A friend had posted this:
Transitioning late in life male to female is very rough mentally. I love it when people say “It’s ok, some women have beards”. But let me explain a bit more. If you think being a woman is rough. Take that and multiply by 2 for the late transitioner. So I just want to be loved, included and accepted. Just like you.
I am also a late transitioner, if there is such a label. I’m 30 years older than my friend. The more I thought about what she said (which I edited for length), the more it dawned on me: We are the in-betweeners. We started late, perhaps too late. We were born before the advent of puberty blockers, HRT, and current scientific knowledge of who we are.
But is it ever too late to be your true self? I used to think of my transition as becoming my true self; now I realize that was an oversimplification: I always WAS my true self—all I’ve really done is to stop hiding her.
I, too, will never “pass.” But I’m okay with that. We are the next stage of human evolution, and despite all of the roadblocks and setbacks, we will outlast the social Neanderthals.
Science fiction and other fantasy genres are full of tales of people who don’t quite fit into their societies. As Trans folk (am I the only person who can’t keep up with what’s the proper terminology—usually placed on us by cis people—to say who we are?), we fit right into those novels.
Indeed, the great master Robert A. Heinlein wrote about our predicament long before most of us even knew what “transgender” even meant. His I Will Fear No Evil may have been my first introduction to being transgender—although I didn’t realize it at the time.
So while so many of my friends and neighbors are bus worrying about the Trumplethinskin administration heralding the end of the world, I simply smile and think to myself, “We are the ones who will pick up the pieces.”
Visions and Journeys 