Transitioning (Part 1)
How my Egg Finally Cracked for Good!
I started my transition about four months ago, and it’s been a wild ride so far.
While I’m not quite ready to share every intimate detail, I do want to talk honestly about how this unfolded — because if you’ve read How It All Began – Part 1 and Part 2, you already know that this decision was decades in the making.
So the real question is: why now?
What shifted? What finally pushed me from quiet endurance into action?
Strangely enough — like something out of a movie — it all began with a dream.
A vivid one.
In it, I was simply living my life as a transgender woman. Nothing special. Just everyday moments — seeing friends, moving through the world, existing.
But there was one striking difference…I was profoundly happy.
And then the dream started coming back.
Again.
And again.
And again.
I have no explanation for why this resurfaced after what I’ve since started referring to as my “long hibernation.” If gender dysphoria has a biological clock, mine had finally started blasting out a loud and inescapable alarm.
But what hit me hardest wasn’t the dream itself — it was the waking up.
The crushing sadness of returning to reality would linger for days — sometimes weeks — followed by waves of anger, depression, and the kind of helplessness that seeps into everything. My relationships, my work, my art.
And the distress was real. Not just for me, but for everyone around me.
I became temperamental. Destructive. I burned bridges — some of them permanently.
The dysphoria I had buried so deeply for so many years wasn’t just resurfacing.
It was erupting with fierce rage.
I remember catching myself staring at women in public. I’m sure my friends assumed I was checking them out like some type of sex-starved creep.
I wasn’t.
I was studying them — their posture, their clothes, the way they moved through space. I was trying to imagine what it would feel like to inhabit their bodies. To move through the world the way they did.
And instead of relief, it brought on more sadness. More frustration. More anger.
It felt like my life was slipping away from me. Like my will to live was slowly draining into cynicism and resentment. Helplessness curdled into jealousy. Jealousy into irritation. This state became especially aimed toward the people closest to me.
This was not sustainable.
And I knew it.
Last October, my wife left for a month-long trip to visit family.
Solitude has a way of forcing clarity.
About a week into her absence, I decided to try something I hadn’t done in over twenty years.
I went shopping for a female outfit.
The spree was chaotic and more than a little stressful, yet when I got home and put the clothes on, I could barely contain my excitement. I stood in front of the mirror and saw someone I thought had been lost forever.
She looked older. There were more gray hairs. More lines. A few extra pounds.
But she was there.
And then the practical voice crept in:
Was this just an itch? Something that, once scratched, would quiet down again? Could this buy me another decade or two of manageable denial?
The answer came instantly.
No.
Something fundamental had shifted. I had opened Pandora’s Box — and this time there was no closing it.
In transgender circles, they call this “cracking the egg.” A rebirth after years of self-imposed containment. Maybe a cocoon-to-butterfly analogy fits better in my case — but the egg metaphor works just fine.
What followed was a surge of gender euphoria so intense that I could feel it in my bones. I slept maybe two hours a night. I forgot to eat. I was running on adrenaline and endorphins.
I devoured everything I could find about transgender experiences. Writers like Stained Glass Woman and Cassie LaBelle resonated deeply with informative and heartfelt articles. And then there was Real Life Comics — simple, honest, and unexpectedly hilarious in the way it offered hope.
And yet…
What came next would lead me into one of the most emotionally demanding chapters of my life.
But that — is for Part 2.
If this resonates with you, I hope you’ll stick around. There’s much more to unpack. And if you know someone who might see themselves in these words, feel free to pass this along.