My whole life has been a search for personal meaning, a search that will continue, to a greater or lesser extent, till the day I die. In itself, this life-long search, whether consciously or unconsciously undertaken, makes me no different than anyone else on the face of this earth, whether now, in the past, or among the yet-to-be-born. Generally speaking, we all seek love and security in the midst of life's challenges, and we all develop one means or another with which to face those challenges.
What really begins to differentiate me from
most of my fellow searchers is my gender confusion, which has served to
intensify my own search for a personally meaningful life. I am not alone,
of course, with my gender issue. I am part of a small, though not
insignificant, minority of gender-confused people. But the fact remains
that such an issue is mine in terms of my own life, and I must come to
terms with it if I want my search to be as productive as possible. If I
were to deny the existence of my gender issue, I would be denying the
meaning of my existence as a whole person, for I would be burying a
significant part of my self and my identity. Actually, it is probably safe
to say that anyone's search for personal meaning is intensified by one or
more complications in his or her life. The search is difficult enough
without such complications, but the added problems can, and usually do,
deepen the meaning we each seek.
For most of my life,
I buried my gender confusion, keeping my fantasies, my hopes, my
fears, and my behaviors all a secret from everyone, especially a secret
from those closest to me. I even seem to have kept it all a secret from
myself, for I could not recognize, let alone accept, myself for who and
what I am. Ironically, when I finally faced my gender wishes, when I
finally faced the very thing I thought would destroy my life, I suddenly
found myself beginning to live, to feel alive, to feel entitled to be
alive.
"These problems pale in
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Now I am not saying there are no
problems attached to the decision to face one's gender confusion head on.
The fact is there are many problems, especially social ones, such as in the
area of marriage, work, and friendship, along with problems of
documentation -- obtaining various legal documents which facilitate legal
identification, whether one is driving, flying, getting a job, and so on --
all of this varying in degree depending upon the extent of one's
transgendered behavior and overall lifestyle. But these problems pale in
significance compared to the inner joy and fulfillment I experience as the
gender-realized person I am now.
There are undoubtedly many ways to
slice the cake of personal meaning and the search it involves. In other
words, there are many perspectives one can bring to a discussion of such a
search and to the actual search itself. In a fundamental sense, we need to
be aware of our goals and the means for their achievement. Personal
wholeness is a basic goal, along with the achievement of self-recognition,
self-acceptance, self-integration, and self-transcendence. We must also
address the social aspect of these personal accomplishments.
And then we should look at the
method by which we undertake such a search, for the methods and the
attitudes behind them have a direct bearing on the outcome we seek. Where
do we look for answers? Are there, in fact, answers as such, or is there
just an ongoing process with temporary solutions? If solutions are somehow
only temporary, then how much of such a process can we tolerate in the
midst of our search for stability and security?
The fact remains that a search for
personal meaning is what life is all about, whether one is gender-confused
or not. But it is the confusion about one's gender, regardless of whether
one is a transvestite, a transgenderist, or a transsexual, that can,
ironically, shed significant light on the meaning of one's life and on the
nature of the search itself. It is in terms of such a search that we are
helped to make sense of it all.
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