Why is Being Transsexual Important?

What makes us so focused on terms and where we define ourselves to be finished on the path of transition? Why is it so important for me to define myself as a post-op Trans Woman? Why shouldn’t just being included in the transgender box be enough for me?

As a person who is up in her years, I look back at my years of “stop and go” phases of transitioning and wonder why it means so much to me to identify myself as a ‘post-op trans woman’. Yes, I could have stopped anywhere along the path of my journey to become Sarah; but each stopping point became a jumping off place to a higher plain. As I traveled on each path of my transition journey, I was satisfied to be just a part-time, occasional ‘cross dresser’ until that phase became me, and that wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough to cross dress on an occasional basis; but my guilt and shame overcame the need to experiment further. And so I stopped dressing for long periods, because I did have a family I needed to be with. With each successive alternating periods of ‘dressing’ and avoidance, the time period between the two changed; longer periods of dressing and shorter periods of avoidances coupled with depression, anger, intense agitation with not being able to ‘dress’ when I wanted to. Whatever I want to call or name these two behavior patterns, I knew that if I tried hard enough, I could stop ‘dressing’ and it wasn’t permanent. I never really wanted to continue with living as the male person, but I could stop.

When the time came during my long period of transition that I really had to make a choice to try and give all this being girly up and remain my male self, filled with alcohol, and anger and feeling sorry for myself; or I could choose to accept who I had really become and live as a happy, spiritual fun filled person in the form of Sarah.

Defining one’s self as a transsexual is a threshold that if crossed, is very difficult for one to backtrack; it is almost is a point of no-return. Although that are some that have re-transitioned; I know that and that’s ok. Wherever we define our stopping point along the gender identity line, is the place where we have accepted ourselves within the sub-set of gender. For me as I claim my ‘box’ to be ‘female’, I know that I have reached the end of my transition journey. I don’t have to do anything more to my body to correct flaws that I think I see. Because I am comfortable with my life as I have become. When I am out and about in a large group of mixed company, I know that when people see me, they see a woman; a female accompanied by another female of the more mature crowd. That’s all I need to know; that I am accepted as just another gray-haired lady of a certain age bracket, who has more life experiences that most people will ever have; and my life experiences came from two different baskets. So calling myself a ‘transsexual’ woman gives finality to my journey; I have reached the end of my path of transition and accept the fact that the door to my other life is shut and bolted. I have stepped across into the conscious stream of just being woman; of living in my feminine existence, and I know that I am home.