I had an extremely fascinating experience last night. As many know, I am transgender. This has not come without a LOT of heartache and struggle over my life. Pain and suffering that was completely unnecessary, but brought on by the perceived reality in which I lived.
Imagine living your entire life fully convinced that you were crazy. If every experience you ever had as you grew up. Every moment in time. Every decision you ever made. Every interaction you ever had. Literally every single experience and memory, was all had while carrying this internal belief that you were somehow crazy or would be deemed crazy should you let your "secret" out. How would that affect, mold, and influence your life? Look back on your life, and remember all of the little interactions, and forks in the road that you arrived at, and imagine how your choices or experiences would have been different, if the entire time, you carried this belief that you were mentally insane? Or believed some other thing about yourself that drastically influenced your life?
Welcome to my existence. I was raised Mormon, and ontop of that, was home-schooled from the age of 7 through high school graduation by a mother who because of her own childhood traumas, lived her life having certain internal beliefs about herself, which translated into a very strange perception of the world. This perception she had of the world together with an excessive concern with what others think about her, was passed onto myself, which infused with my own childhood traumas and the result is, I grew into a very emotionally unavailable adult, who has the hardest time doing the most normal of activities.
I spent my entire life feeling like I was alone on this planet. I honestly thought that I could very easily be the one and ONLY person in this entire world who feels like I am a girl stuck in a boys body. None of it made sense at all. Every day I would wake up hoping that somehow in the middle of the night, my body would have changed into the girls body I was supposed to have. But I would look down and see that clearly, it had not. I clearly was still in a boys body. And the world was telling me that I needed to live a certain way because of that.
Years and years of trauma caused by having this realization at every step of life. Think about how much of our lives are gendered. Birthdays have genders, school children are divided by gender, restrooms are divided by gender, girls grow up to be "Moms" and therefore are raised in preparation for that destiny. Boys grow up to be hard workers who provide for their family, and as such need to be raised "Tough" so as to be good productive workers. Every time my sister would have a slumber party, I felt extremely sad and sick to my stomach knowing that it felt natural that I should be a part of it, because I am a girl. But then to be snapped back to reality that I happened to be born with a boys body, so everything my mind and intuition is telling me I should be a part of, is non-existent, because I have a boys body.
To live an entire life honestly feeling and believing that I could very well be the only person on the planet that feels this way. I convinced myself that I was mentally insane. And that if I ever so much as mentioned this secret I was holding onto, that I would be put in a mental hospital in the blink of an eye. Because I had no idea growing up what it meant to be transgender.
I of course had seen and been aware of what the world called "Transvestites" and cross dressers. I knew there were "men" who dressed as women. I would see them, and knew they existed, by somehow I thought I was different. I saw them as simply "men" dressed in women's clothing. I went most of my life thinking that I, feeling like I was literally female on the inside, was convinced that I was different than these other people I saw. I thought they honestly identified as men, and only dressed as women for fun. And so I separated myself from them in my mind, having this understanding that they are not experiencing the same thing I am. It was not until my mid to late 20's that I FINALLY for the first time in my life happened to search for the right search term, which brought me to a website that for the first time ever, told me what it meant to be "Transgender".
All of a sudden.....my entire existence took on a different meaning. All of a sudden I realized I was not alone in the world. I was not crazy! I was actually living with something that literally millions of other people had lived with! I was not mentally insane! I really was correct in feeling like a girl inside, but seeing a boys body outside! It was one of the happiest days of my life! Because all of a sudden an entire lifetime of negative thoughts toward myself, and holding myself back in social situations because of this internal belief that I was insane, kept me feeling incapable or un-qualified to do the normal things that everyone did. I had such little confidence in myself, because like I said, my entire life was spent believing that I was insane! Think about that and how that would affect you!
So as I got older, and realized that I could NEVER let this secret out no matter what, I started to hypermasculinize. To do every manly thing I could, so as to avoid the possibility of anyone ever finding out that I felt like I was a girl inside! You know like on the movie American Beauty? How the one guy was so anti-gay and was brutal toward those who were gay, and then in the end it turns out the reason was, because he was gay himself and was hiding from that reality and felt that if he was so publically against gay people, surely no one would suspect him? It is part of human nature and psychology to do so. If we don't want someone to find out we like something, we tend to go overboard in expressing our opposition to whatever it is.
I absolutely did every masculine thing I could, and put my all into it, in order to keep anyone from ever suspecting that I had these thoughts inside that would deem me mentally insane. I grew my beard and mustache out because I felt like if I was clean shaven like I prefered to be, that someone might think my face looked feminine and might suspect that I felt like a girl inside. And the repercussions of anyone finding that out, would be tragic and would be the end of my life! So of course I did everything in my power to keep it suppressed and hidden!
Now.....you might ask yourself.....what in the world happened to you, that you became programmed with this belief that you must never talk to anybody about it. That is a very good question.
So last night, my wife and I were going over my memories from my past. For the most part I have really good memories of most of my childhood. In fact, you can name any year, and I can tell you where my family and I were living at the time, and can name very vivid memories from that year. I am wildly fascinated by psychology and the human brain. And I have understood for many years the concept of dissociation and blocked memories. When we experience trauma, especially as kids who do not know how to process what is going on, sometimes the best tool of survival, is to block the experience or memory completely out. Many people do not remember super traumatic things that happened to them. Yet they live their entire lives being sometimes drastically affected by something they cannot even remember! It is such an emotional injustice we live with!
So....at 4 years old are the first memories I have of starting to recognize that I was not really a boy. At that time in my life, I apparently started to realize that there was a difference between boys and girls, and inside I knew I was a girl, but was so confused by this thing between my legs that differed from what my mom and baby sister had between their legs. I have one distinct memory at 4 years old, of putting my moms big soft, flowing nightgown on. I remember my heart feeling full of joy, and me running to wherever my mom was and excitedly exclaiming "Look!" And all of a sudden, my memory goes dark. Not only blank....but dark. Like something bad happened in that moment that negatively affected the entire rest of my life. As I attempt to recall that moment, the memory literally goes from me being all happy and excited to show my mom that I was wearing her nightgown, to feeling a sense of darkness and sadness like something happened that was traumatic to me, and hurt me bad enough to instill in me that I must NEVER EVER AGAIN dress in anything feminine or express that I feel like a girl inside. I do not believe that my mother would have beat me for it or anything like that. But I have a feeling that she sternly scolded me or something in a way that made me realize that despite my internal feelings, the body I was born into was going to dictate the rest of my life.
Having this realization about my past and experience, was tremendously huge in my path of personal growth. Because once I realized that my entire life was lived with this trauma of feeling like I was mentally insane when it did not have to, and everything that molded me into the person I am today, did not have to make me who I am. Had I lived a different life where I was supported, and told that I was not insane and allowed to live true to my internal feelings rather than according to the body I was born into, I would not be living with so many personal fears and blocks that keep me from accomplishing the dreams I have in life. I would have grown up knowing I was actually far more normal than I always thought I was, and every single decision would have been entirley different. Every experience where I othered myself in a group of people, would have been different. I would have been able to feel like I was part of the group, rather than this weird person harboring such a deep dark secret that I could never let out. I could have lived a life where confidence was actually a part of my existence rather than this constant feeling that everyone else is better than me in some way.
I could have grown up knowing that I was born with a boys body, but that it was normal and acceptable for my to have these feelings that I was really a girl inside, because millions of other people experience the same thing. I would not have grown up feeling alone and separate from the rest of the world.
So this brings me to the title of this blog post. One of the most amazing realizations that my wife has helped me with, is the concept of linear time, and the fact that in reality, linear time does not exist. At least not in the way that we have always imagined it.
Picture your entire life as a line. A timeline. Where each section of the line represents a period of time in your life. We all experienced it in linear fashion as we grew older. However....at this point in time.....we all tend to live our lives as if that entire timeline is crushed into one tiny moment in which we are living right here and right now. We quite literally are the product of our entire life and every experience, decision, fork in the road, and memory, whether made up or not. And most of us go on living our lives not quite realizing this concept. We know we had a life. We know that our life molded us into who we are. But that tends to be where the realization ends. We accept that reality and continue to live it.
What if I were to tell you, that you do NOT have to continue living that reality. If I were to tell you that you have the ability to be whoever you want to be. Because you absolutely do. If you can, in your mind visualize your entire life as one moment in time. One speck that your entire existence is crammed into. And that one speck of time, is what you are living right now in this moment. Being affected by everything that resides in that tiny speck as if your entire life is being lived and molding you and affecting your every decision and experience. When you visualize it that way.....it becomes much easier to realize WHY you are living with the kinds of traumas that you are. But the amazing thing, is that it also allows you to realize that you do not have to keep reliving that trauma. You do not have to be a person that is hindered because of a lifetime of being programmed to believe you are one thing or another based on your experiences. You may live with a belief that you are ugly, because of a childhood of being told you were. But does your childhood really have to dictate who you are now? In this moment in time? Do you really have to continue living with that trauma and everything that came along with it over your entire life time? Every decision that was made based on this internal belief that you were ugly. Those auditions you never went to because you felt like you were not attractive enough anyway to get the part. How different would your life have been had you been able to live without the effects of this moment from your past?
:-)