Resistance

You only realize just how much resistance you put up to being yourself once you fully stop. I had built such barriers all my life until slowly but surely they were dismantled piece by piece because they had to be. Then you look back and wonder how you were able to muster the strength and I chalk it up to youthful vitality but mostly to the sheer panic of what rejection upon being found out would do to me.

Being transgender isn't for the faint of heart and asking for it would be akin to begging for a hole in the head and yet I wouldn't trade it now. Being this way has colored everything about me and challenges are meant to be faced and conquered. We can then sit on that mountain top and look down and marvel at both our persistence and at the endurance we didn't know we had.

I have never understood elective gender variance so I cannot relate to it and I used to wonder why anyone in their right mind would want to indulge it (with no offense intended). That was my starting point at the base of that mountain. 

It's why I will never ever be convinced that transgender people aren't born that way.