My feelings continue to swing back and forth between a real desire to begin transitioning and a wish that it would all go away and I could be content to carry on life as a man.
That understates the extent of the feelings though.
It’s not a vague “I wish I was a woman <sigh>”. It’s a longing for a female body. It’s cupping my chest in my hand and feeling the fat under my skin and how it is a little like a breast but not and wishing it were real. Knowing that I could take hormones and make it real and fulfill this urge to be like the girls that has been there since puberty. It’s feeling comforted by the feel of my underwear which just feels right for me, but uncomfortable because I have other things down there that don’t fit in very well. Worse, believing I’m feminine from the sensation of wearing them but then seeing the truth in the mirror and hating it. When I am wearing a bra or crop top and have the sensation of the stretchy band around my chest and straps over my shoulders and how they move when I breathe, which fades into the background of awareness after a while but is always there. It feels right and brings me comfort to know it’s there reminding me of my femininity. Then there is this recurring thought that comes to me: “If I transition I will have to wear this and feel this way all the time for the rest of my life” and although it sounds daunting put that way, this thought brings me hope and joy. Even just thinking or writing the words “I want to transition” or “I am trans and want to live as a woman” give me feelings of hope and happiness.
Unfortunately the pendulum swings both ways. As they tend to, otherwise it would be a pretty ineffectual pendulum.
For every moment of optimism and hope and feeling feminine, there is another moment on another day when I feel the opposite.
I will never go through with transitioning so anything I do in that direction is pointless. My life is okay as it is, and coming out will break everything in it so I must repress my feelings. Which aren’t real anyway, it’s just a stupid fantasy. My memories of wishing I was a girl when I was eleven aren’t real, they’re false memories that I have created through wanting it to be true and being selective in my focus leading to a reinforcement and exaggeration of the bits that suit my narrative. I think that’s called neuroplasticity. I only want to be trans because it feels less embarrassing than admitting that I’m a middle aged cross dresser and maybe Blanchard was right about autogynephilia and I have just trained my brain to be stimulated by feminine things over the years and now believe that it’s real. If I go in public dressed female, no one sees a woman, they see a man in a dress who is either ridiculous or pitiable or even dangerous. Transitioning will expose me to hate and ridicule and transphobia so I mustn’t even consider it. Back in January when I was under the illusion that this was real and I wanted to do this, I emailed my doctor and asked about tests and hormone prescriptions, which they refused. But that is now on their records and if I ever go there again they will laugh at me, so indulging my stupid fantasy will never go away as it’s recorded in official notes. Transitioning will destroy my career, my family, lose my friends. I’ll have to move out and live in a sad lonely flat where the neighbours gossip about the weirdo next door. No one will ever want a relationship with a freak like me so even if it were a “sex thing” or AGP, I’ll never get to find out what that is like because I’ll never be with anyone again. And so it goes on.
The negative thoughts have no end. I could write pages and pages of things that I tell myself that keep me stuck and believing that transition is impossible, my belief in my transness is false and that I have to repress this and “man up”.
And yet, there are always reasons to disbelieve this side of the pendulum swing. Whenever I read about the experience or feelings of other “real” trans women, it resonates. I share so much of what they talk about, to the point of looking like I’m a “textbook case” typical trans woman.
Then there are the feelings of hopefulness. Today I feel feminine and that feels right.
But tomorrow the pendulum could swing the other way.
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