the passion I slowly made myself lose. I crave feeling it again. I do next to nothing because I want to, Even my clothing is mostly made up of things I "have" to wear. Shoes, pants, shirt, bra, etc. Putting on things like jewelry made me feel awkward, and sort of still does, even though I love them. It feels awkward because it is letting a little bit of my want, or desire, to flash out for the world to see, and I'm more used to hiding that instead.

Another thing this acceptance has done is I'm starting to feel like I am living my life, like things are happening to 'me'. Like I am the character in my movie, rather then like I'm watching myself play someone else in a movie. I want to remember what it feels like to have a passion for my own life. It is actually scary to me, it means opening myself up like I haven't allowed myself since I was fairly young. I used to think the way I am now is just what happens to people over time, with age. But I hear others talking about their life, how they can think of a person and get butterflies, or how there is something they do, some hobby that they really identify themselves with. There was a time that I would immerse myself in anything I was passionate about. Now it seems like "why bother". Why bother when I know it will go away, or I simply will not get what I wanted anyway.

I am finally starting to get something I want out of life through my transition, but even still I don't allow myself to be truly content with it. There is a part of me that believes this could end at any moment. That doesn't even include the things I assume I'll never get, top and bottom surgery, all of my facial hair and body/chest hair removed, etc. To allow myself the excitement of honestly believing I will eventually get these things feels to me to invite the inevitable pain of disappointment.

I am starting to truly see myself in the world now, I'm seeing how I am indeed a beginning trans-woman. I've accepted a lot of things as "how it is" because this is exactly where a new trans-woman should be. Now I just need to see all of the things I want as things that are actually obtainable. To look to a future and picture myself with breasts and a vagina with more then pitiful hope, but actual desire, and belief it will happen. To be honest though, right now, it feels impossible to let myself be vulnerable enough to get excited over something, to let the fantasy play out in my mind like it will become reality. To allow someone in my life to make me feel safe, like they are here forever, that they mean the things they do and say, the compliments they give, the promises of love. That seems like a feeling left for the young, basically it feels like a feeling that is not possible for me to have any more. It is to the point that I assume others don't get together because of some mutual "spark", they get together for more tangible reasons, loneliness for example.

I know the overall tone of this post doesn't seem very positive, but in truth it is. It has taken accepting a lot of things about myself and some emotional breakthroughs and understanding to start seeing what I have done to myself as a result of being transgender. Or I guess, how I have tried to deal with being transgender in my past. Now that I accept myself, and have more understanding, I can face these things and start undoing them. I don't know how many times and how many different people I have told that this last week, the days my previous post was about, has changed me and my life. I can suddenly see so many things about me that I have an answer for. Like I finally found the key to opening so many doors. I have found peace with so many of my life long troubles the last few days I could write several posts about them if I had the time. I keep having emotional progress daily because of this new me that has emerged from those two days. Whether it is accepting someone about me that is who I am, or coming to terms with parts about me I wasn't away of, unconscious defense mechanisms like I have talked about here, it is all good, it is all progress and I welcome it all. Others may not think this way, but I feel like I can not truly grow as a person, or grown into the person I want to be without first understanding the person I am. Maybe this is something others do at a much younger age and I am just slow, or maybe it is something few people do, I don't really know. What I do know is I'm starting to make more and more sense of myself, and I'm starting to become more and more content with myself, and that feels like a rare and beautiful thing to accomplish.