Time, need, regrets

As I type this, my mind is in turmoil, keep that in mind please.

Time. You only get so much, don't waste it.

Needs, if they don't matter to you, I guess you don't need to read further.

Regrets, we all have them, and often there's no fix if you wasted too much time, and didn't address your needs properly.

I am 56. It's nice I look 36. The reality though is it doesn't matter if I look 36 and feel 6, the body is 56 and next year it will be 57. In 4 years I will be in my 60s. And that means I'm very close to being a senior citizen.

So the brutal truth is I can't really wait for my mind to feel 'adult' enough to date.
I don't have time to waste on mastering experiences all teens go through over the span of 7-8 years. Because in 8 years I'll qualify for a seniors discount regardless if I feel young or old.

Needs. Everyone has needs. And if you meet a person that LIKES living alone, I say there is something wrong with them. Life has done something to them to make them that way. We are human beings and we are social creatures. "Loner" is not an aspect of our species.

Having someone special. It's never easy. The cisgender crowd don't have any magical advantages over us. No one gets a free pass. We even see that the rich and famous have troubles finding someone.
So don't let being transgender become the reason you don't try. Because being transgender is just one of plenty of things that might hassle you. My sister is drop dead gorgeous, and she's never been successful in finding Mr. Right. She's got as many cards in her favour as anyone can ask for. Hasn't been enough.

So don't let being transgender force you to hide. Because it's not like the cisgender have it any easier. So you're transgender, so what. So you're not 'pretty' and transgender female. So you're not 'handsome' and transgender male. Even if you were, it's not like you have it made.

Time is not your friend. Right now, today, it's slipping through your fingers.
And you don't get it back.
20 something becomes 30 something, and before you know it, your friends are jokingly putting a 40th birthday tombstone on your cake.

So what you got married and had kids. And then realized you were not really the gender that they insisted you were.
If you don't accept your needs, in time, they will be taken from you and then you get to suffer from regret.

Look at the very real statistics, yes they are out there if you feel like looking for real.
HALF of cisgender hetero couples divorce. It's not like they have some magical advantage from being cis and hetero.
So don't beat yourself up, if you accept your being transgender ruins the marriage. You never had better than a 50/50 chance, to begin with.

I'm not saying casually discard the marriage, I'm saying don't casually discard being your real self over the idea your marriage will survive if you deny yourself.

Time has no sympathy for those that waste it.

If you are in your early adult years, and you have made choices that make it seem like you can't come out, chances are, your perceptions of your inability to come out, are not entirely accurate.

I have friends that are transgender and post-op and female, and still happily married to a wife that thought she married a man. Thus it isn't impossible.

I had a marriage that was essentially dead long before I entered the scene. It's too bad I was not able to save him from those 10 pointless years of counselling. I'd likely have preferred to spend 2002 to 2012 a grumpy, moody, single white transgender female on hormones wishing she could get surgery sooner. I'd at least be 10 years further along on my process of getting used to being female, and I'd have been a 40 something trying to date instead of a 50 something trying to date.

Yes, I regret those lost years are lost years.
And they're gone.
And the marriage was dead in 2001. The marriage counselling was fruitless. We talked and talked and talked, well at least myself and the counsellor did. In retrospect, I have no fucking idea what the ex got out of the process. It was her idea. I was ready to talk. But she never talked much of the preceding 17 years either. I look back at the marriage, and I wonder, "why did she marry him in the first place?"

Don't waste valuable time, when in a lot of cases, the decision is moot.

My marriage resulted in my son. That also happened in 94. I don't regret having him.
But he was never going to save the marriage. The marriage never likely should have happened.
But being a parent doesn't mean marriage is inevitable.
I'm not saying to ditch the kids. I'm saying don't expect to hide your misery from them.
They'll know.

If you are staying in a relationship "because of the kids", A. you are not fooling them, and B. you're not doing anyone any favours, and C. you're ruining your chances of ever having any sort of life you will actually enjoy without regrets.

It's not easy to come out at ANY age.
But it's a lot harder coming out the older you get.
So the more time you squander, the harder you will be making it on yourself, and the greater your regrets will seem.

So yeah, I AM saying just roll the fucking dice, come out, tell the fucking world you are transgender, risk it all. Yeah, you might lose everything too. You might not. You might actually gain everything as well.

I didn't have that many friends as him actually. He was sociable enough, but he wasn't exactly 'popular'. Most of life was spent with extended family nowhere nearby. If all my then friends and family had left, I'd not really have lost a lot.

You might be holding on to dear life for a lot less than you actually realize.
Because right now, today, this moment, I have a shitload more friends than he ever had.
I have friends so close they are the equal of blood family. So if I had lost mom/dad, brother and sister, I'd have still broken even eh.

Most jobs today, are simply not worth the notion that coming out and losing that job is a major tragedy. This isn't 1950. Seniority is a term that no longer means shit in the workplace. You can barely get mileage from a Phd.
So if you are holding on to work for dear life, because of the mortgage, and the wife and kids, you're lying to yourself in all likelihood.

I admit it, my transition hasn't been quite as rough as it might have been.
I'm Canadian, and that means I'm post-op because I didn't pay for it.
I live in a small rural town. It might not have been as easy what with the saturation level of seniors in town. But I don't walk the streets at night deathly afraid of being attacked from being transgender. That's a big city thing. Big cities, they are expensive, and they are dangerous, and so what if they have larger transgender populations. Safer and a much harder dating scene is still better.

I think the one element of my transition that has been a hassle the most, is not having a car.
It means I can't casually go to Toronto and prowl for a date on an occasional weekend, and then go back home to the safe town. It means I can't just say "screw it" and easily move to somewhere else. I'm kinda stuck in Lindsay.

But I rolled the dice, and took my chances on coming out, and I found that generally speaking, older people in rural locations were not raised to be nasty inherently. Yeah, old people can be inflexible. But small towns are rarely as cold and unfriendly as people in big cities.

I have seen to my REAL needs, and those were to be real. I'm a girl damn it, and not a guy.
I'm not the prettiest, but, I'm far from ugly. I'm benefiting from a life of no drugs, smoking, or alcohol. That stuff ages you. I look 36 for several reasons. A preference for liking my body being the biggest. It helped that my mother was attractive too

I can understand if you are scared of being the real you.
But I'd rather still encourage you to get your ass out of the closet all the same.
You're only getting one run at this lifespan.
Every year you waste, you are not getting back.
You can spend those years miserable, and be clutching on to things that are not going to make you happy. Or you can rip that damned band-aid off and scream and then get on with making your life better.

This is 2018.
You might as well at least maximise on the fact that transitioning today isn't the same as transitioning in 2008, 1998, 1988, 1978, 1968.

I was reading a long rant on Medium about this new "Incel" (Involuntary Celibate) thing. The author was carrying on in response to some other writer who considers himself an Incel and how it's an attack on women and the role of sex in society and bla bla bla.

I was like, WTF? I don't find someone attractive or unattractive because of society or social roles. It's not a game show or a stage play.

Long story short - you are 100% correct, Lesley. When you're interested in someone, you are interested in the individual, not the society they wander in. When you fuck someone, you're fucking them, not society. Likewise, they are doing you, not society.

If I had to sum up the entire LGBTI+ narrative in one sentence: "Rejecting a life lived on society's terms instead of one's own."

Letting go of who others would tell you to be is the most important step anyone can take, regardless of your identity and preferences. You only have one life, and only one body. It's the only place you have to live, so take care of it emotionally and physically.

I think I actually met Mr. Right on Tuesday actually.

Dang it life. Sadly I found out on Wednesday he has a girlfriend.

But Jeff (his name is Jeff), is the boy next door. No, really, he's the boy next door. He lived next door when I was a kid. We played together. Granted, I wasn't the girl next door at the time

But sigh, oh shit he grew up to be handsome. He's a friend of the family, he idolized my dad. He's single, retired, has a house. He has a girlfriend already.

I was talking to him on the phone and the word girlfriend entered the conversation. I was crushed. I never had a chance. Well, that's what I think. I'm not going to really indulge the idea he will pick me over her.

I spent yesterday morning crying my eyes out.
I thought I had scored big time, for about 16 hours. Then life yanked the rug out yet again. I hate you life.

Every time I see that term 'incel' I cringe.
Every time I hear someone claim proudly "I don't need a man" I want to scream.
Fine, you go through life alone if you want, but I consider you mentally broken. Humans are social animals, loner is not normal for our species.
Men ejaculating up another males anus is easier to justify than living alone and liking it.

Celibacy is not the end of the world. Some people are asexual. But I'm sure even asexual people predominantly prefer to at least be around people. They just don't want to fuck them.
But there is some really dumb shit out there connected to incels.
There's some really dumb shit out there about a lot of stuff.

I'm not giving up on Mr. Right. But I stopped dilating for a reason. I don't think Mr. Right is looking for me. So I married my teddy bear as a sort of form of mental health self-defence. By being married to my teddy bear Frank, I can enjoy my being married, goofy as it might seem, and not suffer quite as much as I might otherwise. And Frank has no need for me to have a vagina. And no Adam (Adam is an old friend I permit to say idiotic things), I'm not attaching a dildo to Frank so my husband can fuck me he's a teddy bear, and he doesn't need to do that, nor do I hehe.

But I do wish I could be walked down the aisle by my dad, wearing a wedding dress, and say I do to Mr. Right and become Mrs. some man's surname here.
Not because of anything society has to say about it, but because I WANT it.