Between the ages of 35 and 50, I had at least two opportunities to transition. By that I mean, in at least two different situations my financial and employment condition could have survived transition. There might have been setbacks or reductions, sure, but I would not have been reduced to living on the streets or in my car.
So why did I wait till I was 60 years old?
“Impossible” I said. “I’m too (pick one: hairy, tall, big, fat, ugly) to transition.” “I couldn’t because (make up your excuse).”
I have never had children, so they were never an excuse for me. At several of the TransWeek events that I attended, I met couples with children, who were raising their children just fine during and after the husband’s transition. I’m not going to speculate how that works because I cannot describe it from my own experience, but I have met people who’ve done it.
Employment can be a problem, but it is not necessarily insurmountable. I had one friend who, later in life, decided he could wait no longer even though he had gotten feedback from his employer that they would not accept him working as a woman. Not content to set up everything in advance, he began letting his female presentation show at work.
He did not have support at home; he was not willing either to take a job in nearby urban areas or to switch employment fields. He was fired and he took his own life a few months later.
If you, too, feel an urgent need to transition, but your circumstances don’t seem to support it, call Trans Lifeline 877-565-8860, for peer support. If you are thinking about suicide yourself, please call 988 for immediate assistance.
Perhaps you have similar fears about your job. You can plan around that fear by looking for alternatives now, today. You might have to move to another city, or take a position in a different field. Waiting is hard, but you can postpone your transition until you have an employer who will support your transition.
There are certainly marriages and spouses who would not survive a gender change — but marriages can survive a gender change. My marriage is not the only one to survive.
It’s time to answer my own question from earlier: Why did I wait? I waited not for a specific age, but for a specific condition. I had to get to the point of loving myself before I could transition.
In Chapter 13 of my book, The Lie That Stuck in My Throat, I talk about eliminating my dependence on alcohol and on tobacco as I approached transition. One psychiatrist told me that, as much as I was drinking, I would surely get the delirium tremens (DTs) if I stopped drinking. I didn’t, though without medical support some people do.
I didn’t get the DTs, and I was able to work through smoking cessation (Chapter 16) because the church I joined gave me a believable story of God’s love for me. The story was so believable — and I describe this in the First Preface to my book — that I was able to thank God for my life, and to begin loving myself for the first time, at age 59.
That process of loving myself was completely unexpected. I had “accepted” myself decades before, but that acceptance was the way an amputee might accept the loss of a limb: it’s gone, it’s not coming back, I’ve got to do the best I can without it.
That acceptance is not the same as love. I needed to love myself just as I was, that is, male parts and all, before I could proceed with my transition. From reading transgender memoirs other than my own, and from talking with transgender people who completed their transition, I’ve noticed that the more completely you know yourself, and the more deeply you love yourself, the more likely you are to succeed and be happy after your transition.
Start with loving yourself. Engage a therapist or read lots of self-help books if you have to, but begin to love yourself completely and unconditionally. Once you do, your odds of finding the resources you need to transition will improve.
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