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<h1>Zk | 2015-05-29-the-path-and-new-beginnings</h1>
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<p>type: post
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title: The Path - and New Beginnings
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date: 2015-05-29
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slug: the-path-and-new-beginnings</p>
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<p>Hindsight is, as they say, twenty-twenty. That's a core part of the trans
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narrative, just as it is for so many narratives for minority identities. It's
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usually expressed something like, "I've always known I was trans. I mean...I
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didn't think I was trans growing up, I didn't have the language, but looking
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back, there was this book I secretly read and I often fantasized about such and
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such, and it became much clearer later on."</p>
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<p>I'm certainly not exempt from this, in any way. When I came out as gay, I
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frequently justified that to myself by thinking, "you know, when I look back on
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my life, I can see all these signs of being gay." Lucky me, though, I got to do
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the coming out thing twice (or three times, if you count furry, but the impact
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on self image surrounding furry identity versus sexual orientation or gender
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identity is so small that it didn't have much of an impact on me).</p>
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<p>As with coming out as gay, a lot of stuff made sense in retrospect through the
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long process of coming out as trans. Coming out has a lot of social
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implications, and is often used to describe the act of informing parents,
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friends, coworkers, or whomever that such an identity is the truth, but the
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process really starts much earlier, when one's sense of identity surrounding
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something such as gender identity or sexual orientation starts to gel into
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something coherent enough to identify as a minority identity - most majority
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identities do not involve the same process of coming out.</p>
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<p>For me, the coming out process began sometime around late 2005, early 2006.
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In order to get into this a little more deeply, however, I'll need to take a
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brief detour into the land of furry.</p>
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<p>Within the furry subculture, a significant portion of social interaction takes
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place online by necessity. A large part of many people's membership in the
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furry subculture is interacting with others through a constructed character, an
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avatar that represents both an ideal self, as well as a combination of animal
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characteristics that one admires. This needn't be something visual - much of
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the interaction within furry takes place in a purely text-based environment such
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as IRC or a MUCK - but the visual aspect <em>does</em> play a part in broadcast
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situations (that is, situations where one broadcasts a bit of information in a
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non-directed way for others to consume - or not - at will).</p>
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<p>That said, starting around 2006, I began to shape my interactions within the
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furry subculture in a much different way. My initial reasoning was almost
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purely sexual. I won't go into detail, of course, but needless to say, I
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created an alt (alternate character) who was female specifically for the purpose
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of interacting with others in the fandom as a female. I got <a href="http://characters.openfurry.org/image/31">art of
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her</a> shortly after, and eventually
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wound up in a relationship with a very delightful person, T. Although both
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assigned male at birth, T and I's relationship was primarily a heterosexual one,
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online. We both had grown comfortable with the idea of acting within that
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dynamic and, both question our gender to some extent (whether consciously or
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not), often 'traded places', as it were, to share the experience.</p>
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<p>Fast forward to around 2011. T and I's relationship had started to falter,
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mostly from my end as I began to struggle with serious depression and anxiety,
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and the former explorations of gender weren't settling anything in terms of
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identity for me. My life was all wrong in ways that I couldn't quite place my
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finger on. It wouldn't be until sometime in mid-2012 that I started exploring
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gender identity seriously. By then I was in therapy for depression and anxiety
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with a psychiatrist and starting out with a therapist as well.</p>
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<p>Certainly a shift in career helped my general state out a bit, as did becoming
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more financially stable, but coming out to myself so totally overwhelmed those
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others, that my therapist wrote in my WPATH letter earlier this month, "I have
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never before witnessed such a profound shift in mood as Madison's movement from
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despair to hopefulness, from diagnosable depression to essentially normal health
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that has been sustained now for many months." </p>
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<p>When I started out actively exploring gender (rather than, say, fiddling around
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online as other sexes for funsies; not invalid, just more passive), I described
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dysphoria to my therapist as the intersection between gender identity and
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depression. He refined that to something more specific, that it's more the
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intersection between gender identity and shame. It's more directed than
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depression: there's always a target. I'm <em>so ashamed</em> of my voice, my hair, my
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gait. It may be related to depression, but shame is at its core.</p>
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<p>This dysphoria is what is left of the overwhelming depression that had claimed
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me before. The depression was unfocused, a malaise that completely enveloped
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me. Dysphoria remains, of course, that's part of being trans, but now it's
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simple shame over certain aspects that are out of my control, or at least
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currently out of reach. I often feel a secondary shame that goes along with
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them, a worry that I'm being somehow vain. I do my best to counteract that with
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the idea that its these very things that form the basis of how others decide
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just <em>who</em> we are, they're part of our expression.</p>
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<p>I feel it's important for me to pull this story together into words, to maintain
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a sense of where I've come from as I explore where all I can go. I'll end it
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with this: The therapy, the doctor's visits, and the consults finally culminated
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in me receiving my WPATH letter, my visit at the Boulder Valley Women's Health
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Center, and picking up my first prescription earlier this month, on the 14th.
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Here's to who I've been, and to who I get to be.</p>
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