Not being able to transition for medical reasons, where now?

Because of a medical condition, it is unlikely that I will ever be abe to transition. It was on the back of my mind that it might be my reality but today it became much more real. So where do I go from here, there is always some hope that things will change sometime in the future but for now, I need to go back to trying to libe my life as I am. So what now? where do I go from here and how do I cope? Has my journey ended or has just began? I can still make the world a better place, I can still write ans share with the world my thoughts. Sometimes you just need to accept that your path is not the one that you hoped it would be and build on what you do have, which is my case my mind and soul. It's the end of a long day and I will face the future with hope and love and passion and not let the sad circumstances decide my fate, let them be the building blocks of the life that is yet to come. (*hug*)

 

I don't know what to do really. How do you truly accept something like this, I can't stop being trans and the gender dysphoria has made my life until now really hard. I was never able to build up a life for myself because of my life circumstances and this was my hope. However, I understand that this is something that I have to come to terms with. I know I can't sink because I will never come out of it, so I need to brush away the tears and do my best under the circumstances. However, I can't let go of the feeling that I am giving up, maybe I should transition despite the fact that if I do, I will never pass, despite the possibility that I will lose my family and probably any chance at living a relatively peaceful life. I feel ashamed and I regret posting this because I prefer to kerp up the illusion that I might still find a way to transition and now I have nothing really to hold on to. This hasn't been a good day.

 

Thank you that really was helpful. (*hug*)

The sad thing is that over my time here I've tried to help people by reminding them that medical transitioning is only one part of the journey. However, it hit me like a rock when I pieced together what should have been obvious to me a long time ago but I didn't want to accept it. Suddenly there was nothing for me here, I was a nobody anymore, just another lost soul that never really existed in the first place. Anyway, you are right, one door might have closed but others are still open and my journey has just began.

 

I wanted to share something that I just wrote to a friend:

I am starting to understand that in my case transitioning was always about finding my true self and expressing the music of my soul. We are so much more than our physical bodies, we are the beauty of the words we weave and the love and affection we share with those around us. This was a wake up call for me, I latched on to the idea that I have to physically transition and even though every single thing that could possibly go wrong went wrong I still wanted to believe that I would find a way to become the person I knew that I was inside but I'm starting to understand that this was never the path that I was supposed to take. Acceptance has different meanings in context of being trans. A long time ago a trans woman came here and talked about how despite transitioning medically, she didn't feel like a woman, she didn't pass and saw no reason to live. I did my best to help her and hopefully I did to some degree but it was a sad story that showed that transitioning physically is not some magic cure, you need to learn to accept yourself as a woman no matter who stares back at you when you look at your reflection because if you don't, you will still see a man staring back at you. I do know that I don't need to look in the mirror to know that I am a woman. It is at the core of my self and being.

I've never actually seen much value in the femininity connected with physical beauty and I never really needed that to be myself. At the heart of my femininity lies the sacrifice inherent in living for others, supporting and helping them. Making the life of everyone around me a tiny bit better. I know that it is a part of myself that I am constantly trying to express and that's the person my family knows and loves. I can't stop being trans, and transitioning physically and socially are obviously important and meaningful but they aren't the only thing that matters. Ultimately, what matters most is to be able to truly express who you are inside and to take off the mask and show the world who you truly are and personally I believe that we are so much more than societies often shallow view of what it means to be of a certain gender. What does it really mean to be a man or woman? How do you express what lies at the core of your being and show the world who you truly are? Do you do so through the clothes that you wear or by being called by one pronoun or another? I don't believe that that is the only way to do so. The thing is, I will never be a man, I can't suddenly become one by wearing certain clothes or through the act of misgendering myself, furthermore, the hormones flowing through my body still don't make me a man. So why would the same things make me more of a woman? I am already one and I don't need these signifiers to validate who I know that I already am deep inside.

(*hug*)

 

:icon_redf

Ok, there is a slight chance that I might have read an article and became anxious about it and decided as result that I won't be able to transition and once I calmed down and wrote the fairly powerful post above I realized that it is probably a bad idea to give up on my future based on a magazine article. Now I'll jyst go hide in a corner somewhere and lets never mention it again. :eusa_doh:

Sorry.

 

The problem actually lies in facial hair removal. I have a condition called Psoriasis which makes large areas of my body red and uncomfortable, it is always on my upper lip and gives me a permenant unshaven look. I asked a skin doctor a while back about hair removal and she was avoidant and tried to tell mr that hair removal is awtul for the skin and sounded ver doubtful overall. I asked for a clear answer and she sent me to a private skin doctor that she said should know but I never went. Yesterday I read wn article that talked about who can't go through hair removal and one of the answers were people who suffer from psoriasis so I remembered that I had that problem and realized that it is a bit of a wishful thinking to believe that I would be able to use laser on areas of skin that inflamed without it ending really badly. However, later on I realized that it is probably better for me to put this question in a limbo of uncertainty because I don't really want tl believe that it is true.

Of course, people can still trsnsition without hair removal but I've read multiple times that facial hair removal is one of the most important acts of transitioning which also explains why it subsidesed by tbe nhs in England. Unfortunately it is a huge problem and I have the additional problem of being one of those people that have to shave twice a day if I would want a truly clean shaven face. I'll end it here as this subject makes me highly dysphoric.

 

I think that I've reached the point where I need to move on in life. I've grown so much over the last year, become so much more connected and alive. I feel much more in control and I am confident that I won't lose that part of myself that gives me the freedom to breath and feel alive. It was a sad realization but it also came with quite a bit of relief, I stopped being resentful of the the way my family reacted when I came out and no longer guilty for standing in place with regards to physical transitioning. Sometimes, your life takes you down paths that you weren't planning to take but this might be for the best. I still have the love of my family, the connection that I feel with my nieces and nephews and the desire to help others and make the world a nicer place. As long as I have these, I will never truly lose that part of myself that my time here has helped nourish. I can also always be myself here and that takes away some of the fear of becoming lost again. (*hug*)

 

And here things go back to normal, the slow spiraling pain of dysphoria, the harsh reminder that my writing was nothing more than an attempt to stop the darkness from engulfing me and that the harder I try, the faster I will break. Sorry, this is all a bit of a mess, I'll go to sleep and I'm sure I will feel better in the morning. 2 hours sleep is a terrible idea.

 

That's a useful thing to know. :lol:

Thank you so much I really needed to hear that.

Unfortunately, my mind is heavily wired towards intuitive thinking and forming contextual connections, this comes at the cost of a very under developed ability to focus on details and a serious problem with regards to executive functions and sequencing actions. It makes it extremely hard for me to conduct any form of research because I hit a wall when trying to focus on it. So I find myself in situations like this when I read something and automatically form strong contextual connections reinforcing the validity of the article, as time passes I realize that there are other possibilities and I take a step back to reexamine the subject. You can see it in this thread when I retracted what I said. Later on, I gave my reasoning behind my assertion and reinforced it for myself so started to work out how to cope. At this point everything came crushing down as the dysphoria came increased to unmanagable levels.

Finallh moving on to your post which breaks apart the narrative and I se things through the new perspective that you opened up with your comment. (Ok I might be a tiny bit disconneted right now because of becoming overwhelmed with dysphoria earlier, which turns me into a highly analytical version of myself that makes decisions much less based on emotions. )

Just thought this would be something interesting to read because of the way it breaks apart the pattern underlying my behavior and why things developed as they did. As I can appear a bit erratic which can be a bit disconcerning, it does help to understand what was going on behind the scenes and why I reacted as I did. Anyway, cognition is so fun to think about. There wete obviously anxious patterns of thinking, insecurities, fears and shame mixed into the equation that gave me the emotional drive to write what I did. This was done to give life and color to the words through empathetic and emotional connections.

Thank you! Sleep is definitely a good idea now, 2 hours of sleep in 36 hours does take its toll on you. I am used to going to bed at fairly crazy hours and I had an end of year dance performance of my mother's students to go to yesterday evening and skipped sleeping because I was restless. It was a lovely performance but it did mean that I had to go through a sort of all nighter.

Hugs to everyone that read until here, you are all so wonderful!

(*hug*)(&&&)

Eveline

 

Thank you. (*hug*)