A Matter Of Validation

 

 

 

Getting back to my last post, I need to try and work through the thoughts which began this. 

 

Recently I have read some blog posts talking about validation and while it is true I, like so many, look for it from friends and family, I found I also need it from myself. This may seem obvious, after all, I had to realize the truth about myself as part of coming out, right? Well, yes and no. I did realize what it was about me which had made me feel so alienated from the world for all those years. The truth about who I knew I was which I had denied for so much of my life. While I knew I could no longer hide from this truth, I also think I lacked personal validation of those feelings. I did not and still have not fully come to terms with my own identity on the level I need to in order to be at peace with myself.

Part of this process has been to sift through my memories, putting the pieces back together. The problem is, I had denied this truth about myself for so long, finding excuses and reasons for what I thought and felt, I no longer trust my own understanding of who I am, not at the level I need to. I have said it before, it is one thing to know something with your mind, it is another to accept it in your heart…

If there is something I envy about so many young trans* people today, it is the fact they will never have to go through the years of denial and self doubt I and so many others have. That because they have such a level of support, they will not need to bury the truth, but can live life as they were meant to.

You see there were things from the time I was young I did which I convinced myself were “normal”, I told myself so often that what I did, what I thought, what I felt, were all things any other person must also think and feel that I began to believe it. Looking back though, I see I must have known there was something different about what I was going through, other wise would I not have said something to friends or a family member, not knowing any better? Being surrounded by a bunch of boys, there was so much which came out, so much they teased one another about, and yeah, much of it was centered around sex, especially as we got older. Yet I remained silent. 

This should have seemed strange given a fact which I realized and which I think lead to my current issues….

You see, for years and years, from the time I was in third grade, all through high school, I spent hours and hours in the library learning everything I could about the female body. I read medical journals, I read magazines, I read news stories. Anything and everything I could find. If anyone had followed my reading habits, they would have thought I was planning on becoming a doctor. Unlike those oversexed brutes I was forced to listen to every day with their crude jokes and total lack of understanding, this wasn’t sexual. I had a desperate need to understand as much as possible about being female.

I read anything and everything. Medical, psychological, social. Hell, I even studied genetics. I watched television shows and movies. I listened to talk radio late into the night. 

Don’t get me started on “mens magazines”. Sure there was a sexual component to such things, I was young and full of hormones, but there was more to it than that… much more. Looking at those pictures, I was fascinated by the entirety of the female form… fascinated and more than a little jealous. I looked at those images and I looked at myself and and I wondered why I looked this this and not like that. 

And the entire time I was trying to bury an image of a young girl in a mirror deeper and deeper until I couldn’t tell you why I was so driven to understand what it meant to be not only female but a woman.

 

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