Where will your journey take you?

My personal journey has taken me from always knowing I was female, to where I live and work as that person.  I transitioned at my place of employment and am seen as an active ambassador for transgender people.  The path has not always been an easy one, as there have been sacrifices along the way that have been difficult. The path of a trans woman can often be quite lonely, as many of the people we used to know have been left behind. Has it all been worth it? Choosing to live my life as the person I was truly born as, has been the most important thing I have ever done, and I would do it again in a heartbeat.  Experiencing life as Lauren has been, and is, filled with such joy and happiness that it is difficult trying to find adequate words to describe the sheer elation.

Many, who knew me before I transitioned, said I never used to smile.  Now there's a smile that never leaves my face!

And it is a blessing to have the help, knowledge and insight we receive from our sisters here on TGH.  Thank you girls!

Hugs,

Ms. Lauren M

Continue smiling my sister.  We love to see you share your joy with the world.  Big Hugs, Marg

Well, Vanessa, I already have several sisters behind me to tell the story of the journey that connects the imaginary character from my childhood, the actress Queta Marble, to my reality, Gisela Claudine. I've finally found my balance, and I confess I've started taking notes to mature it until I sit down to write it.

So this will be an added incentive.

As for the rest, it already has a title and an image. So I think it won't take long.

Gisela

"Please share with us - where will your journey take you?" Vanessa, thank you for asking and for caring enough to ask. 

Where WILL my journey take me is a hard question to answer. However, where would I like to go on this journey can be answered with brevity. Full time womanhood. 

No doubt many here would say the same thing. Yet now for me those words are much more a statement of a goal rather than as they have been for most of my life; a statement of a wish.

I am now at a place that just a few short years ago for me would have seemed unimaginable. I have embraced this reality; I am trans and though that doesn't automatically make me a woman, I have had enough years of introspection, contemplation, and core person examination to accept that in reality I am a woman. Two health care professionals independent of each other have told me as much. "Charlene, you are a woman. The male you is a facade adopted to survive in a world that only sees you as male because of your body." I readily accept that as my truth now. 

Where I am currently at on my journey is weighing what I see as collateral damage to others should I decide to live authentically. Transitioning, something that I have resisted and because of my strong Christian faith which at one time looked impossible to pursue is much more a goal than a wish. 

There are many other things to say which I am contemplating for an article here at CDH, but let me close this way.  Physically I have not transitioned, but mentally and emotionally I have transitioned considerably.

I believe that a successful physical transition finds its foundation in a successful mental / inner person transition. Though it's been challenging to "take it slow" since accepting my own female identity as the real me, much of what I have done is deliberate with the purpose of transitioning both myself and my wife. I don't want to lose her, hurt her, or ignore her feelingsas I look to live much more authentically as the woman I am. I hope to live at least part time as myself though or full time is on the table, even if that gives the appearance that we are a lesbian couple. 

Blessings,

Charlene

You're right Vanessa, Charlene tells it like it is. It's close to how I feel about the situation. But for me it's still unimaginable. 

Actually more like impossible. But everyone has their own journey. 

This is my story as only I know how to tell it.

The pain of being transgender is absolutely and positively indescribable.

The loneliness, the sadness, the guilt, the shame, the anger, the fear of discovery, the absolute human anguish, all trapped inside my head … and no one in my life has ever had a clue.

It gets compounded by the lack of sympathy, compassion, respect, understanding and comfort from others, the fear of anyone knowing, the fear of being seen as a freak, a sin, a kink, a conquest, an outcast, and the constant fear of and from all types of rejection.

What is wrong with me ? Where did this come from ? Why now ? Why me ? Why ?

Suddenly, late in my life this alien female identity suddenly explodes into my life. It creates a deep emotional pain that is completely inexplicable that I now live with every day, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, minute by excruciatingly painful second.

It was a wall of denial and it has come crashing down. 

I started that wall when I was very young, around 15 years old. I had no clue I even started it.

I yearned for the natural me and I tried to simply live it but I was told it was wrong and was corrected again and again and again. I was told by everyone what was a boy and what was a girl. Everyone and everything around me told me what and who I should be. 

I learned that my feelings and sense of self were wrong. I learned to hide those feelings, those thoughts. They were bad. What did I know? Mom, Dad, my siblings (older), they all knew better. I learned from them and so many other adults.

I just knew that I didn’t want to be bad. I didn’t want to be rejected by my family that I loved or the few friends I had. I didn’t want to sin. I didn’t want to be beaten again and again and again. I had no way to explain what I felt. There were no words I learned in school or at home to help me with this internal puzzle and strife.

I was a boy, no emotions were allowed. Just suck it up and move on. So, I shoved those feelings into a deep lost corner somewhere in my head and I began to build my wall of denial.

Everyone around me drove me to improve my skills in hiding. They were not allowed to know my secret because I learned quickly that they loathed what I was hiding.

They were the “enemy”. They proved it time and time and time again. They were my parents, my siblings, my teachers, my friends, soon my employers, soon my co-workers, and even strangers. They were the media, the religious and political groups, and society all around me. I had a “defect” that no one wanted to understand and everyone seemed to vilely and vocally despise.

I vowed to myself to let no one in. I started lying to myself and others. I created my own alternative reality. I buried myself into academics. That’s who I was. I was given many mental abilities. One of them being a eidetic memory. It has always been my greatest asset and yet my biggest liability. I used this “gift” to create a different version of me. The me they wanted me to be. I couldn’t admit to anyone who I really was. I couldn’t let anyone see the real me. Too much at stake. I sold my soul with everything I said and I did. I truly became what they wanted. It didn’t matter what I wanted anymore. I would scream inside. Let me be me. But I couldn’t and I wouldn’t.

I was perpetually behind enemy lines. I learned to cover my emotional tracks. No one saw me or knew I was there. I buried my true self. They saw what I wanted them to see, knowing at all times they would never accept the real me.

I hid to prevent from being an outcast. I hid so I would not be beaten again and again. I wanted to just be accepted so I became what they wanted. I yearned to be loved just for who I am. Who I really am. Let no one in. Let no one in. Let no one in. That was my mantra. Mumbled to myself and throughout my head every conscience moment of every day 365 removed link I even went so far as to hang it up all around my home and in my work space. 

Over time I became so skilled that hiding it became second nature, an instinctive response that even I forgot that I was hiding anything. I did all the things I was supposed to do. I did all the things I thought a man was supposed to do. I played sports. Not successfully. I tried to get into cars. Not successfully. I tried to be handy with tools. Not successfully. Macho. Testosterone. Again I did ALL these male things. None of it …. successfully.

As I got older, I rationalized my feelings. There was just no way to explain it to myself much less anyone else. I built the wall of denial even thicker, so thick that I rarely felt or heard her “voice” behind that wall.

When she did escape periodically, I found ways to take care of my inner self but even then, I was incredibly mean and brutally cruel to myself. I would harm myself. I would inflict so much pain on my own body. This had to be easier to deal with than the pain in my head. I rejected what I saw. I saw my own disgust reflected in the mirror. I hated to look and I hated being me. Cameras became worst than death. If I saw one pointed at me it felt like a loaded gun was aimed at my head or worse like standing in front of a firing squad. Internally though I was begging they would shoot me. I believed I would rather be dead than feel this internal constant pain. Death has got to be better than this I would cry to myself over and over again. This took weeks to recover and feel “better”. Yet, it never really went away and it has never really gone away for good.

Time passes. My life follows the path that was supposed to be: school (way, way too much school), career, marriage, house, child. They all had joy I suppose and I accepted the happiness they brought I suppose. Completely numb and dead inside but I pushed onward. No one knew. I hid it so well. Everyone in my life thought I was happy. I was not. But I couldn’t tell anyone. Rejection harder now. People saying they care. They don’t care. They can’t care. They don’t know the real me. People say they love. How can they ? They don’t know the real me. Besides, I didn’t love myself.

On and on this goes on for years and years and ultimately for decades. On and on I thicken that wall that excludes the largest part of me and my heart. It raps itself like a Boa Constrictor around my soul. I have to protect. Protect those I confess to love from knowing the real me. Protect myself so I can be who they told me I am. Who they want me to be. Who they expect me to be. Truth is looking at this now, I did not really know how to receive or give love? Real love. Unconditional love.

Now. Slowly the wall is starting to erode. I didn’t notice it at first but I sense it’s a growing weakness. I kept pushing back against the wall. I have started to lose the strength to fight this denial that I thought I would carry to my eternal grave.

But I can’t weaken because I will lose everyone and everything in my life.

Problem is I just can’t do it anymore. It is exhausting, draining, total soul crushing.

The strain and the pain become too enormous. I try to find a solution, a way to escape this continued always growing pain that comes with deep emotional fatigue. I am constantly attacking myself. I know exactly where my weaknesses are. I exploit them and I self abuse myself over and over and over again. I am more mean and more brutal and more harmful to myself again over and over and over now more than ever. I hid the outside scars well and they will heal; but the inside ones are harder and deeper and will always remain.

As I heroically try to keep up the wall in my emotional realities, I begin to realize that I just can’t. 

I saw my failure coming … and it does. 

The marriage, the house, the child all gone because of who I am and of actions I did to myself and to the people around me. I am all alone in my life. I realize now I will always be alone. No one has or ever will have my back. 

I desperately struggle and push back again, again and again. I refuse to accept. I feel the deep, deep agony driving myself forward to two choices:

Either open up my heart and soul to the world and accept what will come or die. 

Over the past several years I have been at the crossroads many, many, many times. I have always chosen death. You see, I have tried to kill myself. The count is growing. I am up to 8 times now. I think about suicide a lot and how I could succeed with number 9. But I tell myself maybe I am not ready to do that again. 

As I wrap up this post I reflect and have come to a point to a life altering moment.

I am ready to stop denying myself and lying to myself and to other people. It may take a lifetime to show the world I can be the real me after a lifetime showing the world who I was not.

However, yes, I would rather open up my heart and soul. Let it all out and bulldoze down that wall.

I am going to stop at 8. The world will just have to accept it. Because I have finally accepted myself and who I am. 

I am Michelle Elizabeth. I am a proud transgender woman. Watch out world ... I am ME.

 Thank you for having the courage to open up to us here, we are indeed your friends though we have never met.

 It is such a tough road for so many being what we are, and we did not ask for this, to be this! That is something I think that most of the world doesn't begin to get, it's felt this is some kind of choice we make, like what make of car we drive, or where we live.

 I so hope to are able to keep your resolve and stop at number 8! A few years ago I was thrust into a situation where I was trying to comfort a lovely young woman who was grieving for a trans friend who took their own life. Little I could do except listen to her heart wrenching story and provide a lot of hugs. Her friend was doing alright for a while but somehow a family member said something really bad to them and they decided to end it all rather than live.

 So you have to courage to finally live as your true self, which is awesome. I know the road is not going to be an easy one, but I so much, and so honestly wish you well in your journey.

 Amy