I am trying to shed the idea that I need to be 100% that I want to get on HRT. I am so angry with myself that I didn’t start it at a younger age, and I have a feeling that in the future, I will be angry if I don't do it now. I mean this in a very subtle way - it makes me genuinely angry that I even have to take this step. I believe so wholeheartedly that we are all one in God’s eyes and gender to me is simply a construct. Some days, I don't feel separate from anyone at all. However, if gender is a construct - why am I making it so hard for myself to exist every day? I avoided transitioning in the past because I was afraid of what it would do to the people around me. But it just occurred to me - I could die. Like, in seconds. And what will all of them do? What will they say at my funeral?
I think about the perfect wife and mother who puts everyone’s needs before her own - only to succumb to some late stage cancer. I think about how putting her own needs first could have saved her life. I think about my needs and how I don't know what they are. I think about all the masking I have done to simply survive here. How all I have ever wanted was to know peace, security, and comfort. I think about how fleeting those things have always been for me. I think about how much I fear becoming her because I predict that it will not feel secure or peaceful or comfortable. But if I can't make those things happen now and I can’t predict if they will happen then - I can at least know that I will be free and I can stop resisting the pain of not showing up as my authentic self.
And yes, you could argue that I should not need to rely on modern medicine to give me a secure sense of self - but I am telling you. I feel secure about my image in christ. I feel secure in knowing that beyond this realm, gender is not what it is here. I hate the illusion that it matters. It feels selfish and shallow and meaningless. But I have to respect the illusion of it all, don’t I? I mean, I haven't been respecting it - I have been actively resisting it. I did the acceptance thing. I did all the masking and all the blending in and it was never enough. I did it for survival and taking this next step into medically transitioning feels really dumb to say the least, but I know that it may mean more on the other side, and so I am willing to give it a try. Not out of some shallow desire to wear a dress and pretend I am a woman - I don't want to be a woman. I want to exist and not apologize for it or hold myself back. I want to show up as my most authentic self and I want to use all the resources that the world offers me to make that happen. If I should die, I want to say that I didn't just try to understand myself - I want to say that I honored myself.
