Cautionary

If you were to choose one word to describe my journey as a trans person it would be cautionary. I was always careful in making sure I wasn't deceiving myself and read all the literature I could starting from a young age. Those of us from the pre-internet era did not have the resources available at our fingertips like we do today and even the idiom was not yet sufficiently developed which allowed us to better comprehend the distinction between birth sex and gender identity. Here my penchant for intellectualizing everything probably delayed me. My journey paralleled our advancement in knowledge but I did not begin to reach a comfort level until I was almost 50 and even now there is much clean up to be done.

They say that caution is the better part of valor and perhaps that's true but it can also be frustrating when the circumstances around you do not align with where you are in your advancement. Family, job situation and even friends can complicate and even delay our journeys of self discovery. Still, I have no regrets because each step was made with the discretion I felt was needed to keep the boat stable. When you have dependents who didn't ask to be born, you need to walk that much more deftly. 

I don't pretend to be able to advise others who take more bold steps at certain junctions but only caution that certain consequences may come of them. Nothing can be taken for granted because life offers us no guarantees.

All that being said, living in suppression of your identity is neither good for us nor for those who say they love us because that shadow isn't really an accurate picture. For some of us being trans became a prolonged purgatory from which there was no escape except it needn't have been that way.

Simply put, if your gender identity is tied to more than a costume you wear on occasion, you owe yourself the exploration.