full image - Repost: Figuring yourself out, versus deciding what to ultimately do with that knowledge. How did you navigate that? (from Reddit.com, Figuring yourself out, versus deciding what to ultimately do with that knowledge. How did you navigate that?)
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CW: negative self-talk/internalized transphobiaGoing to add a content warning here at the top of this, because it does go into some negative self-talk and internalized transphobia that could easily be triggering for some. That is not really the main thrust of this wall of text, though, and I imagine these are common enough feelings that many of us have dealt with same.So here I sit at 50. My egg cracked at the late age of 49, and it's been a complete mental and emotional roller coaster trying to pick through the pieces of shell laying scattered on the ground around me and figure out who exactly I am.Outside of therapy and self-work, part of that effort involved running through the various hypothetical scenarios that I'm sure we're all familiar with:There is a magic button. If you press it, you will swap gender. You will have always existed as that gender. Your friends, family, coworkers...everybody will have always known you as that gender. You can only press once, and that press is final.Press it. Press the shiny button. You are alone on an island. Regular shipments of super-bougie, high-quality food and drink are inexplicably available in perpetuity, as are all of the various sundries you could want or need, such as clothing. You find a box full of enough HRT to last you for your entire life. Nobody is around to care about, or react to, your presentation.Take the drugs. Take all the drugs.You are middle-aged. There is a magic button. If you press it, you will swap gender immediately and without physical discomfort. You have not always been that gender, and will have to learn at this advanced age how to groom, how to move, how to speak, and how to exist in the world as your new self. You will lose your friends, and have to build a new social network from the ground up, comprised largely of people with whom the only thing you have in common is having pressed this button. Your marriage will end, and you may not find another partner. Retention or loss of your job will be decided by a coin flip, as will retention or loss of your family. Your validity and humanity will be constant sources of public debate at the highest levels, and a large percentage of the people with whom you interact will be at best distant (and at worst overtly hostile) towards you. You will lose a not-insignificant amount of money.Hmmm. Yikes. Maybe don't press that one. Sounds hard and potentially more painful than your present situation.So anyway, after months of reflection, bargaining, attempts at denial, angst, and navel-gazing, I finally figured myself out, recognized my lifelong hum of dysphoria for what it was, and got some more insight into my internal sense of gender. Surprise! That inner child is not exactly the cis/het dude I was expecting.However, that dysphoria hasn't been exactly debilitating. Sure, not knowing what it was... that was pretty suboptimal. I was depressed, anxious, irritable, dissociative, walled off, and didn't really have a good handle on why. Now that I do have that insight, though, I'm actively working on all of this. A number of factors bubble up for consideration when thinking through what I want to do with this self-knowledge:I will almost certainly lose everyone I care about and am close to. It's already begun, even. My wife and our mutual friends: gone. Everybody that is remaining in my life would probably leave, as well. All I have experienced so far is loss, so why should that change?My job is probably relatively safe. I do, however spend a lot of time working directly with clients and in new business development. That would probably change, which may mean taking a voluntary demotion.My family would, shall we say, react poorly.I know that passing isn't "the point", but I am 6 feet tall with size 11 feet and big hands. I have all of my hair and a thin build, but boxy, and my neck will never not be too thick to read as femme. I am going to be that clocky old man in a dress. I have very much come to love being invisible in crowds. I am very much of the mind that, if I could not pass, I would ultimately end up more isolated and sad.I don't hate he/him pronouns. I also don't hate she/her pronouns. They/them feels off, to me. At the end of the day, though, I see pronouns as descriptive. I am aware of how I currently present. It would be a stretch to use she/her on me at present, and so pronouns just plain don't bother me.I don't want to be alone forever. I make a decent looking and successful man. I could date. I could find a partner. While I would be fine dating another trans woman if the chemistry was right, I do admittedly tend to gravitate more towards cis women. I tend to like pretty typically femme ladies, which shrinks the pool of folks I might be initially drawn to...horribly shallow of me. I carry some appreciable guilt around this, for sure, and that is a WHOLE other topic to dissect, rife with self-loathing, but I also can't shake it...so...it kind of just is what it is, for now. We'll unpack it later.Queer community is challenging for me. I found it soundly rejecting when I was presenting cis/het, and I think that contributed some to my delayed self-acceptance. Now as "appropriately welcome", I find that I just have little in common with folks, which stands to reason. It's a group of people with one factor of their life in common, but maybe not a lot else. I go to meet-ups and support groups and feel mostly sad and alone.I'm old. Even if I somehow made it to "passable", I would never be pretty. I also don't know if I have to be? This is one of those "societal worth" things. If I were on that desert island, I would not GAF. Out there in society, though? That worth is capital for the making of friends and the forging of relationships. Should it be? No. Is it? Sadly, yes in many cases.And then you have all of the other factors that make a transitioned life hard. I am under no illusion that existing as a man in our society isn't a hell of a lot easier than existing as a woman. I am further under no illusion that existing as a trans woman is even harder still. I like easy. I know how I feel now. I know my inner voice, and it stays constant regardless of other variables...but is that feeling of incongruity, envy, and longing strong enough to make that trade worth it? Or is it more manageable in other ways?As part of an experiment with my therapist and doctor, I started HRT (6mg/wk EV, sub-q, mono) with the goal of staying on it for 4-6 weeks, going off of it for 4-6 weeks, and journaling the entire time.I've found that it lifts my mood quite a bit. I am chatty. I am not depressed. I am present in my own body. I am...dare I say...happy? I feel optimism. I think I need to give it some time yet, to see how much of that is due to the HRT and how much to other factors in my life, but it's promising at least.It's only a month, so physical changes are quite minimal, but I also do enjoy the lack of underarm stink and the less-greasy, softer skin.But again... the trade-off. What is the actual risk/reward calculus here? I see myself at a crossroads with a few options:It has already begun. Lean in. Keep up the HRT and man-mode until male-fail. The fact that my dysphoria has dialed way back since starting HRT (save for trough) should be taken as evidence that this is the right path for me, and I should just resign myself to it, whatever the future may hold. Fear of potential negatives is just fear talking, and I have always been scared of doing hard things.Desist. Stop the HRT. While it makes me feel better, and while I find certain effects of it to be personally exciting and desired, that can't sufficiently outweigh the negatives of transition for me. While dysphoric, it's also true that dysphoria comes in various degrees for various people. Myself, I do feel like I have more or less managed it for 50 years. Maybe. (But have I really?) I could do so for another 20 until it is finally time to shuffle off this mortal coil.Box it all up. Get out there. Date. Make friends. Travel. Do all of the distracting things that make life fun, and get out of my own head. People deal with internal discord and angst all the damned time.Same as 2, but a bit lighter. Close the box, but leave it slightly ajar. Learn something new about myself, and integrate it. Keep presenting male. Keep with the he/him pronouns, but be okay with whatever. Make no apologies for what I like and dislike, and make no effort to fit into anybody else's box, where it comes to those likes and dislikes. Move on in life with some stoicism. Be a better man for having thoroughly explored myself.So... I know I am not the only one to navigate this sort of weighing of options and to wrestle with all of this; I'm not that naïve. How did y'all chart a course here? What helped you pick a path? Just time? Something more?It feels very stuck.
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