This offering seems to have originally been written towards the end of 1995.
We are not all alike, but there are many similarities in our lives. Most of us have known since we were very young that there was something very wrong...some of us even figured out what it was.
Some of us tried to tell someone about it...most of us did not, because we learned very early that this was something to be ashamed of. So most of us tried to live our lives according to the dictates of society...just trying to survive. Many of us married...I was married for 24 years. Some of us were perhaps smarter and avoided relationships. Some of us were even moderately successful humans by most criteria. Most of us were pretty withdrawn, with few friends though. And almost all of us lived in fear of being found out, of making a slip at an inopportune time. It is impossible to bury your true self so deeply that something doesn't come through. Most of us relied on the principle that people see what they expect to see and hear what they expect to hear.
Over time, the discomfort of hiding ourselves, the refusal to acknowledge the pain we are feeling overcomes the fear of being discovered. We come to a crisis point. There are not many choices left to us: return to life as before (untenable, or we wouldn't be at the crisis point), do something about our condition (very difficult, lonely, and scary), or kill ourselves.
Unfortunately, about 30% of us choose option #3 (according to some estimates).
About 10% of us actually get to surgery. Another 30% live in a limbo between the sexes. The other 30% return to a life of depression and quite often self-hate.
If we finally do come out, it's usually with a vengeance. Once taciturn, emotionless humans, we quite often become very open, direct, caring people, the people we really wanted to be, the people we were in our own minds from the start. Quite often we become highly extroverted and often seem very self-absorbed. The self-centeredness is usually because for the first time in our lives, we love ourselves. Transition takes a lot of commitment to oneself and a belief in oneself that is very powerful. But from what I can see, we are very open to the possibilities of life, very loving, although often insecure, because we are growing up so late in life. Our apparent maturity may mask a lot of our inexperience.