Suppose I filled out the application for HRT…?

 If you’ve been reading my ramblings for a while you’ll know that I think a lot but haven’t moved forward. Due mainly to cowardice if we’re honest. 

So this is a story of not doing something positive, but it is about preparing to do something. Which is maybe a tiny bit of progress? 

I’m in the UK where public healthcare is pretty much hopeless for trans people and waiting lists for what services do exist are so long that it’s a deterrent to even trying. Plus it operates on a gatekeeper model so is set up to make you unhappy from the get go. There is however a private clinic that works on an informed consent basis ie if you know what you need and you pay your money, you can get treatment. I first discovered this place online last year. Although I haven’t done anything with this information, I sort of know that one day I will. From the moment I found them I knew. Not that I had even accepted that I could transition at that point, but nevertheless I felt that there was an inevitability to it. 

For a while I just read their information and FAQs. There’s also some blogs and transition stories from their happy clients which I read and found inspiring.  It took me a while to be brave and click the link on how to apply.  

Part of the process is a questionnaire to explore one’s gender identity and help them to understand who you are and what you wish to achieve. 

Filling it in online in the live site is a step too far for me at this stage, but there is the facility to download it and practice filling it in with time to contemplate. 

So I have

Three times. I keep coming back and editing. 

My first attempt was superficial. I was focussed mainly on the physical changes that I hope for. It felt exciting but scary to type that I wish to have surgery as well as hormones. Even now saying that feels like a big deal and a huge admission. But still it felt superficial, like I want breasts and a vagina…and that’s it. 

Version two enabled me to get deeper and go beyond the physical changes that I wish for and explore more of the why behind my feelings. How I don’t feel male and do relate to female feelings. Why I feel that changing my body is a necessary part of that and why particularly I feel the need to have a female puberty and experience becoming a woman as I saw girls do in my teens and longed to be one of the them. Why I feel that I won’t be able to feel I have the right to call myself a woman and enter female spaces unless I complete my transition with genital change. I need my body to be real if I’m to feel I’m a woman and not a man playing a part. Still feels terrifying to say that. 

Version three got deeper still and I thought more about consequences and fears I have. About how I might be perceived, particularly during the transition when I will be neither one thing or the other and how this might affect me. To be honest, many of the things I wrote about have been hard to think about but it has been so worthwhile to take myself there and face up to expectations of real difficulties rather than just the dream of the outcome. The realisation and acceptance that there is no magic wand where I become a woman, it’s a long journey of a number of years and there will be emotional and physical pain to face on that journey. 

This questionnaire, although it seemed quite innocuous at first sight and easy to complete, has through a number of iterations helped my thinking immensely. 

I would love to tell you now that I settled at version three, copied my responses into the live online form and clicked submit. But no, I haven’t yet. 

I’m not sure when I will do so, but inside me I know that I am going to. It’s inevitable. 

What’s stopping me?

Fear obviously and lack of courage to face that. 

Also, I’m not satisfied with my answers to a couple of the questions. 

It’s not a gatekeeper model, so I don’t think that is a barrier for them. But it’s a concern for me. 

One is about real life experience of being out in my chosen gender. I’ve done it once and it was fine. But that does not feel like enough to me. I feel that I need to do more of this and be able to say that I have not only been seen dressed femme, but that I have done so with people that I know, not just walked around a shopping mall where no one knows me. This is what I need to do and to prove to myself, partly because I have a fear that if I appear femme with someone who knows me that I’ll feel so self conscious that I won’t be able to go through with it. The other aspect of this need for more real life experience is to reassure myself that it wasn’t just novelty or excitement that I was feeling, that I really do feel “right” when I present as female. And I think this means doing it enough for it to feel normal rather than novel. 

The second is the biggest one though: who do you have supporting you? At the moment, my wife, family and friends don’t know because I keep it secret. I don’t think that answering this question as I have so far, by talking about my fear that coming out will end my marriage, is the right place to start from. To begin transitioning with such a big unanswered question just feels unwise, to say the least. The reason it is unresolved is because I have been afraid to face up to it, even though I know it’s something that I have to do. 

It’s a pity the clinic doesn’t also offer courage replacement therapy, because I could certainly use some of that!