Runaway

cc flickr - tanya petrova

Over the years, I've contemplated a variety of mechanisms that would allow me to live as a woman.  Obviously, telling my friends and family and transitioning is the accepted and most likely path.  However, I have been prone to the occasional fit of despair, and in those dark times, I consider either faking my death and running off or just getting myself killed so as to end my pain without bringing the shame of a transsexual into my family.  The fact that either of these seem like viable options when I'm that down scares me.  Fortunately, being an overly rational person, I always come up with myriad problems with either plan, of which the primary one is simply the hurt I would be inflicting on my wife and kids whether my death was real or faked.  Pardon the expression, but I don't know that I could live with myself.

I'm blogging this now because I'm starting to recognize the beginnings of my death spirals into depression.  I start to think about telling people and finally coming out into the open.  As I get excited about it, I also start worrying and then I get to hearing or reading news stories about all the intolerance in the world, not just toward social minorities but even to people associated with them.  This makes me question the fairness of burdening them with such a stigma, and I also start thinking that this is an incredibly selfish thing I am doing.  That brings me to my current state, which is fear that two of the relationships I treasure most (with my kids) will be irreversibly altered. And if I follow the same form I have for the last two decades, I'll finally decide I can't do it, and spend a couple or more weeks really depressed that living as a woman will never become reality for me.

But is that really the case?  As I approach my 43rd birthday in a bit over a week, I'm wondering if my kids have known subconsciously all along, or at least had some inkling.  Sometimes they seem to, other times they seem clearly not to (or have forgotten).  Could I make this birthday a rebirth-day as well?