Gender Incongruence and the Jarring Reality That I Am Transgender

Denial, a river that flows through many families

As I have gotten older, I have noticed many of my friends and family have become glued to their perception of reality. As they age, like their bodies, they become less and less adaptable. They are tired of change. In fact, they hate it. The phrase I heard as a child from my grandparents, later from my parents and now from my contemporaries: “It’s not the way it used to be.”

Nor should it be.

Change in our society is constant. Uber has changed our need to drive ourselves, electricity is now powering our cars and soon cars will do all the driving for us. Land lines dominated communication for 100 years and now we use cell phones for everything in our lives, I mean everything. You can’t hide from the internet and you can’t live without it. Just try.

Heraclitus, a philosopher who lived 2,600 years ago, wrote, “Nothing endures but change.” He just didn’t take into account the increased speed of current change.

And then we are assaulted by information daily. But how much?

I Googled, “How much information do we consume in a day?” The best answer I got was from a report done eleven years ago, and I have to assume we consume a lot more today. That research found that the average American consumed about 34 gigabytes of data and information every day. There are about 678,000 pages in a gigabyte.

The average book has 400 pages, so we consume 1,695 books a day.

Talk about information overload.

I then Googled “2020 average stress in everyday life”. What I found was startling. Each year, the American Psychological Association (APA) surveys people across the United States about stress. Their 2020 survey found that, including the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, “We are facing a national mental health crisis that could yield serious health and social consequences for years to come.”

Let’s talk a little further about stress.

According to Dr. Hans Selye, there are three stages: alarm, resistance, and exhaustion. Others have added to the list but I didn’t want to stress you out with too stages. Three is enough.

According to Selye, when people are exposed to a stress, they are at first taken off guard, then attempt to maintain stability by resisting the change, and eventually fall victim to exhaustion in countering the stress.

That’s a lot to process. People are exhausted.

So here I am throwing the complicated nature of gender incongruence and the jarring reality that I am transgender on top of everything else.

I shouldn’t be surprised that I am not greeted with open arms from family and friends. I need to be patient. The concept of being transgender needs more exposure and it is fighting for shelf space in a world and a society that is exhausted.

It is no wonder many are opting for the old days, the old ways and the simpler time. Why are we surprised about the revival of the “Old Time Religion” with its basic, static, and easy-to-understand antiquated rules. It is easier to be led and not think. Unfortunately, many people are making that choice.

Dealing with the issues of transgender children and all the other transgender issues is just another heavy straw on the already over-burdened camel’s back they are trying to live with. I know they just want their bathroom rules simple and safe ...

But, unfortunately, my rights are an important straw.

But I have to work on my patience. Everyone needs a little time to find the room to process it all, but I am definitely going to fight for my self-space in their lives. They are too important to me to allow Denial to flow between us.

…and I’ll take as much straw off their backs as I can in the process.

Emma Holiday

Writers note: If you have read any of my writings on Medium you will have noticed a definite theme: the incredible pain of gender dysphoria and all the difficult aspects of just being transgender.

My writing has three specific goals:

1. Writing is my therapy. I have a very limited outlet for my thoughts so I write to find a way to process the most profound experience in my life. I need to understand and I need to accept myself to move forward.

2. Being transgender, for me, is a very lonely existence and if I can share some of the things that I feel and think as I go through the process of transitioning with others who are transgender and, in some way, lessen their pain and sense of loneliness, then all of this public exposure of my personal thoughts is not a waste.

3. I write to help cisgender people understand that all trans people want is to be simply understood, accepted and treated as a normal person. We are.

Thank you for reading my work.

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