the price of being personal

Nervous.

That's the way I'm feeling today, specifically with regard to sharing personal information about myself and my transition on the internet. The thing is, I want to reach out, be part of a community. Every day I feel myself less and less capable of hiding behind the old male facade and I have no idea what or who I'll become. I know myself well enough to know that was always an emotionally fragile person. Going through all these emotional, chemical, and psychological changes only makes that fragility worse. I feel like a glass girl, that almost anything could break me these days. It's very frightening.

This blog, while helpful, I felt was only part of what I should be doing to reach out to others. I awkwardly have begun to make videos and *sigh* post them to you tube despite knowing the potential consequences. Maybe it's because all I do is joke around, maybe it's because I'm anything but feminine but people don't comment on the videos I post. It shouldn't bother me nor should the lack of subscribers. It does make me feel unimportant and uninteresting though.

There's a simple, undeniable fact present: I need validation. I'm not proud of that but I'm trying to be honest with myself. Six out of every seven days of the week I feel disgusting, manly, and not even human. I'm struggling to relearn how to respect myself and how to connect with others, both new and old, around me. Someone gave my last video a shitty rating. It bothered me, albeit only to a very small degree. The thing is that the video is less than three minutes and doesn't remotely cover anything personal about my life.

This begs the question: What happens if I do open up and share the deeper parts of my life? Even though my low self esteem and fear of others has made me hesitate, a big part of me does want to share what's happening to me. I've been hoping that I'll find kinship and understanding. Part of me hopes I could help others as much as they help me.

At the same time though I feel like, if a one star rating managed to get under my skin, how will I react to actual hate mail from inside and outside the community? I want to believe that I'm stronger than that but I just don't know. I'm scared and completely self conscious all of the time, hence the near complete isolation of my present existence. I don't know how else I can reach out though.

I have a lot to think about. If anyone out there has any thoughts, personal experiences, whatever.. it would be much appreciated.