Showing posts with label winning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label winning. Show all posts

Sunday, May 28, 2023

In It to Win...A Transgender Life

 

Self Photo from the Jessie
Hart Collection

Once I seriously started to go down the gender path to a total transgender transition, I just had to be in it to win it. 

The question remained what the process would be to win it. Along the way, I had already suffered from (and conquered) a deep sense of feeling selfish. Once I did I made it to the level of impostor syndrome. First, let's deal with all the selfishness I felt as I transitioned. Many of my feelings came from knowing I was nearly single handling wrecking a male life I didn't want anymore. Most importantly it meant destroying a twenty five year relationship I had with a woman I deeply loved but she was completely against living with another woman. I was stuck between the rock and the hard place with no where to go. Life became hell. 

Perhaps the worst part was knowing I was being selfish. Every time I withdrew into my feminine self to escape the world was time I could have spent to make the relationship stronger. Finally, I needed to realize my pursuit to my version of womanhood was selfish and had to be if I was ever going to be successful. Also I needed to define success and what it meant to me. Increasingly, what success meant to me was to feel so natural as a woman. Deep down inside, I knew I was doing the right thing, no matter how selfish it was to do it. I was certainly in it to win it.  But winning it turned out to be far from easy. To be successful, I chose what I referred to as the "stair-step" method of gender transition. Or once I had conquered one step, I could try another. The first example would be when I began to just have confidence in my appearance when I left the house. From there, my basic confidence increased and I advanced to the point where I could navigate the world fairly easily as a transgender woman. 

It was about this time when "impostor syndrome" set in for me. Here I was out in the world and all of a sudden the feeling I was some sort of a secret invader came along to ruin everything for me. To be in it to win it, something else was coming along just to be another obstacle. Finally I was able to conquer impostor syndrome by accepting the woman I was becoming was a part of me all along. I had just become a woman by taking a different path than most cis-women I knew.   Most importantly I learned I could be a winner and achieve my goal.

Ironically, all our transgender lives are so similar yet so unique. Sadly most of us go through  similar bouts of selfishness and/or impostor syndrome and we transition into our authentic gender selves. We all have to succeed in our own ways to be survivors in an ever increasing challenging world.

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