New Years Realization

[Guest Sarah Faith]

I'm not really that big on New Years or the whole New Years resolution business, to me New Years just means the earth once again completed its relatively stable orbit aroud the sun. This year though it kind of hit me out of the blue where I was this time last year and how much progress I've made over the last year. That is to say that this time last year I had been in a state of physical transition for almost 4 years but just didn't have the money to actually afford HRT or really anything else to make full transition possible for me. I was unable to find work, and was still far far too shut in to really even begin to think about going back to community college.

I had more or less reached a brick wall, a business I had helped start with family had basically fully died by the time Christmas rolled around, and I had just hit rock bottom. I was ready to just give up and was just feeling extremely suicidal, I had let my diet and exercise, that had helped me loose so much weight to make transition possible, slip and all of the small progress I made in trying to come out of my shell regressed a bit. I basically started to withdraw again and tried to distract my self from suicidal feelings by playing video games and watching football. Then of course when the Broncos lost the playoffs the one good thing I had going for me last year faded in a very painful manner, I think I probablty lost it in some ways.. the following weeks were a bit of a blur I tried my best to hold on the best I could but really I didn't have much energy left to do so.

Now here I am a year later and everything has changed, and I mean everything. I have been on HRT and full time for almost a year at this point and I have overcome most of the things that had held me back for so long. I have overcome the majority of my anxiety issues that once had me dropping out of college, and hiding away from life in general. Did HRT lead to all these changes? It helped, it was an opportunity but I truly had to make the most of it and I still had to fight my way through the social anxieties that once plagued me. I think the difficulties of transition of having to deal with the Colorado requirements to change my name, and everything else helped force me to start getting over a lot of things in order to make my transition succeed.

In the course of this one year I have really become more of a complete person than I had ever been before, I have found my self socially and have made many new friends over the last year. I have even reconnected with my past, friends I hadn't talked to since I disappeared to them when High school started and in the process made peace with the elements of my past that had haunted me over the years.

I started earlier this year just after having gone full time thinking that maybe I'd consider going back to college, so I reapplied to Community College but then decided I wanted more than that and moved to San Francisco to go to culinary school there. In the process of moving there, and visiting someone very dear to me in Washington I by chance checked out the State University there andfor some reason the programs that I had once dreamed of completing popped out to me. After a great deal of internal and external debate I decided to give my original dreams another shot, I have applied to a State University to Major in Microbiology in the Pre-Med program and I feel very good about my chances of being accepted.

You would think that looking back on this year that all I'd be thinking about is how wonderful it is to be a woman and all of that, but the truth is this year has been about oh so much more than just transitioning from one gender role to the other. This year has truly been about growing as a complete person and literally reinventing my self to be the person I always felt I was. Transition for me has been about far more than meeting the paradigm of how wonderful it is to wear female clothes, or any of the stuff you often hear from people. No the clothes I wear is little else than an extension of my personality, which leads to what my transition is and has always been about, just being me.

Looking back at where I was this time last year, and where I am now with my horizons being almost infinitely broad. I am just absolutely blown away about how far I have made it in such a short period of time and I largely attribute that at reaching for the stars regardless of how impossible it felt at any given moment. I have had many people over the last two years telling me how impossible a goal I might have had was, including life long friends who also happened to be trans. My friend transitioned basically as a youth had told me at one point that my goals for transition were unrealistic, that being going full time within 6 months of beginning HRT was just not going to happen... I went full time within 2. Even my therapist didn't approve of many of my goals she felt I was setting my self up for disappointment and failure, I did it my way anyways. In many cases I have done the exact opposite of what other people "with more experience" felt I should be doing and I have proved their assumptions wrong.

It has helped me become a stronger person overall, a more socially self reliant person. Yet I have surrounded my self with new amazing friends and placed yet even bigger mountains before me to overcome, but unlike previous years I look forward to the challenges and joys that come with that instead of cowering in fear in their shadow. Most of all over everything else; I am glad I never acted on the suicidal feelings last year, I could never have imagined what was waiting just around the corner. It has been a crazy, difficult, exciting, and worthwhile year.. I am looking forward to 2014!

Happy New Years all.

[Cyndee]

Congrats on your past year Sarah, your post illustrates what can be accomplished when you put your mind to it.

Wishing you the best of luck with your application to that state univeristy, and an even happier 2014.

Cyndi -

[Guest LizMarie]

Happy New Year to you too, Sarah! May each year going forward be more wonderful and positive than the last!

[Charlize]

Happy NEW YEAR. It is hard to believe that another year has passed. 2014 how did that happen? Anyway may we all have a healthy, peaceful new year.

Hugs,

Charlie

[Carolyn Marie]

Happy New Year, Sarah, and thanks so much for sharing your thoughts on what's been important in your life this past year. I think you hit on a really important point; that transition should never be a goal in an of itself. it should be part of a larger reawakening of each of us as a complete person, a coming together of two halves of the whole, as it were. Transitioning is a means to an end, not the end itself. It seems to me that you've figured it out, Sarah. Congrats on that, and on all your achievements. I know there is much more to come.

HUGS

Carolyn Marie

[Guest Sarah Faith]

Thanks all, I don't know how peaceful 2014 will be for me, lots ahead to do but I think it will definitely be interesting. I think you are right Cynthia, when you really have goals that you truly believe in, you can't simply listen to others who say it can't be done. I think one has to at least try and see how far they make it, I'd rather try and fail than fail by not trying.

I will let you all know how the admissions process goes for me, I should know by the end of January! Like I said I feel confident about about my chances but even if it doesnt work out this time I won't be giving up.

[Guest Jo-88]

Triple thumbs up!! and happy new years! I hope 2014 treats everyone here well

[Guest Lelia VA]

Sounds like 2014 will have to work hard to you 2013 but you are definitely on a roll that should make every year amazing!!

Hugs and wishes for awesomeness each day!

LeeLee

[gennee]

Thank you so much for sharing with us, Sarah. I too am happy that you didn't act on those suicidal impulses. I wrote a poem recently and one line says: sometimes I think I'm traveling and getting nowhere; other times I feel I'm getting nowhere and yet have sojourned much further than I anticipated. You have overcome some great odds successfully. Sarah, you did what was best for YOU. Congratulations and Happy New Year.

[Guest Sarah Faith]

Thanks gennee, I personally believe the only way to every truly fail is to give up. That mentality has helped me overcome a fear of failure that had crippled me for a long time.

I'm not usually a fan of poetry but there is one poem always keep in mind.. Invictus by William Hensley. (Who has been dead since 1903 and the poem is therefore within public domain. So I can share it here.)

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.