DECADES DEPRESSED?
Just two weeks ago I realized that Phebe really accepted me, and that allowed me to start accepting myself. It’s a long process, but I’m actually feeling better on a day to day basis.
I’ve started to accept that I’m transsexual. Of course, I’ve known all my life. More than that, I’ve even written up this journal about it. All that, but I still didn’t accept myself. I was still dragged down by decades of repression and a belief that acting upon my feelings would bring nothing but disaster.
Granted, I knew scientifically that it probably wasn’t my fault any more than any other birth defect was. But I had a deep understanding of the potential social and family consequences.
That repression and belief lead down a bad road all by itself, even though I didn’t know it. Now that I’m starting to accept, I’ve been asking myself this question over and over:
“You mean to say that I’ve been living in a depression all my life?”
It’s hard to believe, but I think my entire life has been under a metaphorical cloud of depression because now that cloud has lifted. I just can’t believe what’s happening.
Now that I’ve accepted myself as transsexual, and have tossed many of the negative feelings overboard, I really do feel better.
It’s like I was taking a powerful drug that eliminated pain, but at the cost of my ability to think - many people describe that as a drug haze. Now it’s like that drug haze has lifted, and I’m more active and think more freely than I ever have. And I really mean that. I’ve lived with this my entire life!
And then there’s the possibility of even more. Right now, I accept myself as being transsexual, but that’s different than accepting myself as Stephanie Reyes. I haven’t accepted that yet, but I want to. I’m not sure how to accomplish this except by following the path my wife and I currently trod.
Our constant communications about this issue really does help. I believe our communications lead directly to this outcome. So we’ll keep talking and maybe I’ll be able to slowly break away my masculine personality shell.