The process of coming out, first involved coming out to myself. And while conventional thinking might say that, gee, how hard is it to be honest with yourself? Well, the answer is that it was a much larger deal than I would have anticipated.

To begin with, I did not have the most supportive upbringing in probably any aspect of self-expression, but doubly… no, triply so… with anything coming close to me being “girly”. When I was young, say 7 years old?, I would sneak into sister’s room to try on her clothes. It wasn’t long before I was busted, and it would be years before I did any “cross-dressing”. My family may have ended that attempt at self-exploration, self-expression, but they couldn’t stop me from looking at other little girls and asking, why not me? Why don’t I look like them? Why am I not wearing their kind of clothes? Add to this that any display of over-sensitivity on my part was met with stern rebuke, and what was the result?

Suppressed gender dysphoria. Simple as that. Throughout childhood, where most attempts at boyish behaviors were nothing more than poorly executed facades. Childhood proceeded to become adolescence, and by the way, thanks a lot puberty, and adolescence gave way to adulthood. By the time I was in my 20’s, I could not look at women without some semblance of envy, that I did not have a feminine physique, that I was assigned male at birth. 

It was awful. I was depressed, felt isolated, and more so, felt like a freak in a world full of normalcy. I mean, who the hell wants to be a transsexual in a world that felt overwhelmingly against it? My dysphoria became my secret shame. I hid it,  exposing it only briefly in a stunted attempt at transition in 2006, and it ate away at me, like a dark, horrible secret, because, well, that’s what it. A dark, horrible secret.

My internalized dysphoria, which evolved into internalized transphobia, caused me to develop such a toxic attitude that it impacted friendships, work performance, and my own peace of mind. It was like a venom was slowly destroying the tissue that constituted aspects of my life. How could I escape it? Religion, philosophy, avoidance, medication, all things failed to stop that venom from seeping throughout my being.

How long does it take for a secret shame to turn into self-hatred? For me, a few decades. Eventually it reached a head, and I could not live as a “guy” anymore. The time came, in 2016, to confront myself. The demon of dysphoria was a tricky one… it lied to me, telling me how insignificant and flawed I was as a person. It told me how corrupt and deformed I was. I mean, how do you defeat something like that?

Truth is, I conquered it with honest love and admission. I told myself that I was transgender, that I was worth it, and that I loved myself enough to try. And since trying, I have found success, not just in a vocational sense (which is a big achievement on it’s own), but success in how I managed relationships, socialized with strangers, managed my personal issues, and so on. Have you ever told yourself that you loved yourself, and said so as a form of encouragement? Maybe you should try it sometime.

Because in the end, it was an attitude of self-love that eradicated a life filled with self-hate.