The desire to fit in, to be a welcome and accepted part of a group, can be a powerful thing -- especially if you feel so different.
Disclosure
The following is a part of a letter I once read while in a chat room. I reprint it here (minus names) because it refers to attitudes and values that I come across in other transgendered women from time to time. At the time I read it I was starting to be depressed and a few days later I was suicidal. It helped me get in this mood because it implied a lonely and futile existence at the end of transition.
...I was at a support meeting once, and a post-op woman showed up. She was dressed in blue jeans and a T-shirt, and wasn't wearing make-up. But her hair, voice, mannerisms, and face were so genetic and authentic that we all wondered who she was there to support. When she said she was post-op we were shocked!
Here we were, all dressed to the hilt, and here she was, so casual, laid back and natural, that it was almost impossible to imagine her as anything else but the genuine article. She told here story, though, and we understood why she was there. She was so successful in her new role that not one of her current friends knew. She was in her twenties and in college, and lived her woman's life to the fullest. But, she said, over time the pressure built up that there were so many things about her life she couldn't share - so many things that were a part of her or a part of her past that she had to keep to herself. So, once a year she came to one support group meeting to have the chance to be open with others about all of herself - about all of the things she couldn't talk about with even one other person over the rest of the year.
And when she had gotten it out in the open and released the pressure, she went back to her wonderful, new life for another year until the pressure built up once more and she had to connect with the community. Well, I didn't much get it then (being pre-op at the time), but I sure get it now. You feel dishonest with potential friends when you don't tell, and therefore you stay away from friendships with "civilians". But if you do tell, you feel like you aren't one of them anymore, and you distance yourself to avoid that feeling. Then you go to the community to seek friendship. But now you are so far post-op and integrated that they all look like guys in drag and talk about things you don't even care about anymore. You either feel like you don't have anything in common, or you start to feel like a pretend woman just because you are associating with all the wannabes. It's not any feelings against them, but against the way it makes you feel to think maybe you are still part of that group.
But if not THAT group, to whom do you belong? I guess that pretty much says it. I'm actually very happy these days - happier than I've ever been. But sometimes I run away from home thinking I'm going to keep going and start that wholly new life. But then I call home to see how ____ and the kids are doing, and I come back to sleep alone in my room, and enjoy my kids and have a great friendship with ____. I go to work and think that all the women are idiots and all the men are jerks. The women are idiots because they just talk about relationships and clothes, and the men are jerks because they WON'T talk about relationships and clothes! Where do you go to have an INTELLIGENT conversation about relationships instead of a doting one? Maybe being TG is to forever be in the middle...
Now it seems to me that both the author of this letter and women she mentions may just have the wrong attitude. The woman she mentions succeeds in "passing" 100% (which I doubt, but let's assume that she was on hormones since puberty, so her body is just as feminine as any non-transsexual woman) but by doing so it appears that she's isolated herself. What's happened?
By pursuing a policy of non-disclosure to "close" friends, she's discounted herself and them. She's assumed that their knowing would place a divide between them and that they would think of her as less than the "real thing". So the result is a lonely paranoid life where she believes that she can't share important feelings with others except by the venue of a support group.
And I when I consider this I think that it's a prison of her own making.
Her attitudes bring this upon herself. The tougher road is to make disclosure where necessary or desired to friends. Yes, it's possible to lose such a person this way, but if you do, were they really your friend? When I started my transition I kept in the same job, and I had to disclose to everybody there because I had a service job that had contact with all the other sections in the department. To do so, I wrote a little booklet entitled "Being Laura" which I had distributed to the section managers (it helped working in a publishing section). When I came back from three months leave, I came back as Laura and everyone knew and on the whole it worked.
People knew who I was and what I was about and in general respected that. I did the same thing with SF Fandom too, later on, with the same results. And if in private people reacted badly, that was their business, not mine. Out of over 40 friends and associates, I believe I may have knowingly lost two (it doesn't matter about those I don't know about). That's a good percentage considering what paranoid expectation would give.
I lost one associate once, who called me a homosexual transvestite. He was wrong on both counts, and this said more about his fears than anything else.
In my current life, I live somewhere different and mix with different people. The need for immediate disclosure just isn't there any more. And if my being different becomes an issue, I don't (unless I have good reason, such as a life threatening situation) lie about it. I explain that I'm a woman, though a transsexual one, and this is just who I am. The other person can either accept it or not. As most people that I disclose to get to know me first, they generally accept it, and appreciate my openness.
Alienation
There's a second issue in the quote above -- alienation. The author comes across as being very dissatisfied with major portions of her life.
The people in the support group are "wannabes" (not "mid-process", or just beginning); the women at work are "idiots" and the men "jerks". I get the impression that she doesn't connect with too many people in everyday life. And that's alienation.
I know the feeling, because until recently, I've felt alienated in one way or another in my life. And it's the difference between what you feel and what you think you "ought" to feel. I experienced this in SF Fandom. I felt that I ought to feel good and happy when I went to meetings and conventions. I didn't, I just felt alone.
When I became honest with myself about fandom, I left it, because it had nothing to offer me. And it's the same above. What appears to upset the author is that she still belongs to a transgendered subgroup no matter how successful she feels herself to be, perhaps because it reminds her of her own early struggles. But really it seems to me that she has moved on, and the support group has nothing to offer her.
She's completed her transition.
And at work? Seems to me she needs another job, one that's more interesting and with people she can connect with. That problem isn't based on her being transgendered, it's because she's mixing with the wrong people.
Being Yourself
I once went to a new age meditation group. The instructor used different techniques to demonstrate different things. On this occasion she asked us to each to write down a desire on a scrap of paper and then hand these to her. Then she arranged people in groups based upon the similarity of what they'd written (without saying exactly what that was).
As this was done, and people moved to the various groups, it was clear that most people thought the same way. The biggest group was about 8 people, and the smallest 2 people. Everyone ended up in a group of at least 2 people except myself, I was on my own. Then the instructor read out what people had written on their slips of paper. Mostly, they were desires like "world peace", "inner harmony", "love" and so on...
It took a while for me to learn a lesson from this -- that to fit in, I had to be myself, and forget about the desire to fit in! When I've followed this, and concentrated on me first, I've been much better off. The friends I make when doing this are better friends for the honesty I show them.
The Ghetto Mind set
One reason I live in the Hunter Valley and not Sydney, is what I call the "ghetto Mind set".
This fits into the culture of Sydney quite well. Australia is a
nation of immigrants, and many settle in Sydney. When they do,
there is a tendency to settle in the same area as other immigrants
of the same cultural heritage. In this way, a number of
Sydney's suburbs have dominant cultures: Ashfield is Chinese,
Leichhart is Italian, Cabramatta is Vietnamese; and so on (though
Newtown's is most probably cockroach 
).
This doesn't mean that other cultural backgrounds are excluded from these areas, just that one dominates. Following in this pattern, there are also Queer areas like Darlinghurst and Surry Hills, where the dominant population is either gay, lesbian, or transgender. Sounds good doesn't it?
And yet, while living in just one or two areas where you consider yourself "safe" and "OK" might be alright, it's also limiting. I prefer to go where I will, and generally feel safe in doing so. I make my choices on where I live based not on the sexuality of the next door neighbors (who knows or cares what it is) but on the area as a whole, and the house in which I live.
So far this is just difference in choice. Those people live there, I live here. But the problem with ghettos that I see is that they tend to promote paranoia about everywhere outside what becomes the core group. And the core group really is arbitrary. I don't like labels as a whole, because people have a tendency to think that a label describes more than what it actually does. When that happens, they start relating more to the label than the person themselves.
I've met transgendered people who were absolute arseholes, and others who were real people. The label meant nothing as far as personality and liking someone went. And ghettos are one big label. That's why I like living here. Up here, I'm Laura, I'm me. Down in Sydney I get to be a "tranny". Wow, huge honour. See the attraction (no, I can't either)?