Conundrum

Today I find myself puzzling over the weird fact of my existence. The Internet created an opportunity to show a side of myself that I had long kept hidden. I am transgendered; in spite of being born and raised male the core of my identity is female. It is not a convenient or desirable situation, and it puts me in constant conflict between who I am and what I am. It would be simpler to let myself be defined by my body but the simple fact is that I am defined by my mind, or to be more accurate, my mind is what defines me. It is the nature of my thoughts and feelings that define me as a person, and it is by examining and understanding my thoughts and feelings that I find myself forced to admit I am a girl in spite of being a boy. It could mean that my brain structure and chemistry is feminine, or it could mean that the character of a soul is stronger than the imprint of a body. There is no way to know. What I do know is that being male, thinking, acting and being perceived as a man, does not make me one; it does not change who I am. It only means that few people are ever likely to see me for who I am.

That is the real curse, the real tragedy of being transgendered. Short of changing the way people perceive me, by changing my physical appearance, there is little chance I will ever be accepted for who I am. Actually, short of a miraculous and literal metamorphosis, there is no chance. What I am stands in the way. What I am distorts me no matter how I appear. I am not a woman. Looking like a woman, dressing like a woman, taking hormones and getting surgery to make my anatomy more like a woman’s, will not make me a woman. A change from transgendered to transsexual is a lateral move. I’ve been tempted, because it would allow me to be much closer to my natural self, but I’ve always known that the physical facts would still prevent people from seeing me for who I am.

But, who am I? That is the question it always comes back to. That is the question that stops me in my tracks every time I meet someone, or interview for a job. I am a lifetime full of facts that obscure the truth. I am a consciousness trapped in a reality that denies me my own reality. My body is nothing more than the earth in which my awareness is rooted. To conform to the flesh, I have to deny my own identity and assume the one that circumstance has provided. To survive, I have to conform to the flesh, and the pain it causes leaves me with no doubt as to the existence of the soul. The only thing in reality that can explain the cause and nature of this pain is the fact of my own reality, the fact that I, myself, am real. This pain, though it has repeatedly broken me and driven me to the brink of suicide, is one thing that assures me I am true.

I know who I am. In spite of having nothing to support me, nothing to confirm my identity, nothing in this world to base it upon but the understanding of what makes me true to myself, I know the truth. I have always known it, even when I tried to deny it for the sake of others who expected or demanded that I conform to their perceptions of me. I am different from most people only in knowing exactly the cost of the circumstances of my birth. In philosophy and religion, it is common to hear that we choose our place in reality, but if you examine it more carefully the choice is not one based on getting what we want out of life, it is based on getting what we need to perfect ourselves; it is a test, a trial by fire. I assumed that my test was about self-sacrifice and accepting reality. Acting on this belief, I nearly destroyed myself.

It is obvious when you think about it. It does not matter what you are if you lose sight of who you are. If you take the person out of the picture, it ceases to have a frame of reference, a perspective that gives it significance and meaning. All of my life I have listened to people asking “what is the point of all this?” and as soon as I realized that without us all of this has no point, I understood. We are the point of all of this. We give this focus. The problem has always been that we have never really understood our purpose. We do not understand what it means to be the point of existence. In today’s world, “existential” is practically a dirty word. No one wants to be existential. We have turned our backs on the spiritual, the ephemeral, the insubstantial, intangible and invisible, and in the process turned our backs on ourselves. This is the path to destruction.

All of the pain and suffering in the world is a product of us walking down this path. If we fail to see the point in our own existence, we cannot truly see the point in anyone’s existence. In a pointless existence, we are driven only by the impulses to avoid pain and seek pleasure and either way we are rendered too numb to think. Without thought we are blind and indifferent to the consequences of our actions, the pain and suffering we cause. Instead of thinking, we rationalize. Instead of solving problems that we have created, we justify them and in the process we create injustice. We end up pitting ourselves against each other, struggling for power to rise above the conflict, creating institutions that marginalize and alienate us further. Each step on this path of destruction strips away a layer of our souls and makes it easier for us to destroy each other.

As a misfit, I have always been painfully sensitive to the suffering of others, and the world’s suffering eclipses the imagination. The mere apprehension of it is overwhelming. Everyone is aware of it on some level and I am sure it is the weight of that apprehension that discourages so many, leaving them wondering if there is any point to existence, unable to understand how a meaningful universe could be so cruel and indifferent. I usually wonder why I am so desperate to find a place for myself in it. All I know is, this world is the one dream we all share and I am tired of dreaming alone.