The Waiting Game

All of this waiting has made me very restless lately. I am currently waiting on something big. Something that will change my life, and I hope that it will get here soon because the waiting is making me a nervous wreck. And as I sat there at the stoplight I realized that my transition has been one loooooong waiting game. In fact all of our transitions are just one long series of "waitings."

• We wait for electrolysis.
• We wait to see therapist.
• We wait for HRT letters.
• We wait to come out to people.
• We wait for the HRT to kick in.
• We wait to go full time.
• We wait for GRS letters.
• We wait for a surgeon.

We wait and wait and wait. Most of our transition is waiting for the next step. The actual steps themselves take short periods of time except for the electrolysis and HRT but in relative terms, if we did not have to wait for the red lights that the caregivers throw up at us, how long would it take to transition. I mean HRT will be life long and does not count except in the early stages, and I know a lot of post-ops that are still doing electrolysis. So how fast could we transition without the roadblocks of the professionals? If we did not have the Standards of Care to slow us down, one could transition to full GRS as soon as they found a surgeon with an open date.

Is that good? Should we be allowed to ride on the autobahn of transition without any stops or pauses? I do not know but it seems that these stoplights are put before us at certain intervals to give us time to adjust to the next step. I know with hindsight that during each one of those waiting periods, I have been improving myself and actually preparing for the next step. I often use my red-light time to plan meals or shopping trips or to cuss the city traffic engineers for long lights. In the early stages of transition, I was going out, improving my look, deportment, and passing ability. During the middle stages I have been improving my self-confidence and self-acceptance. How could I have handled going full time from day one? I think it would have been disastrous; remember I am the girl that still sticks the "mass error" wane in my eyes. I see the girls who have fast tracked and I wonder if they were more ready than I am. And from a lot of accounts they still were not prepared for all the things that they have encountered. I do not expect that I could have turn off my one lane dirt road in my 1969 VW Beetle onto a super highway without causing a major accident. That is why we have acceleration ramps to help bring us up to speed.

Sure for a lot of us we only see the caregivers as work zones on our road to happiness. We only see that they are leaning on a shovel to slow us down. But think about this honestly; if you had gone full time the first day that you said I am TS, would you be as successful as you are now? Would you have the makeup, clothing, deportment, passing skills that you have and need now? Would you have the job and family you have now? Would you be any happier than you are now? I for one do not agree with all of the SOC. Some professionals do not believe in any form of detouring from those guidelines, while others do. Some caregivers understand that the SOC are just that "guidelines" and exercise flexibility. That way some of us will not have to wait at the red lights too long. For me I will try to be patient and hope that my red light is not stuck. Be my luck that the gender cops will catch me if I try to run it. But I do hope I don't have to wait too much longer, I need to get in line for the bathroom.

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