You Be You

Take your expectations and get rid of them. You are stepping into a time of great change and it is up to you to show the world that you are normal. We do not exist for the people around us to be comfortable with who we are. If a man doesn’t like you, than by all means, that man can move on. If any person doesn’t like you, they too can move along. There is no reason to continue to let people stereotype you and there is absolutely no reason to fill the stereotype. Great changes only come around when people make them. You are not allowed to compromise yourself any longer. You are allowed to love yourself. You are allowed to have dreams and hopes. You are allowed to just BE!

You have an expectation to be yourself and the best you that you can be, for you and nobody else.

Raised in a world where the goal was to win the man and be his perfect wife, I dedicated my life to becoming the girl that all men throughout the history of my life have said they wanted. I wanted to be different so that at the end of the day, when compared to all women on the planet I filled my role completely.

• I am independent and provide for myself.
• I won’t spend money unless necessary.
• I cook.
• I clean.
• I do landscaping.
• I raise children.
• I rock in bed.
• I encourage my male counterparts to have a life and go out with their friends, male or female, and live.
• I encourage my male counterparts to make their lives better.
• I give affection, attention, I build them up, I make their lives my priority.
• I make sure that I am physically appealing and sexually attractive for my male counterpart.
• I made myself be everything that men have told me that they wanted a real woman to be my entire life.
• In turn, what I had hoped would happen is that these male counterparts would see me as the awesome equal that I clearly am and respect me and revere me the way I respected and revered them. Hoped.

I no longer hope for that. I hope for nothing and expect less, and yet, even with that being what I put out there, it is too much. I have found that by being exactly what I was told men wanted, that I am not what a man really wants. I am riddled with self esteem issues because I based my self worth off of mans’ opinion of me. I became what these men wanted so that I could feel what I thought was love. I gave more and more of me, losing me, to these men that I was never good enough for. I just wanted to feel loved and appreciated, I kept giving, they kept demanding. I gave of myself in any and every way possible to prove I am worthy of equal status. I lost myself in every way when proving myself was a losing venture.

I wish someone would have taken the time to tell me how to be a woman when I was young and needed guidance. I didn’t know that I could say no. I didn’t know that a man wasn’t the prize for being. I didn’t know that my happiness was something that did matter. I didn’t know that I was an equal to be treated equally and respected and appreciated. I had wanted all those things, but didn’t know I should expect them.

Your expectation of yourself is to be the person that you would want to be with at the end of the day. Not the overtly sexual Hollywood porn version of you that you have created to make yourself fit in by perpetuating stereotypes. Be the person you see yourself being the most comfortable and happy with at the end of the day. Be the person that treats you the way that you want to be treated. You love you and treat you the way you’d want your friends and lovers to. There is nothing wrong with having dignity and self respect. You have spent your entire life being someone you are not, take the time to find out who you really are before you find yourself once again conforming to ideals of others.

Your expectation is to understand that you don’t have to be anybody but you and that you can change your mind about who you are at any time. Until you know that the reasons you are doing the things you are doing are your reasons and not for acceptance, don’t do it. This is way to guarantee that you will never feel right with yourself and will only serve up more regrets and mistakes. It will perpetuate the cycle of self hate. We are trying to stop that cycle so that all people can live with their own inner peace. It doesn’t matter what you once thought you wanted or if you decided you don’t like something that you thought you would. You can always change your mind; that is the power of being in control of you. So before you decide to do anything permanent or potentially emotionally damaging, think about who you are doing it for and the real reason why.

Understanding the motivation behind your actions will help you discover the world inside of you that you didn’t understand could exist. The one where you do get to actively make choices about how you feel on the inside and the outside. Don’t come this far and decide that your self image depends on the acceptance of others. Don’t give up on you and give into the people who won’t understand you. You are not the one that has an issue to deal with, it is the people who don’t take time to listen and learn. Standing up for yourself should never be dangerous and you should never have to prove who you are to anybody but yourself.

If you want to hit the beach wearing a bikini but can’t keep it tucked, who cares, wear your bikini. Your job in life is to be normal and the only way to be normal is to not change yourself to be what someone else wants you to believe is normal. Who cares if some one is offended by you being you, they can avert their eyes, they can leave if they choose, but you, you don’t have to do anything but be you.

Stop concerning yourself with being passable or fuckable because those two issues are not yours. If someone requires you to be passable to be with you, then that person has a problem that they should seek to fix within themselves. If you are throwing sex at someone to get them to like you, then you are letting them exploit your insecurities and manipulate you with them. Having a penis doesn’t make you a man, having a vagina doesn’t make you a woman. Who you are makes you who you are. Loving yourself is the only way to find the love you want. By not giving into the societal norms that have been set in place by people who should try acceptance over avoidance, and truth over ignorance, you are doing your part by not giving in and being someone you are not.

Remember though, everyone needs acceptance. Everyone needs patience. You are at the beginning of a huge wave of change and it is up to you make it positive. You can’t hate the people that don’t understand and only seek information so that they can. You cannot lose your patience with the people who aren’t used to the idea of gender identity being defined by something other than private parts. You can educate and you can be open minded, you owe it to yourselves to change the world in a way that honors who you are as an individual.

You can be loud and proud, elegant and classy, mean and sassy, shy and reserved but remember that everything you do is a reflection of you. If you walk around acting like a diva and treating people that way, you will get the same treatment back. If you act like a doormat, you will be treated like a doormat. Be firm in who you are, don’t ever feel like you have to explain yourself, but understand that if you don’t allow people to ask the questions that they have curiosity about, they will never learn and they will not be able to help others learn. If you are not open to teaching the world, then the world won’t learning and without the sharing of knowledge, true acceptance will not be had, and that helps no one.

Accepting those that don’t accept you is the best way to move forward in your life. You don’t have to agree with them, but understand that they have their right to be who they are and you have the right to just move on as well. Don’t put more effort into people than is worthwhile. Sometimes you have to walk away from the very people you want acceptance from. Sometimes you have to understand that distance is what it may take, and sometimes you have to understand that you have to let go so you can grow, and that the issue that anyone has with you, is not your issue, it is theirs. The expectations that others have of you are not yours to fail, don’t let them be your failures.

Tags: featured, Identity, self esteem

Category: Transgender Body & Soul