Who Am I?

I see so much written or said about being trans.

Different labels tossed about trying to define people. Placing stickers on them saying you are this but not this. Arguments about who is and who isn't.

I hate it.

However I can't change it, no more than I can change the direction of a tidal wave.

You can try to apply a label to me if you like.

Whatever.

I won't care or accept it. It is simply the other party trying to define me in their neat little boxes.

I don't care if I lived a man for a period of my life.

You weren't there being scolded for doing things that were girlish. You weren't there when I was teased mercilessly by my peers for being different. You didn't witness my older brother beating up someone who was different. You weren't subject to the hate and discrimination of others for being themselves by the people who are supposed to be my family or friends.

You didn't sit through therapy sessions with different therapist and said nothing.

Not. One. Word.

I was that afraid of who I was would cause me to be hurt simply because I was.

Thus I retreated.

And I didn't always know what it was myself.

Answers were also difficult to come by.

I remember trying to find anything I could regarding who I was and how I felt.

However I found nothing.

I felt like I was chasing a ghost. Only that ghost was me.

Deep inside I had the answers but I always felt like they were out of reach. Or worst yet I kept them out of reach.

Usually because when I tried to explore them they backfired badly.

I struggled with so many things in my life simply because I never had a sense of self. Of truly feeling like I knew who I was.

Of really knowing me.

In a discussion I had with someone recently who is a lesbian, she told me she did some of the exact same things. That she lived how others expected her too. Based on the environment she grew up in and just like me not knowing or understanding who she was and that there were others who felt the same way she did.

It took her time to get there.

I was told even though we are similar we all get to this point, we discover ourselves differently. Some sooner then others. Through different routes and challenges, but once we finally understand and accept ourselves, we are who we are. It doesn't make us anything less.

I took a difficult route to get here and I am not even done with everything yet.

Yes I know there is terminology out there. There has to be. How do you attempt to explain it to someone else without words to describe it. More importantly how do you explain it to yourself without it. Yet that doesn't mean that all of it applicable.

So try to define me, try to apply labels to me. Try to tell me who I am. I don't care and I am not listening because I spent too many years caring about what others thought. Changing myself based on their reactions and opinions and only made myself more and more miserable by doing so.

I have cried too many tears. I have suffered too many sleepless nights. I have faced to much hatred and insults to deal with any more.

At the end of the day I love the person I am finally becoming. I look forward to a life that can finally be mine. All because I now know who I am.

Do you?