Using the right pronouns/name with yourself...

[A. Dillon]

I have been out and using male pronouns/name with everyone I meet and people who knew me, and while it certainty makes me feel better, I still have a hard time letting it set in. For instance, when I am walking down the street, I usually assume that other people think that I am a girl and that makes me really self conscious, but only when they use he/him pronouns do I realize that they don't. I get in my head that I am not female, and the idea that I am was very disturbing, so that is not holding me back; I just can't seem to see myself for who I really am. It doesn't help when my mom and dad constantly call me she, so that when I get the off chance he it feels more like a mistake. I can't get over this thought that I should have been born male, and it keeps me from really moving forward with the cards I was dealt. I have always wanted to be seen as male, but now that I am, instead of all of my insecurities erasing like I expected they have now increased ten-fold that I don't look male enough. How does one just exist in their body? I often ask this question, like how do cishets exist? How were they just born into a role with a specific body and are fine with it? Cause I can't seem to get that. 

[TTheta]

I can relate to this, my parents said that they can't find themselves ever using male pronouns on me even if I get surgery. I use he/him in public, My friends do too and I get nervous whether the person we are talking to is open about those kinda things or if I pass. I wish there were a way we could swap an x chromosome to a y with no backlash. I wish we didn't have to question ourselves and if we are valid or not. Welp, I am here to tell you our journey may be hard but we are taking the scenic route to life!!

[Charlize]

My body, society and many years of experience placed a male label on me.  I'm not at all surprised that with that pressure i accepted and lived "as i should".  That reality was so much part of me that there was a time when someone addressed me as a woman i almost looked around to see who they were talking about.  It has taken time but i'm able to accept myself now as never before.  There may have been a mistake at birth but i'm happy to be me, flaws and all.  

As Aidan said above:  "we are taking the scenic route to life."

 

Hugs,

 

Charlize

[MetaLicious]

It can really be hard sometimes.  I've lived half a century as a "he", and despite desperately wanting to be a woman, I've been trained by the world at large so well that I would correct people who "misgendered" me.  I'd laugh it off as a joke when I'd introduce myself as my wife's wife (completely inadvertant, but it's no wonder she wasn't surprised when I came out).  I now find that my first step on the road to transition is taking the mental image of myself that was foisted on me and replacing it with my own. It sure as heck isn't happening overnight! 

[Lenneth]

I share @MetaLicious’s feelings.  I have only very recently come to terms with my feelings about being what I want to be and I have not begun any sort of physical transition yet unless you count shaving all the body hair I can get to.  Nothing would please me more than to be called she.  But right now I am still very much in a man’s body and that makes it hard for me to actually even see myself as “she.”  It also doesn’t help that I am nowhere NEAR ready to come out.  So that male pronoun is used and makes it that much harder to get into the mindset of being “she.”

 

@A. Dillon, I am also worried about exactly what you are mentioning regarding the transition.  I won’t look female enough if I can ever get to where I want to be.  I don’t know how people are comfortable in their own skin because I never really have been.  You honestly touched in several things I myself have considered, though unlike you, I’ve yet to physically experience them.

 

For now I can only dream of others calling me by the pronoun I desire and my first steps, as far as I see it anyway, in my transition is getting to a point where I can see myself as she in my own mind.

[ShawnaLeigh]

3 hours ago, Lenneth said:

For now I can only dream of others calling me by the pronoun I desire and my first steps, as far as I see it anyway, in my transition is getting to a point where I can see myself as she in my own mind.

I felt like this for a long long time. 

I was obsessed with being female in mind AND body but the body part was so hard to break out of.  Even after coming out I had to present male for work for another 3+ months so my desires to be gendered correctly were threw the roof though I could not blame anyone because they saw what I showed them and that was the male I had been for 52 years.  I eventually was granted the ok from my wife to present full female in the privacy of our home and this started the ball rolling.  I called it my practice.  How the wear a wig and clothing and just let my female personality emerge.  I started to see a difference in my mood and my mannerisms shortly afterwards.  After coming out I still had strong male conditioning from years of hiding and the though processes of being male and trying to convert that into a female mind set was far more difficult then I had imagined.  I mean I wanted it so badly so why was it so hard for me to see myself as female in my mind?  This took time as most things do. 

It wasn't until a couple weeks ago did I EVER see my true self in the mirror after a makeover done by my therapist as therapy to help me see this women.

That's what it took for me.  I had been struck hard by the vision what I can be not could be.

Without even being dress as female, just the makeup and wig, this transformed me into the women I was seeing in my minds eye.

The results were actually far better then I had hoped for too. For the longest time I just wanted to look female and was not trying to or worried about looking pretty.  I did not even consider I could look better then an ugly women.  Which I was ok with coming from the male I was looking like at the time.

I looked at myself and saw a pretty face starting back in awe.  I was so happy by this.

Today I am in my second day of being my true self in public and at work and I feel amazing.

It will happen but you have to have faith and just deal with all the crap and anxiety and fears one day at a time.  Hour by hour if need be.  I lived this way for a long time and it can be done.  I am stronger for it.

You can too!

 

 

 

[Lenneth]

I hate my body.  I hate being male.  But I can’t break out of seeing myself that way.  Which means I hate myself.  It’s an ugly circle in my head.  I desperately want to be “she” and I don’t know how to get there.