Emotions: hurt, confused, rejected, helpless, submissive, insecure, guilty, ashamed, stupid, inferior, lonely, tired, sleepy, apathetic, isolated, insignificant, hesitant, skeptical, withdrawn
I feel hurt because I know my wife won’t accept me as a woman. I feel confused because I want to do anything I can to keep her. I feel rejected knowing that what I believe to be my true self is not accepted.
I feel helpless thinking about how it’s a lose-lose for me. I either lose myself or my wife.
I feel insecure knowing how vulnerable I am in this state that were these to surface it would be the end, right?
I feel guilty and ashamed–I feel stupid for believing that I’m a woman. I think about her telling everyone why we had to get a divorce “yeah he thought he was a woman.” As though it was something I could help. She believes I have myself convinced that I am. So in her world I’m just convincing myself that I am.
I feel inferior because I feel like I have to be less than a human to keep my wife. I took a gender test and it came out with femininity being lower than average but higher than my masculinity. This landed me in the “undetermined” quadrant of gender identity. You’d think something like that might be liberating but it just makes me sad. I want it to say I’m a woman.
I’m not sure what my greater fear is finding out that I’m wrong–that I’m definitely not a transgender woman. Or finding out that I’m right–that I am irrevocably a transgender woman. I know that I’d be very disappointed to find out that I wasn’t a transgender woman. The amount of disappointment in that thought makes me think that I’ve confirmed that I am a transgender woman.
I’m lonely. I know I’m not the only one in the world who is transgender. I know I’m not the only one who struggles with wanting to keep my partner despite being transgender and trying to appease everyone. I know I’m not the only one that is so skeptical of herself that she can’t believe herself in anything. I wish my wife could understand the depth of sadness I’m in. I wish she could call me she/her or Hannah or… something? Just to make me feel better? Ultimately, I think I just wish my wife valued my happiness too. I guess she’s perfectly fine with letting me suffer while she gets what she wants. At least… most of it.
I wish I valued my happiness enough to just go for it.
I feel inferior because I don’t feel like a whole self. I feel like I’m fragmented and being emotionally suffocated.
I feel tired and sleepy and just want to sleep the days away until I fade into nothing. I feel depressed.
I feel isolated from myself, and I feel insignificant. I feel like my feelings aren’t valid let alone valuable. I feel hesitant to make any decisions. I’m afraid of change. I’m afraid of losing my wife. I’m afraid of being alone. I’m afraid of being the blame for everything wrong. I’m afraid everyone will hate me. I’m afraid it’s pointless to try. I’m afraid I won’t have the energy to not just go back and to just submit again. I’m afraid I don’t have the (lack of) balls to actually transition even if given the freedom to do so.
I’m afraid of being exposed, vulnerable, in my truest, purest, and best form and rejected.
I’m skeptical that I have any idea of what I really am. I think I just really wished really hard to be a girl and it’s just not in it for me. That the truth is that I just wanted to be something I’m not. That I’m deceiving myself by thinking I could be a woman. But what will happen when I get to the end and I look back and feel so empty. I look back and think wow you didn’t even try. You believed in this and you just gave up. Hopefully your kids don’t do this. Don’t just give up on something they really believe in.
I feel withdrawn. I just want to give up and pretend none of this happened. I don’t know what to do with how I feel about it, maybe none of it matters.