Journeys and Transitions

by Melanie

Epilog

The Stuff Of Dreams

It has been several months since my last entry and nearly eight years since my first. The interval between the two we have shared together: a journey full of angst and woe, but always driven forward by hope. In the foreword to my diary I wrote a wish for my future self: "May you find happiness where I have found pain, and contentment from my frustration."

If I were to say I have found happiness, that would be a lie. If I were to claim contentment, it would be an idle boast. But now that my journey is over, what I can say is I have found something better: I have found peace.

There are those of us who are compelled to look deep within to determine if we are men or women. We question our thoughts and examine our feelings. We stare inward so intently that we no longer experience the world directly, but rather observe ourselves experiencing it.

We cease to feel the sky, a friend, our own hearts, but document and catalog each feeling, adding it to a mental scorecard. Ceaselessly, we tally the columns: man on one side, woman on the other. But the totals always balance. We measure ourselves against everyone we know until we no longer have relationships but comparisons instead.

Our emotions become objectified, petrified, and solidify until we are insulated from the immediacy of simply connecting to life and are locked in an endless cycle of pain. Who are we? What are we? Why do we feel as we do?

Is there one among us who does not yearn to be oneself, without fear, without shame, without second thoughts?

When the solution does come, it is not from an answer, but from realizing we must stop asking the question.

Only when we look outward once again to see what we see, feel what we feel, and act as we are is the cycle broken. Only then is the world within in harmony with the world without. And only then do we finally become whole, not as men or women, but as human beings.

My soul is no longer troubled, my heart is no longer afraid. I like who I am, I like what I am, I enjoy expressing my self. Happiness and contentment are fleeting emotions, driven by the tides of time. But true inner peace is forever.

Some have said they see me as a role model, a guiding light leading them through territory unknown. But to follow my path would lead to disaster. Though we all must cross the same ground, we all must find our own way. The role of the luminary is not to pave a road, but to draw a map. The journey I have taken is uniquely mine, but by its twists and turns I hope it illuminates the terrain we all must face.

So, this has not been a journal about change of sex but a flare sent up over the same dark land each of us enters when struggling with alterations in the directions of our lives. If enough of us venture on, in spite of our fears, in quest of our dreams, then perhaps, someday, the land itself will no longer be dark but, crossed by our glowing trails, it will become a shining beacon of human triumph.

And so, I stand here at the end of this journey as a sign that there is a passage to the other side.

Eight years ago I preceded my diary with a final wish, "And may you have no regrets."

Today, I conclude it with a simple affirmation: "Regrets have I none."

Best wishes for all you hope to do and be.

And always remember,

Dreams are the stuff Reality is made of....

Melanie
Burbank, California
May 2, 1997

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