Of the Beginning but from the Middle

Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop.

Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Said by the King to the White Rabbit

Good advice, I'm assured, but I have started late in my journey to put into words my experience of transition. I am 56 as I write -- and will continue to be  56 after I complete this post, but that's neither here nor there. I am, in the most clinical of terms a pre-op transsexual. I began my transition at 50. To do so, I sacrificed everything in my life. I hurt those I loved and those who loved me. I walked away from a life that was never mine because I no longer had the strength to hold on to it. Nor could I muster the desire for there was no purpose in it, there was no connection between that life and who I really was.

The cost was unimaginable, vastly more profound than I could have imagined. It didn't happen out of courage, although many say that I am so brave to have taken the steps I've taken. It came about because my grasp of life, as I was trying to live it, failed. It was a charade that I could no longer sustain. It was the overwhelming, unsustainable loneliness in the deceit that I played on others.  It was a fight -- yes a fight -- that I came to realize that I could not win.


I am perhaps half way in my transition. It is in question whether I shall achieve my destination, but more on that later.

For those readers who cannot conceive of such a change or the desire for such a change, sadly I cannot help you understand other than to say that it cannot, I believe, be conceived by other than those for whom it is essential. You can feel comfort that your life is absent such incredible dissonance of self.


I call this 'Awakenings' and have started writing in the middle of my journey because this is the loneliest moment, where both horizons -- holding what I've left and what I seek -- are empty. I have surrendered my sight of one before I have sight of the other. With no distractions and only uncertainty, I am left to introspection.

What this journey is revealing is more than who I am becoming but who I have always been. My spirit (my soul) unfolds a little more each day, awakening me to potential but also revealing a truer past. So, I am awakened to the future and my true past.


It is in introspection, that I am finding a new self, the self that I denied and hide from others. As my courage grows, my confidence in this new self, I am refinding what always existed. Although so outwardly different, I am the same. One can only be confused. Perhaps by talking with you, I can resolve this confusion.


This blog is about the discovery of my inner-self. It is about all of the emotions and confusion of personalities, one that I claimed as mine and used like armour to fend off inquiry into who I was and to be what I thought others wanted and one that burned silently inside, immutable and inextinguishable.