[ CW ] `` If you put them together it was obvious to see , but I 'd held them piece by piece , and my life was all the emptier for it . ''

( Well, four days later, when I'm finally well enough to write a response, I'll do exactly that. Also, I fixed the prompt sentence, I felt it needed an additional comma. ) 
 
 I'd been running my whole life. 
 
 I was pretty sure I'd known that for a while now. Like, I'd started `` knowing'' that a few months ago, maybe even a whole year now? It had been a thing I'd realized over time. 
 
 I guess I'd been looking at the pieces before to escape from the whole before. If you put the pieces together, the truth was obvious, but I'd held them piece by piece, and my life was all the emptier for it. But... I'd escaped by focusing on the pieces. When I even focused on them at all, that is. 
 
 The cross dressing. Well, maybe I was just a cross dresser. That's a little weird, but it was an easier revelation to swallow than the truth. The discomfort with my body. Well, maybe I just had some self-image issues. This was easy to swallow, fucking everyone had some of those, right? I was uncomfortable with any strong form of being `` manly'', despite not minding a lot of masculine things. Well, maybe I was just open minded about my interests. That was n't just easy to swallow, it was practically an easy point of pride. 
 
 And, in focusing on the pieces like that, they did n't add up to anything at all. After all, you could be a guy who was a cross dresser with some body image issues and be open minded and disinterested in stereotypically masculine things. 
 
 The truth, after all, lay in the connections, not the individual pieces of the puzzle. And the truth was that these were all part of the same thing. 
 
 I was *not* comfortable with being a guy. My body was n't just something I disliked, I really honestly had never been comfortable in my skin. My dislike for traditionally masculine activities had always, *always* stemmed from the fact that they were associated with being `` guyish'', not because I just disliked them. The cross dressing had always made me feel a little better about my body, and it had been associated with fantasies of actually just... well, just being comfortable. Just being a girl. 
 
 It had n't been a `` fun'' activity. It had been an activity I needed. An activity I could n't stop. 
 
 Hell, I'd even tried, once or twice. I just... could n't do it. I hated those times. 
 
 Yeah, if you put them together, it was obvious to see, but I'd held them piece by piece, and my life was all the emptier for it. 
 
 But... But until I'd gone off to college, I'd never let myself do that. I'd cross dressed secretly, narrowly avoiding getting caught. A few weeks into the first quarter here, though, and I'd started to really, honestly question. 
 
 I think I knew the truth within a week of that. And yet, here I sat, on my bed, on this last day before finals, wondering. 
 
 `` wondering.'' I whispered out loud, and then allowed myself a small, sarcastic laugh at my own expense. 
 
 *What is there left to ask? I think the conclusion is obvious. * I admitted to myself, *I do n't think I can say'I do n't know' this time around. * 
 
 I let out a deep breath. 
 
 *Yeah. I'm transgender. * 
 
 That admission was hard. 
 
 After I'd made it, there were three sets of feelings that set upon me. 
 
 1 ) A feeling of hope for the future: a dream, a goal that I had: To be able to express myself as a woman at some future point in my life. 
 
 2 ) A feeling of fear for the future: With this new realization, I knew that either I would aim to fulfill the goals I now knew I had, or I would suffer. But I would suffer some either way. While being a trans person who did n't realize that was terribly hard in this world, being a trans person who did realize they were trans was n't exactly an easy road to hoe. I'd read up on other trans people's stories. At best, they'd had to face up to people that disapproved of them and made their life more difficult. At worst, they were rejected by family members, or faced hate crimes of various degrees. 
 
 3 ) A feeling of slight uncertainty. This was the most painful emotion, although it was also the subtlest. Even with all the certainty I had, I could never be fully certain, and I knew that. What if I was wrong? What if I was just psychotic? What if the transphobic people of the world that said people like me had chosen our fate were right? Sure, I did n't believe that, but I was n't so stupid or so arrogant as to believe with absolute certainty that my view of the world was correct. It seemed unlikely to me that I was wrong, but I found it frustrating that I could not have absolute certainty. This was huge step, and the fact that, ultimately, I still had to make it like I made every other decision, relying on my own ability to perceive the world correctly, was very frustrating. 
 
 I thought the answer to my questioning would be enough when I started questioning, but now I had a whole new set of questions and emotions to untangle. Was I going to be OK? What if I was wrong? What if I was right? Would n't it be a wonderful world if I could have what I wanted? How long would it take me to get hormones? How could I get access to them? Who would I come out to, and how? Did I want surgery? If so, when? How would I gather the funds? What if I never passed? What if the school was n't too keen on my transition? What if some professor was n't too keen on my transition? Who would I come out to first? 
 
 So many questions. But this time, I was fairly sure none of them would take a year to answer. 
 
 I allowed myself to answer one more question that day, the last one I asked. My roommate had been pretty supportive through this, and I'd confided in him a lot about myself along the way. 
 
 Later that evening, I walked up to him, and, my heart beating a hundred miles a minute, I said 
 
 `` I've... got something I need to say.'' 
 
 `` Yes, Alex?'' 
 
 Alex. It was n't a terrible name; a girl could theoretically have it, although that was another new question for me: Would I keep my name, or change it? If I changed it, what would I change it to? I was obviously going to have to change my legal name, as that was'Alexander', which was an obviously masculine name. 
 
 I paused, having trouble spitting the words out, `` I'm transgender.'' I said, `` That's the conclusion I've come to after thinking about some of the things I told you about before.'' 
 
 I'd been drunk when I'd told him those things, but he had n't told anybody. 
 
 He smiled, nodded, and said, `` I assume this is a secret for now.'' 
 
 I nodded, `` I'm not ready to tell everybody yet.'' 
 
 ( That's where I'll end this piece. The `` Coming to terms with being trans'' realization is a kind of a fun thing to write, because it's *very* emotional and powerful and I think it fit the prompt to a T. Also, this is basically unedited, so I hope it does n't have any huge sentence errors in it! )
