Last night, I had dinner with a friend from the meetup group whose meetings I irregularly attend. She's a nice woman, about 30 years old, and not sure of what direction to take in life. Sadly, she has a similar lack of charisma to me, and I think it is her mode of speech that makes me think she's lonely.
So what can make a good person repel people without bad habits or bad intent? This has been a question that I've asked of myself over the years, and I don't have a good answer. But I know that I feel much more confident when presenting as Marian. This might be because I have less social history as Marian, and less history of being rejected by people. Our experiences add up over the years and influence how we express ourselves. We learn to be timid or assertive from the body languages and spoken languages of our parents, coupled with the experiences we endure as we grow up. It's hard to undo these "lessons", as they force us to repeat these unproductive expressions of body language and of spoken language.
Luckily, being trans and expressing ourselves in our identified gender starts to liberate us. We learn how to communicate in new ways and learning a new gender body language makes it easier for us to feel more confident and relaxed. No, transition does not solve our problems. But it gives us a tool to help us on our way to dealing with those problems effectively. If it weren't for the fact that I want romance in my life more than transition, I'd be rushing down my path of transition because of the freedom I'm experiencing as Marian....
