From the beginning, I learned I was different. My earliest and most powerful memories are the indelible images of my attempts to project and experience outwardly what I felt naturally and wonderfully inside, my expression of the girl within. The naive joy of my initial attempts quickly brought rude realizations of retaliatory upbraiding and redirection. For reasons unknown to a child, the exploration and expression of my womanhood gave cause to infuriate or embarrass everyone and everything I held dear in my life.

These scoldings left me with great guilt. Not any shame associated with being who I am but the guilt of hurting or angering those who evidently did not see me as I saw myself or understand who I was. So in self defense, I rationalized my actions, their actions and went underground. I began a life of hiding and secrecy and subterfuge that took me many years to even attempt to overcome. Toddling in my mother’s stilettos, playing dress up with the neighbor girls, running away crying from bullies, locking myself in my parent’s bedroom and transforming myself into a goddess, or wishing I was Mrs. Peel or Laura Petrie were examples of activities that early in life brought naïve joy and later on set off personal alarm bells as I knew the guard of my inner self needed to stand watch as I had a few blissful moments to express myself before “they” returned.

I am sure I can easily substitute “we” for “I” in describing these adventures. You probably are not reading this unless you are transgender yourself and have experienced this in some way or you are a friend or loved one to someone in our community who has. However, I talk about “I” and “me” here because of the extremely personal, isolated, and lonely environment that my plan of self survival and self worth hatched, grew, evolved and sustained in. There was no “we” and never has been. I had no sounding board or internet or trans chat room or support and association gatherings. There was no one to compare notes with. None of my friends showed any signs of being like me. No one on television seemed to be anything like me. I was alone and built mighty walls around me. Yet I survived. Many of us did.

What relevance does this have now? I think it is this. Everything that we see ourselves as with respect to what our transgender nature means about our self and who we are is a personal rationalization. I believe it must always remain a personal rationalization because that is the only way we know how to properly deal with it.. We are alike and we can compare notes and learn from and help others like us. We may take both solace and delight in the discovery that many of us made similar rationalizations independently of each other and see our planned futures the same way. As if we needed proof of our legitimacy..:)

Deep seated rationalizations born solely from our own minds and hearts are still the most closely protected and most prized possessions that we own. As such we are vulnerable to be defensive and sensitive to any outside challenges to our own personal rationalizations of who we are inside. Hence we have a few divisions and fractures within and outside our own community and many people champion their own destiny and philosophies as a universal one size fits all kind of truth. This results in a lot of peer pressure that leads some to go where they might not have gone had they stayed true to their own selves.

I am a big fan of counseling and giving and receiving help in the community. Sometimes we are all we have. But I think it is very important for every transgender person to make sure the voice and journey they follow continues to be their own voice. Make friends and allies and learn from those who can help you, respect and honor those who are different from you. But be true to yourself, love yourself and don’t let anyone knock down your self esteem and the walls of your own personal truth.