Introspection

     I remember very well a lifetime of trying to convince myself that I at least liked me.  I remember the many times I wondered why I could never just be happy.  Happiness was, at best, fleeting.  There for a moment only, then nothing but a memory that I'd hold for a few seconds before letting it go.  I remember thinking at times like that, that happiness just wasn't meant for me.  I was sad!  I was angry!  But worst of all, without even realizing it, I hated myself with the deepest, most burning passion!

    I was raised to believe that the Bible was the absolute word of God.  If the Bible said something was evil, then it was evil.  After all, according to the belief, God had said it and that was that!  But logic says that the Divinity did not write one word found in the Bible, with the possible exception of the Ten Commandments.  People wrote the Bible and, in doing so, did what people do and interjected normal human biases into its texts.  The early Christian church, in order to control the narrative, told believers that it was the "word of God".  Of course, very few people would question if it was the word of God, and those who did were called heretics and put to death.  In time, open questioning of the Bible's veracity ceased and acceptance of a collection of manuscripts as being the actual and absolute "word of God" became the mainstay of the Christian faith belief system.

    Teaching young children that the Bible is the word of God, and that anything counter to biblical teachings is evil, has the potential of causing lifelong psychological problems.  A child who may be experiencing same sex attraction, yet believes that this is unnatural, therefore evil, will believe that they're evil.  In desperation, they'll ask God to relieve them of this unnatural burden.  When the attraction continues, they'll ask over and over again.  Eventually, they'll come to believe that there is no salvation and no redemption for them.

    Now, couple with that the scenario that the child houses the gender most commonly associated with the opposite sex.  One, or both, of the child's parents force the child to suppress their gender and conform to "normal" gender expression, thereby unwittingly causing the child to experience the condition known as "gender dysphoria".  Such a child may come to believe that if the Almighty would not take this burden from them, it must mean that they are unworthy.  Eventually, it all combines to cause the child to be filled with self-hate and anger.  Many children with this weight on their shoulders will, at the very least, consider suicide.  Everyone will wonder why the child would consider suicide as a solution rather than trusting God, not knowing that turning to God was the child's first choice.  They will never consider that the collection of manuscripts that Christianity is partially based on the idolization of is at all the problem.  But it is!

    That is a quick summation of my childhood.  Yes, I had considered committing suicide.  However, the teachings handed down to me said that if you commit suicide you cannot receive God's forgiveness, because you can no longer ask for it.  Without God's forgiveness you can't get into Heaven, and I held out hope that I could yet be redeemed.  I held on to the hope that God would one day find me worthy of redemption and take this unfair burden off my shoulders.  All along the way, I asked God to relieve me of something that wasn't really an issue.  All that time believing what I was taught as a young child.  These are the thoughts that quite often fill my mind in the early morning hours, and cause me hours of sleeplessness.

    Eventually, the gift of reason (which sets humanity above the animal kingdom) caused me to consider that non-believers felt as venomously about these issues as did believers.  That told me that that particular ideology was based on bias, not divinity.  Having realized that, I began reasoning that other ideologies might also be bias, and when I researched matters such as gender dysphoria, transgenderism and transitioning, I realized that all the hype coming from the Right was incorrect.

    It took a while, but I finally accepted the fact that I'm transgender and that I had suffered gender dysphoria since childhood.  When I learned that Hormone Replacement Therapy and transitioning could help to relieve the suffering, I knew I had to try.  I have now been undergoing HRT for just over a year.  I have what I believe to be a rather nice pair of breasts which I anticipate growing larger.  I owe a big debt of gratitude to the folks at M-Care Healthcare of Wichita, KS, its founder, Amanda Mogoi, and the nurse overseeing my HRT, Sheila Ebersole.  Thank you all so much.  Following this path has saved my sanity and helped me to start liking myself.  More than that, I love the person I'm becoming.