I’ve been thinking a lot lately about self denial. What it actually means, and how it can work, and how it affected me.
I said this recently to someone I was chatting with…
“The thing with self denial is if you know you’re denying at some level, you also know it’s true on another level.”
The more I think about this, the more I think it must be true. All the signs I found when looking back at my life, and wondering why I didn’t realize I was trans. I didn’t realize it because I already knew. Wanting to wake up as a girl because I didn’t want to have to transition, etc… I knew all along that I was a girl and then a woman. I just wasn’t allowing myself to believe it.
I think this had a divisive effect on my personality, or id. I split into 2 parts, denying myself, and accepting myself. The denying part won control for most of my life. Suffocating the other part. The denying part made me want to hide, keep my inner most thoughts only to myself, put a bubble around me that kept me safe. My denying side’s interpretation of safe anyway. Pretty sure my accepting side would have felt safer existing outwardly.
I’m finding now that I’ve shed that denial that a whole new me has emerged. I also commented recently to a friend that I never understood how girls could just be so casual about having their breasts stand out so much when all I wanted was to not have a bulge in my pants at all. Now I understand. I wasn’t having the ‘right’ feeling about my self image, and now that I do, I proudly have my own breasts standing out from my chest without so much as the smallest amount of shame. I’m proud to be me. (bit of a pun there for those who get it)
I can tell a complete stranger some of my most intimate thoughts, and I find it hard to keep things secret about myself. Discretion is called for, for a few things, but I hate doing it. I wish our society was more advanced. I want to just divulge everything. And I do to certain friends at least, which is such an amazing thing to finally be able to do.
I don’t know if I’ll be able to do self denial about anything anymore. Not that I think there’s anything left to need it. I don’t regret going through it, because it has led me to where I am right now, and I like where I am right now. The people that I have in my life, new friends and old, family, and the internet readers of this blog mean so much to me now.
Now that my personality is no longer split in this way, it makes it so easy to connect with people in a way I was never able to before. And that is probably the greatest gift to myself in my transition: connection.