The End Of My Dual Existence
My account of coming out transgender
I came out transgender this week. If there is one thing I have noticed, it’s that people, either in person or online, will often say that what I am doing is brave. The word “brave” makes sense in their perception as a good description of what I was going through. After all, most of them couldn’t imagine having to cast off the social norm and open themselves up to that degree of vulnerability and ridicule. I think, though, in my case, it’s less about bravery and more about being tired of having to pretend I was someone I’m not. I could no longer handle the fact that to be myself, I still had to be someone else to the rest of the world. At some point, I got tired of living a dual existence, and I decide to come out. I found, for me, it was less about bravery and more about giving in to the inevitable.
It was almost a year ago when I sat in therapy and uttered those words, “I think I’m transgender.” Since then, I have feared this week with every fiber of my being. At the time of writing this, I am almost 40 years old. As someone raised in a very conservative religious manner, I already had ingrained self-hatred for being “weak and pathetic for giving in to my sinful desires to be a woman.” Forgetting that I knew full well it wasn’t a desire; it’s just who I was born to be, I could not let go of that. I figured…
