Accountability and regrets

To transition, to change sex, (on a personal level) it’s a pretty big thing!

I’d go so far as to say “huge” (at least that’s my opinion)

There isn’t really any aspect of your life, of who you are and how you feel that isn’t effected. It’s very hard, very “trying”. I think that if you can make it through without help, there isn’t too much the world can throw at you that you shouldn’t be able to manage.

   

Being as honest as I can be, I needed it.

I NEEDED to do it, I felt it was the only way my life might possibly become survivable.

With that said, I was absolutely terrified.

The whole time.

I was terrified of a million things, but most of all, terrified that it wouldn’t “work”, that I wouldn’t “make it”, that after everything I still wouldn’t be a “girl” (there are different contexts that I’m applying there, when I talk about being a girl, what I mean mostly by “girl” is simply: who and what I believed I was) and that I’d end up having to kill myself anyway.

What I did, in many ways was due to desperation.

My physical and legal (and most of my social) “transitions” were largely completed within two years.

For a girl in her twenties (IE post puberty), with no kind of support at all from anyone, with very poor (or exceptional in the “male” sense) genetics and who’s pretty much unskilled and under-educated, that is quite a feat (those who’ve been there will understand).

Having to make life altering decisions when one is young, alone, afraid and desperate (and without any means), is not always such a great position to be in, you don’t really get to feel (or be) very “safe”.

And yet I’m confident that I’m not the first to face that situation and I’m also confident I wont be the last.

What it teaches you is accountability.

If you understand (and can master) accountability, you should not end up having (too many) regrets (at least in theory)

Accountability is important, and not just partial accountability, complete accountability, for everything you do, every decision you make, and every thing you say.

The world is a very unforgiving place for women.

I think the hardest aspect for me, was my family. That’s not to say that the rest was “easy”, (all of it was damned hard!!) just that, for me, family was the hardest part.

I AM a strong person, I’ve learned to be cynical and I put on a very hard “front”, but (if you can get to it) I have a very soft heart. I loved and still do love, my family so much that my heart actually aches at the thought.

At the time in my life when I felt I needed them the most, they treated me like I was dead, like I wasn’t even present.

It took some time for me to understand that that was because to them, I actually WAS dead.

From the inside of me looking out, nothing had changed, I didn’t feel as though I was any different than I’d ever been.

BUT! to them, from the outside, looking AT me, and looking IN to me, the person they believed they knew the person they'd always envisioned me to be truly did disappear completely, replaced by a girl they didn’t believe they knew and that they’d never met.

Like being given a grown daughter or sister in her twenties, that they’d never met or knew even existed.

How do you know what that person is like, what her interests are, what her sense of humour is?

Do you have anything in common with her?

In their mind there are no memories of this girl through childhood, no “happy” or “sad” to look back on, no emotions, there’s no “attachment” at all to this new person, at least so they think. Blinded by hurt and grief, all they (think they can) know, is that this girl took away from them someone they loved dearly.

It’s understandable then, that rather than be loving, supportive and understanding, that instead they might choose to HATE everything, even the very sight of this person.

And so I learned soon enough (despite loving them) to build a life for myself alone and away from them, even whilst constantly feeling and carrying hurt and pain from their rejection.

I still feel the hurt over everything with them on a daily basis.

Many transsexual born girls/women I’ve corresponded with who go through this kind of situation end up cutting their family out of their life completely.

Many resent their family, (their mother especially) for their rejection, and lack of understanding and support, and the abuse they suffer as a result.

Add to that the fact that it is guaranteed family will NEVER ever recognise the TS as a female, and it’s not really hard for me to see why they do that.

For a time I did the same too, no contact. I needed to, to get through it all, I was suicidal enough without adding their hurt and anger to the mix.

A few years on and we talk, they’ve met my boyfriend and we travel up the coast a few times a year visit them. They’ve been to our home twice and met BF’s family.

I still feel like we’re strangers in some ways, things aren’t what they where and that hurts even now, but I keep trying anyway.

SO!

I’ve mentioned before that my Mother is not in great health these days. she’s now insulin dependant, she has Crohn’s disease and bad osteoarthritis among other things and so she lives from a wheelchair and spends most of her days in a recliner.

My younger sister (by a year) is generally my mothers carer. She lives at home with my parents, she moved back to their town and in with them, nearly two years ago. She’s never really held a steady job for very long, it’s not really her style, and her and my older brother are still pretty dependant on my parents financially.

Interestingly, I’m the child that was “doomed” to be a failure and embarrassment, and yet I turned out to be the first one who’s managed to support herself and find and hold a steady relationship/partner and get a life together.

So my sister has recently found a new boyfriend, and found some employment, and that has meant she’s been away from home for a few weeks and hasn’t been available as much to look after my mother. As such mother has been struggling, isolated, lonely, depressed and suicidal.

I traveled up during the week, took her to her doctor and then brought back home with me and have had her here with me for a few days taking care of her.

When we’re alone together we seem to end up talking about the elephant in the room, me, “us” and our relationship.

She brings it up nowadays, I stopped bringing it up a while ago, I decided it wasn’t likely that things would change and that if I wanted any kind of relationship with them, that I needed to try and get past that and NOT have it be the only thing we share.

Her own feelings of mortality at work I guess.

Looking at my life now, she’s come to understand (finally) that I’m not “joking” I’m not changing, I’m not going back, and that perhaps I wasn’t lying about my life, who I am and what I believe.

She still denies she ever suspected anything about me, but she conceded this week that maybe things weren’t what she remembers them being when I was a child.

She said she feels guilty, worries that I have a bad or harder life because she didn’t help me when I was a child.

Say’s she’d have been different if she’d “known”.

I guess she can’t let go of the feeling that I’m angry with her.

I was for a while, but being angry did nothing to help me and nothing to change anything, so I let it go, and moved on, and tried to get a relationship back on track with them.

Bringing our history back up only brings back the hurt, sends me back to bad times and makes me want them back out of my life.

I love my entire family, and I wish our relationships could go back to how they once were.

But I don’t know if or how that can ever happen, actually, I don’t think it ever can, that’s what my gut tells me, but in spite of that I still can’t let go.

Sad do you think?

I know that how things are with my family is my biggest regret. I don't know exactly what I could have done to change it or for things to be/have been different, but I wish I could and I wish they where.