Not Insurmountable Challenges
Photo courtesy of Isthmus
It is as if each day is at the same time immense relief and utter sadness. There is no other way to describe it. It is relief because after five decades you finally know who you are and why you have never felt at peace, never felt you belonged. It is sadness because it has taken five decades to understand why that has been the case and that you have arrived here with a person you love dearly who now feels an immense sense of loss of their own. And, it is at this point that you struggle with how to move forward in life, how to be happy, how to help the person you love to be happy and how to just be. This is what it feels like to be a married trans woman who awakens to who they are at the age of 52.
The moment of realization for me came as I read a book by a trans woman who themselves had not realized who they were until middle age. All of the feelings described, the moments of discovery revealed by the author, put all of the pieces of my life in place overnight. How could something this big, this impactful have been unknown for so long? So of course, knowing now, with certainty, who I am, I began to look for answers to this question and more. Answers as to why knowing only now and not earlier in life, as to what can be done to dampen the noise in my head, and as to how to move forward in life all come crashing in together demanding to be answered at the same time.
While many people like me hide their true selves from their families, and struggle with depression and anxiety even after the full realization has developed, I have been lucky to be married to a woman I felt I could share this with as soon as I knew and to have children that I felt confident would be supportive when I shared this with them. Despite this, I have still needed to better understand how this happened. By that I do not mean medically, but rather how it could be repressed for so long.
This entailed reaching out to find others like me as well as to seek some professional guidance. For the former I was able to have some close friends recommend people they knew that I could speak with. One was like me in that they had come through life mostly unaware of the specific reasons for their deep depression. The other was one that knew early on in their young adulthood who they were and what they wanted. Each provided insights and each were helpful in their own way. That all said, based on these discussions and more research it has shown that this is a far more individual experience than may be assumed and that generalizations are not tremendously helpful.
Talking to someone professionally was perhaps a bit more satisfying in that it focused on me and my circumstances. It became clearer and clearer in these conversations that this had been with me my entire life, rising up and expressing itself early on to be greeted with scorn and forced repression. The 70s in middle class white America was not an accepting environment for the most part. The examination of this did not bring answers but did stop the questioning about why now and why not sooner.
So what is the path forward?
I would never claim that my answers are those that apply to anyone else. Mine are unique to me and are based on what will make me happy. It is still evolving, but for now, and as far as I can see into the future, finding a path where I can integrate me, the newly understood me, with my future with the person I love is the work being done. There are trade offs to be sure as she married a man, loved a man and saw her future with a man: and I am changing that. How much can I be me as I know me to be and not alienate the one person I want to grow old with? We are still working on it and it will hopefully be something we continue to work on for many years together. After all, what things that are truly worthwhile come without challenges.
I just hope they are not insurmountable challenges.