Who am I?

Why am I here?

What is the point of my existence?

These are questions we all ask at some point in our lives, and we can go our entire lives without knowing the answer.

I suspect that a lot of people try to avoid thinking about it, not knowing how to begin answering, and I wonder how long a person can go without asking them. There are an endless number of situations and circumstances that can force us to confront these questions, and other soul searching questions like them.

For me, the questions can come up as a result of gender issues, but I’ve had them come up in many other circumstances. The answers, whatever they are, test the limits of my understanding, because in many ways I am the awareness brought into focus by both the sum and the gestalt of my understanding.

In the scope of my understanding, I am aware that I am not driven by a desire to be female. I am driven by an impulse that is at once too simple and too complex for words, because words will never serve to express that impulse.

Because I found myself in a body that I was not able to express myself properly in, it was only natural for me to become obsessed with finding a better way to express myself. I put a lot of thought and effort into figuring out the best way to embody myself in human terms, and because I was thinking in human terms, my self image is based on understanding the compromises that allowed me to be as true to myself as possible.

Of course, human limitations are based on the limitations of reality, which are the perceived limits of existence—or rather the limits of perception. The plain, simple and painful truth is that I am driven to do something that can not be done within those limits—as we understand them.

I am a person who would have to change the world in order to show myself in it. It is who I am, it is why I am here, and the end—the point—is to have a beginning.

It took a long time to understand that I was not limited by what anyone else knew or understood about reality; I can only be limited by my own understanding.

At the same time, I realized that people understand a great deal more than they know, and that the truth is pretty much always hidden in plain sight. As I began to see and understand more, I felt the temptation to try to share what I discovered and help enlighten others. I got side tracked trying to figure out how to describe and explain what I perceived, losing sight of my original purpose.

I do not need anyone to tell me that what I intended to do was “impossible” and I got tied up in wanting to be able to explain how to do the impossible before I went off and actually did what I intended. I just ended up spending a lot of time thinking about how impossible it was to do what I needed to do.

I should have obeyed my original instinct, which was to try to do the impossible without attracting any attention to what I had done, but I did not know how to do that without hurting people I loved. I was also bothered by the implications of what I intended, and the peculiar insight that motivated me to act.

I intended to transform my body, but that was simply how I intended to use the power I perceived in myself, how I would truly show myself. I am not actually interested in trying to change the world, but I find myself in a position where it is necessary in order to be true to myself. But, as Morpheus reminded Neo, “there is a difference between knowing the path and walking it.”

I know it sounds insane, and I’m not inclined to convince anyone that it is not. This is mostly a case of me thinking aloud and not much caring who hears. I have spent decades trying to figure out what it would take to accomplish this task, and discovering where I am obstructed by a lack of knowledge, or experience, or resources.

I’ve shared bits of speculation in past journals and blogs, but I can never really capture my thoughts in words. Writing allows me to slow my thoughts down and get some of them out where I can focus on specific ideas. I needed to get to the root of what was really bothering me, and even if it sounds crazy, I am more comfortable with what I have said in this post than I have been with any of the posts about being transgendered or needing to transition.

Those other posts have forced me to revisit the things that have torn me apart, but in the hope of being understood and accepted, I tried to stay within the bounds of what seemed socially acceptable. The problem is that transition falls bitterly short of accomplishing what I really need to do.

I have paid a huge price to give myself time to think this through, and for the second time in my life been tempted by the practical alternative and found the cost in terms of personal compromise to be too high. It was never an option, because I always believed in myself, even when that belief was undermined by all the doubt in the world.

If I cannot act on that belief, is there really any point to living?