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How many times have you heard someone say, "I'm making up for lost time?" What they usually mean is they have intentions to do something in excess, e.g. Drinking, smoking, eating, exercising, etc. Actually, it is nothing more than an excuse to overindulge. Can lost time ever be recovered? No! Once you've failed to do what is right, you can never re-gain those lost moments, for they are gone forever. Time is, in reality, experience.
My friend and I were reading a book called the "Book of Questions." It is designed to guide your thoughts and help you better understand yourself and others. One of the questions asked, "If you had opportunity to have a marvelous vacation on a tropical isle, knowing that you would afterward remember nothing of the experience, would you?" My answer is no. I feel I would gain no experience from it, and any power to transform my life would be lost. It would be wasted effort for I would come away unchanged.
I realize that what I have lost by growing up as a boy can never be recovered. There is no way to gain the experience of growing up female. I never had a period to deal with. I received no training in feminine aspects, such as proper clothing, mannerisms, or posture. I will never know the fear that a young girl feels when walking alone, an how she cringes at every sound thinking someone is after her. I was raised a boy. I was taught that strength could overcome wrong, and I had nothing to fear. This was lost time when you condsider my present life. My life now feels like I am standing beside railroad tracks while the train goes whizzing by me.
It can be overwhelming when you discover that you have so much to learn. I thrive on learning and I believe learning is necessary for me to feel alive. Still, there are those times when I feel like throwing up my hands and yelling,"I give up! You win!" to the world around me. Patrick Henry said,"The battle is not to the strong alone, it is to the vigilant and the active and the brave." There are definitely those times that I do not feel as brave as others may view me. However, I have heard bravery defined as, "a heroic action taken under pressure that transcends reason." I suppose it is pressure that keeps me going when I want to quit. The pressure of which I speak is internal.
My task, as I see it, is to determine what are resaonable achievements and weigh them against my need to conform. I feel the pressure to be all that I lost, but wisdom dictates that is a foolish goal. What the average 50 year old woman has learned and experienced has taken her 50 years. I have used up 50 years of my own life while living as a man. This means I would spend the rest of my 50 years playing "catch-up." I know I must determine what type of woman I will be. The level of femininity I reach for is up to me, and not society.
I have friends that tell me they like me the way I am. It angers me that I have always lived my life to please others. That is why I waited for so long. Now, that I have chosen to break free of my former life, I would prove the fool to again become entangled in other people's opinions. It is important to have friends, but true friends accept you even when they don't understand you. How can I expect them to understand, when there is so much I have yet to understand myself?
Transistion is all about breaking free, but a therapist once told me that I must pick the battles worth fighting. Although I never meant for my family and I to go to war, it did happen. They have kept their distance from me since I first changed my name. Like so many of my co-workers and friends, they felt betrayed when I came out. I have begun to realize why it hurt them so much. They thought they knew me well, but I had never revealed to them the discontent I felt with my life. In actuality, I was fighting myself.
I feel it is possible that I could have stopped some of this loss from occurring. If I had been honest about my transsexuality from the beginning, things may have turned out differently. Possibly, it was my fear of their rejection that caused it to occur. I hurt them deeper by my lack of honesty. I have always considered myself honest, but in this area I find myself a liar. I have begun to comprehend a little of what family and friends experienced. The Bible says, in I Corinthians 13:7, that love, "beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things." By not being honest from my youth, there was no love-no trust, no faith, no hope-put in those I cared for. When trapped in the wrong flesh, it is not possible to trust others, for you can't trust yourself.
I was never able to share myself completely because of my lack of trust in others. I will forever regret this, and I hope you will not follow my mistake. Family and friends may reject you, regardless, but show them you love them enough to trust them. They may not understand but, as I said, family and friends will love you when they don't understand. Give them the benefit of the doubt and it is possible they will help you look for the answers you need. Settling the issue early is the best way to avoid the need to make up for lost time.
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