Did being trans/nb or transitioning take you to the edge?

[Trinity]

I know there's like only a handful of us left but we still have people guesting in and reading stuff.

Did being trans break you, take you to the edge in some way?

I know it did with me, big time.  I leaned hard on the forum, both the old forest that burned and this one, in the old forest with the standard trans narrative they really pushed me right to the edge to the point where my mind would shut down for minutes or longer, I mean it was rough.  But I had to do it, had to accept myself, just couldn't go on any longer without it.

I personally had friends that were watching over me and still do, one in particular but there are others that are still there, and of course the old timers here too.

I also had a major spiritual experience, more than once, that helped a lot.  Had I lost my faith or had I allowed others to destroy that faith, I would have been lost, a stat.

But for you, has it goine smoothly, or did you freak out a bit?  Did the stress get to you or did you blow right though it?

I think a lot of it has to do with our loved ones, how they handle it, and with how bad the dysphoria was or is, mine was redlined, mine still is intense but the hormones help enormously as well as living as who I am, where I choose to do that, where I show myself.

I still think its really wild that I am so comfortable in any and all presentations, but then again, the body is a constant and I just got comfortable with it no matter how I decorate it or show a part of the diamond, its hard to show the whole diamond all at once anyway, you can feel it, sure, but to see it visibly, not so easy.

So that awareness helped, taking it as slow as I could helped, and getting rid of the trans narrative was a big help.

How has it gone with you?

[Ativan Prescribed]

I tend to live on the edge as a way to keep my sanity, if I lose sight of the edge I have to go search for it and generally run right up to it and stick half of me over it.
Not literally, I hated looking over the actual edge of a cliff and hate that, even looking over the edge of a building just isn't comfortable at all.
I have jumped from planes and I have looked straight down hanging out the door and even hanging on the wing strut once, just flailing in the wind, but to actually like it I need to just step out and fall or roll out and fall depending on the plane, some of them are pretty little in the doorways.
But life experiences, yah I look to be close to edge because thats were things tend to happen more, take away the safety nets and I'm fine, I prefer things to be somewhat stressful, and reality is, stress gets you up and going, off that fricken couch and leaving the bag of chips behind.
I'm always up for an adventure, and the entire trans thing to me is nothing short of that but its also pretty tame for me, I've always known and didn't give a shit, I talked about it lots of times to friends, if you don't make a big deal out of it they don't either.
When you make absolutes out of things about yourself, people tend to want to make something out of it, I've always been more of the lets go instead of the lets wait and see kind of person, so I've mentioned it sure, but never in terms of absolutes, like this is my gender, its always been a kind of sometimes can feel like its different, like both and leave it at that, next question, more and better things to do than talk about my gender, pretty low on my list of importance for myself anyways, I most certainly know how important it is to a lot of people, and initially it gets overwhelming for some people, but it doesn't have to be.
It's like if someone calls me a asshole, I look straight into their eyes and say 'yes I am'. then wait for the next stupidity to come out of their mouth, but so long as I look and say, yes I am, it becomes a nothing thing, I mean what are they going to do, beat me bloody with words?
This is the thing with bigots, you step into them, you actually step right at them and give them the yes I am treatment, and then shut up, because the first person who speaks is going to come off as an idiot, it just works that way.
But, not reason for anyone not to go to the edge if for no other reason that just to see what there is to see, who knows, it might be right where you are supposed to be, which is where I always am, right where I need to be, I could be somewhere else, but then I wouldn't be here for whatever it is this is.
There is such a thing as our destiny and if it is near or even over the edge, we don't fulfill our destinies, we don't do it by sitting on the couch with a bag of chips, even if it kills you, take it and move on to the next thing, odds are you won't know you died anyways, seriously, do you know for a fact or do you believe in the movies, I've been technically dead a couple times and I don't know if I realized it at the time or not, weird shit to be sure, but dead wasn't the priority at the moment, the edge was though, when you are on it it becomes everything, focussed energy, nothing else matters.
I kinda live on the entire premise that life is one long insanity ride anyways, I get antsy if it slows down and it is doing that again, been trying to think of how I can get this close to death that I can touch it and taste it and feel it all around me and yet still have that one ounce of situational control that gets me back up and over the to the safe side of the edge once again, if there is anything in the world that truly makes me happy its escaping with my life again when I was worried this was going to be the last time, I need that edge, I need to be happy.

[Leena]

Kind of the opposite. Trying to live as a guy did take me to the edge quite often, but I'm far less extreme now.

I was kind of stuck for a long time, knowing that I wanted to transition but being too scared to take action. When I finally did, it went much more smoothly than I thought it would.


I don't expect that it will go well with my family once they find out I'm transitioning, but I distanced myself from them as one of the first steps. I really just can't be the guy they want me to be and I'm not able to live the dual life I thought I would be able to. Even if I still could do it easily physically, it's a lot harder emotionally and mentally than I thought it would be.

I think most of my discomfort in presenting feminine was that I was very unhappy with how I looked doing that before electrolysis and HRT. It made me more dysphoric than just doing guy mode. It doesn't now, and there really isn't much need to do guy mode. There's occasionally things that are uncomfortable doing because I haven't had my ID updated, but that isn't even as awkward as I thought it would be most of the time.

[Ativan Prescribed]

I think of that as like my avoiding looking over the edge of a building or cliff, lots of avoidance tactics can be used, but once I do look, it generally isn't anywhere near as frightening as I assumed it was going to be.
It's like flying in something, it looks like a long ways down for just a little bit, then it turns into a surreal sort of thing and its because you lack the ability to judge great heights.
Same thing for being who I am, during my younger years it was an avoided topic but those times I confided in someone, it just suddenly became something I know and they don't, I saw it from great heights while they saw it from just after getting exposed to lifting off the ground.
This is in a lot of ways how I see gender and trans in general, from our point of view, we see so much more and its a surreal experience to be able to do that, we see more square miles of gender than most people can comprehend.
Bigots and some others just go berserk about it because they have never been able to see it for what it is, they assume its going to fricken scary as hell if they even contemplate that it is just one thing, one thing and only one thing about a person, as if that is all there is to someone who is trans.
They see trans like most people see looking over the side of a tall building is going to be like or better yet a cliff of some sort, just think of all the things that could happen, when the truth is that looking over the side is just looking over the side, its the unknown that gets us.
So to them, trans is like this scary huge big deal that all sorts of things can happen and does in their imagination, like what if trans people have a forum and talk to each other and shit like that, it only leads to them forming organizations that will rip the fabric of society apart and soon there will be hordes of trans all running amok and just taking over and the biggest fear is they will become less relevant and suddenly trans are running the country, its the exact same fear they have of people of color running the country, they become less relevant and that can mean only one thing, which is who knows what it is they think would happen, like homeless and hungry and not being able to vote and have to work in fast food the rest of their lives and be treated like shit by everyone just for being white and bigots?
No, the idea of going to the edge is all about being scared so you can find out just what everyone says, it isn't really scary, but it is until you just do it, and most things in life are like that, take the same carnival ride all the time and it gets boring, same as flying does, even sitting next to the door when there is no door and the pilot is a crazy person or so you think since they do what feels like crazy, but even after a few times of that, its nothing, it isn't really any different than riding in a car with the window rolled down.
Going to the edge is having the ability to become more bulletproof is a sense, as things become less scary over time, you become more confident and truthfully, you can take a hell of a lot more that is dished out towards you that way, going to the edge is just the best way to get over the fear of the edge, after that hanging over the edge and eventually just figuring out how to safely jump off the edge, because thats when the ride really departs and you are no longer at the carnival and it just suddenly becomes worth it to not only go to the edge, but figure out a way to go just that much further.
The best way to enjoy life is to live it and the better you live it the better it becomes, use the couch to sleep on in recovery of living your life as you want to live, not as others want you to live.

[Trinity]

Pretransition and even after that in the midlife, when it was getting harder, I did push things and I was driven, very driven. That's when the racing came in, like racing the camaro on the high bank in the spectator races, those are real races but not real racecars, they are modded street cars and some were police interceptors and others were a bmw, lots of different cars, and it was very crazy, standard seatbelts and a motorcycle helmet, you hit the wall you very well could be dead. And I loved doing it and I'd do it again, but at the end of 5 laps every warning light on the dash was blinking, sustained revs way up between 4-6 thousand.

But glad I did it.

Even the kart racing was driven, lot of fun there. Still dangerous, my last run I spun into a flagman and the last thing I heard was his leg break, not a sound I ever want to hear again.

But once through the transition gauntlet, its been a heck of a lot better, the edge was closer just before transition, I think I had both feet over it.

Quite the ride, life has been.

Right now for me, its all pretty normal, but I don't race anymore and I haven't auditioned either, I feel like relaxing and enjoying the ride more.

LOL you floor my Camaro you better hang on, the steering is loose as hell, goes half out of control and gets fast quick, but its heavier than the car I raced, that one I had two wheels off the ground more than once at intersections that have that little crest in them so the water rolls off, it pours in the topics and its all about where that water is going to go, hit at high excelleration the wheels just keep going up after the mound a little, and then drop hard.

Life in the fast lane.

[nyx]

TW.

To me it often feels like I am at the edge all the time, sometimes looking down there, but also often just feeling it from behind and knowing it is there. It used to be in a quite literal sense of the word, as I was having suicidal thoghts for many years. And it didn't feel like slipping over the edge, it was a very active thing for me, I really wanted to leave this world. I had no idea about being trans back then. But now that I am in the middle of the route of transitioning (as I believe the inner transition is at least half the deal, everything that follows will just be the logical consequence), I think it is all connected, the threads are moving in one direction, and it is not just about my gender. It is rather about coming to realize that I had my reasons to feel wrong and unwell, and these reasons are many - not just one big bad thing that happened to me, it's a lot of smaller things that, put together, made me feel like this.
Learning about my gender is a part of it. But it also showed me other things. For all those years, my agenda was only to react to things, and it led me to think that the only escape might be to flee from existence. Even now it is still hard for me to allow myself of acting. Taking space, although I've spent my life trying to take the least space I could, making myself the smallest I was able to. Never thinking that I might be capable of acting on my own. This has somewhat changed, I have reached a point in my life where I am successful at work, I can make my own living, and this plays a big role in my life. I find myself in a position from which I feel safe enough to make my own plans, to dream.
Perhaps I needed to arrive at this point in order to be ready to realize that I can be whoever I want to be, that I can actually start to see my true self. I think I wasn't able to do that for a long time.
So, in a way, I got to manage my position near the edge. Now I can see something I want to reach, and it is not easy to go there, yet not impossible. My mother not accepting my identity is a huge obstacle to me and I still don't know how to deal with it. For the moment, I try my best to go on nevertheless, hoping she will adjust to it. The choice is mine. Yes, I see it as a choice and I know this breaks the binary trans narrative, but fuck the narrative. I COULD decide not to transition. It is not like I would die from it. But the real question is, will I be happy? And I know the answer to that, I can for sure be a bit happy but I will always wonder, what if I went down that path to become my true self. There have already been so many what ifs in my life. I don't want to sit quietly in the corner and watch others living their lives, wondering if I could one day be strong enough to stand up and be happy.
I don't believe in any afterlife or reincarnation, so for me it is just this one life and the only real question is: what am I going to use my time for? And I don't want to spend it in that damn corner, wondering and doubting. So, in a way, my transition is driving me to the edge, but not the one I spent the last decades with. Going over the edge now means to break down walls, to fight all the fears, and to seek happiness. Jumping won't lead to death, but to life.

What a plot twist, huh? 

[Ativan Prescribed]

So many times in my life I became just dissatisfied with how it was turning out, so I changed it, stepped forward and didn't look back.
I've remade myself so many times I tend to lose track of it all sometimes, but what I realize more and more is that I have always been me, and at times that means doing what I am told to do, but other times its just no, I think I'll do this instead.
Sure there have been times of being in trouble, but mostly I didn't see myself as in trouble but just being accused of doing what I wanted and not what others wanted, it is a really satisfying way to be, I tend to think of it as just going to another level in life.
Countless adventures and times of great emotions, both good and bad, but we need to be able to take the bad to have the good.
By the time I was thirty years old, I had done more than most people will do in a lifetime and it just kept on going from there, if I needed to know something, I found out, if I just needed something, I did what I needed to get that.
Life isn't just a peaceful life until you have totally thrown it into chaos and created havoc in it, letting fear dictate your life is no better than just doing as you are told regardless of whether you want to or not.
It's an adventure and I take it that way all the time and I feel sorry for those who just say it scares them to let it hang out in the wind, and sure I have many times been near death because of my choices, but thats just perfect, living without fear is living a life worth living.
Playing it safe gets you to where 'they' want you to be, playing the odds and knowing you can beat them, probably, is sometimes painful, sometimes you wish you hadn't done that, but in hindsight, I don't have very many regrets, I have a few rumination moments, but they center around basically minor stuff.
Always step forward whenever you can and thats almost all the time, don't fear a loss, look forward to the gains, when fear has you stopping for a moment, assess and move forward, almost all fears are baseless and what it is you fear can more easily be dealt with than having a life lived in those fears.
It's not a you only live once thing at all, its knowing your limitations and if you never push yourself to the edge of those, you never reach your potential.
Living through your fears is actually how you grow as a person, nobody dies of their fears, but the eternal boredom of the stable sameness can wear you down to the point that death isn't much more than just waiting for it to get here.
I do things and look to my death and ask if it is time yet and never getting an answer just means it isn't time for it yet, so another step forward.