Liberatis Tutui
by Raven Usher
It is amazing what the mind chooses to remember and what it forgets. There are points in our lives when we say to ourselves, “This moment will be burned into my mind forever. Surely, I will never forget this day.”
Then we get washed away in the wake of time speeding by us. Things we thought would be with us through the ages fade by the wayside while bits and pieces of trivia set up permanent residence in or minds.
Then there are the things we would like to forget but can not. Things that haunt us. Things that keep bringing the past out of storage and dropping it back in our laps. We all have the things we would like to escape. But we can not escape ourselves.
For transsexuals, the one this we want to escape the most is the gender of our births. We want to erase all traces of it. Not only from our bodies, but from our minds as well. It is one of the hardest mental challenges that face transsexuals.
Too many transsexuals develop a hatred for the person they use to be. Being raised as the wrong gender, they feel, was the source of their current sufferings. In their minds they put out a contract on that person from the past. They try to kill him. They try to wipe his very existence from the face of the earth. They think the “payoff” for the hit is the true gender of their soul. But they are wrong. Dead wrong.
The person of the past is the same person of the present. Just as the baby once carried home from the hospital is the same person as the rebellious teenager of high school. One bares little to no resemblance to the other. They think different. They act different. They look different. But still they are one person. To erase one is to erase both.
It is not an easy thing to do, to come to grips with the person you once were. It takes the healing power of time. It takes the patience to all change to happen. And most importantly, it takes the power of forgiveness.
We have to forgive the genetics of our births. We have to forgive fate and random chance for the cards we were dealt. We have to forgive those who raised us as the gender that presented itself when they changed our diapers. We have to forgive medical institutions that make it so hard to become what we should be. We have to forgive the strangers whose lack of understanding cause them to hate us without reason.
First and foremost, we need to forgive ourselves. Forgive ourselves for the accident of our births, for the fear that condemns us to inaction, for the turmoil we cause in the lives of those around us. We must forgive ourselves for being us.
That may sound harsh. But if we cannot forgive ourselves our pasts we surely will never reconcile our presents mush less build a decent future. Worse yet, if we cannot manage to forgive ourselves for those things we believe to have wronged ourselves with we will end up destroying ourselves in the attempt to destroy the dreaded past.
Don’t let you memories kill you. Liberatis tutui. (Save yourself.)
Blessed be.
by Raven Usher
It is amazing what the mind chooses to remember and what it forgets. There are points in our lives when we say to ourselves, “This moment will be burned into my mind forever. Surely, I will never forget this day.”
Then we get washed away in the wake of time speeding by us. Things we thought would be with us through the ages fade by the wayside while bits and pieces of trivia set up permanent residence in or minds.
Then there are the things we would like to forget but can not. Things that haunt us. Things that keep bringing the past out of storage and dropping it back in our laps. We all have the things we would like to escape. But we can not escape ourselves.
For transsexuals, the one this we want to escape the most is the gender of our births. We want to erase all traces of it. Not only from our bodies, but from our minds as well. It is one of the hardest mental challenges that face transsexuals.
Too many transsexuals develop a hatred for the person they use to be. Being raised as the wrong gender, they feel, was the source of their current sufferings. In their minds they put out a contract on that person from the past. They try to kill him. They try to wipe his very existence from the face of the earth. They think the “payoff” for the hit is the true gender of their soul. But they are wrong. Dead wrong.
The person of the past is the same person of the present. Just as the baby once carried home from the hospital is the same person as the rebellious teenager of high school. One bares little to no resemblance to the other. They think different. They act different. They look different. But still they are one person. To erase one is to erase both.
It is not an easy thing to do, to come to grips with the person you once were. It takes the healing power of time. It takes the patience to all change to happen. And most importantly, it takes the power of forgiveness.
We have to forgive the genetics of our births. We have to forgive fate and random chance for the cards we were dealt. We have to forgive those who raised us as the gender that presented itself when they changed our diapers. We have to forgive medical institutions that make it so hard to become what we should be. We have to forgive the strangers whose lack of understanding cause them to hate us without reason.
First and foremost, we need to forgive ourselves. Forgive ourselves for the accident of our births, for the fear that condemns us to inaction, for the turmoil we cause in the lives of those around us. We must forgive ourselves for being us.
That may sound harsh. But if we cannot forgive ourselves our pasts we surely will never reconcile our presents mush less build a decent future. Worse yet, if we cannot manage to forgive ourselves for those things we believe to have wronged ourselves with we will end up destroying ourselves in the attempt to destroy the dreaded past.
Don’t let you memories kill you. Liberatis tutui. (Save yourself.)
Blessed be.
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