I wish I had been brave when I was younger. I wish I had done a lot of things differently. I have grown up, knowing that to be different gets you targeted. I would say, “in the south” but let’s face it, it doesn’t matter where you are from, to be different puts you in a bad position. Being different, sexually, even more so.
Had I been brave, I would have talked to my Mom. She would have supported me, she would have cried for losing a son, but she would have supported me I think. I would have gone on hormone treatments, and started the process for change as young as I could. I don’t know if my Dad would have dealt with it well, who knows, I never gave him the option. I don’t know that my life would have been any better, but I would be more me, than I am now.
I am always intensely interested in tv shows that feature some actor, usually female, acting the part of a transgender female. But it fits what I would have had to deal with, if in a rather magnified way. There was this episode of Law and Order, in which a pre-op girl was forced into revealing herself to her straight boyfriend. I cried during that episode. I cried for her and I cried for me. Thing is, I don’t want to be a transgender anything, I just want to be what I am.
But life doesn’t do perfect, it doesn’t do fair. So I am relegated into the title of transgender, or to the unenlightened, transvestite. So in light of the unfairness of life, I am what I am. (apparently I’m Popeye) To think of all the time I wasted, trying not to hurt anyone’s feelings, trying to fit in, to not have my brothers think of me as a freak. I should have been brave, I should have borne my families scorn and societies injustice. I would have gladly traded my time in the military towards changing into a semblance of who I am in my head. I would love all that time back, but it’s gone. I can only hope that the next life chooses to put my soul in the right body. This is a long shot, but really, what do I have to lose by being hopeful.