Yes! I Am Transgender!

It's true. I am a transgender woman. If you don't know what that means, it means that I was born as a male, and I am now a woman. For a great majority of people, it is a wild concept to comprehend, how one could feel that they are not the gender that was assigned to them at birth, while on the other hand, there are a lot of people that know exactly what that feels like! Crazy! There really isn't any way to explain it. It is instinct. We are who we are, each and every one of us. We are all free to be ourselves.

I am proud to be who I am, although not everybody else in my life is as happy for me as I am, but there is very little I can do in that regard. I have long sense given up on sacrificing my true feelings, and my true character in order to accommodate those around me. I will never even try to live up to anybody's expectations because I will not give them the power to make me feel like I'm not valuable simply for being myself. I know my worth. I know what I want for me, and my future. Nobody stops me. That's a fact.

Being transgender empowers me. It fuels me from within. It boosts me. It gives me drive, confidence, inner strength, joy, fulfillment, and satisfaction. Life feels like it has a purpose for me. It gives me everything and more! Inside, I am glowing! It gives me a reason to keep going. It gives me something to fight for. I now embrace the identity that I had been searching for my whole life. The reason I've always felt "different" but never could figure out why.

In my journey to self discovery, I learned that we all wear masks. I didn't understand this until I got to a point in my self-search where I got fed up because I did not feel any fulfillment. I realized that even though I am successfully fulfilling the roles I am choosing in life, there is no joy because I'm simply wearing masks. I can play the role well but I am not living the role. So then I had to ask myself, who do I want to be? I had never honored myself with a such a question before. What is it deep inside that I truly want to show the world? Who am I?

From what I see, there are two types of people; those who know themselves, and those who are looking for themselves (although they may claim they know who they are). Many of us, act as would be expected from our environments. We act like our elders or our friends. We always act in a way that appeases people around us, so that we receive approval. That is how most social structures are setup. If you act, dress, or talk a certain way then you will be accepted. If you fall outside of what is considered to be "normal", you're casted out.

I grew up knowing that I am in some way or another, I was different. I didn't know how, but I knew that I wasn't normal and that did not stop me from trying to be normal. I fit in well. I wore the mask well. I was like a chameleon, always blending in, shifting into whatever type of person I needed to be in order to feel approved. Deep down inside, I always felt the dissatisfaction and emptiness from being what people want to see while being so untrue to myself, even though, at the time, I had no idea what being true to myself actually meant. One of my greatest experiences of this, shortly before admitting my transgender identity to myself, I remember I had gotten a hair cut.

I was trying to grow it out. I really wanted it long. I always wanted it long, but would crack under social pressure to get it cut every single time. Summertime heat was getting brutal working construction, and at the time my hair was in super awkward phase. There was nothing to do with my hair, so I got my haircut and I was very bothered because everybody was so happy about my haircut while I was not happy with it.

"I love your haircut. It looks good!"

"..Thanks, I hate it." -I would think.. I do know that when people give me compliments like that, their hearts are in the right place and they are totally unaware of the battle I am struggling with on the inside. That is one of the many challenges of walking the world while still vulnerable with invisible wounds, when people are unknowingly festering those wounds, all we can do is smile through the pain. In many cases for me, people mean well, but their words are harmful nevertheless and it is my job to see the positive intent behind their message and reciprocate appropriately.

In a lot of cases, I'm accepted for who I am expected to be, but I'm rejected for who I truly am. Some people don't want hear that I am trans. They don't care. It doesn't make sense to me because I'm not a bad person and there is nothing fundamentally wrong with anybody deciding to gender transition. The amount of backlash I received from people I expected to be accepting blew me away. I knew when I was at a "coming out" point, I was going to lose a lot of people in my life. It hurt to know that relationships were going to change, but it has really shown me who are genuine people in my lives, and who are not.

I will never again be burdened with the responsibility of living up to anybody's expectations. I will be me, and it hurts to say something like how I don't care what people think because to some respect, I do care what people think, because I care about them. However, I do not believe that I am anybody's object to which they can decide my hair length or clothing style. You cannot change anybody's identity. Nobody can change how another person feels on the inside. We are who we are! All of us, everybody. Nobody has a right to decide your identity.

Through the mental trauma I experienced, I hit many breaking points. Two years after grieving my daughter, one year after attempting suicide, I come out as transgender. I don't think that somebody would even require basic psychiatric knowledge to see that there is, for me, a direct link between my post traumatic stress and my coming out with transgenderism. I completely broke down. I had to figure out who I was again. In the two years time between my daughter's death and my suicide, I failed again and again. I tried to hold myself up high and carry myself while my heart dragged in the dirt the entire way. I got shit on every step I took, and each cut just felt deeper and deeper, and finally I shut down.

When I rebooted from a suicide attempt, I pledged to myself, that so long as I walk this Earth, I will do so my way. I put the pieces of me together just the way I saw fit. With that attitude, and determination to discover my true identity, I was able to access who I truly am. I suffered harshly, I shut down, and came to a place of pure openness within myself.

At the time I got the haircut I hated so much, I caught myself in the bathroom mirror at a friend's house and thought to myself the haircut looked feminine. It was a simple "shave the sides, leave some on the top" type of haircut. I never had the barber do a fade. I liked the direct contrast look, and I would have them shave a line where the hair parts. I thought it gave it a real clean look. Anyway, the haircut I got this time, it looked feminine. I mention it to my friend, how I feel it looks, and he agrees. I go back and look in the mirror, because I seriously didn't expect him to agree that I look like a female with this haircut because I'm like "Oh shit" but once I caught myself in the mirror, I looked, and I thought to myself "What am running from myself for?" It's deep when you're looking yourself in the eyes in a mirror and have an epiphany or a very profound realization from deep within.

That moment, looking in the mirror was the first time in a very long time, that I remembered who I truly am. I was concerned because I thought my haircut made me look feminine but when I meet my own gaze in the mirror, lightning struck. I buried the fact that I wanted to transition for years. From the moment I knew that people can actually transition, I was intrigued. I knew it was for me. I wanted to but at the time I did not have the courage to do it. I felt more comfortable being a chameleon, just being whatever people wanted me to be. That was much easier than to consider a life of being a transgender woman.

I repressed the feelings of femininity and wanting to transition and live the life that would make me truly the happiest, and in that mirror, I discovered that I had been carrying these feelings for so long, and when I found those feelings, I felt a spark. They were good feelings, my true desires.

When I see somebody being truly being themselves, it gives me a lot of joy. It makes me respect that person for their braveness and willingness to show their true colors and be who they really are. When I knew that I no longer had to try to be man, I was so relieved. I was like yes because I am so exhausted from trying to be something I was not. Like wow, what a relief! I can just be me!

Why can't we all be happy with each other? That's what I'm always asking myself. I think there is way too much discrimination against transgenderism. Most transgender people I have met and talked to are very genuine people.

To live in transition is like to create a piece of art with every step in view of the audience. I am judged based on only what can be seen on the surface. Things don't happen over night. Only the artist knows what the finished piece will look like yet is faced by speculation by their audience because everything is happening in plain view. A step in progress for me, may look like something entirely different for somebody else. Nobody understands, and if they want to understand, I want to educate because I firmly believe most all feelings of prejudice about anything at all is associated with a lack of knowledge and understanding about things. Together, we can all learn!

There is so much beyond transgenderism in our culture and our society that could be so easy going and pleasant if it weren't for the labeling, misinformation, crude discrimination, and false ideology that surrounds these kind of subjects. So many people are misled and there is not enough information available out there, and people are hurting because of it.

And this is just a personal thought, but I think that because Society's rules are "controversy must be raised over what other people have a right to do with their own lives of which have no effect on ourselves or anybody else." so much energy is wasted with negative opposition for no good reason, and therefore we hold ourselves back from our own evolution as a human race.

The End.