I can understand the feeling that my being non-transitioning would make me seem less serious than those who are transitioning. I am a woman, I have always been female since my earliest cohesive memory. This isn’t a burgeoning fantasy, or something “cool” to be. I hate it. I hate that I am not who I am. I hate that I have hidden who I am all my life in the belief that my parents would be hurt in some way, or even disown me. That my grandparents would not accept me. I didn’t want to be alone in life.
It has been building for years, thinking there was nothing I could do, then finding out there are things I can do. But when I found that you could change, transition, the results I saw were horrifying. Plastic and fake looking, these were to me, a parody of being. I didn’t want to be a man in women’s clothes, I didn’t want to be an obviously surgically altered man in women’s clothes either. They have advanced since then, and in that time I have bemoaned my getting married to a person who was already violently intolerant of her gay sister, she would have left me without a thought if I had come out to her. I was trying to be the man the world wanted me to be. I failed in that I think, in many ways.
I want to change, but I’m getting too old, and money would be an issue. I have responsibilities to my family, to my kids. In the scheme of things, I managed to still have a good life. I burn with regret, I still hate having the body of a man. But, I have good friends, and a good life despite it. I have a wonderful woman and children that I love. Changing now only hurts everyone I know and love. Changing now is a last minute grasp at some personal happiness. I know who I am inside, perhaps that will be enough, now that it’s so late in the game.