Glimpse

The sun rises in the east

a new day is born
sheathes fall from newborn eyes
tresses of light stream across
illuminating what once was hidden
a word written clearly on my heart
only a glimpse is caught
before sudden sunset
and darkness falls.

Possible Separation

Today my wife and I went down to see her parents and goto the fair. On the way down she started discussing the possibility of separating for a time. Neither of us know what that would really look like. We'd share the same finances still, I'd stay at the house and she'd live somewhere else temporarily until I either decide to transition or decide that it is not right for me and that I want to fight it and stay married to her.

She has been in a lot of pain over the last few days because of me and her sexual thoughts about being with another woman. She thinks those thoughts are wrong so all she can do is feel guilty constantly. She even said she felt guilty hugging or kissing me because she felt like I was being too feminine and she felt like she was stumbling from her own sexual desires of being with a woman.

Anyway, I agreed that this was something we should probably do. I think that it sounds like she needs some time away from me because of how I'm making her feel and I could use some time away from her to try to realize what life would be like without her because I will lose her if I go forward with transition. I can imagine crossdressing again as well if this happens.

We will both pray about this more and she wants my father's blessing as well before we go forward with it. Not to mention she'll need to work out living accommodations with her parents or people from church.

I don't want to do this but I know this is a step down the road I am traveling. Unless I turn back, I must accept the consequences.

I'm alive

Well I'm alive.

Around this time last week, I was starting up my truck with the garage closed, ready to end it all.

The night before, the guys at my bible study had confronted me once again saying many things and saying them very forcefully, harsh, and fiercely. They said even if I was born with this tendency that I should still fight it. They said that if they heard I was on the forums or blogs or seeing a gender counselor, they would bring me to the next level of church discipline, to the elders. Once again they would deny me others' points of view. They said they had to protect my wife. They also said I would go to hell if I became a woman and that I would no longer be invited to group.

Anyway, I drove home ready to kill myself. Their logic rang in my head:

"God would rather have me dead than become a woman."

Well my wife happened to be getting out of her car when I got home so I did not have the chance. But Wednesday morning at around 5am (my wife was still sleeping), I got up, got dressed, and wrote some last words, texted them to a choice few, and started up the truck with the windows down.

My best friend called back immediately, he had been up because of a pager call for work. He said "Don't do this, man." I told him I couldn't take it anymore. He begged me to open the garage and I could hear him getting into his car. I told him he would be too late (it would take him 30 min to get there). I got cut off at some point, thank you AT&T, but my wife woke up, noticed I wasn't in bed and was worried. She came downstairs and heard the engine running. She immediately opened the garage and I shut the engine off and just sat there, numb.

She threw some clothes on and came and sat in the truck with me for a couple minutes. I told her I would go to work and she told me no that she would call my work and let them know that I couldn't go today. So I said I'd go back to bed. She said I should talk to someone. Nobody I wanted to talk to was up so she ended up calling 9-1-1 and the cops came. I went voluntarily to the Emergency Room at the hospital.

They tested me for CO poisoning and said I had less CO than the average smoker. Apparently my plan didn't get very far. I told the social worker and doctor that the reasoning behind it all had to do with transgender feelings I had been experiencing. They said if I could sign a paper honestly that said I wouldn't try again, I could go home. I knew I couldn't sign it honestly at that point so they got me a bed at the psych ward at another hospital and I spent a few days there, reflecting. It was kind of lonely and boring there but the people there were good people. I was able to easily put myself out there and they were all accepting/affirming. It's kind of funny, they were all sad to see me go and I was sad to leave them.

I went and saw my counselor the day I got out (Friday). He didn't agree with what the guys at bible study had done, he asked my wife if she thought it was 'helpful' what they did. She has defended what they did saying they did it out of love. I know they did it out of love but the way they did it was hurtful. And threatening to bring me up with the church when I haven't even done anything yet was ridiculous.

When I was in the ward and my family came to visit me during visiting hours, my brother (who started getting drunk immediately when he heard I had tried to commit suicide) actually made some sense. Did I want to go down the hard path of becoming a woman or the hard path of staying the same. Both would be hard but only one, I would not be alone. Only one, my wife would not leave me. It made total logical sense in my head that I should fight to keep my wife and yet in my heart, I still felt no guilt, no wrong for feeling this way, for wanting to be a woman. Talk about inner clash, brain and heart.

So at this point, I'm seeing my counselor twice a week now. I asked him if I should see a gender counselor and whether I should stop talking to my transsexual friends online and he said it was my choice. He didn't threaten to bring it up with the church. I then asked his opinion and he said he thought either would be harmful to me right now.

The psychiatrist and social worker at the psych ward both suggested that I should see a gender-experienced counselor. As did my Primary Care Physician. So I don't think I'm being unreasonable about seeing one but I do wonder why my current counselor thinks it would be harmful. Why does everyone want to deny me information? Shouldn't I be able to make an educated decision once I'm informed of all sides and possibilities?

My counselor did of course say that it was my choice. But I do think his opinion matters. Of course part of my problem is that I tend to want to please everyone around me. In fact, I think the reason this has all come up now is because I've tried to please everyone my whole life. I denied these kinds of feelings my whole life to try to be someone everyone else wanted me to be. I did well in school, didn't rebel much, went to college, got married, was working on kids......

And right now everyone around me once again wants me to be something they want me to be and I'm trying to adhere to that and suffering because of it.

To Heart

What have you done?
Did you think you could get through to me
with threats and condemnation?
Did you really think
that would be helpful?
Are you words really chosen out of love
when they're spoken
with such fierceness?
Is that needed?
Do you know how much you've hurt me?
I cannot blame you for my own actions
but state of mind can be accountable.
You do realize that I have not even made a decison
don't you?
How can you condemn me when I have not even begun?
What church discipline can be brought up on me
for future prospects, yet undecided?
I stood on the brink, trying to understand
instead of embracing me in Jesus
you chose to shove me over.
Your harsh words still ring in my head;
do you think that makes me feel loved?
I opened my heart, have been honest from the start
and yet by doing so, I only get it thrown
back in my face.
Did God call you to treat me so?
Is that your righteous reasoning?
These words of mine are not meant to afflict
but to express that which could not be shown
without careful contemplation,
insightful isolation, and retreating reflection;
this is how I feel brother
take it to heart.

Investigation

So it's been a while since I've posted publicly. So many people seem to know about what's going on in my life right now I kind of had to retreat into my shell for a bit.

These are the things people have been telling me:

1. God made me a man and He doesn't make mistakes
   
2. I am treating this like an idol
   
3. It's shameful for a man's hair to grow long
   
4. A man should not wear women's clothes
   
5. I am rejecting God by doing this
   
6. I am rejecting my wife and her family by doing this
   
7. I should suffer and be self-sacrificing instead of going through with this
   
8. I will be excommunicated from the church
   
9. These thoughts and desires come from Satan, not from inside me
   
10. I should not do ANYTHING feminine, ever.
    
11. I should love my wife and not myself
    
12. The phrase "You must love yourself before you can love others" is not true
    
13. I will never really be a woman
    
14. God will still see my spirit as a man
    
15. I will lose my salvation
    
16. I will go to hell
    
17. I should not explore the other side of these arguments, just accept this side as truth
    
18. I am not being strong enough
    
19. I should just be happy being a feminine, tender-hearted guy
    
20. This is like a porn addiction and can be suppressed similarly
    
21. If God doesn't take this away then I should live with it for the rest of my life
    
22. He made us male and female for a reason
    

Etc, etc, and so forth. And then they wonder why I have these sudden thoughts of suicide???

My response has been to retreat a bit and try to investigate what is true and right. All my life I was raised in the Christian church and with the belief that homosexuality and transgenderism is a sin. I never even questioned it, it was so ingrained. It's probably part of the reason I buried any of these transgender feelings while I was growing up in the first place. Now that I'm feeling these feelings I'm starting to wonder.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not questioning whether God exists or the bible is true. I still believe those things and have tested those things in my mind all throughout growing up. It just never occured to me that translation and interpretation could be compromised or that there could be validity to other interpretations. Now, I'm also not saying I now suddenly believe that homosexuality is right. I just don't know right now. I'm still searching my heart and trying to understand what is going on there as well as what God really considers true and right.

It's hard though. I've been told that the voice of God is through the Bible and other Christians around me speaking scripture from it. Yet everyone around me is always speaking against this as they have my whole life. It was easy to believe and agree when it wasn't so personal.

I know God made me a man on the outside but circumstances that He allowed to happen (whether that be how my fetus was formed and/or how I was conditioned in the early years of my life) have produced these feelings that I have been having.

One comparison is to a hermaphrodite being born. God allowed that to happen. Should that person be forced to live like that because God created him/her like that or should they be allowed to choose to become a whole man or a whole woman? And what about a child born blind? If we have the technology, shouldn't we try to cure their blindness? The only difference between me and these examples is that theirs are much more obvious on the outside where as the only ones who really know what's going on inside myself are me and God. Everyone else just sees it as a struggle to overcome and get on with my life as a man.

My wife loves me so much and I love her equally as much. But she has said over and over that the second I start on Hormone Replacement Therapy, she will leave me because:

1. She believes what I'm doing is wrong and a sin
   
2. She believes that she should not be in an intimate relationship with a woman.
   

She has also voiced that no matter what I do to my body, God will always see my soul as a man, that I will always still just be a man. I laugh at the obvious contradiction to one of the reasons she would leave me. I just wish she could see what I see...that it will still be me. She didn't marry my genitals. She married me for my heart. That will not change. But she doesn't see it that way.

From here on out, I'm still trying to get in contact with some other counselors while still seeing my current one. I'd like to research other arguments but at the same time, continue praying and reading the word to really hear from God what it is He wants me to do.

If this IS wrong, what I want to do, then I need to NOT do it somehow. But if it's right and God understands and still loves me, I will most likely want to go through with it. Everyone else doesn't really matter frankly. Just me and God. If my wife wants to leave me because of her beliefs then so be it. It would be hard but while she thinks I'd be rejecting her I'd see it as quite the opposite.