Now don't get me wrong. Others have been able to see me. They have seen (at one time or another) a man in a business suit, or on a motorcycle, or playing with his children, or teaching, or selling cars, or playing trumpet. But they did not see the secret female, the invisible woman in all those activities. I was, in that sense, invisible to others.
But I was also invisible in my own eyes, and in a double sense. I did not really like myself as a male, even though I did all the things appropriate to my assigned gender. Nor did I really want to recognize who I was in terms of my feminine wishes. I used to peer into mirrors a lot to see if I could discern the real me. Over the years I experimented with my male appearance a great deal, such as going from clean-shaven to bearded and back in an endless number of variations. What was seen by others as vanity was really my own deeply felt insecurity. I felt like two people, one of whom wanted the other one to go away, because the two of them could not really live together. The mirrors did not help. I ultimately became so invisible in my own eyes that I dreamt and talked of suicide on a consistent basis, as if to make real the invisibility I was feeling. In death I would have become truly invisible, burying both the male and female parts of me and, in effect, burying my inner, and in this case my outer, conflict.
It was this difficulty in seeing myself with contradictory inner feelings and wishes that led me, at least inwardly, to blame others for not really seeing me and appreciating me. I blamed other people for my own inability to come to grips with my feminine wishes. I can recall blaming, again inwardly, my parents and my wife for not understanding me. But all the time I was hiding from myself as well as from them. It was as if I wanted everyone else to take responsibility for bringing me out of the closet and making my inner struggle an outer reality. I wanted other people to make me visible, even visible to myself. My parents died before I owned up to my gender issue, and I obtained a divorce rather than risk being rejected by my wife. She now knows the truth about me, but such knowledge on her part does not matter as much anymore in terms of our non-marital relationship.
he rejection that I actually experienced in the case of both my parents
and my wife stemmed from my inability to fit easily and pleasantly into
their lifestyles. I was always somewhat of an oddball, or at best unique.
Even at work I was seen as being somehow different, albeit effective. And
all of that was not necessarily a gender thing but rather just my being a
person in my own right. But at the same time I was also refusing to face my
underlying gender struggle. As I have said, I kept it all invisible, even
to myself. And so I blamed others, blamed the world, for not appreciating
me. My personal unhappiness was everyone else's fault. I was behaving like
a victim, a victim of gross neglect.
My way out of this morass of self-pity was, ironically, the previously mentioned contemplation of suicide. I say "contemplation" of it, not an attempt at it, though I think a serious car accident was an indication of my inner disturbance. But I did allow myself to face my depression head-on, at first symbolically with my head-on car crash, for which I was completely at fault. With that car accident I saw, or at least somehow felt, that I really was responsible for my life, for my very existence. The point is that I began to allow myself to experience my own depression, my own sadness, my own pain. I did not drown all this discomfort in various methods of avoidance. I did not turn to drugs, not even prescribed ones, though I am sure prescribed drugs have their place. If I am "guilty" of anything, it was excessive masturbation, an attempt to relieve tension. But I do not see masturbation as the basis for a verdict of personal guilt. I see it, at least in this particular instance, as the private indication of a need to face up to something personally troubling.
If there was any death in all of this, it was finally the serious rejection of my male self. What had been a living death, that is, a reluctance to recognize and accept my ongoing feminine wishes, became the basis for a suicide, so to speak, in the other direction. Whether I see myself as having displaced, and therefore replaced, another part of my self, or as having been reborn, or as simply accepting myself more totally for who I am, the fact is that I came out of my personal depression into a sense of personal expression. I went from dysphoria to euphoria, from personal irresponsibility to personal responsibility. I went from being invisible to being visible to myself and then to the world.
Interestingly enough, as I now live with myself the woman, I find I can more readily accept the fact that I was born a male. I am beginning to see that, whatever I am, whatever I embody, whatever my life experience encompasses, it is all part of who I am. The only difference now is that I am living in a way that is most meaningful to me in my one life on this earth. I am not saying that there are not prices to be paid for all of this, especially in a social and vocational sense, but the inner and outer prices I have paid and continue to pay are well worth it all. Let's face it: nothing really worthwhile is free. There is always some price to pay. But out of that payment, usually in some form of pain and struggle, comes a sense of quiet dignity and pride in one's achievement.
One would think that being visible to oneself and to the world would be a simple matter. We are talking about a life of honesty, of truthfulness, of simply being true to oneself. And yet, given the web of relationships and expectations and the shoulds and should nots into which we are born and in terms of which we are raised, such visibility, with all of its simple honesty, becomes an extremely complex and difficult matter. Generally speaking, this honesty of self is usually associated with the world of young children. Adults, perhaps with a certain degree of condescension mixed with longing, applaud such honesty. But the adult world does not really take kindly to this same honesty among other adults. Although we do preach honesty and in many ways practice it, the fact remains that dishonesty of all kinds, from outright robbery to quiet deceit, are an unfortunate mark of adulthood. And so we hide ourselves a bit for self-protection.
hat most of us, including myself, seem to lose sight of as we make our way
in the world is that, as adults, we end up robbing and deceiving ourselves.
We not only hide from each other but, as I have pointed out, we also hide
from ourselves and thus have difficulty achieving the one thing no one else
can give us: true love of self, true self-esteem, a self-affirming basis
for celebrating our birthdays each and every year of our precious time on
this earth. Being visible is a gift, but it is a gift we ultimately present
to ourselves. It is not something others can really give us. We may gain
public recognition and even fame, but the ultimate and most solid
recognition is from within oneself. We are thus our own challenge, and
those of us experiencing gender confusion on whatever level are among those
who know the inner, as well as the outer, challenge of being visible, of
being self-affirmed.
It is my inner visibility that I now recognize as being the most crucial element in my sense of identity, not only as a woman but also as a person. The more I accept myself for who I am, the more truly visible I become both to myself and to others. I seem to be accepted by others in proportion to my own self-acceptance. If I am visible to myself, then somehow I become more visible to others. If I like myself, then others find it easier to like me, to relate to me, to accept me, to see me as part of their lives, to accord me visibility. Being truly visible seems to happen from the inside out. It is this inner visibility over which I have at least some measure of control. When I actively begin to look within myself, then and only then do I begin to make sense of it all.
© 1996 by Human Dimensions