NORTH EAST TRANSWOMENS ALLIANCE INC.

                    "We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty."   -Maya Angelou

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NETA Editorial

Am I a Boy or a Girl?

By:  Eva Kraus  

Coming out as a Trans person has its freedoms and its burdens.  To live an authentic life is the ultimate experience that few can claim.  The pressures of transition, dealing with changed relationships, work and our own personal experiences during transition are so weighty that you have to actually live it to understand.  No one person’s story can substitute for your own experience of the challenges of transition, much less the personal hell we each go through to understand ourselves.  

For those of you that don’t know me, let me briefly set the stage for this discussion.  I am a 50-year old post-operative transwoman.  As a male, I held a senior executive position in a finance company.  I was married with three grown children.  I served with distinction in the U.S. Army’s 101^st Airborne Division and was a rare direct commission in the U.S. Navy.  By all measure, I had the ideal life as I lived in my personal nightmare.  To all who knew me, I was a man’s man.  

I lost much in transition.  I lost my job.  I lost a marriage.  I lost some relationships.  I found that the family and friends that remained loved me for me.  I found new relationships, very good ones.  But, most of all, I found myself.  

 The act of coming out and understanding my pain was torturous, yet cathartic.  I was a girl.  I was so sure.  I came out at a hundred miles an hour.  I was excited and I was going to live free.  Over time, the fever of self-realization waned.  I was going to try to save my old life.  I could live part-time.  I could keep my wife.  I could keep everything I had and still be me.  If only I could relieve the pressure of my secret.  I could live in both genders, live for my family and live for me.  

I had a great plan, except for one issue.  It tore me up inside.  My transition slowly moved forward.  In fact, from coming out to surgery was 3 ½ years.  As I have written in previous commentaries, when I awoke from surgery, the noise in my head was gone.  I was complete.  Or was I?  

Let me just say that SRS was never the end all for me as it is for some of you.  I was a bit troubled by my physical state but it definitely did not define me.  Passing unnoticed was and is.  For whatever it is worth, I pass.  I can collect guys’ phone numbers, if I wanted to, like stamps.  

A funny thing happened along my journey’s path.  I had gotten what I wanted.  I am living the dream.  Physically, I was complete.  I thought I was emotionally complete.  I WAS A GIRL!  What I found was that the journey doesn’t remotely end with surgery.  Transition is never ending.  Personal development continues.  

This story might lead you to believe that I have some regrets.  Let me tell you…ABSOLUTELY NOT!!  I love who I see in the mirror and the qualities of the person that I found locked inside me.  I am slowly rebuilding my career and I have a loving partner.  

What has evolved is my view of who I am.  Many of us can’t wait to run from our past.  Many of us only want to own our new future.  I have found that the opposite has been true for me.  I have been told that, externally, I embody femininity.  I am happy about that.  My partner, a genetic girl, embraced much of the remnants of my male personality, while still finding me physically attractive.  She embraces my love of make-up, dress and presentation.  She embraces all that we have in common.  She embraces my female sensitivity that has created a relationship that is built to last, yet she loves my intensity, my desire to protect her, provide for her security.  And, yes, she loves that I use all of the male expressions that I always used.  She loves all that I have been for 47 of my 50 years.  She loves the hybrid that I had become.  

Without realizing it, she has had a profound impact on how I see myself.  We talked much about it.  I expressed my discomfort and her attraction to the part of me I was trying to put away.  

Over the many months, which I look back on now, this relationship has profoundly changed me.  Without realizing it, my journey into me has continued.  The way I see myself has continued to evolve.  I was a guy.  I was a girl.  I was and am a hybrid, a blend of all.  I am the best of both, the best of all.  

In the end, does it really matter?  We all like to label.  We all like to identify as something.  I get up in the morning and nothing has changed.  I don’t look in the mirror and say “I’m a girl.”  I don’t look in the mirror and say I am a “boy.”  I look in the mirror and just see me.  

Note: The opinions of our contributing writers do not necessarily reflect the opinions of NETA as an organization. 
This is a forum for individuals to share their personal stories and experiences.

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