Tuning out and the Doubt

Whilst I've been very lucky during my transition so far and have encountered very little open hostility from people, I'm still quite aware that there are a good number of people out there who think I'm just about the worst sort of creature to walk the face of the earth.
In trying to figure out what was wrong with me I inevitably came across the arguments against both my sanity and against the very existence of trans people at all.
Most of the time it doesn't get to me.
Most of the time the fact that I'm happier than ever before, that I feel at home in my own body for the first time in my life, that I'm more mentally organized and competent than I was before I started HRT, these things confirm to me that I am on the right path.
But sometimes I get the feeling that someone who I care about doesn't really get it. Doesn't see me as I see me.
I wonder if I just look insane to them.  I wonder if I am insane.
Society doesn't have a lot of time for people making radical assertions about themselves.  Asserting that ones internal sense of gender does not match ones physical body is a fairly radical claim to make.

A lot of trans people hate being called brave.
"So Brave" is a trans meme.
I don't think I'm brave, but taking a stand and saying "No, despite what my body has to say on the matter, I am not a man, I am a woman" Is a really scary thing to do.
It was scary when I told Lyssa.
I couldn't even say I was a woman.
I said I was trans.
I think it took at least three months after I came out before I said those words aloud.
'I am a woman."
I said it to myself, alone, because I didn't dare say it to anyone else, and I waited for the universe to refute me.

There are a few women I know, friends who I really respect and who exemplify what I consider a female role model to be, who I haven't spoken to since I started transition because I'm still scared that they might deny me my existence.
Refuse my claim of womanhood.
These are women who, more than anyone, taught me what feminism was, and I get lost because I don't think I can live up to that, because I can't live up to them.

As much as I try to tune it out, the hateful things that are said about transwomen are there in my mind and sometimes the doubt is enough that I sit here, like now, and wonder if I'm not just making this all up.  If I'm not just mentally ill.  As bad as they say i am.

And so I go through the trans checklist and review my past for all the clues that add up to make me "trans enough".
Because if you're going to reject the gender you were assigned, you'd better have a good narrative.  
An approved narrative.
You'd better measure up, because we can't let people go around making assertions like that.
We just can't.

Trans enough.
So Brave.