Has anyone experienced an identity crisis?

Sort of, yes.

You know the typical trans saying, "I see a stranger in the mirror"?

Sometimes, I feel that way. Literally. For a moment, I stare and I can't even recognize my reflection as myself. And that's really damn scary, you know?

I lose myself a lot, and sometimes, I actually feel as if I'm a literal different person from who I was a year or so ago. It makes me apprehensive.

I get the sense of urgency and panic, though. I really do. I get stressed about transitioning and getting a good job for paying for it, then I realize I'm at the beginning of freshman high school year - I have four whole years to go. Maybe eight.

Sometimes it just feels as if every second is slipping past, though, and it gets me a little anxious. Like time is just wasting away, and before I know it, I'll be at college having accomplished nothing. You know?

But I think it'll get better eventually. It'll be OK. I know it sucks. I'm sorry you're going through this.

(*hug*)

 

Oh yes.

The last few years have been the culmination of a lot of that really. And then the last 4 months an even more accelerated version of that.

The last 4 months I've changed where I live, how I see my future, my major relationship...basically everything but my job and I've been there less than a year. The number of "major life stressors" was adding up there for awhile.

Feels better though. The upheaval has been worth it to be me.

 

I relate to the identity crisis. While I have no doubt I'm gay, I often wonder how much of my personality is the result of living an inauthentic life for so many years. How would I be different if I had come out at a younger age? How much of the "real" me is salvageable and which of the inauthentic parts are so ingrained that they can't be changed? In other words, who Is the real me? Bit by bit I'm figuring it out and I'm liking much of what I'm discovering about myself.

 

I've been through a few identity crises over the years, especially during puberty, then in my late teens, mid twenties, mid thirties, and now, times when I've evaluated my life and the direction it's going. I don't know if I would have continued to get these crises if I had been able to go in the right direction earlier and embrace my otherness, but I simply wasn't ready to face it before now. I was still trying to fit in, find a life partner, establish myself as an adult.
One of the things I like about being older ... I just don't give a fig anymore about what other people think, besides the people who count. Even with the people who count, I know that I can decide how far I'm willing to compromise. It makes life much more fulfilling to know I'm in control of my own happiness.

---------- Post added 17th Sep 2014 at 11:21 AM ----------

@Nychthemeron: I think it's great that you're coming to terms with your identity at such a young age. I wouldn't have been able to do that - transgender themes were almost unheard of back then, and I felt completly alone in my strangeness. Besides, I was too busy trying to find a way to fit in to think about who I really was.

You have plenty of time, don't let yourself or others make you feel that you need to rush anything.

 

Hi,

Why look at it negatively? It is not an identity crisis, it is a REVELATION.

You have a brand new life to explore. FANTASTIC!!!!!

Of course you should be questioning, you just tossed away a failed closet, a failed set of life assumptions.

So don't build a new closet of negativity. Question. Be open. Learn.

I am happy you reached this point.

Tom

 

Yes. In fact, I had an out-and-out panic attack. I've had lesser identity crisises throughout my life during times of transition or dissatisfaction with my life. I think that sometimes it just takes some time to emotionally adjust and integrate the change in yourself, then the anxiety abates.

I hope you start to feel good enough to go out and socialize soon. For me, at least, isolation only makes me wallow in it. I've had to learn to strike a balance between introspection and extroverted activity during these times so that I'm neither avoiding my issues nor letting them overwhelm me.

 

Absolutely. I've found myself looking back on so many decisions that I've made over the years and wondered, was that me, or was it some fabrication that I created to try and fit in? I've never wondered if I was really gay--for me, coming out was less a revelation than an acceptance of something I've known all along but never fully understood or dealt with. But I look at my life now and think, did I really want all this? For me the hardest one has been looking at my daughters and having the sinking realization that my desire for children--which was a big factor in my decision to avoid coming out years ago--may have been more programming and desperation than anything else. They're my kids, they're here and I love them, and that hasn't changed. But it's shocking to think that even their very existence may be the result of my denial and lack of self-awareness.

It is a chance to look at things in a new way, though. Part of the "identity crisis" has involved looking at things I buried years ago because I sensed on some level that they were "too gay" and revisiting them in a new light. I'm enjoying music more, and movies, and am finding myself restless to try new things. At the July 4th parade in our town I was comparing mid-life crises with my next door neighbor and told him with a drunken laugh that "You wouldn't believe my mid-life crisis if I told you!" But the symptoms are pretty similar (and as it happens, that was the day the news that I was gay started its slow creep through the neighborhood, so I might as well have just told him).

It's still a "crisis" of sorts in the sense that it does shake up your very sense of who you are. But it's also a very positive awakening of aspects of yourself that you held back on for years. So embrace it and enjoy it! You're building a new and BETTER identity.

 

It is an ill wind that blows no good.

Even a forest fire brings forth germination of seeds of new life, new hope.

All of you currently caught in the fires of your closet and it's collapse need to know this and take it to heart.

New life sprouts from the ashes. It simply just takes time.

Tom

 

Definitely. I've used the exact phrase more than once to describe how I've been feeling. When I started to realize I may be gay I felt like my world was off-kilter. Like that song, "Everything you know is wrong."

I started looking at my past and was blown away by the things I'd repressed, or denied, or just plain refused to acknowledge. I couldn't recognize who I was anymore, my entire interpretation of myself seemed to be changing.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about my future, and questioning the things I thought I wanted, and what it is I want now, and still, it's difficult for me to wrap my head around entirely.

A few things have helped me. First, to remind myself I am still the same person in so many other ways. Well, I am the same person, entirely, but my understanding of myself has changed. And realizing I'm gay does not change the fact that I'm an artist, that I love cartoons, that I am an animal lover. It doesn't change where I live, or who my friends are, or who my family is. And it doesn't really even have to mean that my future will be that different, either. A gay marriage is still a marriage between two people who love each other, just the same as a heterosexual marriage.

Another thing that has helped is to start redefining how I personally view the concepts of "gay" and "lesbian." These terms come with so much baggage that I find working backwards to their barest definitions seems to help me. "Gay" just means you're attracted to the same sex. "Lesbian" just means you're a woman attracted to other women." It doesn't have to change my appearance, or my attitude, or the way I view the world. I don't have to become a stereotype to be lesbian, I already am lesbian, and what a lesbian looks like is, well, me.

These are just some things I've been working through, myself. But I hope it may help you, as well.