Read on Twitter
A year ago on this day my egg finally cracked wide open. I've been wanting to post all day but had a busy one. So here's a short thread...
(Left) This was me a year ago. I was miserable. Every day I would come home from work and just be dead on the inside. Hurting, hating life.
(Left) This was me a year ago. I was miserable. Every day I would come home from work and just be dead on the inside. Hurting, hating life.
The pic on the right was 18 days later with some hair, makeup and real joy based on the knowledge that these feelings I've pushed off for decades were real and I could finally be me.
So here's me tonight...a year later...just being myself, 8+ months on HRT. No foundation, just a bit of mascara, lippy, and brow pencil. the joy...still real, very casual, very much something I feel a lot and every day.
MY egg cracked at 46, but I knew so much earlier. I didn't think it was possible, I didn't think it was for me. Because I thought I would be an ugly woman...not just thought, I convinced myself time after time in front of a mirror. I didn't know what was possible...
I just wished, hoped, prayed..."Maybe in the next life I could be a girl. Maybe in the previous life I was? Maybe we get to trade off one life after another." I just wanted to be me, I just wanted to be happy, and I hated everything that was making me more masculine as a teen.
My examples in media were terrible. How terrible? Go watch Disclosure on Netflix. Maybe I thought I would look like John Lithgow in The World According to Garp...you know...the dude in a dress. What little I knew about transition was wrong or terrible.
I heard people would have to live as a girl for a year or more before any kind of medical intervention. I don't know it it was real. I didn't even know HRT was a think and that it had actual effects that were a positive influence on things like joy...the joy of being on the...
right operating system. The joy of going through puberty 2 and having softer skin, developing breasts and feeling like myself. In fact the year I was born the term Gender Dysphoria was coined really meant that it was not going to be something that came up in any conversation.
Not being myself gave me secondary issues I couldn't even Identify. I lived under the threat of being beat up, so adding anything about femininity to the mix felt like it would have been a death sentence. People want to talk like individuality and self expression are great, but
conformity is insisted upon. The nail that sticks up is the one that is hammered down. I was not about to give the other kids ANOTHER reason to beat me up or threaten me as much.
so I hid myself. I built walls so tall that eventually I could not see over them. Like a caged animal, I would snap at anyone who encroached upon the little bit of me that was left. I managed somehow to survive this, but my relationships did not.
Decades would go by and I had forgotten about it. I had some ideas, some inkling that there were reasons I had some thoughts. I didn't feel like I was gay, but something wasn't right. and I didn't know what it was.
Intermission...I need to sleep...will probably add more tomorrow to round out my story, hopefully someone will find some peace through commonality.
