Earlier than expected

I woke up earlier than expected this morning, my eyes, full of grit and dry with tiredness against my will, creaked open and forced me out into the world again. I haven't had a dream like that in years dreaming I was lying there quietly knowing, waiting for some dream entity to kill me.  I am calm inside, I see it coming but I don't try to run from it like I have before. My dreaming mind conjuring every image or sensation it can in am effort to illicit that cold sweaty terror I don't seem to feel anymore. Finally hands around my throat, it's a new sensation not the usual knife frenzy I knew so intimately in my younger days. It's cold hard hands trying to squeeze the life out of me, I feel myself struggle, the urge to stay alive kicks in and I fight back against these dream hands, then I am awake. It's morbid of me but somewhere in those seconds of awakening before I get out of bed there is a small me in the pit of my gut that's a little disappointed. Here I am awake again, alive again, stuck in this flesh again.

I thought I was past this and somehow here it is creeping back and gnawing at me, I'm angry that it's here, kicking it's heels against my ribs in tantrum. Insecurity and doubt eating at me, filling me with questions again. Is it real or my imagination, how can I say I am this, how can I prove it. Must I prove it, why do I need to change myself now after all these years, I have found revelation and acceptance and here the same old dusty questions come on out again. I went to a trans salon last night, I thought it was more of a forum, I should of read the blurb a bit better maybe. I thought it was about the diversity of the trans community but it was really about transition itself. For the first time in a long time I felt the pressure to change hang in the air around me. That I could not be a male without the hormones or the operations to take away the offending parts and give me the parts I feel I should have. I don't think it was the intention of the people who put on the show to say this it's just the feeling it generated in me. I needed to talk to them but I didn't, I should of, but I didn't. 

Looking back

When I started to consider that I may have gender issues ( which was how I used to describe myself, someone with gender issues ). There were only really two alternatives as far as I was aware, I could be a butch lesbian or become a FTM transsexual.

I considered the latter very very carefully not only because it is a huge thing to do and very difficult to find someone to do it, but also because of the way the people I loved reacted to the idea of me having operations to change my sex. To them I was a beautiful person inside and out and the idea of me having operations to remove my breasts and have male genitalia was just mutilation. I guess I could of ignored them and just gone ahead because it was what I at the time thought was right for me, but for whatever reason I didn't do that I put myself in their shoes and tried to see where they were coming from and I did see to enough of an extent to hold off. ( Just to clarify here this is purely to do with me and is in no way a comment on the way I think all people considering sex reassignment should think, everyone has do what's right for them I believe that very strongly ). Part of it was that, but the other part was because their reaction made me feel like what I was feeling was wrong and somehow dysfunctional. I stopped trying to talk to them about how I felt about my gender because I was afraid of upsetting them and for many years I stopped talking.



My behaviour became more and more destructive as I tried to find a way to reconcile my body image with my actual body. I was like a man dying of thirst in the desert, if anything come on TV about transsexuals I would drink in it but never satisfied and slightly tortured because I could not speak to people I trusted about what these things made me feel. If I'd had the facilities to access sex reassignment when I was younger I think it would of been a different story here, I think I would have had those operations. Now I am not so sure, but it makes me wonder. If I had had that chance what would I be like now, would I have gone the whole way? What would my name be? Would all the years I spent hating myself and ignoring my body of been happy and productive years? I am now happier with myself than I have ever been and I'm learning to find things to love and explore in my life rather than let it waste away but still I cannot help but wonder a little.