I'm quite curious about the need to be recognized by society for who you were (inside) and that thing you describe as a little ache in the head.  Each of those things make sense on its own.  But then I get confused.  Weren't you already who you really were on the inside?  How did the pills make that different?

Unfortunately this verges into the philosphy of self and I'm afraid I'm not well versed in such thinking. When you're a guy and you have the feeling you shouldn't be, there is a tremendous need (or at lest there was for me) to rationalize it, examine it and tease it apart to separate the wheat from the chaff. That idea of social acceptance was one of my attempts to do so.

Germaine Greer has made much hay in her criticisms of transgenderism by taking the stereotyped ideas that some TGs use to express their desires as meaning that the "need" to transition is a very superficial jealousy of society's gestures (or something). Although it is very easy to find yourself hooked into almost fetishizing uber-femininity, I recognised quite early on that there was a deeper aspect to identity and wanted to find some way of expressing that. As I have explained in the earlier essay, being male was almost like being poisoned. However I suppose I'd become so used to feeling like that that it was my "normal"; kinda like having a bad knee, you learn to avoid causing problems to the point where you no longer think about it, even if it's always there. So I hadn't imagined that there was another way of being, which was without feeling bad in my head. When that release came I realise that this feeling of genuine normal, the absense of internal distress, was what I'd been seeking. Of course, after that release you start to realise there are other ambitions, but none of them would ctually have meant anything without losing the ache in the head.

I compare it to my experiences of male transvestism. I hated dressing up as a woman back then, because however much I felt compelled to do so, the fact was that having put all the effort in, there was no satisfaction. I didn't feel like a woman, which was the hope and intention, I certainly didn't look like one and just had the feeling of having wasted my time and been foolish. I was embarrassing myself, even alone in my flat. Because what I was looking for was nothing to do with the clothes, the need to dress up was simply an expression of that internal need for womanhood that was only addressed by taking hormones. Once I had that.....everything else began to fall into place.

keep to the Fen Causeway