I've been thinking about making this thread for weeks now, and after you read this, you'll probably understand why. For most of my life I've been on the run : Changing jobs, appartments and even the countries and languages. Sounds like fun... A fun life full of all excitement that comes with every adventure. You end up developing survival skills you never thought you were capable of. To improvise becomes a second nature, as normal as breathing. Well... I never wanted this. I spend a lot of time doing nothing but running away. That's it, running away. As if the distance would allow me to free myself from whatever monster I thought it was after me. So I blamed it all on the circumstances. I was only half right, the other half was just to instrumentalize my own feelings in order to avoid taking the hardest decission of my life : To stop pretending and go through transition. It's no wonder I got fed up with running away right now. I don't have the energy of a 20 year old anymore on that respect. I crave stability, human warmth, all the things I denied myself since all this nightmare began. My main worry is that I'm aware running away has become a part of who I am. I can't be trusted on that respect. I know myself well enough to be at least aware of it. I'd appreciate any advice or comment from you. This is something that I don't want to 'leave it for better times'. There is never a better time than right now.
It's funny that I am a 20 something and I'm in the process of 'running away'. Well, I like to think that in my case that it's justified. There are a few things that I really don't want to do. I'm afraid of attachments. But, I believe everything will worth it in the end. So I just ease myself into it, sometimes I take some distance, then I'm going in for some more. Keep persisting. Sorry for the vague paragraph, you're right when you say "there is never a better time than right now."
Dear Michael, here're my two centimes: I do realize I don't have all the details of your full story but from one of your past threads I could glean that you identify as a Transman and were beginning your transitioning journey around half a year ago. Regarding the running away bit, what you seem to be saying is that the romance of the nomadic lifestyle is fading away from you. You had a lot of adventures (which is terrific) but now you are questioning the difference between "running" and "running away". Well, the logical question is: Are you STILL running away? And if so, then why? From what? I think all of us tend to blame circumstances at times when we want to avoid imputing blame to ourselves. We promise ourselves that our lives will be perfect 'someday'. For me, I seem to cling to a notion that my life will magically set itself into order the day I come out. I also think that it's not the right way to think. When you say you realize that "running away" is a part of you and that "you cannot be trusted", I think that's needlessly self-critical. WHY do you take these things as a given? Why should you have such a low opinion of yourself? Just because you've been running away doesn't mean you don't have a choice on the matter. You should look into yourself and try to see WHAT you were fleeing from. Was it emotional maturity? Was it committed-ness? Was it stability itself? Was it adulthood with all its customary responsibilities? You have already surmounted obstacles that millions of other people cannot even guess at. Clearly, you're not worthless in any way. So if you need stability, love, and affection, then you also need to stop running away...from yourself. I wonder whether you've somehow ended up convincing yourself that you're a perennial nomad and cannot stay in one place (your writing suggests that). I would simply question that notion. If you have defined your own walls, well, who better to break them down? The closest parallel I can think of (and I may be way off) is how I tend to form snap judgements or sweeping generalizations and then stick to them. Only when I'm forced to reconsider do I realize that a lot of the problems which I perceive originate from me (not from the surroundings) and I need to change the way I look at things. Does that help? I think it was a confusing answer to a complex question
Thanks Closeteer, yes, it helps, Good question what I'm really running aways from. You are right, coming out and going through this won't magically give me a perfect life, but it's going to stop the feeling that my life is just nothing but a lie, full of lies and deception. On that sense, you can't value what you have, 'cuse it's all about somebody else's, not the real you. So you get it, and then months later throw it away... This is hard to describe.. But imagine you can't value anything, 'cause you feel it's just a loan, nothing truly 'yours'. I'm talking here about the people you meet as well, including 'relationships'. None of them knew the real me, so why bother or even care? I took it as a provisional arrangement, a half heartless 'try', in the hope I could finally stop 'being the monster' I was. I tried hard to convince myself my own feelings, those feelings shouting at me 'you are a lier!' were not real. We are talking here twenty years of denial, most of it self imposed, forced on me by my own stupid, coward part of myself, my own version of 'conversion' therapy, 'cause the idea of losing everything during a transition (financial stability, hard earned, among a million other things), that fear turned the idea of 'taking things seriously' impossible : If the life you are living is not yours anyways, why should you care at all? And even if you manage to care a bit, what do you feel when those folks call you by a name that is not yours, and say compliments about the things you hate the most of yourself? I have no words to describe the loneliness I have experienced. This mortal loneliness and this hopelessness of being forced to live somebody else's life. I think you gay guys know what I am talking about. I think we share this... I tried to care, to do things right and be someone I wasn't, hoping someday I would just get used to a lie. I tried to change myself, to 'correct my wrong behaviour' in countless ways. Always playing a role, always on the run. Hurting and being hurt. I finally reached a point where I feel tired of playing a role. It happened a year ago, when I killed denial and started finally to stop calling myself 'failure' and 'monster'. Since then I haven't experience anymore nothing but peace of mind, except the struggles that come with being trans, but the rest of my life has improven, and being who I am, having accepted myself... All that was priceless. I say I can't be trusted, 'cause I'm aware that you can'tjust wipe twenty years of wrong behaviour, and I'm alert, expecting aftershocks... After all I did to myself, how can I be sure I won't try again to 'stop all this madness'? Everytime I look back, I feel horror... I have no idea why I was so cruel. You are right, sometimes I had to choice but to pack up and leave, but I have given up golden oportunities both professional and personal, just 'looking for something better'. Now I can see clearly I was just looking for a new scene where I could tell myself 'they don't know you', and spend some time blaming on others something it was clearly my own fault : To fake being someone I'm definitely not. Do you think that after 20 years of this, things have changed? 20 years is a long time... That is my main fear : More denial, more lies and going back to running away.
Looking back, your words are pretty much a reflection of my own life. In my case it was 22 years, since puberty. The moment when the mask became my life and I started living the lie. I was never able to travel as you did or even find a job. Cancer killed any chance of that happening. It gave me an excuse to stop living and to enter into a cycle of starting a degree and failing. I run away by becoming a new person every time I started over, one day I was a biologist, the next a great business mind and it went on and on for 12 years of isolation and addiction, each day I went to bed thinking that tomorrow will be different and each morning I woke up to the same grim reality. The appropriation of trying on new masks, was accompanied by a propensity to live life through other people. This was a coping mechanism that I used to feel a tiny bit more alive. At 22 or so, I remember thinking to myself that I will live to make my parents happy. At that time, I stopped caring about life, I felt as if I was living on borrowed time, that the cancer was supposed to be the moment my life ended. My body was meaningless to me, an abomination and I just wanted to be free of it. By seeing through the eyes of others, I was free for a short while, I could be an extension of them and it gave me something to hold on to as the days went by. I was still lonely, as you wrote, no one could see who I really was, I felt trapped, lost and alone and every time I tried to change it felt empty and meaningless. I put on a brave mask for others, became a 'Pollyanna' and lived a life of fake positivity as I was struggling to figure out what I was supposed to do. The positivity and support I gave others allowed me to go on living as I did, from time to time a symbolic attempt was made to 'help' me become a more productive person but it always hit a wall and they gave up quickly. Eventually I completed a degree by leaning on my brother and forcing myself to study so his help wouldn't go to waste. I got accepted to a MA degree away from home and for the first time I lived alone. I was sure everything would change once I moved out. Unfortunately, a month into the degree, the initial excitement of a new situation turned into a growing sense of dysphria and I escaped again, I shut myself in my room, only forcing myself to go out and buy groceries and watched videos of other people playing video games. That's my life, one long attempt to run away from who I really was deep inside. I look back and it hurts so much to see how much pain and sorrow could have been avoided if I was able to see myself for who I was earlier and transition. Now I feel old, my body is ravaged by testosterone and I'm clinging on to a hope that somehow I will survive the years to come and come out the other side as the kind and caring person who I know I am, deep down, a person who sees a world full of color and lights up the room when she comes in. I want to be the person, I dreamed I would be before I knew that dreams usually don't come true, when I could imagine that I would wake up tomorrow as a girl if I would just ask god nicely enough, each night. Thanking him three times and spending the next hour or two tossing and turning as the dysphoria consumed me from inside... puberty... Michael, you are not alone and what you went through was never your fault. Like me, you did it to survive for one more day without being consumed by the pain and emptiness. So we escaped and lived when others might have given up and ended it. We used the time to grow as a person to see the world through a large amount of perspectives and find solace through the story we created out of the lives of others. Like me, you are tired of running and I'm sure that you will never fall again, because you know now that all that waits down below is nothingness and emptiness. You have lifted the veil that was protecting you from who you really are and there is no going back to the person that you once was... Let the past be the stepping stone for the creation of the person that you were always meant to be and don't be afraid to take the next step forward on your journey towards transitioning because there is nothing but darkness behind you... I hope you found my words and story helpful in some way, Much love, (*hug*) Yael
I feel like a broken record - you may want to read The Velvet Rage. I just started reading it, and it's really helping me to understand the shame I feel and what it means to be a gay man. It's very compelling reading for me, and I highly recommend it. Caveat: More gay focused than trans focused - but helps one to understand many of the topics in this thread - including ways to escape from the shame, why gay men have trouble pursuing meaningful relationships, and constructive ways for authenticity.
