THIS PORN NEEDS MORE UMBRELLAS!

eccentric-anthropologist:

hybrid-knight said: Who cares if you’re trans? I don’t get what is the great big deal about it.

That’s easy for you to say, especially if you’ve not been evaluated, criticized, ostracized, or bashed for being trans.

I get it, y’know?  I get where your comment comes from.  Cuz there’s people like you out there who don’t look at that stuff.  And that’s great!

Well not everyone is like you, and not everyone understands.

We’re living in an age of the Gender Revolution.  It is a hard and grueling one, one that at times, we’re not sure we’re winning.  But we fight on, because we are who we are.  No, we can’t change our sex, but yes, we can identify with a set of social constructs that we feel defines us.

I’m gonna get real with you for a minute or two.  Sit down, this story may knock you off your ass.

I am biologically a transexual male.  Socially?  I identify with males.

That was two sentences of explanation.  To someone like you?  It is what it is, and it’s like “oh, well okay.”

To someone who doesn’t understand though, it’s hell, just trying to exist how you are.  You grow up socially awkward, your family thinks you’re an embarrassment, too weird, too wrong, too odd, just going through a phase, it is hard to find friends because you don’t even feel like yourself, and everyone around you tells you that you’re wrong, to the point where you can’t even love yourself.  You can’t go to your family, and your friends can’t help you all the time.  You try to explain your grief, but no one quite gets it.  You always feel like you’re alone in this whole thing, and the journey of life is a bitch to go alone.

Do you know how hard it is?  To have someone romantically love me and ooap, drop the trans bomb and bam, kiss em goodbye.  And now that I’m comfortable with it, I can’t get a guy or girl to look my way, girls think I’m too pretty, guys are intimidated, and everything ranging from superficial things such as looks to the deep down nitty-gritty like how my PARTS work.  They work.  Just fine.  It is embarrassing as well as humiliating, especially over something so intimate to you.

Do you know what it’s like to go out in public and have EVERYONE stare at you?  You for your whole life teach yourself to ignore the whispers, the names, the stares, but some days?  They just get to you, it makes you anxious, it makes you sick.  Oh, and good fucking luck trying to use the restroom; the wrong person in there with you can make the whooole thing a living hell, and all you had to do was pee!

The statistics are the way they are because you always feel alone, and you feel nothing you can do can change the way things are, and you feel that no one understands, and you feel that something that you can’t help is making you an utterly terrible person.  No one loves you, not even YOU love you, so what’s the point, why even be here.  In the age of the teens to about 25 where people are finding and solidifying their identities, when you go through all that?  When you are told that your identity is wrong?  That you’re looking at it the wrong way?  You lose yourself, over and over again, and get so lost that you stop trying to find what it is you believe you are.  You try to shape in an identity that you HOPE others will understand, but it hardly works, and doesn’t keep the pain away.

I know, because I’ve lived it.

But I’m here.  Three suicide attempts and years of therapy, but I’m here.  And through all of it, I learned one valuable lesson, a lesson that saved my life.  I can’t expect the rest of the world to understand what exactly it is I am, but I am who I am, and I’m not gonna stop being who I am.  I am me.  I love me.  At this time, being me is taking the hard road in life, but no one ever had it easy.  I just gotta keep pressin on, gotta keep being me.  This is the dark tunnel before the light, and to be engulfed in that light will make this journey all the more worth while.  I can’t give up now.

Lance, I know this is probably really personal to you, and I’m sorry if I just kinda sniped this from your reply, but I just wanted to bring some clarity, and hope you understand.

You know I love you endlessly. You’re one of the best friends I’ve ever had, and I know all this will pan out into something good for you. Cause you’re amazing.

When I met you, I had no idea that sexuality and gender and sex were all such vastly different things. Or that I COULD actually legitimately explain how I feel to others. 

Nor did I realize how TERRIFYING it was to try to explain it to the people you care about. Telling my mom that I wasn’t happy the way I was born. With the name she gave me. With everything she’d raised me with in terms of those things…

even though -she- took it really well. I was scared to death she’d be pissed with me.

And the shit I had to deal with at work. The weird ass looks. The subtle ‘we’re going to be nice cause you’re friend/family but its till weird as balls’ glance from people I associated with. I never experienced outright ridicule, thankfully, but I’m still scared I’m going to get it.

Worst I’m getting is someone telling me how I’m wrong. Which just makes me combative and up in arms about it. 

I’m proud of you for coming as far as you have.

It’s still one of my biggest privileges to know you. I’m always here for you too<3

Anyone wondering why I’m reblogging my personal response? 

I don’t know how many of you are going through the same thing. But I want you to know you’re not alone.