Someone wrote to me recently, and this is what she asked:

“I have a very critical question to ask, I hope you can shed some light. In your article or section called “Theories and Therapies” and later on the section “Will SRS help me? Will I regret it?”. at the end there is a paragraph that says:

‘There are two people I know that were there when someone awoke from surgery, and that person knew at that moment that they made a huge mistake.’

 

I wonder if you may still access to those people and if it is possible to contact them regarding their experience. I am a MTF in transition and still have some doubts, no so much about SRS since that has never been a ‘must’ for me, but about transitioning and living my life as a female.

 

I certainly have seen many therapists over the last 8 years and I have been diagnosed with GID. And I do live part time as a woman. But I am ready to go into hormones and I would like to hear the stories of those who ‘detransition’ or ‘regret it’…. I guess I am a little critical of the whole thing and I would like to hear the ‘worst case’ scenarios. I think there are plenty of ‘rosy’ experiences out there. But it is hard to find info about those who changed their minds, for whatever reason.”

Here is my response to her, with a few embellishments…..

Since then, I’ve had a post-op friend transition back to male, mostly because of the difficulty in providing for herself.   She hasn’t returned calls or emails, so I can only guess based on past conversations.    I get the impression that her therapist was not convinced that this was the right thing for her, perhaps she was going too fast, but my friend had no doubts.  After transition she lost too much, including her wife/best friend, and lost her job.  She was working at two or three part-time jobs, but wasn’t where she needed to be, I believe.  Despite a lot of hard work on her part, it was not easy.

 

I had another friend that went overboard and had breast implants and liposuction pre-op, and came out at work (a macho truck driver), and nearly lost everything, including wanting to take her own life.  Her antidepressants were making things worse, too.  She eventually found Jesus and that helped her to get her wife and family, and life and job, back.  She had a Very difficult transition with a very unsupportive family.  She never had SRS that I know of, and the last message I got from her some years ago was trying to convince me that what I did was wrong and I should repent.  I wished her luck, but also explained that this doesn’t just go away.  Besides, I was post-op so I’m not sure what his point was.  Transition isn’t for everyone, and certainly not for her at that point in her life. 

 

It is certainly more exciting to be pre-op. There is a certain danger in going out, and when you are male everything is sexual on some level. When Post-op, though, the great thing is that life just is what it is, the whole gender issue is gone, provided your transition went well.  I find that life is just normal, which is great, but I can’t tell you if I’m the exception or the rule. 

 

Post-ops tend to disappear into the woodwork.  Like a child that has grown up, you leave the past behind and continue to grow in new directions. It doesn’t make sense to hold on to those things that you worked so hard to get past.  We want to get to the other side, dream about that, and once there our lives no longer revolve around being TS and the goal of transitioning.  We can then use our  psychic energy on life, and family, and career, just like regular people.  

 

If you have a lot of doubts then I would say that transition is not something you should pursue at this time.  You don’t want to wake up after SRS and realize you did something wrong.  Personally I can’t imagine someone getting to that point and not being ready for SRS, realizing when waking that it was wrong, and my information on ‘people waking up…’ is second-hand.  I do think that some people don’t work through all the consequences beforehand, and that some people’s lives just don’t work out to support transition and it isn’t necessarily something they can control.  Society is better at accepting transgendered people, no doubt, but it isn’t universal any more than it is universal for accepting gays and lesbians.

 

You may reach a time in your life where you have to do it, and maybe not.  It takes a lot of time, preparation, money, and fortitude to make it to the other side and be able to support yourself, and to not lose too much of what you have that is important to you, like family and friends.   What we lose is not something we can control or predict, and you have to be prepared to lose everything, everyone.

 

I don’t have access to my old friends, but hope to add some voices to the blog to talk about their experiences, both pre and post-op, so that we can all learn about the reality – the joy and pain - of transition.

 

  Jenni