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Nov. 23rd, 2011 11:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sacredchaoI was rather ill the past couple of days. Ill enough that I actually failed to register throughout the whole of yesterday that it was the actual anniversary of me starting to take hormones. One whole year of me reinventing myself and my body and my life.
God, what a year it's been. This time last year I was desperately trying to find a place of my own, watching my marriage fly apart and wondering how on earth I was ever going to make this work. It has been the absolute hardest, most horrible time of my life and also the most rewarding. When I haven't been curled into a ball in tears or staring blankly at the wall in stark terror wondering what on earth I've done to my life, I've been more relaxed, more happy and more me. This is something that my friends have noticed as well. both those who see me regularly and those who haven't seen me over the course of the whole year. I've been able to uncurl, to allow myself to explore who I truly am and knock aside a pile of preconceptions about who and what I am and who and what I'm allowed to be. In the process I've discovered a person who I really rather like and who I'm very much enjoying getting to know. It's a rewarding thing to discover that you like yourself. I've learned about the sides of me I don't like as well...I'm lazy, I procrastinate, I can be selfish...there are a multitude of things that I need to pound out of myself but the level of self-knowledge that I've acquired in the past year alone is worth a very dear price indeed and that process has only just begun.
So here I am. I'm only a little way along this path and it frightens me only a little less than it did a year ago but I have learned that I can present myself to the world as I truly am and that for all that the world will in a thousand tiny ways deny me that and make me want to scream and hit people, the vast bulk of people will not only allow this but congratulate me on making the journey in the first place and this is an incredibly empowering thing. What I also learned, standing in the middle of a house full of people who were there to support and celebrate and further me discovering myself is that I am surrounded by some truly wonderful people. Many in my position are not nearly so lucky. Their friends leave them, their parents disown them, their employers find pretexts to fire them. I read and heard these horror stories when I started and I was terrified of the prospect of discovering who amongst those I loved would treat me so shabbily.
God I'm lucky. So so SO lucky. Thank you all, more than I can express. I still have no idea what my life will look like a year from now as I finally approach surgery which in itself is just another gate to pass through on the road to finding myself. The uncertainty and the feeling that I'll never quite fit into this world ever again frightens me badly. It does not, however, frighten me as badly as the idea of not doing it which literally make my mind go blank and my vision fade...it's genuinely, actually, literally unthinkable which is the most bizarre sensation I have ever experienced, and not one I recommend...I've re-emerged in the foetal position crying and shaking. I've learned not to try it anymore. This is not something I can deny myself. The fact that I am not alone tempers the fear though. I will always have a small place in the world, even if the wider community cannot accept me.
So tomorrow I continue as I did today. I will go to work. Once I finish there I plan to meet a friend of whom I've seen far too little. (and that has been happening a lot lately) I hope to discuss plans for the future in a real and concrete way that will lead to me doing real and concrete things. Hell, I might even find a life amongst it that isn't entirely tied up in this transition process. If I keep doing this, my life a year from now might be rather good. I like that idea.
God, what a year it's been. This time last year I was desperately trying to find a place of my own, watching my marriage fly apart and wondering how on earth I was ever going to make this work. It has been the absolute hardest, most horrible time of my life and also the most rewarding. When I haven't been curled into a ball in tears or staring blankly at the wall in stark terror wondering what on earth I've done to my life, I've been more relaxed, more happy and more me. This is something that my friends have noticed as well. both those who see me regularly and those who haven't seen me over the course of the whole year. I've been able to uncurl, to allow myself to explore who I truly am and knock aside a pile of preconceptions about who and what I am and who and what I'm allowed to be. In the process I've discovered a person who I really rather like and who I'm very much enjoying getting to know. It's a rewarding thing to discover that you like yourself. I've learned about the sides of me I don't like as well...I'm lazy, I procrastinate, I can be selfish...there are a multitude of things that I need to pound out of myself but the level of self-knowledge that I've acquired in the past year alone is worth a very dear price indeed and that process has only just begun.
So here I am. I'm only a little way along this path and it frightens me only a little less than it did a year ago but I have learned that I can present myself to the world as I truly am and that for all that the world will in a thousand tiny ways deny me that and make me want to scream and hit people, the vast bulk of people will not only allow this but congratulate me on making the journey in the first place and this is an incredibly empowering thing. What I also learned, standing in the middle of a house full of people who were there to support and celebrate and further me discovering myself is that I am surrounded by some truly wonderful people. Many in my position are not nearly so lucky. Their friends leave them, their parents disown them, their employers find pretexts to fire them. I read and heard these horror stories when I started and I was terrified of the prospect of discovering who amongst those I loved would treat me so shabbily.
God I'm lucky. So so SO lucky. Thank you all, more than I can express. I still have no idea what my life will look like a year from now as I finally approach surgery which in itself is just another gate to pass through on the road to finding myself. The uncertainty and the feeling that I'll never quite fit into this world ever again frightens me badly. It does not, however, frighten me as badly as the idea of not doing it which literally make my mind go blank and my vision fade...it's genuinely, actually, literally unthinkable which is the most bizarre sensation I have ever experienced, and not one I recommend...I've re-emerged in the foetal position crying and shaking. I've learned not to try it anymore. This is not something I can deny myself. The fact that I am not alone tempers the fear though. I will always have a small place in the world, even if the wider community cannot accept me.
So tomorrow I continue as I did today. I will go to work. Once I finish there I plan to meet a friend of whom I've seen far too little. (and that has been happening a lot lately) I hope to discuss plans for the future in a real and concrete way that will lead to me doing real and concrete things. Hell, I might even find a life amongst it that isn't entirely tied up in this transition process. If I keep doing this, my life a year from now might be rather good. I like that idea.
