I'm thinking this weekend I should take that terrifying leap into the unknown that I have been dreaming of for ever, share who I am with my wife and family and start my journey for real!
Can I really do it?
- I know who I am: Nicola and I am a transgender woman.
- I know what I want: to be able to fully live my life as Nicola as a woman
- I know what I need: to socially and medically transition
These are positive things that I feel really good about and 100% want and need my life to be.
Just the small matter of taking the scariest step of them all and sharing all of this with those close to me, who will probably feel that I am pulling the rug from under their certainty about what our relationship is and who I really am, and therefore might well react quite badly initially.
Hence my trepidation and slight uncertainty that I'll be able to actually go through with it.
My brain is playing its usual trick of trying to prevent me from taking risk by focusing on the potential worst-case outcomes and reintroducing doubt that I am even transgender at all. It is remarkable the ways in which our own minds constantly gaslight us to hold us back from doing the things we truly want to do. Fortunately, I am wise to my own mind games now, but it does still feel very real.
I think the way to play it with my wife is to start by sharing my feelings and explaining that this is something that I have felt since pre-teen years. My sole aim for the initial conversation is to get her to understanding and acceptance that these are my feelings, they are long-standing and real. That is likely to be difficult enough. It would be completely unrealistic to expect her to be able to get into what might therefore happen in the future without the uncertainty becoming overwhelming. It's probably impossible to avoid her jumping straight to "does this mean you want a sex change?" and having to respond to that, but I certainly won't take the conversation there myself.
To get to where I am now, has taken me literally 37 years. I now know what I want and have all the information I need. I can't expect my wife to come to the same place of acceptance and readiness in 37 minutes. Therefore I know I need to be patient, take it steady and allow her time to process and find her own understanding and explore her feelings about this.
Why now?
The easiest thing in the world would be to put it off.
Now isn't the right time, maybe I'll leave it.
There will never be a right time. How is there ever a right time to do this?
It will be just as hard next weekend as this, next year as this, just as hard in 2050 (probably harder as I might not be around by then!).
What is getting harder though is not thinking about this. It is consuming my every waking moment and distracting me from the rest of my life, which has to go on day-to-day.
Therefore I need to act soon and now is as good a time as any. Or bad a time as any.
Why come out at all?
It's a curious thing, but the "do nothing" option no longer feels like the safe choice.
The default to status quo has always felt easy. I don't have to transition, I can just stay as I am.
But this is feeling more and more difficult and less of an option as time goes on.
I am becoming aware that although transition may result in difficulties and unhappiness, remaining male also is unhappiness, just different. And I am increasingly feeling regret for time lost and experiences not had. This is definitely a turning point.
I have to do something.
It's strange to think that if I have the courage to go through with this, today could be the last day of life as I know it.
And tomorrow maybe the first day of something else.
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