Like a lot of people, life has been strange. The world as we knew it has been turned on its head and given a big shake up. It has given a lot of people time to contemplate life and all that it holds for them.

As in previous posts, I have thought a lot about myself and how I perceive myself in the eyes of everyone else. I have made changes that have helped my self confidence and have made me a little happier generally. This has then lead me to look at why this happened. Why did I perceive myself so negatively? Why do I feel like a failure at trying to be me? One fact kept cropping up. I was raised as a male. Grew up as a male and have been conditioned as a male. As an adult trans woman, I have had to try and undo the 30+ years of male conditioning in so far just over 5 years. 

This white, male conditioning did grant me some privilege (which never sat comfortably with me), for which I could never expect to share the same experiences as a cis woman. I like to think I was more empathic than my contemporaries and had a more caring side to my nature overall, which in some way might point to the feeling of not having the right shell to live in or the feeling of uneasiness with the privilege I had. I have been lucky with that privilege. Feeling safer when out at night, people not questioning your knowledge, your opinion, your right to exist. You could live more freely than any other race, gender, sexuality or creed on the planet. 

I now feel unsafe going out at night, my knowledge is constantly questioned at work (I still work for the same company as in my previous incarnation), my opinions aren't taken as seriously and even my right to exist is questioned at an evermore alarming rate. This last bit scares me more than anything else in the world. My right to exist. To live as me. I have to work harder than ever before to justify myself to not just my peers and the world around me, but to those who wish to remove me from the face of the earth. Is this what the loss of privilege is? That fear? The never feeling good enough and the having to work 100% harder just to stand still?

I have had a very steep learning curve during my transition. I have had to decondition myself of many traits and practices I had developed over the years. Everyday things like how I walk, talk, eat and even think. I have had to learn new skills like (unfortunately slightly cliched) applying makeup, doing my hair, clothes shopping, talking (voice training) and all the other little things you don't realise until you can't do them. Even now, I sometimes think I still act male in some aspects. This is the bit that gets me down the most. 

Do I still wish I had been born in the right body? Absolutely! I hate this body and the bits in all the wrong places. I missed out on learning in the last few years what I would have learnt over a lifetime. I have missed out on growing up without thinking there was something wrong with me. I would have grown up without that privilege afforded to me by my conditioning, but I wouldn't have known anything different. All those things I wish I could have now in my few years of puberty and not having to adult on a daily basis. To forgo that privilege for living the life I feel I should have had. 

I have to do the best with what I have and the time I have left. I have had to come to terms with the fact that I can't have what I want and I have to live the best life I can. I'm trying my best to be the best me I can and keeping some of the parts of my last incarnation. Those bits of the real me that burst through the barricades of male conditioning.

I hope I am a different person to the one I left behind. A better and more rounded person. Maybe less tolerant of idiots as I'm getting older and a better ability to say no to people. I am still in the process of learning what it means to be me, a trans woman and all the whirlwind that goes with it. The ever changing maze of emotions, hormones, existing, rights, loves, losses, battles and fights. There is that young woman in there. She's nearly free. xx