The Lady or the Tiger

I had no idea three years ago that I was to start a journey that would slice, dice and dissect every aspect of my life and myself. It is the most painful process I have ever experienced. It may yet become the most exciting and soul fulfilling.

I went through an emotional acid bath of doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, frantic internet researches as well as brutal self-criticism and analysis to discover, without any doubt and against every effort to deny it, that I am transgender.

I went from a binary world of gender into one filled with technicolor variations.

As my journey continued to acceptance, the next thought was, what to do next. I had shared my news with a very select group of people. I was fighting continued self-denial and a fear of letting the “cat out of the bag.” I still was coming to grips with being transgender. I still was very uncomfortable.

I started the “soft” part of my transition, things I could try and do that didn’t require a permanent commitment like surgery or publicly coming out. I tried androgynous clothing. I started to increase my awareness of the feminine world. I experimented with a professional makeover. I fearfully tested the water. I needed to know what my transness was. I needed to find a way to ease the incredible pain gender dysphoria was causing. What did I need to do to be at peace internally?

I found these solutions offered some relief but they also increased my need to express my female gender. My gender dysphoria seemed to be insatiable in direct proportion to my increasingly desperate need to suppress my desire to fully transition.

I was between the fabled rock and a hard place.

So, I continued my journey. I went back multiple times for makeovers, not as a test, but for the pleasure it gave me to see me for the first time in the mirror. In the photos I took in those moments there was an undeniable joy in the smile, totally different than the photos as a guy all my life. These photos seem to reflect my soul…and it scared me.

But I couldn’t stop. I went to an endocrinologist who confirmed my diagnoses of gender dysphoria and prescribed female hormones. I started hormone replacement therapy (HRT). I had passed a major milestone in transitioning and it made a difference. It felt right. The example I use to describe it is, it is as if I was running on the wrong gas without knowing it and now I am on the right gas and I could feel the difference. It was amazing.

Now I knew that not only was I transgender but my body was absorbing the female hormones as if it had been waiting a lifetime for them.

So, after 18 months on HRT I have come to the most major crossroad to being transgender: Should I settle for feeling better on just the hormones or should I finally realize a lifelong dream that I had always thought was a fantasy?

I am now faced with the path of “hard” transition.

Why do I need to go for permanent surgical changes and live my life as a woman? Why isn’t simply knowing what has caused my gender dysphoria enough?

It is my decision and my decision alone and I am dealing with the greatest fear I have ever encountered.

Frank Stockton wrote a short story in which the accused person stepped out into an arena and was given the choice between two doors; one held a ferocious tiger, the second a beautiful woman. The destiny of the accused was in the hands of the accused.

For me, I know which door is which, so why would I choose the tiger?