Unhappiness

 

Image from Abigail Keenan
on UnSplash 

When someone asks me why I ever would give up the male privilege I reluctantly earned to pursue a life as a transgender woman, it's easy to answer.. The entire process required me to jump into an existence I didn't know really much about. Regardless of spending a lifetime of closely observing almost every girl/woman I saw. 

One of the simplest responses I could ever come up with, as well as one which was easiest to understand, was I just unhappy with who I was. 

In many ways the whole process started when I was very young when someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I always answered without fail and didn't tell the truth. Instead of the usual doctor or lawyer answer everyone wanted to hear, all I could keep thinking was I wanted to be a woman when I grew up.  Imagine the shock I would have received if I had ever told the truth. So I did the natural, for me, and held my ever increasing gender dysphoria to myself. I built a very dark and lonely gender closet while I was very unhappy. Even when I achieved some success in my male dominated world. It was difficult enough to achieve happiness in my family to begin with but nearly impossible when I added in anything to do with my gender dysphoria. Keep in mind, all of this occurred back in the days when being a transvestite or transsexual was considered to be a mental health issue.

Even still, I knew I wasn't crazy, all I wanted was to be was feminine. As I went through a life which included graduating with two college degrees along with surviving a stint in the Army, I never lost my desire to be a woman. In fact, the more I explored my chances to live as a transgender woman, the more natural I felt. When I was successful in my explorations I did feel so natural and yes, even happy. Since happiness was an emotion I had never felt in my life, I knew I was on the right path. The problem was, I was so used to existing with an underlying unhappiness in my life, I didn't know how to live without it. Or, in some ways, I thought it was just the normal way of living. Plus most of all the other transgender or transvestites around me seemed to be unhappy also. Even when they were supposedly going down a gender path which made them happy. 

The problem which became evident also was how much baggage could I bring with me from my old male life into my new feminine one. Since I had spent so much time acquiring all the life's knowledge I had, I didn't want to lose it all. Mainly because not all of the experiences I acquired as a guy were unpleasant and I wanted to remember them. I found rather quickly I couldn't bring much of my knowledge with me because society didn't dictate women didn't know (or shouldn't know) about subjects such as sports or politics. By joining the feminine gender, I literally lost a portion of my intelligence. I knew it was going to be a reality when I transitioned to being a transgender woman but even still I was shocked in how fast it happened. 

By this point in my transition I needed to decide what was more important to me, my male privileges or my happiness in life. For once I had the chance to throw away all of the privilege and choose my happiness.. I finally had the chance to live my childhood dream of living as a woman.