On Regret

Where’s the Regret?

You’ll

You’ll regret it if you start hormones.

You’ll regret it if you stop hormones.

Regret.

We’ve all felt it. About relationships. About work. About every fucking thing humanly possibly. If we can do it as a human, some or all of us will regret it.

While regret can keep us back, keep us and keep us down, it is a stupid emotion.

Regret assumes we can all access some crystal ball, which will magically tell us exactly, precisely and accurately how everything would have worked out had we made the different choice. I put this one in italics because we all know which choice would have made the difference, right?

If only I had started/stopped/upped/lowered my hormones then everyone/noone/someone would/wouldn’t still be talking to me.

When people tell us we will regret our decisions or we fear we will regret them, regret hides the fear we feel. We’re afraid for our future or our relationships or ourselves.

And instead of dealing with the fear, by dumping our shitty partner who humiliates all the time, or working hard to find an employer who supports our transition, or telling our mother to fuck off, I’m an adult, I’ll make my own decisions thank you very much, we get stuck in regret.

What a waste of time and human energy.

I get it. What if are two words that are huge for trans people. In fact, What if undergirds just about every decision we make. What if I lose my job? What if I lose my family? What if someone murders me?

These are terrifying propositions. All quite possible. But the fear that these realities might come to pass are just that: fears. If you do transition or come out and your father rejects you, for example, don’t regret your decision.

It’s his problem he can’t accept you. Don’t then reject yourself through regretting” your choice. That puts the responsibility for his bad behavior back on you, a really, truly stupid action on your part.

Instead, tell him to go cry in the closet and get back to you when he can adult for a period longer than fifteen minutes.

Every decision humans make every day, what if haunts the sidelines like the creepy guy at the prom. But ask yourself this question: why do our supposed champions, the ones professing to care about us, only tell we’ll regret changing our gender?

They don’t tell us we’ll regret buying a car we can’t afford or eating a bag of donuts every day for a year? No. They only give a shit about our gender choices.

This fact alone should cause you to be very suspect of anyone telling you’ll later regret your gender choices.

Never trust anyone who boldly reveal their double standards. They are like the advertisers of our social support networks, selling us shit we don’t need with money we don’t have.

Regret nothing, friends. Be proud of your decisions, knowing the future remains always unknown and the past is but a story we play on repeat.