My current situation makes it difficult for me to do many things towards transition. Were I to begin any open steps towards transition, it would cost me my job. Since I've done 15 of 20 years required to lock in a lifetime pension, that would be costly. Although still tempting, as the thought of having to wait five more years to transition isn't a happy one. But I have to be practical, as I may well have trouble finding work during and after transition, since it's perfectly legal to discriminate against transgendered persons, so I'd best have at least some income locked in before I set myself up in that way.
But that means that, in many ways, I'm in a holding pattern, trapped in a body that doesn't seem right, being treated in ways wholly incorrect for the way I see myself. It is an annoying weight to carry around, as there are many situations every day during which people treat me as a man, and it's difficult not to speak up.
Fortunately, there is one thing I can do to move me in the right direction: therapy. In order to be approved for Gender Reassignment Therapy, you generally need the approval of two therapists. This is at once logical and maddening. On the one hand, this isn't the kind of thing people should do without thinking about it a lot. After all, you're talking about a pretty significant life change. It's understandable doctors don't want people to undergo it without being pretty darn sure they should. Conversely, for someone like me who has been living with this for close to 40 years, the knowledge I now have to convince two complete strangers that, yes, this is really the right thing for me is a bit frustrating. Nonetheless, that is the road I've got to travel if I don't want to go black market, so I'm better off trying to deal with it than wasting energy worrying about it.
My employer will provide access to therapy, but those therapists would be bound to tell my employer I was transgendered, so using them is right out. I thought that would mean I'd have to wait to try therapy, but it turns out that there are some therapists who offer online therapy. I'm not going to pretend that online therapy is likely to be nearly as effective as face-to-face meetings, but given that my options are not between traditional and online therapy, but online therapy or no therapy, online suddenly seems like a reasonable option.
So, after an appropriate amount of searching the internet for therapists who appeared to have the appropriate experience with transgender issues and whose credentials appeared to be in order, I settled on a therapist and set up a meeting with her for last Friday. Hiccups with my internet service nearly prevented me from making my appointment; internet service in my current location is often intermittent. But things worked out and I was able to get online for my first appointment.
The therapy itself went reasonably well. I don't know if it is necessarily something I need from the standpoint of being in some way unhealthy, but it was certainly nice to talk to someone who has some experience in the field and who, when you mention something that has seemed odd your whole life, says that yes, that's actually not atypical for transgendered people. Not that I want to live my life in the footsteps of others necessarily, but when you've lived your whole life thinking that there was something wrong with you, it's nice to hear that, at a minimum, that 'wrongness' is shared by other people. We are social animals, after all. From that standpoint alone, I think that the therapy will be helpful.
Comments