OT "I'm Dealing With A Few Transgender Issues"

Move on. I have. With much more productive posts.

 

Mayo is the King of condiments. I feel like you guys and gals are living in crazy town. I buy the Japanese Kupi Mayo. It is a little more tangy due to only egg yolks. I also make my own when needed. Mayo is heavenly.

 

You can believe me, or not. It matters not to me. I've simply asked the mods to moderate in fairness. I think they've all received the memo by now. Hence, I'll call it moveon.s2

 

Now you're a lying. Either that, or you don't know how to read. Or both.

 

It depends a lot on how the statement is taken by the receiver. You can use the phrase in a friendly way and you can use it in an ugly way. If that's too difficult to sort out then I guess you have to allow it. I think that given the time and effort that I could sort it out but it wouldn't be easy so it falls in your lap.

 

I recently had a woman technician that did a wonderful job applying hemo dialysis to me at the privately run Davita. She has short hair and is married with children. When I was 15 I went to a summer session in a University, JESSI. I thought my roommate was gay and now don't give a hoot whether he was or wasn't; I think he wasn't and it's one of the many things I'm ashamed of although I was just a kid. You can't tell a book by it's cover, something I've had to learn the hard way.

 

What a wonderful post.

 

Are you sure he didn’t send you a memo? Did you check the fax machine?

 

Well, hopefully Alex will figure it out in college.

 

Just getting this out there because I think it's vaguely interesting and relevant to the discussion...

A timeline of when I almost figured it out:
8 years old - Felt wrong in my body, like I was monstrous, too big and too clumsy, not feminine. I put that feeling in a box and kept it out of sight.
10 years old - first suicide attempt, really clumsy and easily thwarted.
14 years old - when I closed my eyes I could imagine the "shape of my soul" as a girl's. I put that feeling in a box and kept it out of sight.
18 years old - unironically said I felt like I was a lesbian to my roommate. I put that feeling in a box and kept it out of sight.
19 years old - join Blazers List Talk, annoy the hell out of Ed O because I'm jealous he's smarter than me.
23 years old - second suicide attempt, less clumsy, but narrowly thwarted.
28 years old - An online friend came out as trans; she told me she didn't think I was trans. I put that feeling in a box and kept it out of sight.
38 years old - I couldn't look myself in the mirror for five straight days and wanted to kill myself, so I opened the box.

The goal, if I'm being frank and honest, is to reduce the number of suicide attempts but reducing the amount of almost figuring it out. I didn't figure it out because by the time I understood what trans even was, I'd compartmentalized my feelings so much and papered them over with Being A Good Son, that I had a ten year task of ripping that down. If I'd figured it out at 14, it wouldn't have mattered because I would have had no access to any drugs or surgery in 1991. But it's not 1991, it's 2022. There are treatments and medicine, and they can stop a less clumsy person from succeeding where I failed twice.

If Alex is expressing things, it's because the words are there, and the concepts are known. It doesn't matter if Alex finds sexual gratification in breasts; that literally changes nothing, and if Alex's father thinks or hopes it does, and is insisting that's just good normal teenage boy behavior, then all he's doing is helping Alex shovel feelings into a box and taping it over with Being A Good Son.

 

Well said.

 

I see.

 

I've been saying I wanted to move on for awhile now.

 

Here's hoping he goes.

 

Very well said, and thanks again for your bold transparency (absolutely no pun intended). I really feel for what you've gone through. I can't imagine how you worked through all of that. So glad you did. So, you made the change when you were 38? How many years has it been? Are you being well received amongst your friends and family? Did your family have any inkling of what was going on when you were pre-teen....or even later?

Just to be clear, while I'm pretty sure Alex's step-dad (actually, my Niece's boyfriend), was pleased to hear Alex was engaging in all the teen boy activities, if Alex tomorrow were to say, hey, I still want to be a girl, he/she would be supported. There is no conflating those situations. The reality here is, it's still all so new to everyone. Alex has been to family counseling. That's not to say he's been to the "right" one. As I understand about the camp, it's a 6-week affair. Very expensive. $600 per day. The kids have to leave phones, computers, even their own clothes, behind. Effectively, they get stripped down to the elements of nature itself. Even when they take a crap, they dig a hole and bury it. Apparently, the concept is to reduce and/or eliminate outside influences and distractions. Apparently, in doing so, the "real" them begins to emerge. There are professionals on staff to help diagnose what's going on. No judgements. If, at that point, Alex determines to be a girl, then support in that space begins. At least that's the way I'm understanding things.

Thanks again for actually dialoging with me. It's appreciated more than you know.

Tim

 

I began the process when I was 38, so this was back in 2015; in August it'll have been 7 years. The process was really slow; when I came out to my wife, she didn't take it well. In order to keep her comfortable, I found a therapist, paused my transition for a year, went to couple's counseling. We ended up getting divorced in 2019, which honestly was best. The four years I spent trying to keep her happy were making us both miserable, and we've actually been much better friends since the divorce.

Most friends were good and supportive about my transition, but I found that many of my friends stopped making time for me. Right now, the only person who knew me before my transition that I spend any time with is my ex-wife. Everyone in my life now are people who met me as myself. I don't know if this is natural or not; I assumed it was. COVID hasn't helped there; I did have a group of before-friends I played board games with, but lockdown killed that group pretty definitively.

My parents definitely had an inkling when I was young, but to them I was just having trouble Being A Boy, so they taught me to act like a boy, and encouraged me to go into Cub and Boy Scouts. It's funny you mention that camp; my time spent in Boy Scouts, specifically Boy Scout camp, was some of the most miserable and traumatic of my life. Without the support system I had at home, being at the whims of 50-100 boys who all viewed me as a weird outsider even though I was ostensibly presenting male, I was adrift. I was bullied quite a bit, and I don't know if there's ever been a week where I cried more. Definitely a low point in my life.

I feel like cis people encounter a young person who says they're trans, and they think this is a problem to be solved. Maybe, they think, the child isn't experiencing their biological gender enough, so they encourage behaviors of the biological gender, and push the kid into activities, hoping they'll finally "get it" and just fall into place, that the problem will fix itself. Of course, being trans is not a problem. The World antagonizing trans people is a problem, but in the quest to give their kids An Easy Life, family members often try to encourage hiding from antagonists. Be a better boy and boys won't bully you. You'll learn how to be a man eventually and then your life will be easy, which means we'll have done a good job as parents.

I hope Alex is okay after that very expensive camp. I don't envy her at all.