If one were to read my collective group of essays offered to date, one uninitiated in transgender life might suspect that either my personal transgender experience or transgender experience in general was a totally positive and uncomplicated awakening. As most of us know, nothing could be further from the truth. I have done my best to illuminate the positive aspects of being transgender. Society has long spread and cultivated negative misinformation and stereotypes about those who are transgender so hopefully I can be forgiven for taking an opposite approach, especially in regards to pointing out the benefits of self expression, casting off repression and opportunities for personal growth.. But in an honest attempt to relay my experiences as an offering to those who find them interesting or helpful, it is only fair that I broaden my storytelling to include all aspects of my experiences and evolution.

If I go back to some of my earlier essays I see a simpler perspective that was based on how I viewed myself and my experiences at that time. To my credit, I was smart enough to know that I was undergoing a life changing metamorphosis, letting the genie out of the bottle, if you will. . Whether transgender life is actually dynamic or whether years of repression are simply peeled off like the layers of an onion, I do not know or care. All that matters to me is how I view myself, my goals and my future and those of my loved ones.

The personal truth for me is that over time my male life once seemingly happy has become more of a chore to return to. The more female time and living I experience, the harder it is for me to return happily to that male life. My female experience is a furnace that needs more and more coal shoveled into it to keep my life and persona “warm”. To feed that furnace I have concentrated more and more on myself regrettably to the unintended neglect of my wife and children. As a woman, my desire for male attention has forced me to adopt and rationalize a type of morality that previously I would have scoffed at in others. My need for more and more girl time and desire for more measures taken to improve my female presentation has turned me from a grateful asker to a demanding diva in negotiations with my loving wife.

In fact unwittingly I suppose I have become Adolph Hitler to my wife’s Neville Chamberlain. With the unspoken threat of broken home in lieu of war, I have sweetly muscled my way to my own “Poland” and “Sudetenland”. I’m just wondering if my family will ever have “peace in our time”. Certainly they did not ask for nor deserve any of this.

I do not know what tomorrow brings. I am doing my best to hang in there for my family by continuing to balance two lives instead of following the one life I dream of. It admittedly is an exhausting undertaking. I love my family very much. I hope I am not deluding them or myself. There may come a time where I need come clean with them or myself or both.

So what should anyone else take from this? Whatever you can or will identify with.