First of all, I want to apologize to those of you who are here to see what movie I talk about this week.  I don’t feel like talking about a movie.  I want to talk about something that happened this morning, which hasn’t happened to me in over a decade.  I cried.

Let me start at the beginning.  When I was young, even before puberty (or just on the cusp of it I suppose), I was teased for crying.  I plan on going deeper into it in another blog, but know that I was teased for crying constantly from about fifth grade until ninth or tenth grade.  This taught me something that no child should feel the need to learn.  “Boys don’t cry.”  I learned to not cry.  I learned to bottle up what I was feeling.  I learned to be Data from Star Trek and not have emotions.  Alright, that’s a bit much, I still had emotions, but they were sort of a bland version of such.  I started to rely on humor to get through sad things, a lot of people do.  But that humor is false, you’re hiding how you really feel.

As an adult (including the rest of high school), I can count the number of times I’ve cried on one hand.  My grandparents passed, I was sad, but I didn’t cry like my father.  I got married, I was happy, but I didn’t cry like my wife.  I’ve watched a lot of sad Doctor Who episodes, I was sad, but I didn’t cry like David Tennant.  That has started to change.

Since accepting myself, I’ve felt a release of the emotional blocks I have in place.  It’s taken effort.  I have to allow myself to tear up.  Since I know who I really am, I’m comfortable to allow myself to feel these things again.  However, it’s still difficult to do it with others around, including my wife.  I’ve watched episodes of Doctor Who (including the one I wrote about for this blog) that have had me tearing up, but it’s only ever been when I’m alone.  That, unfortunately, didn’t change this morning.

I was talking to my cousin this morning.  She had reached out to let me know how much she liked my posts about being Trans, was proud of me, and how she admired my courage.  This made me think a little about what accepting myself has meant to other people.  I knew that there were a couple people I had inspired to make changes in their life, but I hadn’t really made the connection until this morning.

Here are some of the things I’ve inspired in others, I’ll leave them generic, as to not out anyone else.  One friend told me I’ve inspired her to try new things when it comes to her makeup.  Sure that seems like something very simple, but as someone who hasn’t even had the courage to play with much makeup myself, I see how important that change can be.  Another friend took a new job.  Again, it doesn’t seem like much, but change is scary, and when you’ve been doing one job for a long time, it takes a lot of courage to leave it, even when you hate it.  I’ve had friends come out to me about their sexuality.   I don’t think I need to explain how important that is to them.

One of the reasons I decided to accept myself, was I wanted to make a difference.  Over the years a handful of YouTubers and podcasters, as well as every other Trans person I’ve become friends with on facebook since, had helped me start to realize who I was.  I wanted to make that difference too, but I couldn’t until I accepted who I was.  While I haven’t inspired anyone (that I’ve heard about) to accept themselves as Trans, I realized this morning, I’ve inspired a lot of people to accept themselves nonetheless.

While talking to my cousin, all of this flowed into my thoughts.  I’m not sure if others would call it actually crying, but I’m going to.  A flood of emotion, followed by liquid flowing out of my eyes is enough of a definition to me.