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Taking stock of my trans identity

I’ve done a lot of research, a lot of reading, many YouTube videos, much social media and time on trans forums. This on top of three decades of thinking about it in my own head, experimenting in private, sharing with a few confidants.  

Has this got me anywhere? What have I learned about myself, what I want, who I am and the perennial question of “am I trans enough”?  Or framed another way: do I want to be like a girl, or to be a girl?

I have found that I have a great deal in common with other trans women.  Psychologists and women who have transitioned talk about feelings and anxieties and thought patterns and I can relate to and have experienced all of these things myself.  I have found absolutely nothing at all that might indicate that I am not a trans woman.  Nothing.  

Questioning my own thinking, over and over and I still feel that I am female inside, that I want to be a woman fully.  That thought makes me happy.  I have no similar feelings about being male.  I have lots of fear about the consequences of coming out and how I will be able to deal with those, and that is a reason not to transition, but it would be staying male out of fear, not because I want to.  No part of me wants to do that.  My whole self wants to be a girl. 

I have tried some meditation and creative therapy to be able to visualise myself as a woman and it is easy for me to do so and find that part of me, she’s just there always beneath the surface. And seeing her and how I could be brings me such joy.

If transitioning were easy I would start immediately. If there was a magic shortcut to go from me now to me a complete woman, I would take it in a heartbeat. 

But it’s not easy.  It is hard and scary. I have been held back by fear but I realise now that is what it is, just fear of the consequences and how I cope with them. It is not any kind of reason that I might not be transgender. Because everything says otherwise. All my research, all the things I’ve tried, all my thoughts and feelings. 

I am without any shadow of doubt a transgender woman and it feels good to be able to say that. 

Now I just need to work out how to say that to the people in my life. 



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