I’ve come to realize that when I transitioned in the 90’s I never really dealt with my own issues around actualy being transgender. In my therapy sessions and with my doctors I was intensely focused on jumping through the HBIGDA (the predecessor of WPATH) hoops so that I could get letters of recommendation, HRT, and eventually surgery. Accordingly I intentionally avoided talking about a lot of things because they either would not help or I thought they might actually hurt. Then, after my surgery, I stopped having any regular therapy sessions at all and just tried to get on with “normal” life as a woman.

So I really never did deal with any of the trauma I had from growing up. But getting active in the trans community again a few years ago started exposing me to all the people still going through transition, and still experiencing the kinds of things I once had to deal with. Over the past year or so, thanks to politics, things have only gotten more intense in our community and I found myself trying to help people more and more as they dealt with trauma, and that in turn made me think of my own trauma. Now I find myself writing every week, sometimes multiple times a week, about my past and all of the issues that I never truly dealt with.

In other words, now I’m actually starting to deal with the old, lingering trauma and talk about it with people, and it’s really affecting me. Positively, to be sure, but I still find myself crying a lot these days, for example. It’s weird to reopen these old wounds after so many years, wounds that I had ignored and assumed were gone. But they really are still there, aren’t they?

Dear S-

It’s 1982. You are 12 years old. Tonight you are crying yourself to sleep. You just came in from standing under a tree with a rope. You were ready to hang yourself. You thought you couldn’t live any more if you couldn’t be a girl. But you got afraid. You thought it would hurt. You wondered if it would even work at all. You worried about waking up in a hospital not knowing what happened after you pulled the rope. You thought about your parents waking up in the morning and finding you and not knowing what they did wrong. You just couldn’t go through with it. So you went inside and went to bed with tears of shame and despair.

I want to hold you and hug you tight to me and comfort you because I know the pain you are feeling. It was my pain too, you know. I want to stroke your hair and tell you that you really are a girl and nothing anyone says can ever change that and there’s nothing wrong with you wanting to live your life in the way that makes sense to you.

Everyone thinks you are a boy. They expect you to be a boy. They give you things boys like: an autographed baseball; a pocket knife; a skateboard. They think you are just being a nerd about your love of the Lord of the Rings. They don’t know that you really want to be Arwen, the daughter of Elrond. Or really anyone at all from Middle-earth. It’s just a better place than the real world.

No one knows (yet) about the stash of clothes you have hidden under the carpet in the bathroom closet, with all the unused sheets and blankets piled on top to conceal the bulge. Clothes you stole from the store room where a bunch of Mother’s old stuff still is. A few things taken from the back of her overly stuffed closet. Clothes you took because it was the only way to get anything resembling the styles you really want to be wearing all the time. At home, at school, and anywhere else you go. After all, no one is going to go out and buy you nice clothes of your own. Nope, you get stupid Izod shirts, t-shirts, and Levi’s blue jeans. Because you only ever wear what Mother buys for you. Because you don’t care to put any effort into your appearance if you can’t actually dress like you want to. Because it makes you invisible.

I want to tell you about all of the misery and suffering that lies ahead, but also the joy and euphoria that comes after it. I want to warn you about the future suicide attempts. I want to tell you about the euphoria that fills you up when you finally admit to yourself that you are trans. I want to tell you about the incredible relief and overwhelming sense of joy that comes from the first time someone simply calls you by your real name. I want to tell you about the sense of normalcy that you experience for the first time in your life when you finally see yourself naked in a mirror after getting surgery.

I want to tell you not to be afraid of letting others know how you feel in high school. They won’t do anything bad to you. The beatings you already get at the hands of boys in junior high is so much worse than anything that would happen in high school, and you are strong enough to handle coming out to your friends.

Do you remember when L- caught you dressed as a cheerleader and getting ready to kiss K-? You should have kissed him! You should have laughed at L- and told her to go away because y’all were just playing and there was nothing wrong with what you were doing.

Do you remember when T- told you that you weren’t allowed to be a girl when playing house? You should have played a girl anyway and just laughed at her.

The future holds both pain and joy for you but the joy wins out in the end and you really do become the girl – the woman – you were always meant to be. But this night you are in pain. This night you cry because you feel completely helpless and useless, not even strong enough to end your own suffering. So sleep now. You will wake up feeling exhausted and beaten down. You will go through life numbly, always trying to avoid feeling anything at all. But in the end, you will find peace and joy and all the suffering will fade away.

Sleep, and dream of the future.

I don’t want this blog to turn into a stream of reposts of other people’s work, but I saw this video this morning and it left me in tears and with a feeling of joy. Then I watched it a second time just so I could experience it once more.

@ami_fox_amelia

I challenge you not to shed a tear. This is beautiful. She is beautiful. You can find her on other platforms as laser.breems #transition #trans #heartwarming #story #transjoy

♬ original sound – Ami Foxx

You can find the original of this on Bree’s Instagram site at https://www.instagram.com/laser.breems/

While watching this I felt such joy for Bree. The difference between her old self and current self is so incredibly obvious for anyone to see. She’s come alive whereas previously she seemed like, well, the way I was before I transitioned.

But I also began thinking that this joy is precisely what transphobes want to deny to us. They want to force us all to be those depressed, barely living creatures we were before we discovered ourselves. Worse, they want us to know that we could be happy but that happiness is being deliberately withheld from us. They want to torture us.

They want us to die.

Please spread this video far and wide so that every cis person who doesn’t know how joyful transition is can get to see it! Maybe it will help to convince them to stand up for us instead of passively letting us being eradicated.

Well, I just quit the trans Discord server I was a mod for. Quit the whole server. Once again, the server owner decided she had to insult someone for disagreeing with her, and once again it was me. This time because I stated that the c-word (“cunt”) was objectionable to me and that I considered it as vile a term as the n-word. That’s how I was raised! So she says I just need to let it go and also calls me racist for some unfathomable reason.

This was hardly the first time we’ve butted heads, but this was the last time. I just am so sick her holier than thou attitude. I wasn’t even asking for anything specific, just for other people in the server to understand that for some people, especially older people like myself, that is a horribly vile, and disgusting insult that reduces a woman to nothing more than a walking set of genitalia. That was apparently too much of an ask, though.

So I gave up.

Do note where I say we butted heads before. This was not a knee-jerk reaction to a single incident, it was the culmination of a year’s worth of conflicts that just never seemed to end. This had been coming for a long time. I had previously stepped down as a moderator even, but the server owner gave me back my mod powers without asking me and apologized, so I took up the role again.

I do not like the way this has worked out. I think that being an active part of the trans community is very important for older trans people like me so that we can share our own experience with the younger generation. I am still in a couple of other trans servers and will continue to be active in them, but the one I left simply had become too unpleasant for me because of the server owner’s dismissive attitude towards anyone who disagreed with her.

First they came for the immigrants and I said nothing, for I was not an immigrant.

Am I the modern Niemoller?

To be continued.

I’m moving this week, so I’ve been silent, but right now the movers are getting everything out of my house and I have a moment, so I thought I would share this.

Yesterday while driving around I saw a bunch of wildflowers and it brought back a long forgotten memory of childhood. I remembered one time when I was sitting in the grass with the (other) neighborhood girls and we were making daisy chain necklaces and putting flowers in our hair. I always loved putting daisies behind my ears as a kid. But when I came out in college my mother insisted that there had never been any signs I was trans. How funny is that?

I’m not going to be posting much the next week or two because I am about to move from one state to another on the other side of the country, so I’m going to be spending a lot of time packing, and the driving, and then unpacking.

Another diary entry. This was post transition and surgery and I was no longer dealing with gender issues directly, but was still dealing with the lingering depression and C-PTSD caused by gender dysphoria.

---

October 14, 1999

Depression is a fuzziness and bluriness of the soul.

Depression is the feeling that ones soul is disintegrating – dissolving into nothingness.

Depression is a lack of focus.

Depression is a lack of energy.

Depression is not caring.

Depression is wanting to care, but not being able to care.

Depression is gray.

Depression is being alone in a crowd full of people who know you.

Depression is wanting help but being afraid to ask for it.

Depression is not knowing how to ask for help.

Depression is being unable to act to save the things one holds most dear.

Depression is being unable to act to save ones own self.

Rant incoming.

Today a couple of trans women in a Discord server – not a trans server – really pissed me off. I expressed my opinion that being transgender has a physical cause: genetics, endocrine anomalies, whatever. There is some limited research pointing in this direction, but nothing conclusive, and I said as much. My opinion is based on non-conclusive studies and my own experience of my self.

So I got attacked for that.

One person called me an “apologist” meaning that I side with the Pick Me’s who try to present themselves as the “good” trans people who it’s OK for society to accept, unlike those loud, pushy “bad” trans people who gasp might not even want surgery! Another person accused me of “sloganeering” because my wording reminded her of the phrase “born this way” that was popular a while back. I do not understand people like them. I have an opinion, and I admit it’s an opinion, and I don’t try to push it on others, and yet I get accused of betraying all trans people because of it. That is BS. This kind of infighting needs to stop! It doesn’t help the community in any way shape or form.

And to think they accused me of this. In 2023 I took off from work 5 times to go to the Texas capitol to testify against bad legislation. I’d be there this year too if I wasn’t in the process of moving out of state. Last week I wasn’t even in the state at all, so I couldn’t testify anyway.

Most of my days are literally just spent talking with other trans people in 4 different Discord servers to try and be there for people when they need help. I’ve stayed up past midnight talking to people who were feeling suicidal more than once.

But somehow, I’m the bad guy because I think being trans has a physical cause in the brain and the way it develops are we grow.

Well screw that noise.

I’m not ashamed of who I am, and I won’t apologize for it, either to transphobes or to politically correct armchair activists who talk a lot but never do anything.

End of rant.

This diary entry talks about my fears of abandonment and feelings of loneliness, things I had been dealing with ever since first learning that people would hate me for being a girl at age 10. For me, being trans was a very isolating experience because I was so afraid to let anyone find out about me, and I knew from experience that I could not even trust my family. That lead me to not trusting anyone at all, something that became a very big problem for me as an adult and it still affects me even today (though I am much better now, and may even have had a breakthrough recently).

Actually coming to understand this about myself was very … overwhelming. I couldn’t really explain to anyone what was going on; I just had to cry a really big cry and be hugged and held.

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Tuesday, July 8, 1997

I’ve started getting things ready for surgery: I’ve called M.A. and Dr. C. to get letters of recommendation lined up; I’ve got the phone number of the consulate: I’ve got Dr. M.’s packet. I’m ready.

I wasn’t ready until just a few days ago – Friday night. That afternoon I was feeling lonely so I called D. to talk and maybe suggest that we get together and do something, however K. had just arrived at her house and the two of them were going out for the 4th of July celebrations, so I said “bye” and we hung up. I was disappointed, but before I could get up D. called back and asked if I wanted to go with them. Of course, I said “yes”.

We drove around and wound up eating dinner at [a restaurant]. After that we picked up S. and went to watch the fireworks.

I felt happy.

And I finally realized what had been holding me back from the surgery: fear of being alone.

I’m not sure what exactly led to this revelation, but there were several things that happened that night which probably influenced me. Early on, just after K. and D. picked me up we went to an ATM so I could get some cash. Now standing at the ATM I could not see the car, and I found myself very afraid that when I went back they would have left without me – that they would have abandoned me. I knew that this was irrational but I still had the nagging suspicion that they would at least have pulled around the corner as a “joke”. Even as I reached for the handle I was afraid they would drive away at the last minute.

I can’t explain the origin of this fear.

The other thing that I believe led to my epiphany was seeing S. Ever since she came back I’ve been able to see first hand how the recovery time and the “home-boundedness” it imposes result in isolation and loneliness. She’s always saying how much she appreciates it when I call.

This kind of ioslation – being at home alone – is exactly what I’ve been trying to avoid lately. To think that I have to face it directly in order to achieve my dream/goal/life-long ambition of gender congruity/bodily form/womanhood is very daunting. To achieve my dream I have to face my nightmare.

This is especially bad in light of how I’ve only recently started to be able to be social. In a sense I was better prepared for the loneliness when it was still the dominant theme in my life and I didn’t know anything else. Of course, at that time I was also unprepared for surgery itself because I could not even identify my fears. Only by recognizing and experiencing my fear have I gained the potential to overcome it.

Hmm … “Fear is the mind-killer. I will not fear. Fear is the little death. I will face my fear and allow it to pass through me. And when it has passed I will turn to see the path it has taken, but it will not be there, for it never truly existed.” (Or something like that.) I think that I may understand the litany now for the first time ever – and I mean really understand the meaning behind the words and why they are true.

I was thinking about these issues and coming to my realization while we were watching the fireworks, and walking back to the car is when it really hit me. All of my fear came crashing down on me at once and I suddenly felt very alone and isolated. Suddenly I desperately needed to know that I wasn’t alone and so I reached out to D. to hug her. She must have sensed that something was wrong because she didn’t complain and she held me. I started to cry then. I must’ve cried for 5-10 minutes and all that time I was hoping someone would ask me why I was crying – but ask me after I’d stopped; at the time I couldn’t really talk. They all asked when they saw me crying, but let it drop when I didn’t immediately respond.

The next night at K.’s party I was hoping to talk about all this, but I never got a chance ( at least not one that I recognized.) I hate television.

But I love my friends and I wish I knew how to be closer to them. I’m trying, but I’ve no experience at it and I think that my past aloofness has made them think that I don’t want to be closer.

There’s not yet light at the end of the tunnel, but I’m finally in the tunnel, and I’m moving.

Blessed Be!