Shiri Bailem<p>As someone taking the opposite path from the below image:</p><p>I navigated it most of my life by constantly and obsessively managing my threat presence. It felt like a constant battle with the toxicity of other men. I had my guard up not because there was some threat of women assaulting me, but because watching their guard go up around me felt like being stabbed in the gut, like a lifeline getting cut off.</p><p>It took trauma and ego death for me to really start building an actual community for myself. I had bits and pieces I had gathered carefully and with great effort, but all that toxicity kept me from knowing what to do with it.</p><p>Now, even later, transition has been a massive weight lifted. (For those in the closet or eggs cracking: people clocking you doesn't make much difference here, if they put up that anti-creep guard around you they're a bitch anyways)</p><p>I feel like I can breathe. Connection is so much more casually there. I can see it in people's eyes, I can be in a crowd of strangers and I feel drastically less alone.</p><p>Unfortunately, those years of malnourished pain don't just disappear. I still have all of those threat management patterns, I feel like I'm scarred and sometimes even bleeding from that. There's a caution in me, afraid that people will misinterpret, that this wonderful person I want to make friends with will abruptly shut down on me and then disappear from my life if I relax too much, if I'm too open... I still feel like I'm emotionally walking on tip toes...</p><p><a href="https://foggyminds.com/search?tag=lgbt" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>lgbt</span></a> <a href="https://foggyminds.com/search?tag=lgbtqia" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>lgbtqia</span></a> <a href="https://foggyminds.com/search?tag=trans" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>trans</span></a> <a href="https://foggyminds.com/search?tag=transmasc" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>transmasc</span></a> <a href="https://foggyminds.com/search?tag=transman" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>transman</span></a> <a href="https://foggyminds.com/search?tag=transfemme" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>transfemme</span></a> <a href="https://foggyminds.com/search?tag=transfem" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>transfem</span></a> <a href="https://foggyminds.com/search?tag=transwoman" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>transwoman</span></a> <a href="https://foggyminds.com/search?tag=toxicMasculinity" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>toxicMasculinity</span></a> <a href="https://foggyminds.com/search?tag=Patriarchy" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Patriarchy</span></a></p>