Hey everyone. I know I'm trans. It's not a new feeling, it's something that's been there for as far back as my memory goes. Because of it and the dysphoria (although perhaps not exclusively), I've struggled for many years with depression, anxiety and depersonalization. So obviously it's affecting me a lot. Having come to realize and starting to accept this part of me seems to actually be lifting the symptoms of those. I shouldn't be ashamed of trying to live a better life for myself, right? But I can't seem to stop feeling a lot of shame. Binding, wearing men's clothing, packing... I feel so ashamed of myself. I know that on one hand this is who I am. On the other hand I still feel like I have to hide who I am and keep things on the sly and that I can never truly be a man. It doesn't always hit me, sometimes I feel completely happy and confident in myself. But once in a while, right now for instance, it really sucks. Feeling ashamed and depressed. I bet it's not going to be the last time. Anyone have some suggestions with how to deal with this? =/
You're right you SHOULDN'T see shame. The people who riding the high and might horse SHOULD. It's good that you've started to feel better. When you feel a certain way for a long time, it becomes normal and it feels strange if those feelings start to go away. I think most of us here can understand feeling like you need to hide, I know I did for years. But, the truth is we hide because other people make us feel that thee way we are is wrong...and that is just a load bullshit. Society comes up with all these rules about what is "normal" which is nothing but hypocrisy as they don't follow them anyway, but they will try to crucify someone who they don't like based on these rules, it's insane. As for how to feel better, well you just have to not care what others think. It's hard as we are social creatures, but people will judge you it's human nature. Just hold your head up high. People's opinions are like butt holes, everyone has one and they're all full of crap.
I think some measure of this hits all of us in the LGBTQIA world. Just about everyone I've talked with or whose story I've read has "known" something is different about them from very young. And our brains process, over process, think, and rethink to figure this out and to appear "normal." It does make us generally f*cking amazing thinkers of course ;-) But with the layers and layers of dissonance in our lives vs what 99.9% of us see in society all around us, the message is clear -- we're weird, broken, not normal. So its not any surprise that we have guilt and shame. We have guilt and shame for not being like most everybody else around us. Even though most of us tried. Tried very hard. Ultimately we are who we are, so against the standards of the world, we failed to be normal. And then we find people just like us. Communities online, communities IRL, and we realize there isn't a broken thing about us. We're just us becoming who we were meant to be. Then the journey to healing starts.
