Ok I don’t think my name lends itself too well to this post, I definitely had Studio Ghibli in mind (The Secret World of Arrietty).
I found great relief from my online friends. I don’t know if I talked much about this in any of my posts. But at some point after I knew I was transgender I started to … transition my online presence. Part of this was–when I could–change into female characters. In FFXIV I did this. First I changed my gender and I made the character look as androgynous as possible.
I eventually became more open to people in the game. It felt like a veil came off and I could be myself again. It’s strange to think that an incongruence of gender would prevent one from being herself. Also, perhaps not strange at all. Gender dysphoria has some strange ways of manifesting and in combination with depression I think connecting to yourself is really important. That disconnect for me I think took its toll over several years.
I made friends online, a small free company kind of adopted me to some extent? I was invited to a discord. Initially that was a bit stressful as my voice is–well it sounds like a mans’ voice of course. I haven’t had voice training and I haven’t found a voice that feels right yet. I wanted to join their voice chat so it hurt inside to know that I’d have to reveal being transgender. On top of that my wife has withdrawn her support off and on. So if she came home and heard my female voice? Well, yes, anyway I was invited on a whim and I don’t know that any of them expected me to join.
One of them I got really close to, I still consider us to be pretty close. I decided to let them know what was going on. It was a relief to have their acceptance so… I joined. I’m pretty sure I put my pronouns because I knew my voice didn’t match. What I was met with was a wide range of response. None of them intentionally misgendered me. All of them accepted me. One of them intensely used my preferred pronouns and I was over the moon (not literally because 6.0 wasn’t out yet). I hope they’re doing good because I don’t know that I’ve heard from them in voice for quite a while let alone see them online.
I’ve gone through some tumultuous times. When my wife would freak out I would overcompensate/overcorrect. I’d change my character back to male. I’d hate myself for doing this. I probably mostly disappeared too. Didn’t do voice–didn’t want to hear he/him. Just not a good time.
One day my brother out of the blue asked if I would prefer Hannah/she/her. I was excited. I was also tired if I’m being honest. Like discouraged tired. Wish that I could just transition. Have a different set of problems with actually transitioning. How could I turn that down though? The sadness that resulted wasn’t because of being referred in the correct way but because I felt like it was something I couldn’t have. I still prefer this over dead name/he/him. When I hear my dead name I just tell myself it’s more feminine than people think. Or I was a girl who just happened to get a boys’ name at birth. There’s a girl character in Zelda with a name really close. Anyway it was a different form of support going from “you do you” to “I’ll call you your preferred name and pronouns.”
Well anyway. I hope one day soon I muster up the courage to transition despite everything. Maybe if my wife believes I have a legitimate problem with gender dysphoria–that I’m definitely transgender. That it isn’t just in my head. That I haven’t been sitting here on a computer convincing myself that I’m transgender. Maybe then things would be approachable or acceptable. But maybe not, maybe her love is confined to my male version and/or maybe she only wants a man. Either is acceptable. I don’t know if I could live without her. But is there a “me” left–I’m not a man?