The Life You Choose

Some view being transgender as a gift, while others view it as a curse. Do you feel you’re a victim of the transgender condition? 
Regardless of what you feel or believe, being a victim is a choice!.  That’s right, it’s a choice. 
While the internal feelings may not be a choice, what you DO about it is. 
Let me say that again slowly, because it’s the part people skip on their way to being offended. The feelings are not the choice. Nobody sits down on a Tuesday afternoon and decides to spend the next thirty-five years hiding a locked box in the back of a closet. That part showed up without an invitation and without a receipt. What’s left to you — the only thing that was ever left to you — is what you do with it.
How does that make you feel? Most of us have spent parts of our lives wondering, “What’s wrong with me?” And then, after decades of purge-and-repeat crossdressing behavior—which made us feel a mix of shame, guilt, and the need to search our soul for the truth of these internal feelings of self-identity —some of us have slowly learned to accept in ourselves what society often mocks, or worse, condemns.
And you know the cycle I mean. The buildup, the indulgence, the crash. Then the garbage bag, and the promise — this time I mean it — followed six months later by the same catalog, the same size chart, the same quiet drive to a store two towns over where nobody knows you. We don’t purge the clothes. We purge ourselves. And it never works, because you can’t throw away the part of you that keeps buying them.
And those social pressures of “
Normal
” can, at times, cloud or distort our choices as we try to conform to the opinions and expectations of others (and maybe ourselves too). 
Let’s be honest about where that pressure actually comes from, because it arrives from two directions. Some of it is out there — the jokes, the stares, the job offer that evaporated, the family dinner that went quiet when you walked in. You can’t always control that kind, and I won’t pretend otherwise. But some of it is in here, and it’s a voice you built yourself, out of everything you were told before you were old enough to talk back. That second voice has been running unopposed for years in most of us. It is also the only one you have any authority over.
But the truth is that EVERYTHING we do in life is a choice. If you’re biologically wired in the wrong body, then the natural manifestation of that is for many (maybe for all) to transition to the opposite gender. And while those individuals will claim, “I had no choice; it’s who I am,” the reality is that they choose to follow their natural intuition. 
And for the others, those that cross-dress for reasons they can’t comprehend, but at the same time don’t identify as the opposite gender on a full-time basis —
they are content to cross-dress on occasion — they too choose to indulge that desire. 
Neither is good nor bad: it’s the choice we make, and that’s O.K. Each person has a life to live and should do so in accordance with their own quest for fulfillment, happiness, self-expression, and contentment. 
I’d go further. The woman who transitions at fifty-two and the man who dresses twice a year in a hotel room and tells nobody are not at different points on a ladder, with one of them further up. They’re two people who looked at the same set of facts and reached different conclusions about what they wanted their lives to be. Yes, I know, the gender dysphoria for one may be fr more intense than for another. But it doesn’t change the initial premise: we don’t control how we feel, only what we choose to do about it. And a society that wants to box everything makes that even harder. 
Our own community is as guilty as anyone of boxing us, labeling us, predetermining who we are — of treating the full-timer as the finished product and everyone else as unfinished. That’s a hierarchy we built ourselves, but we don’t have to remain in it; we can put it down. I’m not defined by the opinions and words of others. 
The point is that you don’t need to justify the life you live: it’s YOUR life, YOUR decision. 
So weigh what you want vs. what you can achieve, and then don’t be anyone’s victim. Life throws obstacles our way; everyone has to deal with them. Regardless of whether you’re transgender, gay, tall, short, skinny, fat, smart, or not, we all have crosses to bear. 
In my friend
Daylle’s blog
, she so eloquently notes that “I Can’t” often means “I Won’t.” To bring it into focus, she points us to Mark Goffeney, who travels the world playing guitar—
with his feet, because he is without arms!
As you read this, somebody else is already composing the email: “Easy for you to say, Brianna. You don’t know what I’m dealing with.” You’re right — I don’t. And I’m not telling you the obstacles are imaginary. Some are real, some are unjust, and some were put there deliberately by people who should know better.
Here’s the distinction I’m drawing, and it’s the whole essay. Being the victim of something is a fact — it’s something that was done to you. Living as a victim is a posture; it’s a decision about where to stand afterward. You don’t get a vote on the first one. You do get a vote on the second one, and you get to vote every single morning.
There are no victims in this life; only those who choose to push forward, and those who don’t. 
If you want — or need — to transition, then do it. If you find crossdressing disruptive in your life, then quit. That’s not to say either is easy; it’s not. But nothing is foretold; you don’t HAVE to do anything in particular, only what you choose. 
And if you don’t know yet which one you are — that’s a position too, and an honest one. Just make it a decision rather than a default. There’s a difference between “I’m still working it out” and “I’ve been waiting twenty years for somebody to tell me.” The first is a life. The second is a waiting room.
Take control of your life, and never be anyone else’s victim again.
Agree? Disagree? You’re entitled; tell me what you think below.