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Dreams confronted by reality

I haven’t written for a while. In fact I put away the whole trans idea for a bit. I didn’t want to write. I didn’t want to even think about it. 

This was a consequence of a sudden and unexpected reality check that hit me really hard. 

I’m in some kind of limbo I suppose. I realised that I was trans quite some time ago, after a whole load of going around in circles. And I accepted it. More than accepted actually, I’m truly positive about it. I love the trans part of me and I know that I am female and that I should be the woman I know myself to be. It’s great. However, I am also terrified of doing anything about it, all the things that I might lose. All the usual stuff. The fear is a barrier and I have made no progress at all in so long. 

I’m also someone who lives on hope. I can put up with my situation, or most things to be honest, provided I can envisage a hopeful better future. This is not good for living in the now and enjoying life but that’s a whole other issue so let’s gloss over this for now. 

So I’m stuck as a ‘man’ knowing I’m a trans woman but unable to make the leap. This would be causing me unhappiness (more than it does) except so long as I can think about a future where I have done it and I am happy, then I can live with being where I am. 

Some might call this daydreaming or living in a fantasy, but let’s be charitable and say that I’m envisioning my future and that this is a good thing. 

I have a range of future scenarios mapped out in my head but the one that’s relevant is the ‘college girl’ scenario. I’m in my forties and have a career but I still have fond memories of my time at university and a longing to go back. In this possible future, my solution to all the complications of transition is to go back to university, learn something new and start again on a new life, new people and a different career. A total reboot if you like. Of all my mental scenarios this is the one that brings me the most comfort. I think it’s because it shows me that even if I lose everyone and everything, there would still be hope and a way of forging a new existence for myself by myself. 

So, reality then. 

My son is of an age to be choosing his career path and universities to apply to so we have been doing the rounds of open days. 

I was waiting for him outside one of the faculty buildings on this campus whilst he was touring the facilities. I was drinking a coffee and watching people go by, and thinking about how this could be me, coming here as a girl as a new student next year.  No one would know me and would never have known me male, I’d be just Nicola.  There were lots of people around and walking in the direction of where I was standing was a girl, long hair, tight jeans, short T-shirt showing her midriff and looking like the girl I could have been in my imagination.  

Then I caught sight of my own reflection in the window of the faculty.  Unflattering baggy T-shirt (hiding a midriff no one needs to see), shapeless man jeans, hair a mess, bad posture, unmistakably male and forty something.  

Hormones might work wonders, but not miracles.

I could never ever EVER be that girl, or anything like that girl.

It was like reality fell on me from a great height (and was big and heavy).

I felt absolutely crushed by it. 

You see this is the downside to living on hope of a different future: if you lose the vision, and the hope, then suddenly you have nothing at all but reality. 

Without a vision of a future as a trans woman all I had to contemplate was the obstacles, which loomed even larger in my mind now. So far as I could see, I would lose everything and gain nothing, so I have to give up. 

I posted something melodramatic about all hope being lost and giving up, then left the trans forum and social media accounts. 

To do what? Accept my lot? Be a ‘man’? 

I wasn’t just without my trans woman dream, I was without any dreams. 

Now I have a little bit of distance from this event, I can see that this tells me something: a huge amount of my envisioning of my future centres on my future being female.  

What do I do with that information now?


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