When people ask, "so, you want to be trans?"

It seems "good news" travels quickly, even to people who you wouldn't expect it to travel to.  Recently I received a message on Facebook from someone I knew back in high school who said, " So...[so-and-so] mentioned you wanting to be trans?"  The short and simple answer of that question would be yes, yes I do.  However, the more that question has stuck around in the back of my mind, the more I've come to think that no, I don't want to be trans.  Now, don't jump to conclusions, I'm a little over 9 months into my transition and I'm not stopping, but I really don't 'want' to be trans...it is simply who I am.  While talking to about this to one of my friends one day I was feeling particularly insecure, he told me something along the lines of this:

Seeing everything that you are going through, the pain, the financial burden, the divorce*...no one would want that, it isn't something you choose.  If you could choose, you would have chosen male, and from what you tell me, you've chosen to be male over and over again, but it isn't who you are.

Okay, so that was a really rough paraphrasing, but that is the overall message of it.  I've thought about that for a very long time, and he is right.  Being transsexual isn't something someone chooses, it is born in them.  For me, not even 2 weeks into my hormone therapy, my emotions and my enjoyment of life began to rise.  And that was only starting the male hormone blocker, I would start taking estrogen the following month.  The basic point is, I had tried from the moment I found the name for what I felt, and understood what I had been feeling my entire life, to be a male for everyone around me who I love...and those were the hardest years of my life.  From the moment I started hormone therapy, my life began to slowly, yet systematically and steadily fall into place.  Life began to be enjoyable in a way that I hadn't thought possible, and I noticed that even simple things like smiling spontaneously for the first time in my life began to be a part of who I am.  It's amazing how simply being able to smile and truly laugh feels, and that isn't something I could do before.  Don't get me wrong, my life didn't suddenly start to become free of pain and trials.  Transitioning isn't a magic cure all to life's woes and tragedies.  For me, it simply aligned my world to what always seemed the right trials, the right temptations, the right life worries.  In other words, I began to feel like I fit in where I always thought I should be, even before I truly realized I thought it.

Okay...I got ahead of myself a little bit, I missed a major point that changed everything for me before the transition, and looking back I don't see an easy place to slip it in, so here goes.

I covered that I had chosen to be male over and over again, but to further show that it isn't as much of a choice as so many seem to think it is, let me tell you about the time I could no longer fight to be male.  This part of my life actually starts in the office of our family doctor, trying to figure out the pain I was having regularly in my pelvic/abdominal region.  Aside from the basic physical examination, we ran blood tests, got 2 CT scans done a few months apart, and I even got a colonoscopy...but every test came back saying that I had a clean bill of health, and they had no idea what could be causing my pain.  Doing the only other thing I could think of to help my doctor figure out what was going on with me, I started keeping a pain journal.  Three months in I had to do a double take to the data I had recorded.  I seemed to be having this pain for 5-7 days at a time, every 26-29 days.  I'm sure you've guessed it, I immediately didn't want to believe what I was seeing, even though part of me desperately wanted to believe it so that I would have physical proof for my family that my feelings of being female weren't going away.  I've kept that pain journal for about 2 years now, and it has been consistently the same.  Anyway, long story short, I'm not intersex as I had hoped for a while, but while I thought still that maybe I could be, my fight to be male stopped forever.

For one glorious moment in time, I connected if I was having a period, then it stood to be possible that I had an intersex condition, and on the slightest chance that this could be true...it stood that there was the slightest chance for something truly miraculous.  There was the slightest chance that I could be a mother and have a child of my own.  A child that I would carry and grow inside of me for 9 months.  That thought literally stopped me in my tracks that day.  I stopped in the hallway of my house, frozen while I thought about this, then slowly my hands fell down to my pelvic region and I slid down onto the floor.  Everything in my life changed at that moment.  Nothing about myself mattered anymore.  The only thing that did mater, was that slightest of chances that I could be a mother.  From that moment it felt like I had no choice, the instinct of being a mother and protecting any child I might could have was overwhelming...and there was no fighting to be male any longer.

Intersex conditions are extremely rare, and of those who do have it, most are sterile.  I'd always know in the back of my mind that my being intersex was very unlikely, but it didn't stop the devastation of learning to read my CT scans for myself and seeing with my own eyes that I was not intersex, and in that there was no chance of having a baby of my own.  I was almost literally catatonic, completely striped of emotions and all but dead for almost 3 days following that realization as I saw with my own eyes, and understood with my own learning, what was the probable answer all along.

In the weeks following this realization I've come to more fully accept who I am.  I know that I'll never have a child of my own, and I know that I'm not the only woman out there who feels the pain of never being able to conceive.  I've come to understand something about myself and my transgender condition through all of this.  Being transgender isn't a choice, it is born in who I am.  I've had to accept that that just as much if not more than everyone around me.  Part of me may have been born male, but the more important part of me, the part that can't be changed, was born female.

I believe that there is one question at least that I have yet to answer that you might be thinking.  Yes, I still have what seems to be a monthly cycle.  I asked my endocrinologist about the cycle and she didn't quite know what to think, other than now that I've started hormone therapy it will probably go away with time, but that has yet to be seen.  This brings up another question though, how in the world do I have a monthly cycle anyway?  The answer might lie in brain research being done on transsexuals, but it is only a topic that I have started looking in depth into recently, so I really have no answers, not that there are many answers out there at all as of yet to be honest.

So, wrapping this up for now since this post is plenty long, we can look for answers all day every day until we are blue in the face.  Here is the short of it: that it is.  Once we accept who we truly are inside, realizing that it isn't specifically in our control, we can let go and stop trying to control this part of our life.  Letting go and experiencing and learning in this new take on life has been life altering and full of the greatest joys I have yet to feel, and I wouldn't go back for all the wealth in this world.


Ashley


For those of you that are curious about the transsexual brain, I think this short clip is a great place to start =)

If the embedded video doesn't work, here is the link, you can copy and paste ;-)

http://youtu.be/6axg2VFMPY0


*Yes, I am divorced, yes I was married as a male, and while we were still together I did everything in my power to be male.  It was only after the divorce when there was absolutely no hope over getting her back, let alone ever seeing her again, that I even began to think about transitioning...but all that is a much longer story for another post.

The grass isn't always greener on the other side...

 We've all heard the saying, "the grass is greener on the other side,"  and in a lot of cases, I agree with that particular cliche saying.  This saying, however, is hardly all encompassing, and in the case of gender identity, I believe this saying to be totally irrelevant.  I have dealt with gender identity my entire life.  I have distinct recollections of my being curious about my gender and disliking it, that date back to 2nd grade for me.  In all that time, when I've thought of this saying, or someone I've told about my gender issues has told me this saying, I've never felt that it fit my situation.

I've had a very long time to think about this, to ask myself, and honestly answer to myself if my "problem" was simply that I thought the grass was greener somewhere else and I wanted it.  The more I think on this topic, the more I feel that I'm not saddened by the yellowed grass of my life and I long to move away for greener pastures somewhere else, but the more I feel I would do anything to nurture the grass I've been given to make it as green as is possible, even if that green was yellowed or browned compared to everyone else's grass around me.  Here is where this analogy gets a little more complicated for someone with gender identity disorder...their grass isn't green, their grass isn't even completely brown and dead...their grass is growing upside down, roots above the soil, and the blades of grass completely hidden beneath the rich brown earth in which they are trying to grow.

This is how we see the world in which we live, or at least a fitting description of it, as everyone is unique, and every situation is never exactly the same.  The very first way that we are labeled as when we come into this world is "it's a beautiful baby girl" or "it's a beautiful baby boy."  This first label then defines our entire lives.  From that moment on, a course in life is set for us, and though the road we travel is wide open and anything can happen, but we are completely barred from that other path that can be taken if we had been born a different gender.  Those of us who live every moment of our lives with gender identity disorder, from that first thought that sounds something like "my gender is wrong", or "I feel like I should be a man, but I was born a woman", or in my case walking to the bus in the morning back in 2nd grade "what is this thing between my legs that is in the way?", from that first thought, we start questioning everything in life, trying to make sense of it.  That first thought, that first question, can be compared to someone who has always been blind their whole life seeing the sun for the very first time.  However, in the case of this analogy, the blind person has gender identity disorder and they have just seen the grass around them for the first time, and to their horror, despite everything they have heard, their grass isn't green...it isn't even yellowed...and dead grass would be far better than what they see.  Their grass is trying, in what seems like complete futility, to grow upside down, with their roots reaching towards the sky.

Realizing that you truly feel you are stuck in a body that is the opposite gender of your heart and soul is life altering, and the way you view yourself and everything around you changes, and your world is never the same again.  From that moment, it seems that no matter what you do to try and make your world livable like any "normal" person's, nothing you try and try to do will make the grass around you grow correctly, and the endless despair of it is deafening and heart breaking.  The only light that can usually be seen by someone in this situation is the light of changing their orientation, and to physically become the gender they truly feel they are in their heart and soul.  In the end it seems this is their only option, and they would gladly pay any price to make the life in their heart a reality...to not make the grass change the direction it is growing, but to change their physical selves in order to live in the world that feels correct and true which is rooted deep with in their very being.  In doing this, in a sense, their world turns upside down and they find themselves on the other path that was barred to them from the beginning of their life, and surrounding them is the green grass that they had always been told existed.  Nothing about the grass has changed, its' position is fixed and unmovable, but in changing their physical gender, they have

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This is the view I had back before I started hormone therapy and started becoming the woman I've always felt like inside.  The part about the grass being fixed and immovable seems inaccurate to me as I have actually begun to experience the change.  It now seems that as one progresses and listens to their heart and begins to become who they truly are inside, the grass begins to become movable.  They are able to dig up each blade of grass individually, removing the blade side from the soil where it doesn't belong, and planting it roots down the way it was always meant to be.  This process isn't easy and can be very pain staking, but so far for me it is one of the most rewarding things I have ever done for myself.  I have discovered that some of the simplest and most rewarding things in life I had never experienced, things as simple as truly smiling spontaneously because you are enjoying yourself.  In truth, before hormone therapy, I had never truly smiled in my entire life.

This being said, I am leaving my analogy incomplete for the time being.  As I continue to experience the change and can truly illustrate what is going on, I will finish writing this.  I decided to post it incomplete for a couple of reasons.  One, I have been told by several people who I have shared this with that I should share it.  Two, because it will be a while yet before I can complete this, so if it can be of any use to anyone, I want to share it.

In closing, all of you out there going through this hardest of trials in life, I give you my love and wish you the best! =D

-Ashley