Double Life

Currently I find myself in a double life. At school and work I feel like a drag king, doing the same routine everyday in front of co workers and colleagues. An excellent performer, or so I'm told. I can fake the male persona so well, years of practice in the role certainly does help.

It's draining, exhausting and truly an exercise in frustration. It is unfortunately a necessary falsehood. I risk a great deal if I out myself at work, losing my job for starters and then be unable to continue transitioning. It is unfortunately interwoven to school because my employment is tied into my graduate assistantship. Lose that and I can't fund school. If the environment where I worked offered protected status to trans and wasn't so damn conservative I wouldn't have these reservations, but that is simply not the case.

But outside of school and work there's no cloak and dagger game, nothing to hide, and nobody to worry about discovering anything. As a matter of principle, I am tempted to drop the act. I've done it everywhere else and accepted the consequences, losing friends, losing family and relationships all in the process.

So why not take the results of this? Because my goals are so close to fruition that the risk is unacceptable, if it means delays.