Becoming trans

No-one is “born that way”. Babies have personality, recognisable in the infant and the adult by those who watch them grow up; and we grow up in families and societies which mould us. Nature and nurture intertwine. There are a group of apparent men who feel the need to “make men” of themselves, and take macho jobs- on an oil rig, in the armed forces, the police firearms unit- and then transition. I look back to my childhood and think- was there another way?

I do not “blame my parents”. I recognise that they did their best with the situations they found themselves in. They did their best for me, in love, not being inerrant. It’s not “forgiving” for there is nothing to forgive.

I am intensely controlling. That’s why I am not working: I stay in my house because I need to be safe, I am not in control outside and not safe when not in control. My mother was very controlling. Her mother was, and her mother’s father:

My grandmother had to be home by nine. One evening she did not come home until quarter past nine, and her father was very angry with her.

“But dad, I’m going to get married tomorrow!” she said. He replied,

“There’s many a slip twixt cup and lip.”

That’s one of my myths. I come from a controlling family. That’s the proof of it. It’s the only story I have of my great-grandfather. I have few of my grandmother, and those are capable of wildly differing interpretation depending on my need. I want not to need this to be true.  I want to see clearly, not to lie to myself, for I have always lied to myself, and not seen that I was lying; and then I worked out that I was lying, and worked out by analysis what sort of lie would produce this ridiculous falsehood. The first I worked out was

I lie to myself, because I want to see myself as a good person.

I don’t think I am alone in that, though definitions of “good person” differ. I lie to myself because I want to feel safe, is the underlying lie. I tell stories to understand the world, so saying how I “became trans” I link together stories which seem to fit together as an explanation which is as true as I know how.

Insofar as “truth” could have a value for me- to justify, or even explain- I will only see it partially, I will gloss over the bits which don’t contribute to my desire. But I want to be truthful, so will try not to gloss, if I see I am.

I’ve been blogging five years. My first post was 18 August 2011- here it is. I have published 1,817 posts and about nineteen pages since then, and perhaps one other person has read all of it; people stay, commenting, for years. We are where we are by accident- why, in the 1950s, would my mother take a job four hundred miles from home, in that particular town where my father was born? (I am glad she did.) A story can’t say why I am how I am, but it might come to some approximation. I intend to post that tomorrow.