Coming to Terms With Myself
By Julia Ann Gilkey
It is amazing to me how much I want acceptance for who I really
am. I have an intense hunger to be honest with people about it
and yet I can not, at this time do that.
A great part of this
quest is to reach a level at which people will have a better concept
of who I am and how to deal with me at the beginning of a friendship.
Hopefully that will improve interaction and communication.
It has been very frustrating
throughout my life to feel that I always have to make adjustments
for others and then they often still miss who I really am and
how I really feel about things. I guess being taken for appearances
hurts no matter what those are.
I realize the need for changing so many behaviors in order to
be able to be whom I always have felt that I am. One thing
this soul searching and deep appraisal of my self has brought
is an appreciation of how feminine I really am. In the past
I always thought I was much more feminine than masculine, but
I didnít realize how far along that continuum that I was.
This does not mean that I feel ultra feminine, because I donít,
but I do feel confident that I am a very feminine person. I may
need to strip the onion some more in order to totally expose myself,
but I am me and me is she. That doesnít mean that I do
not have masculine behaviors now or that they will all disappear
in the future. But, I have seen very few people that donít
have some bits of masculinity in them or some bits of femininity
that helps creates the unique man or woman that they are.
Lately I have really begun to see that I am most in touch with
my inner self when I am in relationships with other people. Contact
with people seems to bring out that which is feminine within me
the most. I value people more than anything else and I want people
to value me and my friendship with them.
I have played the strong male, on occasion, I have been the protector
and filled the role as well as I could which is very adequately
I would think. Yet, I have also not wanted the hierarchical structure
at all. I wanted my partner to be my equal, to have the same room
to grow and experience things as I have needed to have. I wanted
first and foremost for her to be happy and fulfilled.
I would like to be able to accept the strong sheltering protection of a man.
There is a strange dichotomy among the sexes that no matter how
strong the woman nor how weak the man. In romance, the man is the protector and the woman
the vulnerable one. This does not reflect reality, but it does
reflect where our hearts and minds are.
However, no matter how much I want my partner to be happy and
no matter how much I want to be able to help him and care for
him, I also want to be in charge of those decisions that directly
effect me and to be an equal participant in those decisions
that effect the both of us. That is something that is unchanged
from where I was as a male. I want our humanness, not our gender
to be the level on which we operate.
Just thinking about being a woman in a relationship is both wonderful
and scary. How good a woman will I be able to be? Will I be able
to represent my real gender as I think I should? Will I be accepted
for what I really am, a woman who is more than that, but also
none less? I do believe now that being transgendered is a gift,
not a curse, and that it has helped me much more than it ever hindered
me. I believe that being transgendered has given me insight and
understanding of a much more broad level of human experience.
It allows me to see and understand things much more clearly.
Until I began this process I donít think I recognized it
for what it was, a gift from God. As I uncover more of myself,
as I strip away the training, attitudes and expectations away
from covering who I really am I constantly am amazed. For example,
I was on Julie Watersí Web Site one evening visiting personal
sites when I encountered sites for women. After a few seconds
I realized, ìWow, I am a woman, at least in spirit and
soul, so why shouldnít I go to those sites?î It was
then that I began to see that I made an essential shift, not from
the male as I had already began to think of myself as transgendered,
but as a transgendered woman. This is quite a leap for
this dumpy broad.
My whole life has been involved in connecting people to one another
and to the community as a whole. I am just now beginning to understand
why that was important to me and where it came from. I know now
that it reflects my feminine nature and it always has.
I would hope as a functioning, accepted woman that I could develop
even more of those feminine gifts that I already possess
and to bring along those others that I have not completely
been in touch with.
I also possess masculine gifts which
I hope that remain, not in the fore front, but somewhere that
my genie can call from the bottle of my soul and utilize
as parts of the whole for the better. I believe that I am
more than the sum of my parts and that my parts are diverse and
sometimes even at odds with one another. I am an aware individual
whose developed philosophies are enhanced and
expanded because I am a transgendered woman. I would hope that
as a transgendered woman I can contribute to some little bit betterment
of my world.
In the beginning I thought that my logic could help me withstand
the pressures that come with understanding. I still feel that
is true that I can act in the manner best suited for me to achieve
what I need to that I do feel the pressure to get on with my life
as a woman and to begin living as fulltime as soon I am able.
I know I wonít be able to be totally happy until I am able
to live as a woman completely.
When I can get up in the morning,
put on a dress or even Leviís and be able to relate and
be accepted by the world as the woman I am will I begin to live
whole life that I need to. To me living and being accepted for
whom I am is the manuscript and the SRS is only the punctuation.
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