The Transgender Storm Inside

My primary goal writing on MEDIUM has been to verbalize what I am personally going through because I am transgender and wanted to share with others this incredibly unique journey. Either you are a fellow traveler who needs to know you are not alone or you are just interested in understanding the trip. I have linked a number of my writings below to spare you too much redundancy.

I am suffering from an incongruence between my gender, how my brain is wired, and my sex, how I was physically born.

I never truly understood mental anguish until it hit me three years ago with my discovery that I was transgender. I am frustrated with trying to find a way to convey this incredible pain that gender dysphoria has inflicted on me to anyone else. I want others to realize that this is not made up nor can it be dismissed as a mental illness. It is very physical, very powerful and it is very real. Gender dysphoria is a blaring alarm that something is seriously wrong.

I know with absolute certainty that I am suffering from gender dysphoria. So does every medical professional that has diagnosed me over the last three years.

It’s just the rest of the world that just refuses to accept that it is real.

For those trying to understand, think of battling day and night, the pain, the exhaustion, the endless turmoil. Think of it bottled inside you, day after day, night after night, for days, weeks, months, years, minute by painful minute, hidden from plain sight behind your eyes, inside your head.

What would you do to end the pain without taking your life to do it? What desperate acts of courage and personal selfishness would you be willing to take to survive and end that pain?

Could you take those steps?

A lifetime of continued pain and emotional agony is just not a viable option. There is an alternative. You must transition to survive. You just need to choose how much you need to transition.

So, in order to survive, you need to finally accept that selfish acts are required. They are needed if you are to have a chance to have any life left in you to repair the damage this massive internal battle has caused with those you love and the life you once lived. These changes are necessary in order to have any hope left over to live in any sort of peace and, just by chance, have some happiness left over in you to share with others.

It is so much to ask of someone.

For those living with this I say: Stay strong. Keep your hope alive. Breath.

Emma Holiday

Please also read:

I have tied all of my stories to the above thread.

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.