On one level we are people. We are just like everyone else. We hold down jobs (hopefully, though that is a very, very big issue for some of us sadly I have to say), we pay taxes, we shop (especially when it’s on sale!). Generally speaking we are no different than anyone else is. Except for how we look – or rather, how we don’t look. This weird incongruence between our inside-self and outside reality seems to vary in intensity but without a doubt this is an overwhelming theme. And that is what appears to be the main focus. Look in the mirror, get addressed on the street, or talk on the phone and be known to both yourself and to others as the gender you really are. The person you really are.

I’m totally for that and for that having GID is partly a genetic issue. But here’s where my doubts lie. What if you found that the very characteristics of you, your personality quirks, kindness traits, and general demeanor that led you on your gender journey, that led you to question the very fabric of who you are at the core of your being, what if these things started to disappear? What if instead, whilst moving steadily but slowly (or quickly – depending on your rate of working out being transgendered to some place of balance) forward you found you were less caring, less empathetic, less able to build friends, love your children or nurture those around you? What if you
found your transgendered nature had you so tied up in knots (reading, researching, learning makeup, clothes, trying to un-grip your
birth gender cues and getting a new grip on your correct gender cues) that the very traits of who you are that led you to the conclusion, and subsequent diagnosis of being transsexual – what if they disappeared?

What do you do then?

For me, this has been a truly niggling issue for the past month. Being who I am seems to be moving me away from those whom I love the most and have responsibility for the most. I do not know many women who would abandon children in a marriage, or other relationships simply to attain balance in their life. I know plenty who skip mammograms or pap smears so their kids can eat, and those who work three jobs so their kids can go to college. In my life, what I’ve found of late, is that my trans issues have been driving me not to be more open, loving, kind, embracing and nurturing. But have driven me to be more selfish, more guarded, and characteristically less of the kind of person I really admire frankly. This puzzles me as I’m out to some people, and others are on a need-to-know basis only. I’m not by nature secretive. So how did the very traits of who I am that made me start to wonder about who I am, how did my search after some answer, some peace with who I am and ultimately some balance, how did these things result in me being the opposite of who I want to be in the first place.

I don’t have any easy answers for this. I suppose they partly come down to not accepting myself, or not being even more open than I am now. Perhaps if I finally accepted my therapist suggestion of HRT & anti-androgens I’d see things differently. But surely for those of us who are trans, this has to be something we all think through – maybe must think through? For though our outside and inside image is important – indeed critical – I would wager that who we are as people is even more important.