I’ll Never Be…

The first time I went in to see a therapist to talk about being trans, I lamented that there was no way anyone would ever not clock me as trans, that I would never be accepted as a woman given my build and many other masculine attributes. I was a 39 year-old furry fellow who wanted nothing more at that point than to be comfortable being a furry fellow for the rest of my time on this planet. The fact — and this is a fact — was that aside from the near crippling dysphoria, remaining as I was would have been simpler in almost every possible way. It would have been the simple act of doing nothing more than continuing in the status quo. What I desperately wanted from her was a magic tool to make the dysphoria go away because there was no magic tool to make me a woman as I wished to be.

As an aside, I believe that trans people are the world’s best wishers. We spend our childhoods wishing for the gender fairy to come and remake us — remake our lives — as they should have been. I would always include the caveat of having memory of the “wrong” life so as not to lose that element of self that comes from living. I didn’t want what was essentially me to be erased by the well-meaning fairy. I had so many wishes — variations on a theme — that helped me go to sleep at night with the hope that they would be granted by morning.

But no magic solutions to any of my trans problems were to be found. My therapist all but guaranteed me that should I move forward with transition, there would come a time where I would be surprised by the woman I saw in the mirror because she would…