Losing yourself in transition to find yourself

So when you transition you go through a phase where you kind of lose yourself. In hindsight I started going through that phase a long time before I actually started transitioning. When I finally did there really wasn't all that much left to "Nathan." I, as you can see in my first entry in this blog, was living at home and honestly didn't have much of an identity except as a transsexual.

Yeah, gender identity is that important. I couldn't ignore it any longer.

After you finally lose yourself you begin to find yourself again. I can say that "Nathan" died over Thanksgiving weekend 2010. I had been living as a woman but working as a man, and then I had a four day weekend where I didn't have to go anywhere as a man. I passed fairly well by that time though I wasn't on hormones.  I had to quit my insurance sales job after that weekend. I couldn't bring myself to face anyone as a man again.

I started building my identity as a woman about six months prior to Thanksgiving, and by that weekend I had enough of one that I didn't really need "Nathan" anymore. Being transgendered is kind of like being in an abusive relationship with yourself. My internal self was always female but I created this external male persona  to protect myself. It started out as a way to protect myself from bullying and ridicule in grade school but it ended up being the type of thing where I was absolutely terrified to let that person go.It was a  "I need to hold on to 'Nathan' because I'll never be able to support myself" type of thing. Like a woman who is terrified to be independent because her husband convinced her she wasn't capable of it.

I think it was just four days without "Nathan" that helped me realize that I didn't need him.

While you're losing yourself you're actually also finding yourself. Eventually you cross that invisible line and everyone sees you as the sex you actually are not the sex on your birth certificate, and a funny thing happens; you stop thinking about gender all the time and you begin to rediscover other things and other interests. Eventually you become the person you always were. I don't mean that to say "I was always a woman and then became one." I mean to say I was always this person that I am, and now that everyone knows me as a woman, I am the same person I was when no one thought of me as a woman, only I am free to be myself; my thoughts aren't consumed by gender.

I mean, and I'm aware that this is gonna sound really girly but oh well, I definitely have a palette of colors that I always wear. It definitely is seasonal and part of it is what colors look good on me but honestly I buy the colors that I like. They are just colors that I am drawn to. The thing about it is they were the same colors that I loved as a little kid and would pick out of the crayola box. It's more complex than just this.

Last night I saw friend of mine from college play at a local club. I also ran into a bunch of my college friends. The thing is I'm still the same person, I'm also definitely a woman. Really the only thing I can compare it to is that at 18, I was the same person I was when I was 12 only I was 18.

When I am alone with myself and my God I am the same person I have always been, and the relationship I have with myself and my God is the same it has always been.

It's just that for years I thought of that relationship as masculine. Or, I didn't, not enough to really accept it. I wouldn't have transitioned if I truly accepted it.

Sometimes it's surprising to me when I am referred to as "She." It's more surprising when someone calls me "He." I am very aware that my body is basically female at this point; I look like a normal woman when I wear a two piece. I think the thing is that I thought transitioning would mean I would become a different person and the truth is I haven't.

Right now I'm kind of reconciling myself with the fact that I am a very feminine person and that I really always have been. I'm reconciling myself with the fact that I spent almost my entire life feeling really jealous of every girl I saw thinking they had something I didn't, when in reality I had it all along.

Transsexualism is a simple hormone imbalance, but how we experience ourselves is anything but simple. The fact is I am as female as any other woman I know. I wish I hadn't been told I wasn't. I hope someday I have completely recovered from that experience of everyone thinking I was a boy.

I used to be awoken three or four times a night by the prayer "God, please let me wake up and be a girl."

Now its. "I'm a woman. Thank you God for creating me as a female person."

In my half awake state last night I was planning this blog entry. It started "I am beautiful..." I don't know how I would have explained the rest. But it was something about how the experiences that make up a trans person gives us incredibly beautiful souls.