Oh fuck, look! She's at it again, writing contemplative essays & posting cutesy girly pictures instead of re-blogging luridly captioned photos of bare-assed transgirls whacking off while sucking giant cocks!!! What the fuck kind of tranny blog is this?!?!

Your life is your life. Don't let it be clubbed into dank submission.
—Charles Bukowksi

It's not Selflessness if You're Not Being Yourself

I hear it a lot. The argument that it's selfish to come out as trans, especially when you're older & have established a life based on your outwardly perceived gender identity. Even if you've come to realize that life is largely a lie, the argument goes that you should tough it out. Continue to live the lie for the sake of everyone else around you who've come to rely on that lie as the foundation for a good part of their own lives.  You've made your bed, as the saying goes, now go lie on it until it becomes your death bed.

These same people will insist that it's selfish to disrupt your marriage, traumatize your children, shock your friends and family by coming out as trans. Better to keep the secret, live in the shadows, be quietly unfaithful if you have to. Better to just stuff it all down and never acknowledge it even to yourself. But, of course, you know that's impossible. And the things you do to "let the pressure off" make you feel sneaky, dirty, guilty, because you are all of those things. You're a big phony and you know it.

It feels like shit. 

So you keep your secret. You maintain the facade of the good father, the good husband, the good son, etc. But you're just kicking the can down the road. Because chances are all those people you think you're fooling will at some point find out the truth if they don't suspect it already and you can bet they most likely do suspect it. Trying to hide the fact your trans is like trying to hide the fact that you're an alcoholic. If you're "successful," it won't be until after you're dead that what they may have long-suspected is finally confirmed. That's how you define success—by putting off discovery of what you are until after your dead. And if somehow they never suspected the truth while you were alive, can you imagine the seismic shock when they discover it after your death? They'll come across that secret stash of clothes, those computer files, those chat logs and emails, that porn stash…you know where the skeletons are buried and you can almost guarantee they won't stay buried forever. But you'll have taken the easy way out by then. You died. Congratulations. You were the consummate escape artist. And so you can't be asked any of the difficult questions you spent your whole life avoiding, you won't have to see the hurt and disappointment on their faces, you don't have to weather the blast of their rage and their accusations. You avoided it all. You're the Queen of Avoidance. Your betrayal will be complete and you won't have to answer for it. Is that what you meant by being unselfish? Letting those you left behind, those you professed to love, discover your little secret on their own? Letting them cope with your infidelities now that you're beyond the reach of their pain, self-blame, recriminations, and outrage? Now that you don't have to proffer any explanations? Throwing up to them how little faith you had in their ability to love and understand you? Is that what you  consider being a responsible person?

Because that's how they'll see it. That you didn't trust them enough to accept the truth. Oh, they might well not have accepted it when you were alive, they may have been every bit as shocked and ashamed and disgusted as you imagine they would have been, but once you're dead, they'll blame you for not giving them a chance. That's how people are. They'll blame you for selfishly (oh, the irony!) keeping yourself a secret from them, for denying them the chance to get to know the "real" you. They won't consider that you did them any favors by lying about yourself to them all your life. They'll feel cheated of knowing the "real" you. They'll feel doubly-betrayed. They'll be offended that you thought so little of their love for you. It's life's joke on you.

And the truth is that if these people really were worth sacrificing your life for then they would be the kind of people who would accept the real you. You shouldn't have to lie to them to get them to love you. They should be every bit as understanding and loving as they like to think they are, as they will claim to be after you are dead. Why not give them the chance to prove it now? 

Yeah, its a shame that it took you so long to discover yourself  and that your false life is now entangled with the real lives of others. You built on a faulty foundation. But does that mean you should continue to build on it, to make the tower of lies, illusions, and half-truths even higher?  If you made a mistake at the start, does that mean you must persist in making it to the bitter end? If you took forty steps in the wrong direction does that mean you keep going in the wrong direction? Is that kind of consistency really any kind of virtue? Is that really the definition of unselfishness?

And is it really unselfishness that keeps you in the closet or is it just fear and cowardice? Is it unselfish to keep on pretending to be someone you're not and cheating behind the backs of those you profess to love? Is your cheating and lying and subterfuge truly for their own good or is that just a rationalization? Aren't you just taking the easy way out by acting the martyr? Maybe that wife of yours would be better off if you gave her the chance —at least the choice—to leave a marriage with a man who doesn't feel like a man, a faux man who most likely isn't satisfying her, never has satisfied her, and never will. Did you ever think that maybe by sticking with your obligations instead of following your own path of fulfillment you're cheating her (and everyone else in your life) out of a chance to find her own path to fulfillment? Are you really that vain, that egotistical to think that these people can't survive—even thrive—without you? Can you imagine the anger a woman must feel when she discovers how deeply and completely she's been betrayed over the course of a lifetime? 

You can do your duty, stay the course, and die knowing that you fulfilled your obligations, onerous as they might have been, that you denied yourself the only life you'll be given for the benefit of others if it makes your quiet desperation any easier to bear. But don't fool yourself. There's no guarantee that's the way anyone else will see it when all is said and done. You may not have decided to make the break, to walk out on your life to start another. But you aren't being faithful to that life your clinging to, nor to yourself, nor to anyone else. You're cheating. You're cheating  not just yourself but those around you from the chance of accepting or rejecting you for who you really are.You're cheating yourself and those your life touches out of the chance to live authentically. You're giving up not just your own life but stealing a part of every life you touch.  

And isn't that the primal fear we have in all relationships? That if the people we love only knew who we really were they wouldn't love us anymore?

Isn't that what's really keeping you from becoming who you are?

You can go back to fooling yourself and everyone else in just a moment. But take a minute or two to ask yourself that question. Ask it honestly for once. 

And then you can go on to live or die with the consequences.