My surgeries haven't been scheduled yet. However, they're not far distant either. I'll book them this year unless things go catastrophically wrong.
...and I've thought a lot about how I got where I am now.
I wrote the following one sleepless night... and never posted it. I feared I might have to defend my feelings. Here it may be safe to do so.
I did send it to two people whom I knew to be suffering. One told me it resonated. That made me glad. The other... did not.
I know we're all different, and our situations are different. And also our needs, desires and destinations. And as such I don't know whether you find this helpful. If not, be at peace. It is my story, and does not need to be yours.
Like just about everyone, I'd felt strange since my early childhood.
Wrong. I wasn't a boy. Or I was, but I shouldn't have been.
The physical reality was undeniable, though. And I couldn't see any way out.
Along the way some things happened that put my emotions in suspended animation. I lived... but wasn't alive. I'd lost all hope. I only existed because I knew I was still useful to others. What had made me me had been extinguished.
But what I thought had died—the core of my being—wasn't annihilated after all. Tiny roots spread out from the seed sleeping in the ashes of its funeral pyre. And fed on the incessant pain I still felt.
That pain guided me. Slowly. I only knew what I had to do. And did. One step at a time. Although as far as I knew it was useless.
I began to search for information. Information on anyone who had accomplished the impossible. And found many accounts of people who were transitioning. But... what I found didn't very much resemble what I needed. It only increased my anxiety and distress. Nothing seemed to fit.
Passing... yes. Not being seen as a man dressed as a woman was definitely important. It was essential. I'd seen the ex-football player in the movie The World According to Garp. That fate scared me. It seemed much worse to me than even being a man.
That said, being seen as a woman was not what I wanted.
Much talk also centered on how trying to pass was harmful. That one should be happy just expressing one's "inner woman." And that it was self-acceptance that was the key to happiness.
But... that wasn't what I needed either.
There was a lot of other discussion. Of politics. And makeup. And clothes. And identities. And expression. And affirmation. And validity...
I myself just wanted to be a girl. No... I needed to be a girl. Not act the part of a girl. Not dress up as a girl. And not be "accepted" as a girl.
Just be one. Nothing else.
And I could not see that ever happening.
Meanwhile my attempts to alleviate the pain continued to mold me. I hated my beard so it had to go. I'd always envied my sisters' long hair and grew mine. If I couldn't have their overall shape I could at least train to get my waist close to the same girth. Whatever brought at least some relief. Even though I was resigned to all of it only making me look, sound and seem ever more eccentric.
Because I was a man.
Had I known back then what some friends have recounted this past year it would have given me hope. And maybe helped free me earlier. Because it paradoxically turns out I was beginning to "pass." But no-one thought to tell me.
Like I've mentioned elsewhere, the turning point was when I was denied entry to the men's toilet. And shown to the women's side. Whose attendant then proceeded to look me over, and turned me back to the men's side. After which both attendants went on to glare at each other malevolently...
That was a shock. I couldn't believe what had happened. But it did give me hope... that I could at least be seen as a woman. And that did feel nice. Maybe there was something to the talk on the forums after all...
But... to just be seen as one still felt foreign. Complicated. Sad. Inadequate.
I wasn't interested in practicing how a woman moves. Or speaks. Or behaves. I'd worked as an actor and model—and knew very well that learning a role did not make me that person. Makeup and clothes wouldn't make me a woman.
Even so, I slowly began to accept that an in-between state was the best I could hope for. And that even a twilight existence just might be better than the status quo.
Meanwhile the pain escalated back to a constant ache whose intensity matched what I'd felt before my quintessence and memories had been obliterated.
The first part of what finally jolted me back to life was seeing my family after a blank of some years. My relatives seemed bemused when they saw me. I was bemused when some confused me with my sisters. And when one of them asked me straight out I told her how I'd felt ever since I was tiny.
The second part was when at my family's behest I went to see a gynecologist/endocrinologist. The first hormone test results were strange enough that he also ordered a karyotype test. Whose results dashed my momentary hope of actually being a girl, and caused me to cry the whole evening and into the night.
But his words—that the result didn't matter, because I'd need the same treatment regardless—did remain with me. Although their significance only became clear after the third part...
...which was my first meeting with the psychiatrist whom I asked for help to get help. At the end of our meeting she told me I'd been born a girl and grown up as one to be a woman. It was just that no-one had noticed.
And I could be fixed.
And I cried. And cried some more.
For the first time out of pure relief. And joy.
Because it was true.
I had been. And I was.
And the memories that I'd erased returned. Together with the accompanying agony. But now I welcomed them. They made me clearly see that what I'd needed then was what I also needed now. And what I'd needed ever since I was tiny.
Not to change me, but to simply correct what was physically wrong.
...and that's my story. The path I walked to where I am.
Now... I only want to step through the door to freedom.
