Self Acceptance...

...is one of the hardest parts to deal with in the initial stage of transition. I remember. From my early youth until my late 20's, I tried to put the T stuff aside...never telling anyone. I was ashamed of what I was, and I was ashamed of the crossdressing I participated in to compensate for the feelings I had while living as a man. I think the key thing for me was seeing a transsexual for the first time. She was finally that reality I needed to see in order for transition to not seem like a fantasy. Not only that, but the friends I was hanging out with didn't bash her, but realized she was a human being.

It took me another year to finally begin the embrace of who I was and what I needed to do. A year after that, I was on hormones and the physical transition was on the way. There was also a bit of planning in there, as well, as I sorted through the stories I heard in support groups, and created the plan that I thought would work for me.

In that twilight period between being a man in a dress and an adrogenous figure, there were plenty of times when I was simply too scared to go out the front door. I'd get all dressed up and either scan the landscape through a window late at night or stare out the peephole to make sure no one was around. The time spent looking out that peephole became less and less the more I went out until I no longer looked through it, but simply opened the door and went outside. Initially, I knew people were looking at me funny...looking at the man in a dress. Honestly, I was afraid...ashamed of who I was and afraid of people finding out. Over time, I began to care less and less about what people thought of me until I was secure in realizing that I was a transsexual. Eventually, I became proud of my journey.

Yesterday morning, I caught the very beginning of the Maury Povich show. (OK, OK, I was running a little late to work.) The first guest they had on there was a black woman who had been burned by battery acid thrown on her by one of her family members. She had run back into a house after her daughter told her there was an altercation happening inside. (Where they got the battery acid is something that wasn't really explained.) The woman had been burned over a portion of her face, neck, and upper body. The incident had happened approximately three weeks before she was on the show. The woman was having a difficult time with all of it...but her physical pain was heavily outweighed by her emotional pain. She felt ugly...deformed...and wanted to hide from society. She was afraid to go outside where people could see her. Maury tried to console her, but she was more worried about how people were going to look at her. My process of going thru self acceptance took years, her's was just beginning. The difference, though, is that I was able to escape my place as a man...her burns were visible all of the time.

Last night, I chatted online with a young man who used to IM me a bit. He mainly hit on me before, but last night he told me that his girlfriend was in one of the classes I recently spoke at. He also told me that he crossdressed. His girlfriend and I chatted online for a while, and basically she told me that he's ashamed of his dressing...ashamed of what he does...and that he doesn't want to be a crossdresser. She's semi-OK with his dressing as long as it's with her, but every time he decides to dress up with her, he backs out just prior.

The story is no different for people who lose an appendage, use a wheelchair, are going thru chemotherapy and lose all of their hair, have a limp or walk funny, or anything which leaves them different than the rest of society. People stare. You can feel them looking at you even when they aren't. I can tell you that, initially, it scares the bananas out of you, but you get used to it. Well, most people do. It just takes a bit of time.