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I am more fortunate than many of you who will never get the opportunity to live as yourselves. For those who reveal ourselves willingly or accidentally, the cost is often rejection, exclusion, and emotional torture as if they pulled our fingernails out. Many years on, thoughts of the ones we once thought loved us but didn't don't come very often. Thoughts of ending it must be fought off but we trudge on in the hopes that the past will punish us less tomorrow.
Peace
Gwen
Comments
A day at a time
I can resonate with this comment today Gwen,
Depression,suicidal ideology and body dysmorphia can only be taken a day at a time.
for those in our online family here at BC when it feels like it's gotten too much I beg you to reach out. We are stronger together and I myself will try my darndest not to let you fall
to hug is to be and to be is to be hugged
view the world through the eyes of a child and relearn the wonder and love
Allie elle loved and cared for and resident of the kids camp full time
Painful Lives
I see and meet so many people around me who are trudging through things that seem unfair and believe me, religious belief spares one nothing. Having no Father in our lives is common. Many of us had parents that were just awful. For myself, life seems relatively easy right now, though I sometimes need to kick my own ass and stop with the pity party. When I look in the mirror, I see someone who is ancient and trying very hard to be the woman I think I am. I am astonished that most people buy it. I am thankful even If I do not deserve it.
my sister gave me a pendant a few years ago...
My sister gave me a pendant a few years ago, with a comment about how I seemed to just write off and walk away from anyone who wouldn't accept me for who I was. She said the pendant kind summed up that attitude. I started wearing it again, and told her that, 'Yep, it has summed-up my life.'
charlie
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/missing-without-a-trace-cha...
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/832524
Pick a side
I love the sentiment. Still, we need to double check which side of the bridge we are on before we ignite it.
Your friend
Crash
No Less than 4 stories
I tried Amazon and there are no less than 4 stories by that title.
My attitude
Once I had committed to transitioning, was if you aren't with me, keep out of my way. Perhaps not a particularly feminine way to approach life, but I have no desire to have anyone walk over me or tell me that I can't do what I knew was right for me. It's all a huge gamble and you have to have belief in both the rightness of your cause and that you will give 100% to it. It isn't easy, risking social suicide, and other prejudices that may cost you friends, family, jobs and possibly even your home. I was lucky, in doing a job that was performed by women as much as men. I had supportive neighbours and friends and I am able to cope with my own company.
Having had my son take his own life, seeing the mess it leaves, means I am unlikely to do it and like everyone else life occasionally got me down and I wondered if it was worth the effort. It is and I also decided that if I accepted responsibility for my life, then I was in control of it as much as I could be. A decision I have never regretted. Sometimes it means that I am on my own, but I cope with that and plan for future times.
There is always something you can do, we are never entirely powerless and to change genders, you have to be mentally tough, because it isn't easy, though it's easier in many places than when I did it, 35 years ago (see my blog). But if it's what you need to do, plan and prepare and go for it and brook no thoughts of failure. As Napoleon said, a good general makes his own luck.
Angharad
"who we are" isn't just gender
I was indeed rejected, ostracised, and emotionally abused for being who I was, but it wasn't specifically about gender. My parents wanted us kids to fit into their fantasy of what the family was supposed to be, or at least not require any emotional effort. It didn't help that they preferred girls and we were 4 boys. (Later, we got a baby sister, and how she was treated made it obvious how much they preferred girls.)
School was a problem because they had an idea of what kids our age should be able to do and we couldn't. For one thing, all of us kids in my family, like my own children, were slow to mature and generally didn't have the executive function to do what they expected of us. That, of course, was treated as intentional disobedience. The fact that all the punishments just made things worse was not seen as a reason to do anything differently. More emotional abuse.
The rejection and harassment by the other boys could be seen as gender-related, in that I wasn't acting the way boys were supposed to. I got called "queer" a lot, but somehow nobody interpreted it as me being feminine -- I never got called sissy or "girl." But it was also that I thought original thoughts, and where I was in the USA South you weren't supposed to say or think anything that hadn't be said and thought back in Robert E Lee's day.
Fortunately, once I went off to college, I got away from the family and from the South and thus away from the abuse. I'd also emotionally separated from my parents by then (for the rest of my life, I addressed them as "Mrs. [last name]" and "Mr. [last name]", but they didn't seem to notice.) But it couldn't undo the damage (C-PTSD) that the relentless emotional abuse in my first 16-18 years of life did to me; half a century later, I'm still trying to heal.
On the bright side, I've learned how much I can survive. If someone rejects for being trans (which doesn't happen a lot around here), I just figure, good riddance to bad rubbish. A lot of stuff that really throws other people (e.g., the COVID epidemic) doesn't bother me all that much -- it's kind of "here we go again...."
Unfit
parents, is not an uncommon occurrence. Though the gender curveball, may push some of the marginal into the unfit category. Regardless, many (both trans and cis) have to trudge through life, without the greatest gift every child deserves, a home that is safe and filled with unconditional love.
As you know, it is better for your emotional health to be thankful for the good in your life than to begrudge that you cannot change.
You probably inflicted your share of emotional torture as a parent. It comes with the territory.
Peace, Cheryl
I've kinda been lucky too.
Most folk seem to be okay with me actin' and lookin' like a girl. I do get weird looks sometimes, and once in a while somebody'll say somethin' they seem to think is clever, or stuff like that. Mostly though, I'm pretty much left to be myself. I have lost some family over the changes I've made in my life, but I'm glad for the family I still have. Plus, I'm grateful for the family of the heart who've I've adopted, and who've adopted me. I'm also really grateful for alla friends I've made here. I know stuff can be tough for a lot of us, 'specially with stuff we've gone through, and still go through, but bein' able to at least know others out there understand me, and care about me, makes fightin' to be myself worth it. So keep bein' your awesome selves!
{{{huggles}}}