I Am A Rock, I Am An Island
Julie’s girl friend had just broken up with her. This is probably the fourth relationship that has failed for Julie since her SRS. She told me that being TG had nothing to do with these failures as we sat sipping tea one cloudy afternoon late last spring. Julie spoke about the previous relationships in detail and opened up about her feelings and her questioning what went wrong. She is really a good person and very attractive; but for some reason, she strikes out when it comes to relationships. As she told me things that she never had told me before I began to see myself in her words and then I realized her problem because I had the same problem not too many years ago. The only difference was that I found the problem after a lot of soul searching and she had not yet come to terms with something that many of us faced and many of us still have to.So as she said more and more about things that used to ring true for me I nodded more and more in agreement. I saw myself talking to me and I knew what she would say next. Julie then stopped and looked at me and said in tears, “What’s wrong with me?” I said, “There is only one thing wrong with you and that is that you are afraid of being hurt.”
I built walls…
As I was growing up I built walls to keep people away from me. People can hurt you. People can learn your secrets. People can make you vulnerable. I basically turn to myself to find comfort. I became very self-reliant. I shunned team sports. I took up hobbies and pastimes that did not require anyone else to participate. This became very self-perpetuating in that as one withdraws from people, people sense that and tend to stay away in turn. So my walls became very tall and very thick over the lonely years. And after a while one gets used to being alone. It is safe to be alone. You do not hurt by being alone.
And then one day going after a lot of self-analyzation, I began to realize that for the most part my life was a sham. It was void of anything beautiful, rewarding or fulfilling. If I were to die, no one would even notice that I was gone. I realized that I needed someone in my life but that would mean I would have to let some know the real me and in turn make myself vulnerable. How could I do that? How could I take such a risk? How could I risk giving up control to someone else? I would be allowing myself to be hurt. But then I had been hurting all this time and did not realize it. As with any long lasting pain, you sort of get used to it and some pain become numbing after a long time and being lonely is very numbing.
I then told Julie that being TG was the root cause of her problem. Like me she grew up feeling different yet not understanding why. No matter how you try you just do not fit in. So you begin feel inferior and develop low self-esteem. So in order to protect yourself you begin to isolate yourself from people because people make fun of you and take advantage of you and you see others as the cause of your hurt. And then you have a secret that is too terrible to tell anyone so it causes you hide even more.
So I began to slowly tear down the wall that had kept me safe from others for all those years. I knew that I had to take the chance. I had to expose myself. I had to become vulnerable and give up control. Maybe I have been lucky in that no one out there wanted to take control away from me. Once I let them see and get to know real me, they liked me. Yes I am still vulnerable; I can be hurt, but the rewards have greatly out weighed the risk.
So as I finished relating my discovery to Julie she looked up and smiled at me. “See,” I told her, “today you became a vulnerable person. You allowed yourself to be hurt and to start tearing down the walls”. “How?” she asked with tears on her face. I smiled and held her hand and told her, “Because a rock feels no pain and an island never cries…”
Words by Paul Simon
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