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My biggest problem with this life is that I have to deal with Mirrors.
Mirrors are purported to show the real you.
Unfortunately I have never been able to look into any mirror and see myself. I see some fictional Male that everyone tells me happens to be who I am. I however have always known that mirrors are terrible liers. My one wish is that before I die I could see my real self in a mirror just one time.
I really do not think that is asking for too much.
Do you?
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i feel the same, sweetie
sometimes, even when i dress up like the real me, i see that ugly male poser who took my life...
Mirrors
Who says "mirrors show the real you"?? Who starts these viscous lies?!
I'm not going to say that presentation isn't important, but really! We are something much more than other people's perceptions. More than appearance even, and presentation is what you present, what you choose to present. People; the real people; the good, rational people, the truly honest people, do know that, and that is also how you know them. Mirrors and assholes only see twisted light and illusions.
A Mirror Story
After surgery most people go through a period when you think you’ll never make your way back into a normal routine and feeling yourself again, what with the healing, the need to be careful not to over do it and a requirement to submit to the dreaded dilator every few hours, day and night.
Then it happened. One day, a few weeks after my surgery I was toweling myself off after taking a morning shower. I was thinking of anything or, for that matter, feeling good, bad or indifference. I was simply performing a rather routine, everyday chore by rote.
That was when I looked up and caught a glimpse of myself, head to toe, in the mirror. In the twinkling of an eye I knew everything was just right and that I had made all the right decisions. For the first time in my life body, soul and mind were in harmony. I smiled.
Sometimes mirrors do reveal the truth.
Nancy Cole
"You may be what you resolve to be."
T.J. Jackson
Be your own cheer leader!
One trick I used to do is look in the mirror, and practice the most brilliant smile I had ever imagined. I also pretended that I had done something really naughty and sneaky and gotten away with it! :) I take a lot of care with my appearance, but have recently had to face that I no longer look 16, or 26, or 36 or even .... ENOUGH! I am not saying how old I look now. :(
I'm in a new living situation right now, and it is challenging because I am in a strange place with two women who are very preoccupied with their own needs, so it feels really lonely for me right now. Who'd have thought that I would be saying that? Not me. So, sometimes our situation just drags us down. I'm seeing that I need to boot strap myself and just get over it.
So, when I get done writing this, I am going to kick my sorry butt into the bathroom and begin to practice my mischevious smile again, no matter if I feel it or not at first. By all the powers in the cosmos, I am going to put the moaning Mable away, and call up my saucy, sassy, belly dancing inner Khadijah!!!!
See I already feel better! :) You see, we have to play the mind game ourselves. No one will do it for us. :)
Much Peace
Gwendolyn
probably it's a more widespread feeling, i have it also!
The "mirror effect" you are feeling i can relate to. In my personal history i have unconsciously ceased to ever see my image in mirrors (real mirrors, shop windows, photos, anything that let see me myself) for a very long time, roughly from my thirteen year to about a year ago, when i started hormones. I have uncovered also in my counselling, that my being transgendered was isolating me from my image at a very subconscious level to the point i was substantially refusing to see myself.
You can just imagine what i felt when, with the hormones and the approaching of my SRS i slowly begun to simply see myself and more and more feeling proud to see myself. It's about the same time i seriously started to get proud of me and the work i do to take care of myself. Certainly i have a long way to go but i already lost many Kg. just in this process. It's a circle: as a transgendered person i have a very precise feeling of myself; then i really see me in the mirror, then i look critically at me, then i work to improve myself, then i feel proud, then i go back to square one.
but this proud feeling is strange. at work i can feel proud of something i've done, but it's a feeling that is easy to let go away. This being proud of myself, of the image of the real me approaching the internal imagine of me is a feeling more internal and more basic. I think it's connected to the self-esteem i have because i'm proud of myself and this feeling doesn't fade away but permeates all the other feelings i have.
I'm not sure if it's connected, but when i started feeling like this, i have noted also a more vibrant perception of the world; for example the colors. This year really really have grown to appreciate the vibrant colors of the world i live in, as a filter of sorts that was between the eyes and the world was teared away.
This, in turn, have brought me this sense of joy, of fulfilling existence i never known about before.
Just imagine the face of my mom when she had got me in front of a mirror just *smiling*. it's something i have not done from my childhood, so for 30 years or so. i think it was the moment she was convinced i am in the right path for me.
I sincerely hope your "mirror path" can get you that proud feeling to be finally oneself. I just can feel it in my heart for you and for me. It's a feeling i will feel and cherish for all my life, because it's so me it is me, actually. I wish and i am sure you will feel it also and grow with it as i am growing with it.
hugs
Andrea
(please excuse me for some unusual terms or grammar in english language. it is not my native one but i am getting better!)
It is OK
I still remember that, even if the feeling is slowly fading away now 7 years after the formal transition. But once the hormonal treatment starts you will probably do as I did. I looked so much in the mirror that I almost "wore" the mirror out. It was another kind of "miror-pain". What I did not realize was that the visual proof of something happening to me was so slow in the beginning that it could not be detected from one day to the next. I was close to call the whole thing off because I saw no changes. Then I just passed the full size mirror several times a day as before, but never even looked there beside checking on my hair or make up or clothes. Suddenly I did feel the increased sensivity in the budding breasts and realy dared to wach in the mirror wÃth no clothing on. Joy over Joy, I even saw the difference. And from that day the long time of waiting was over. Even if the real operation was still far ahead. SO just try to get your mirror picture one of your friends. It will make Life so much better.
When you start to train the science of make-up, your razor-mirror will be your best friend anyway. Why not start on that practise as soon as possible?
Best greetings
Ginnie
GinnieG