[AnnieBL]

For many of us, and I include myself in this group, bringing our bodies into alignment with our inner gender identity is the only way we know how to ease our GD. The misalignment of body and soul is the very source of our dysphoria, and had we addressed our gender identity issues while still young, we likely would have transitioned to life as a girl and a woman and avoided the suffering that many of us have endured for decades.

Those of us who for one reason or another did not transition early, and are only now doing something about it, are at a terrible disadvantage with so many years passing under the effects of testosterone. CD clubs provide some GD relief certainly, but not complete escape.

I guess that's why I keep pushing the boundaries day by day, moving inch by inch, trying to close the gap between my true self and the image of that true self that I hold dear. I will never completely accomplish that goal despite hours and hours of time and thousands of dollars attempting to do so. I don't even know if in the end I'll think it was all worth it.

Transgenderism that is not treated early in life becomes a chronic condition that too often brings frustration, humiliation, impoverishment, even death.

Without support networks like we have here at BN, the despair of transgenderism would be unbearable.

Comments?

Clara

Yes, Clara, of course I agree with everything you say.. But how in my case at least and I guess yours too could our transgenderism have been treated earlier? Transition was something simply not on the radar. Yes, one might of heard of sex changes, but that was not part of the real world for us. All I knew was that there was something desperately wrong in my relationship with my social environment, which I interpreted as some form of homosexuality. That did not stop me falling head over heels but wholly ineffectively in love with my O&O, and it was my greatest good fortune that it ultimately turned into the relationship that I value above all things and which kept me sane over many years until my stepchildren left home and increasing stresses at work broke my health. It wasn't fear that constrained me -it was lack of knowledge. And when I started to understand my transgenderism, and study the possibilities of transition that had become real, it all seemed an impossible dream that the course of my life had ruled out - but I had to do something. My first attempt at NBE wasn't successful, but in their attempts to control my blood pressure the medical profession unwittingly chemically castrated me and got the feminisation of my body off the ground - and then I found this place and this community. And now all of a sudden the way is wonderfully open for me. Yes, societal attitudes are a problem and constraint, but the main regret in my mind is 'if only I had known sooner'.