Today I want to speak to both sides, while giving some advice to those that have asked for it. I don't like giving direct advice, for one reason. In this, you must forge your own path. It is the nature of the hand we have been dealt. While following your own path is wise advice for the cis gender as well, for the transgender it is of utmost importance, in my opinion. No one, not even me, can tell you if transition is what you need to make you happy. You must choose that for yourself. I can't stress this enough. The last thing I want to do is somehow convince someone to go through the hurricane that is transition when they could have made themselves happy in another way, if only they, themselves, decided to choose that path. Not to mention, choosing to transition, yourself, is what keeps many of us going. It is the knowledge that I chose this, I know it is what I needed. I didn't do this for anyone else but me. When all becomes unbearable, many times that is the one thing that pulls you through. So with this in mind, I will continue.
I spent some time today reading over the things I have been writing in my journal. I have decided to share some of them, mostly unfiltered. I'm hoping it will do two things. For those who are wondering if transitioning is what they should do, I hope it shows you the vast difference between who you are now and who you can become. That may sound a little presumptions but while reading, the constant theme I seen was change resulting in happiness. Second, I hope this can show the cis gender why it is so important for those of us that need to transition to do so.
One of the main things I realized was how much my aggression has slipped away. Before when I was pretending to be a man I was almost constantly angry. Most times my thoughts were taken up with some sort of violence. Be it revenge for slights that I felt happened, though probably didn't, or anger with the entire world for things not making sense to me. So rarely was I happy. If I wasn't angry I was depressed, turning my anger inward toward myself. Blaming myself for everything that was wrong in my life and the world around me. There were so many things that caused all of these feelings in me. I felt completely out of control. Not in the sense that I couldn't stop myself from the things I did, but that I had no say in anything including, and especially, my own life. After years and years of trying to understand myself, trying to understand what made the question "Why do I want to be a girl?" never cease, of trying to justify everything I desired so that it fit into the world I was surrounded by left me with a complete sense of hopelessness which eventually turned to anger toward everything and everyone. I don't know any specific examples, but I have no doubt whatsoever that I have thought someone was attacking me when in truth they were trying to help, that is how clouded I had become. My anger and aggression was the single emotion I had no control over, ironic that isn't it? How the lack of control led me to live nearly entirely in an emotional state I had no control over. It was also the main thing about myself that, upon reflection, I hated. I would hate the things I said in an argument, or that I caused said argument, or the actions I would take. It never felt to me that this angry person I was was the person I was supposed to be.
Now that I am a year into my transition, I didn't even notice my aggression slipping away. Of course this has a fair bit to do with replacing my testosterone with estrogen, in that it is chemical as much as it is psychological, but the result is the same. I have such peace of mind now it makes me pause every time I consciously realize it. It hasn't disappeared of course, everyone gets angry. The biggest difference is that my day to day life isn't consumed with thoughts of how to get back at someone, or how I would defend myself if certain things happened. Especially I no longer assume everyone hates me, or is trying to make my life worse, or trying to tell me how to live my life and being insulted beyond reason for it. I am far more calm. It just feels "right" it feels like I am being me, and not the monster I was.
Another thing I have come to realize is something that may be a little more difficult to explain. Many, many times in my past I had the thought, "If I was a woman people would see me for who I was." Writing it out like that and looking at it with hindsight seems like I was constantly thinking the answer I was looking for. Well, I guess I was, but I didn't see it that way. It was a form of envy, or jealously. I would think "women can say/think/do these things and people fully accept it, why can't I?" As I have said before, so many years of trying to hide this from everyone and so little information made me hide the truth from myself best of all. I assumed, and I'm fairly certain I am correct, that people seen me as arrogant or constantly angry (which I was) or thought less of everyone, thought I was a "know it all", etc. Honestly I assumed everyone seen me as just about every bad trait a person could have. I'm not sure if it is completely true, or if it was all just what I had convinced myself of because I hated myself so much. Either way, it was what I believed.
I find now people see me with attributes I always wished they would. People see my passion instead of anger, my thirst for knowledge instead of being a braggart, my self reflection/understanding instead of arrogance. These seem to be the result of a combination of things. Probably the most important is I am being true to myself and people are able to see how genuine you are when you are indeed being genuine. Also, people have responded to the shedding of weight I have gone through, and am still going through. Every personal and emotional breakthrough I have gets reflected back at me through the reception of others. Perhaps least important is that I am being outspoken with being transgender and people have at least some small idea that it must have been difficult and see the strength I have gained through it. Which brings me to another point.
My confidence. Before I had no real confidence in myself. Yes, I thought I was good at some things, I was "confident" I was a great swimmer for example, but I had no shred of confidence in the person I was. I could not, at all, see myself as a whole person, or barely a person at all. I would think, and say often, that I must be from another planet or some such foolishness because I had nothing in common with anyone, I had no footing to gain purchase on the person I was. I was as lost in my person as someone living in an illusion. To me, there seemed nothing about myself that could be used to make a whole person, a person of any worth. I was as at odds with myself as one could imagine, never understanding who I was or who I was meant to, or could have been.
These days, people comment on my confidence often. There is no secret to it. I have searched myself far and wide, over years and years, to find who I am. I came to this understanding after as much inner reflection as is possibly reasonable. Something every single transgender person is forced to do. There is no way around it, no short cut. You have to deal with every bit of doubt, everything about you that doesn't make sense, because nothing, or little, about you seems "right". You question yourself endlessly. You question desires, emotions and thoughts. Not just "were they the right thing at the time" but "why do I have these thoughts?". Not only do you question these things, but you question things about yourself that no cis person would ever imagine doing. You question (in my case) why do I have a penis? Yes, that's right. I was born "male" according to some people, but I often questioned why I had a penis, having one making that little sense to me. I questioned if I would feel better with breasts, if I would feel better being called "miss" rather than "sir".
It is my experience that this confidence is something everyone in my life, and in the life of any transgender person who is going through or gone through transition can feel radiate from me and them. It is something I would always see in the past when looking at other transgender women. I would see the strength in them that I could not place, or see in anyone else. And that is something else that seems to be true in all of this. If there is one thing that being transgender and transitioning has given me is a confidence only people with those two traits can possibly have. No cis person has this confidence, they have never been forced to face themselves in such a manner. The transgender person has to face questions that, not only are we the only sort of people that face them, we are ourselves, the only one with any answers to give our self. Everyone can face adversity in the outside world, but when you face it within you, and subsequently overcome it, the reward of confidence is unparalleled.
There are two other things that I have gain from transition, and I would imagine any other transitioning transgender person would also gain. That is perseverance and self-reflection. These two things have been forced upon me, they have become tools of my survival and now that I am transitioning have become tools I can use to launch myself forward in both life and who I am as a person. As unforgiving as it is to the mind, being transgender is a harsh, but effective teacher of what is important. It forces you to learn everything about yourself that you can possibly learn, and at the same time it forces you to keep on going no matter how impossible something may seem. To the majority of people, the desire to want to be the "opposite" gender seems like something from an exercise in thought rather then a desire in reality. Yet there are many of us that live that reality daily. That this thing that seems impossible is the very thing we want... not just want but need in order to live our lives as happy, confident, flourishing human beings. We all see this impossible goal and say "Yes, I can do this.". I feel justified in saying a transgender person is the strongest person anyone can ever meet.
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