Perceptions

Perception is a difficult thing sometimes and in our community of transgendered people it sometimes can become a quagmire as we come out to people and move through our physical and spiritual transitions. I was in a several conversations recently with a friend of mine and someone who I admire greatly for her courage to come out despite risking her family and career that she has performed so well in public service here in Columbus. We discussed the fact that many in the mainstream community and in particular our families see us as in some sort of pretend world and I know my ex has even addressed me as being in a “subculture” and Paula’s parents think she is not a “real person” being who she is as Paula. The family members think that we are somehow living a falsehood being who we are and have always been on the inside and that the real us was the person we pretended to be for so long. The longer we played the game and pretended the more their perception was that was really who we are and have always been. When we finally come out and tell them who we really are they so disbelieve it and are stuck in the perception we so amply created living the lie.

I played the game so well I sometimes fooled myself. I know others have done the same. The only pretending i ever did was when I tried to fool others and hid the real me from the world. I immersed myself in almost everything from activities to politics which portrayed me as this person they grew to know and perceive as the person I really was when the truth was so far from it. The better one played the game, the worse it was when it was time to come clean as the ones who were closest to you bought into the false perception even more many times than those who knew you only marginally. The period of time following coming out, transitioning and living fulltime in your true gender is a wonderful experience in which your peace is found and the happiness of being and presenting yourself as whom you really and truly are gives you great joy and comfort. However, the loved ones who were close to you and knew you and bought into the false perception better than most are left only with their perceptions of who you are which you created even though that is not who you are as a person. I think sometimes the easiest transitions as far as retaining many of the family members are those where the transgendered person shared more of their true selves with their loved ones and did not let them obtain the deep seeded misperceptions which plague many of us in our transitions and relationships with those that were close to us before we told them the real truth about us. So they believe the other person we tried to be and misled others into believing we were is who we were and that we are only pretending to be someone else now.

We know that is not the case -but the quagmire of misperceptions of our doing which we weaved and built in our previous life in hiding and deceiving does us in and leaves those we fooled so badly (and you know they cannot be happy about being fooled so badly!) asserting we are in a pretend world, a subculture, a cult and not “real persons”. I long for the day when I can connect again with my immediate family and I get the chance to erase the misperceptions I created with them for so many years and let them get to know the real me and hopefully alter their misperceptions which I created in them. I built the misperception living the big lie for so long and so well that I know that it cannot be erased so easily by others. We do it to ourselves and we must live with the consequences of doing so and of playing the game so well for so long and leaving the trail of misperceptions that now lie at our feet as we move through our journey being who we really are as people. No one weaves a more tangled web than that of a transgendered soul….but maybe that is just my perception!