Fate, 12 monkeys, the people up stairs, Final Frontier

 

I've always been haunted that I would be alone.  When I was young I watched the movie "12 Monkeys" and totally got it, these characters trapped in this crazy loop of time, destiny, and inability to change what was to be. Fate. 

I have experienced a similar feeling of fate. When I was very young I was in the military, living in a cheap downstairs, apartment with my wife at the time. upstairs there were two people and I could hear them moving around, vaguely talking, muffled through my ceiling, their floor and the entire time... I lived there I never met them once. Not once, not a glimpse. 

And my imagination took charge and the idea came into my head that this was also me, and someone else...many many many years from that day, living upstairs. Ya weird right...  I have never been able to fully shake that thought. I know its crazy. I know its not true, but there is a part of me, that feeling, that thought, that the person that was up stairs was me.

In the Star Trek movie "The Final Frontier" there is a scene in which there is barren flat of land, no plants, nothing, just dirt, and wind, and dust. A wasteland. And in the scene there is a single character, a lost soul, covered in rags, protecting his gnarled body from the elements, digging small holes in the desert floor. Another character approaches on horse and stopping within meters, dismounts and starts approaching them. The character digging the holes, stops and draws a weapon and points it at the approaching figure. And the  approaching figure then says "Would you really kill me over a few holes?", and the lost soul says "Its all I have."

 

For some reason that I didn't understand I got and felt deeply what was happening in that scene and I would cry.

So what does this have to do with anything? What does it have to do with being Transgender, or liberty, or identity?

I have always been alone, even when married, in relationships, I have felt isolated and alone and I believe that many transgender people have similar feelings and experiences. 

In my personal life I try to be brave, social, interesting, accepted and fitting in. I have tried to be a good person, I have tried to have a good morale compass of right and wrong and follow it.

Through my life I have mostly survived, fit in, been accepted, tolerated. Yet there has always been the nagging that I'm an illusion, blending in, a chameleon and fated. Through my life I have coped with my awkwardness, through music,  buried in video games, and many adventure books where I no longer exist yet am apart of some other character more powerful and greater than myself. 

Relationship wise I have had a few. And all of them have failed, because I wrecked them an or we were toxic to begin with in some way; co-dependence,  or more take than give, unbalanced. A perfect relationship I don't think exists and the divorce rates seems to prove that true. I also believe that because of the in-congruence, dissonance, and discord I carry inside it was impossible for my relationships to be healthy ones. So like the song lyrics from margaritaville, her fault, no bodies fault, my fault. yes and no.  

For years... I didn't know what was going on in me; my feelings, and anger, and dislike, and disgust I assumed was because of my body betraying me. I hated losing my hair and was in pain and anguish about it. I hated my body betrayal, I hated not having (perceived) charisma, being weak(I was bullied a LOT), being different, being a scrapper and raised in a way that made me a scrapper, a survivor. I was and am tough, but tough in a surviving a desert sort of way.

ok lets connect some more dots....the Epiphany

There is a song that has the lyrics 

"Will they hate me for all the choices I've made
Will they stop when they see me again?
I can't stop now I know who I am" 

When I had the epiphany that I am transgender that all the discord, dissonance, all the non fitting pieces of my life is because of an imbalance of body and mind. It all became clear and makes sense. I cannot unsee what I see. Literally "I can't stop now I know who (WHAT) I am" I have been wanting my feminine mind to bloom and for my body to manifest how my mind feels and sees itself in the world. And because my body doesn't match my mind, I am broken and I need to do something to fix it. 

So...now that I know, knowing is half the battle. AND I know that transitioning is a move in the right direction, to be seen, visible, to walk out of the desert and self isolation and choose who I want to be, regardless of risk of hard or even death. Is a good choice, it is the right choice. I choose me.  

I know that these weird ideas of me living downstairs from myself, was likely my subconscious trying to tell me that there is a different me that needs to get out. A warning...a foreshadowing that I need to fix something. I didn't know what that something was for a long time. And so I was haunted by it.

Epilogue.

I don't know if that helps anyone. I don't know if this even makes sense. But I'm writing this down because its something I want to share in hopes it can help someone else.