🌂 that other post isn't at home in this tag, it was playing around too much. still, it pierces through to an important matter, so i'll speak on it.
🌂 All too often when I get to know a trans person online they reveal, or I learn through dribbles of information, that they are not out in their day-to-day life. Among family, among friends from school and work, and where it concerns their body.
🌂 To any of this nature reading right now, take this from the thantophobe. You only get one shot y'know.
🌂 Let's say you have 60 years until you die after you become an adult. Makes the numbers easier, right?
🌂 6 years in the closet is a whole 10% of your time. Even 3 years is 5%.
🌂 And what the fuck are you waiting for, huh? Things gonna be different in 5 years? You're gonna be more economically independent than you are now, some tangible reason? Can you seriously look me in the eyes and say it's a tangible reason? If you can then great! <Perfecto>! Keep that reason in mind, y'hear? And if progress towards that reason ever slows down, promise me you'll reassess it, okay? Oh! "Society will be more accepting of trans people in X years" isn't this, btw. Retroactively flinch if that was your "tangible reason", alright?
🌂 Now. The rest of you. Those who had to avert their eyes. You're not ever gonna move, you know that? Putting it off and putting it off and putting it off. A vague unease, visions of how hard it might be, all of that has a name: weakness. Cowardice. Chains bind you, the chains of acceptable behaviour in our cissexist society. You gonna let that keep happening?
🌂 You're allowed to want to be happy.
🌂 You're allowed to make things inconvenient, unpleasant, and even painful for people.
🌂 People are allowed to do that. They might receive backlash, retribution, bring an end to relationships. But they're allowed to do that. That's what being a person (or whatever you wanna call yourself if you're a weird kintype) is.
🌂 You've already taken a virtual step.
🌂 You have friends where, if it goes badly, you can lean on at least some of them (if you let yourself). You'd be really surprised how far people will go for you in crisis. HRT is stunningly easy to get for transfems compared to what you expect, and even transmascs have a different homefield advantage—masculinity as the default, feminity as the exception. And HRT still isn't impossible.
🌂 Close your eyes. Imagine that person, you as you want to be, not this body as it is now, that man, woman, something else... maybe you even see a little boy or girl instead. Are you gonna let them down? They don't exist right now. The you you should be—want to be. And that's on your back.
🌂 I talked about weakness earlier, and I'm not taking that back. To be unwilling to do stuff like this, you have a fundamentally poorly developed sense of self. But that's not a death sentence, not even close. You can kickstart that kind of thing with active effort. But first you need to shake off these shackles, y'hear? Take a tangible step toward trying to be a person.
🌂 Do it. If you have an actual tangible reason then make plans. Consider the nature of that too: it's possible that changing some things about the way you behave to better match your heart is still possible under the conditions you're within.
🌂 And... maybe you need to ignore those "tangible reasons" if they don't have a defined endpoint.
🌂 You don't wanna die like you are now, right? Not doing anything until you're all the way at 80 and the light leaves you, or dying young in some accident before you can?
🌂 You're allowed to want to be happy.
🌂 You're allowed to make things inconvenient, unpleasant, and even painful for people.
🌂 You're allowed to transition. No matter what anyone says.
