Okay, I'm going to blow a lot of people's minds right now.

I'm not an "inspiration". I'm not "Brave". I'm not "a role model".

I am, without a doubt, the most selfish, self-centered, cowardly person on the planet.

Why you might ask? I'm glad you did.

Transitioning from one gender identity to another is a coward's act. It brings nothing but pain and heartache for the rest of the lives of everyone involved. I know this.

Let me tell you why I say this.

I was born. My parts between my legs were identified as "boy". I started my life as a boy, and grew that way. I was taught boy things, how to pee like a boy, how to act like a boy, how to walk like a boy, how to dress like a boy, how to play games like a boy, how to take my privilege as a white boy, and how to be a jerk as a boy. I was put into the "boy" box and I was expected to live there.

And live there I did. It was okay. I had friends, I could be who I wanted. I dind't have to like cars, and I could like to sew and cook. I could stay at home for 7 years with my child, and I could do the househusband thing. There wasn't anyone who had a single problem with any of that. It was easy. I had people even mention that when I put "daddy" on my resume, that got my foot in the door for an interview.

My mother loved me because I gave her a granddaughter, my sisters loved me as their big brother, my father loved me as the genetic legacy of his testicles, my friends loved me for being a good guy in opposition to all the other asshole men out there (for instance, I never, not once, got upset at being friend-zoned, I didn't see sex as my right just because I was nice), I stood up for what I believed in (politically and socially), I had opinions and I expressed them, I was insanely competent in my chosen profession and others saw and recognized that, and rewarded me when I did well. I was expected to express my professional opinion, and I was not penalized when I did.

Then everything I had been living finally got tiresome for me. I selfishly decided that I really didn't like being a boy, I wanted to be a girl. See, since I was very young (I say 4 years old, although I'm not sure about the age) I had had this feeling that something was off. So I pushed that feeling aside, since I was told that the feeling I had was wrong. I did boy things, but really I wanted to be sitting quietly in a pretty skirt. I liked makeup, and I was waiting for my breasts to grow. I wrapped the towel around my chest when I got out of the shower, and liked taking baths. I was punished for these, but not punished when I had the towel around my waist.

I tried dresses, I was punished when I wore them. I tried makeup, was punished when I wore it. I popped seams in my sisters' clothing (all of them were 7 or more years younger than me, so none of their clothes fit me at all) and when I was caught wearing my aunt's things, or my cousins' things, I was punished again. As long as I was in the "boy" box, I was fine, and I had a decent life.

But then I decided to be a girl now. Most of my life is behind me, child grown, parents looking at the grave, grandparents dead. Friends moved on, and I had a new job.

Come to work in a skirt, wig and makeup, heels and now insisting to be called Joy, and that was a damned selfish thing to do.

I took the focus off what I was doing to make the world better, to help others and made it about my identity. I made others uncomfortable to be around me (because of the G word) and they no longer knew how to react to me. They didn't know what to call me now. Instead of it being about the work we were all there to do, it was now about that faggot over there in the skirt. It was about me.

I caused pain in my wife. "Would s/he divorce me now that he/she's a girl?" "I'll miss his dick in me." and more. I KNOW those thoughts are there, even though she said they aren't, she can't help thinking them. I know she misses sex, hell, *I* miss sex, but I'm not horny at all. Then there's my daughter who still calls me Dad even though I'm in high heels, wig and have a bra on to hold my breasts. And those people around her who now are going... Dad? Where? when she talks to me in their vicinity. Anyone who overhears her.

Friends from when I was a boy react in one of two ways, going out of their way to show they don't despise me (so they are now too nice and solicitous) or not speaking to me at all, even though we were intimate friends in the past. So I now either have a BFF or an acquaintance where I had a friend. My mother doesn't know how to react to me anymore, she's known me as a boy for 43 years, now I tell her "I'm a girl" and you don't just shut off the circuit that says "my son". And you sure as hell don't do it from across the country. My sisters go from "one boy and three girls" to "three girls and a kinda-girl" because I didn't do all the teen bonding and sisterhood of the blood thing as we were growing up and they couldn't come to me with boy problems, after all, as a boy I was the enemy....

Then there's employers, and they look at my resume, see I'm a perfect candidate, call around to the companies I cite on my resume and they don't know who the hell I am, no one with my name worked there. So I put a disclaimer there saying that "worked in this location under (former name)" and they see that, and suddenly, my perfect candidacy is "oh, we decided to go in a different direction".

Bitch, how can you say I'm over qualified for a phone tech one day and then say I don't have the skills to do that job, especially since that was the ENTIRETY OF MY LAST JOB????

This means I go on a lot of interviews, and get none of them, which means I'm a ridiculous waste of flesh in the household. I contribute NOTHING, not even sex. No income, no practical skills. The ENTIRE COMPLEX knows I'm trans, one lady who is too old to give a fuck about anything still talks to me occasionally and she tells me the current gossip in the complex, and a lot of it is about "that fag living a couple doors down".

And then the cardinal sin of going from the Apex of the Privilege Ladder (white, male, middle class, provider) to the bottom of that same ladder (trans woman, betraying your own sex and needing welfare to live and free medicine that MY tax pays for to get surgeries so you don't have that DICK God gave you so you can fuck everyone) is a hell fo a drop. The only way it could be worse is if I got my skin color changed to a nice charcoal color. And the betrayal of my dick. I mean, it is not insignificant. If I had an overgrown clit, or a penis that was 1" long like many do, it would be easier. But I have 6" and 2.5 around, yes, I've measured (how can you compare with other boys if you don't) and I had a professional woman (read prostitute at The Mustang Ranch) tell me that I have nothing to be ashamed of, it's bigger than most of her clients' dicks. And I want it gone, which horrifies EVERYONE, male (for the betrayal of the penis-ocracy) and women (for removing that love-stick from the world).

All this could be mitigated if I were to pass well. There are 6 foot tall women out there, few of them are 235, but we can work with that. Very few of them have no hips, or no boobs (while I have them, they aren't big, they look like overweight man-boobs and that's what a lot of people think they are). None have 5 o'clock shadow at 2 PM. None have a baritone voice. None of them have a baby's arm holding a walnut in their panties.

So, see the brave thing, the considerate thing, the thing that would be admirable would be to suck up all the feelings I had for decades, the knowledge of what I felt, share it with no one and keep on being the strong person I was and the rock people could rely on, the role model that showed young boys that it was okay to be sensitive and to treat women as equals and partners, not just as a warm pulse-having hole to stick it in when the urge comes. I could have done more for women in that role, and I was good at it while I was doing so.

This, this is selfish as it could be.

I'm not brave, if I were I would have shut up. If I were strong I wouldn't have broken down and put bras on, bought panties, had a secret drawer of hose. If I were a good role model, I would have taught people by my actions (the definition of a role model) that women are people, not baby factories.

If I were strong I could have withstood it.

But I broke.

Now I'm here, a half person. Can't have sex as a man anymore, not interested in mounting anyone, only want to BE mounted, and I can't even provide a child, will never know what it's like to have a life in me, to feel the baby kick and to vomit at 7 AM every morning, and to feel a new person come out my vagina. I won't be able to nurse a child because of all the goddamn hair on my nipple, and I can't participate in most of what I wanted to do because now I'm too old and it would be creepy.

No, I'm not brave, not strong. I'm fragile, and I have to be reassured constantly that I'm a good person, when everyone around me by their actions are telling me the opposite. Except my wife, and she's just as messed up as I am.