This is personally the scariest thing I've ever written, so please bear that in mind when/if you respond.

I’m 43 years old and I know myself. I’m no kid y’know. I’ve got my priorities straight and I know what’s what, I know who I am. I’ve been around. I’ve experienced life. I’ve loved and lost, stood on the sun bright top of mountains and struggled through some deep, dark valleys — hell, I’ve traveled the world. I know what it means to be an adult, to be a man. Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit. Oh, fuckin’ bullshit. I don’t know squat.

It’s amazing how far you can wander through both time and space when you’re running away. I’m still a babe in the woods. I’m still trying to figure out the answers to a seemingly simple question, like “Who am I - really?” I thought I’d answered that a long, long time ago. Turns out I was just fooling myself, hiding from an uncomfortable question that only elicits uncomfortable, even scary and impossible answers.

Who the hell am I, really?

Have I really been running away, or have I been searching for an answer, for myself? I’d like to think the latter, but I know it’s not true. It’s too easy to try to put a positive spin on things, to look at life through a positive, rose-colored lens. That doesn’t help you when you’re trying to get down to the heart of the matter, to find and face the plain, unencumbered and uncomfortable truth.

In the last few weeks Walt Kelly’s old saw from Pogo has come to mind on more than one occasion, namely, “We have met the enemy and he is us!” I am my own worst enemy, and I didn’t even know it. Why? I don’t want to be me. Why? I’m not sure exactly; I’ve always felt that everything I’ve done has been contrived, an act, not really mine — I’ve been playing a character, this guy, this everyman, ‘John’. Just John, this hollow core of a loving human being, one who loves, but feels unworthy of being loved. One who achieves, but takes no satisfaction, no feelings of accomplishment from the act. John’s waiting for something to happen, waiting to be reborn. He’s thought of hurrying the process, still does on occasion, but he’ll never do it. Why? Those he loves he loves too much; he could never hurt them that way, tear a smoking, deep black bleeding hole in their lives. Life’s too rare and precious of a gift; knowing that is what hurts most.

In one sense John is alright; he has his priorities straight and values life, knows he’ll probably never get another shot at this, so he should play the hand he’s been dealt. He wants children, so he’d better find the right woman and settle down to married life — and he’d better not wait too long to do so. He’s been handed life on a silver platter, relatively speaking, so what does he have to complain about? He’s not ugly; he’s healthy. He’s educated,somewhat intelligent and occasionally witty - he’s not exactly poor. He has a number of close friends and has had more than his share of great opportunities in this life. Other people have real problems, like not enough food or clean water. They live in a constant fear of violence and/or don’t have appropriate medicines, or any real opportunity for that matter. They also don’t have time to dwell on such privileged, wishful fantasies as those that John’s recently come to realize have become an obsession. He wastes so much time thinking about them, but does nothing to achieve them. They’re just fantasies, after all. Fantasies are best left as just that, right, impossible dreams? Instead he’s withdrawing, lonely in a crowd, hurting his personal and professional lives by spending so much of his private time reading fictional stories about fictional characters transforming into their private, fictional dream images. ‘Get a grip’ he tells himself. Grow up. Deal with reality. Stop this crap and move on. Easy enough said; John’s berated and belittled himself for years over these weird gender based transformation and sexual fantasies, but they won’t go away. If he puts them aside, they eventually come back, stronger, if not dominating then coloring all of his waking thoughts and perceptions. John therefore lives a distracted life, rarely really in the present moment, but all too often focused on, hoping for a different ‘reality’, a make-believe universe that he’ll never see with his eyes. He’s fully aware that this is an untenable situation; as a result he lives in constant pain, like a sword in the belly, but he’s too nice to tell anyone. Why burden them by trying to explain to them something that he can’t even explain to himself, that he doesn’t fully, or really, understand? Best to not say anything, just grin and bear it. Do that stiff upper lip thing. Pretend that everything is going alright, be happy for what he’s got. It’s a nice life. Soooo nice!

John’s a nice guy in a classic sense; he’ll forever finish last. Why? He lives in fear, fear that he’ll be discovered for the fraud that he is. He’s forever vigilant that his tells’ll be read, that he’ll give his ‘true self’ away. He doesn’t like to admit it, but all too often it’s fear that dictates what he does, or doesn’t do. After all, he’s intimately aware of the truth of FDR’s famous admonition, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself!” John doesn’t know the path around the fear, however, so he’s proactively gregarious, outgoing, living in a land of shielding facades, forever hiding, shading his essence, putting on a brave front. Is he a coward? I don’t know, but living scared has become habitual; it even has a protective basis in experience. He’s seen the faces of loved ones, female partners who’ve glimpsed his true self; they weren’t smiling. They didn’t really talk to him again, just looked at him funny and muttered some niceties the last few times they met; then they stopped crossing John’s path. Those memories are painful because he had cared enough about them to show them a glimpse of his offered secret heart, but they turned it down, spat on it like an unwanted Christmas present. Those hurts were furtive, unspoken, and cut deep to the bone.

It’s so much easier to use a simple device and write about these things in the third person, as if they’re the life of someone else, a fictional character, unreal and at a distance. That’s probably how, why, I’ve dealt with (avoided) this issue by reading other people’s stories online; I could tell myself that this was the author’s tale, not mine; it’s fictional, nothing I need to take seriously. I’m to the point now, however, that I don’t think I can carry on the charade any longer, the burden’s becoming too heavy to bear; it’s crushing me. There are days when I physically feel like I’m choking on this… thing. I’m not even sure what to call it.

Even as I write this I’m doing my best to ignore the elephant in the room; I’ve said nothing in more than two pages about my…difficulties figuring out my gender. If I am going to be true to myself, I have to admit that my personal body image has always been female.

That. Was. Difficult to write.

I just fuckin’ outted myself… fear is, at this moment, nibbling at my core, sending shivers up and down my spine. But I should be used to that, shouldn’t I? I’ve done nothing but live in fear since I was about seven and realized I really wanted to be a girl, act like a girl, be treated like a girl and interact with my friends like a girl, knowing even then that such thoughts were forbidden, that they’d get you hurt. How, why, did I begin to fear at such a young age? I don’t remember anyone overtly telling that I shouldn’t think that way.... Somehow I swam in a river of fear, dragged along by its current, but, like a fish, I was unaware of in what I was submerged. I dwelt in fear for such a long time that when I finally realized what it was, I knew its flavors all too well. Maybe now I’m afraid to live without it; it’s familiar, part of my atmosphere, of home.

But as I grew I tried to stay slim, to not bulk up, to stay flexible, to retain some aspect of girlishness. I tried to not think about it that way, but told myself that being bulky and muscle bound was ugly. If I looked at pictures of body builders, it was the female body builders I identified with, that I wanted to look like, not the male; they were gross. Genetics, testosterone, and time have conspired to make the retention of this body image impossible. This’s why for so long I’ve been ashamed of how I look, of why I find it impossible to believe that a woman could ever find my very masculine body attractive; I don’t — how could they? It’s not me, it’s not who I am, not deep down inside anyway. Since way before the movie "Shallow Hal", for at least the last 20 years, I’ve thought of my outer covering as a ‘fat suit’, something that is not really me, but something encasing and smothering who I really am, something that I could take off, that is, if I tried hard enough; I just haven’t tried hard enough, I’ve told myself, I’ve beat myself up over this time and time again. I’ve not been able to reveal myself; I’m a failure because I’ve not worked hard enough to do so…failures are not, I’m not, worthy of love. I’m a failure no matter what I do. Twisted logic, isn’t it?

This, perhaps, is why I love writing. It’s a painful process, but one that’s cathartic. I do feel like a burden is beginning to lift a bit, admitting what I have, but I’m not sure where to go with this. This is a long delayed step on my life journey. I don’t know where it’s leading, or exactly what I want the end goal to be, but it’s a beginning, no matter how awkward or belated….