Ask Yourself Why Do I Want To Make My Life Difficult
.Ask Yourself Why Do I Want to Make My Life Difficult
November 11,2019
If you will truly look at the title and think lets, make my life a whole series of challenges. One doesn’t typically wake up and say let’s make my life a challenge and add to life’s burden. As a transgender person I’ve spent countless nights and days of trying to understand the feeling within my body. It became obvious to me something didn’t feel right inside as I had a big conflict with a feeling that I should be a girl which I didn’t understand. There wasn’t a perfect explanation of this feeling or a sign to explain my feeling. I enjoyed some masculine things like cars and tools, but I’ve never had desires to hunt and really had little desire for fishing. I enjoyed being outside in nature and loved auto racing. Inside my mind though I had a feeling that I was a girl. I tried on some girl clothing because of the feeling and felt an inner peace. I enjoyed doing some crocheting, cleaning and cooking. The reality of trying to understand these feelings were hard fought in my mind for countless days. My lack of knowledge and the fears associated with understanding gender along with limited information kept me from disclosing this feeling of being a girl. The complete and utter fear of loosing the people I love most in my life kept me hidden. I had to hide my tears that tore me up for years trying to hide my secret. Being unsure what would happen if I disclosed my true feelings because of the lack of information at the current time kept me silent. The reality of hiding the many aspects of wanting to cry, being emotional and overall communicate openly hurt very severely. Think for a moment if your most valued loved one’s would walk away or refuse to acknowledge you simply for accepting your true feelings. Let’s look at the fact that many in society look at trans as if your nothing but a predator. Throughout generations the thoughts were gender is a mental problem and trans were labeled with such a title. Thankfully doctors and therapists have corrected the mental description which explains gender isn’t a mental disorder. Imagine for a minute the possibility of loosing your friends because of accepting oneself. One of the most amazing things is the fact of being rejected by a religion that you’ve grown up in. If god created all then he created me. This is just another challenge that many of us face as trans people. Then to think maybe I’ll be kicked out of a business because I’ve completely accepted myself. Realization of the many things I’ve done and hidden from people in life have created multiple challenges in my life. I had to hide from everyone in life at some level. Hiding created several levels of fear of becoming too close to people in school, work, family, and life in general. The fear of telling my parents tore me up for years as I tried to understand my feelings. With my extreme fear of displeasing my mom because I’ve never wanted to ever cause her any hurt/harm or sadness because of me living my life the way I truly felt. Then comes the many other challenges of life such as dealing with health. Wondering at one point what’s going to happen if I go to an emergency room and they see my polished nails and or panties. How will I be treated by the medical staff. Again, very thankful that more medical fields are becoming more educated which is helping. The uncertainty of equality throughout our country and hate from people that can’t wrap their heads around being transgender. The fear of loosing or trying to get a job because of societies lack of understanding that being transgender isn’t a choice. You are or you aren’t born transgender it’s not a choice one makes. Aside from the fact that there can be extreme self-harm because of denying one’s true feelings. The emotions of hiding from family and friends as you self-discover the feelings of gender that can’t erase. Once you acknowledge your gender another whole group of issues arise. The expense of therapist and counseling is the first of many financial hurdles one will face. Visiting doctors or therapist and expressing the truth about true feelings can be scary and brings on anxiety. Undergoing hormone replacement therapy and allowing the adjustments to happen takes time . Squeezing in a name and gender change which can cost above one thousand dollars for an attorney to make this happen. Once a judge agrees and allows the name and gender change then a multitude of different things must be changed. Although the name change procedure is usually a very happy time the challenge and confusion around trying to figure out exactly how to change and correct each item can be a bit of a challenge. When someone has finally dealt with all this acknowledgement then sometimes comes surgery. While being transgender isn’t a road map and each person feelings and fears are their own. There’s no perfect way to be trans except to accept one’s true feelings. While surgery may work for some others may forgo this step because of financial, fears, health issues, or a multitude of other reasons, but this makes them no less trans. One of the many things I’ve learned from attending groups of trans people is that hours, days and years of thoughts and feeling have been wrestled with by each one before coming to understand this gender feeling. Generally, once a trans person has fully accepted the feeling of gender and adjusted their life to one’s true gender a happiness happens. This doesn’t eliminate all fears as some fears become reality as some family, friends, and society reject you. Worry about equality and be treated fairly by jobs, businesses, and government protrude very strongly on one’s mind. This is just a glimpse of the process I can’t begin to tell you of the many hours in thoughts and dreams trying to come to realization of the whole process of understanding of my gender.