In talking it over with my counsellor, I feel that I have broken through the barrier of resistance. That resistance stems from being unable to please others in my life and always looking for ways to do so. Not a very good technique when one considers that we are here to learn about ourselves and to bring all our gifts to the surface for the world to see. Sometimes the world does not want to see what we have to offer but this is the world’s loss. What I mean by ‘world’ is those around us who are steeped in dogma and religion and their own pain of not being who they are truly are. This is because everyone, to some extent or other, is submerged under a cloak of comfort hiding those bits that their ‘world’ does not like. We all have darkness and secrets that we would prefer to keep hidden from others in case we get admonished or castigated or told we are wrong to be that, do that, have that.

I have moved from the scared person of yesteryear and become … Becoming what is a project still in development. I like where I am going now. I spent the major part of my life trying to work out what other people wanted of me so I could navigate life without being told I was unworthy.

With my gender, I still looked for answers in the wrong place. Rather than being and feeling I constantly analyzed my thoughts and feelings in order to find a way through them, to understand them, to reject them as being just another psychological aberration that needed to be removed. And all this for other peoples satisfaction so they didn’t have to contend with my idiosyncrasies. You know that I was told this many years ago by my section head at the BBC where I worked for 20 years. He said that the design engineers shouldn’t have to deal with my foibles but in the next breath he suggested that I had to put up with the design engineers foibles. Talk about double standards. This sort of treatment started as young as I can remember. The constant suggestion that I was actually less than normal and should always do what other told me to do.

My feminine outlook on life was not accepted in the 50′s or 60′s and by then that side of me submerged so deep as to be nonexistent. It wasn’t really until later, much later, that it came bubbling up like a volcano about to explode. When one hides part of oneself, it eventually breaks out and if you resist it, the pain increases exponentially. This has been my life for many years.

In going on hormones, it is as though the weight has been lifted from my shoulders. It is not the hormones per say that has caused this revelation but the end of a long journey where I was guided to release many old dogmas and concepts that no longer served me – like they ever did! The journey of pain simply served to highlight the issues that was the cause of my pain and give me the opportunity to let those issues go.

When one decides that to go dressed as a woman 100% of the time, and to deal with the possible torment that other people could inflict upon me, it was a very fearful time indeed. But only by experiencing could I feel what it was like. My fear was greater because I had developed a feeling that what ever I did it was a mistake. When I made choices only to be told later by others that I had made the wrong choice, I very quickly learnt to let other people make the choices for me to stop the barrage of admonishment. The down side of this strategy was that I failed to learn from my choices – simply because I didn’t make any. I don’t remember when this began but I am sure it was when I was very young.

Being on hormones is like being un-tethered, being let go to learn to live. Before the hormones, I was tethered between appointments with the gender clinic and that was not good for me. The IBS was always bad and now I have been set free the IBS is much better almost to be nonexistent.

The freedom of not having to constantly analyze my thoughts has given my mind space to be creative. And that creativity has come with it much less anger about whether I can produce artwork without mistakes. I simply start again or try something else to manifest my imagination.

There seems to be that placebo effect running, you know the one that means that I feel more than I am supposed to. When I have a headache, I take a painkiller tablet and before the tablet can take effect, the headache goes. It feels like I am giving over the headache to the Divine or some other force so I no longer have to fight it. I feel the same is happening here with the hormones. I feel little buds forming underneath the nipples which cannot possibly be happening this fast. Placebo is taking over. Not that I’m complaining you understand. Everything feels right.

I saw a TV programme the other day on the paratrooper transsexual going through her changes. Very much like my own, her parents had great difficulty with this change and would rather it go away so they no longer have to deal with it. In her case, they simply told her that she had died to them and they would no longer see her. Rejection of the highest degree. I know how she feels as my mother would not like to see me dressed in my female role because her neighbours might think less of her and we cannot possibly have that can we! Rather than help me to deal with this transition, she thinks of herself instead. This was much the same for the paratrooper.

There is a fundamental lack of understanding of society in general for things outside the normal (whatever that is). That band called gender expression is a line which extends from ultra masculine to ultra feminine with 99.9999% of the world somewhere in between. We are ALL part feminine part masculine and when we reject that part of us that society dictates should not be we simply suppress it. Any suppression we do is to our detriment and just causes us more pain.

I would like to be able to be myself and express myself how I please (within reason of course). I have noticed now that I have moved towards that goal of self expression that my creativity has blossomed. I find my intuition is helping me to do things I had bottled up for so many years because of the anger I felt for those around me trying to tether me to the pigeon hole they had created for me.

In order to be what others wanted me to be, I had to be perfect. Perfectionism is very dangerous as it eats away at your insides gradually diminishing the light within until there is virtually nothing left but a burning ember. If I couldn’t do something perfect, and on the first try, I got very angry and eventually gave up doing anything at all through the fear of that eruption of destructive anger. The choices I made no one liked so I gave all responsibility to others. The easy way out.

Over that past few years I have realised that I have learned responsibility. Therefore I get nervous and fearful of making choices in case they turn out to be wrong. The circle turns and I am now reaping the rewards of NOT doing the responsibility thing then. What goes around, comes around. A really good case of head in the sand. If I had gone through instead of around then maybe I would have had the chance to reduce my stress levels now. Leaving all this until late in life means I have to experience all the pain I would have felt then had I done it then. Things suppressed have to come out at some point. The pain I feel now is magnified simply because it has all been suppressed for so many years.

The only thing I can say to the readers is go through the pain when it arrives and don’t leave it for 40 years to deal with it.

It starts at the moment we are born and never really stops. The gender choices we make are usually opposed by the society we live in. I wanted to be at peace with myself but because of parental and peer pressure, I was forced to wear a mask that did not fit. It still doesn’t but gradually it is falling away leaving my true self behind from the ashes. As I shed more of the accumulated rubbish, I am finding more of myself that I didn’t realise existed, parts of me that I found difficult to deal with as my programming, my inner phobia, went against the beliefs I absorbed from others. Not a nice place to be.

Now I am experiencing a movement in my life whereby I can try hormones to resolve the issue I have with my body. I had waited two long years for this having been ready in 2006 but was not given the chance. Perhaps now I can experience this next part of my journey in relative peace without the distraction of trying to be what other people want me to be.

Shedding the tethers of those past requirements is a good thing indeed. It frees one from the subtle influences of those who think they know better. Usually, it is only the keeping of you in chains that stops others from looking at their own ‘stuff’. I know because that is what I did to others so I didn’t have to look at mine.

Gender is just one of the many difficulties I have. Confused says it best. I am not really sure whether I am in the wrong body – just finding being in any body difficult. As a spiritual being, the body is going to be a difficult place to experience as the spirit is essentially non-gendered – both masculine and feminine and neither at the same time. I prefer to see myself as a spiritual being learning from the point of limitation in a physical form striving to make sense of the sensations of the world – the sound, the sight, the touch, the belief, the manifestation of the soul in density.

My experience so far has been one of feeling that this has all been a psychological aberration brought on by my listening to other peoples viewpoint telling me that I am mentally disturbed and all this has been a fantasy to get away from the things I don’t like. I think instead of feel because that is what I have been told to do all of my life. I simply ignored my feeling which was telling me something else – if only I had the strength to listen to my intuition.

Putting words to feeling is not easy but that is where I am heading now.