Be careful what you wish for

I guess most people would view starting treatment and making a transition as essentially getting everything you want/need and that it is as simple and clear-cut as that. As if that was the obvious thing that you knew would always happen. Like it would be the total solution to every and all of your problems. I can't really speak for other trans people but for me this isn't the case.

I'm actually finding this a little difficult to explain and to old onto the ideas to write about them.

For me it just isn't that glaringly obvious - maybe it is to outside observers but for my own internal struggle it is somewhat elusive. But it is constant. I've changed lots and I continue to want to change and make the bits of me I don't like look better/different. It's easy for me to ignore things as I can concentrate on something and almost forget but it always comes back eventually. And it's the constant nagging feeling that I need to be different that has now taken over and, because I recognise what it is I'm heading down this path. Don't for aa minute think that this is going to be heading for some sort of nirvana though.

My son is staying with me tonight and tomorrow and I just read him a story before and, as usual he asked me to sit with him for a while so we snuggled into bed and, as he curled up to go to sleep he found my hand and held onto it while he dozed off.

Tears were rolling down my face when he did that and they are as I write about it now. I remembered how I've helped look after my (our) son since he was born, how I rocked him to sleep, how I was there when he wa ill. His Mum has been the one to do the most to be fair (particularly while I travelled alot) but I've still been there at important points in his life and I love him dearly and so much that it hurts sometimes.

How can I go ahead with such a radical change in my life when I have such a wonderful son and had such a good, and 'normal' life? The honest answer is that I really don't know, part of me can't believe what has happened, but the desire to change has, I think always been inside me, it won't go away and has leaked out in many ways over the years.

I don't know how this transition is going to affect me or my son, his Mum and everyone else. I don't know what it is going to be like to hug my son or hold his hand when my hands, and skin, and body are going to change. I don't know whether how I look, smell, feel, act an sound is going to stop my son recognising me as a parent who cared and still cares for him. I guess all my thoughts and talking about losing importsnt things in my life are nothing when you're actually faced with the very real prospect that that might happen.

All I can say to my son is: I love you dearly and I'm sorry if what I do hurts you in any way. And to his mum: I am truly sorry to have not been what you wanted and needed in a partner.