In July 2013, I reached my goal. I climbed the mountain of transness, stood atop it, and cried out, “I am Sabi! Hear me roar!” I basked in the achievement, done, complete, finished; I had conquered the impossible journey. Had I actually been standing on top of a mountain, I could see myself, arms out, looking triumphantly out at the world below me and demanding, “Everyone may now bask in my triumph with me…”

Here was my problem, though. Had my life had a guide to help me along, she would have stepped up about then, pointed into the distance and said something along the lines of, “Yeah, that’s great, kid. See that mountain over there? That’s the next peak to reach…” I can see myself looking at her with a blank expression, “Sorry?” Then I would look off at the far-off mountain, “No, you don’t understand. THIS is my mountain. See? I climbed all the way up it, and now I am here where I belong.” I could see the guide looking me up and down and then commenting, “Yep, you did good, kid. Here, let me help get you started on the next mountain.” She then pushes me off a cliff in the new direction.

At the bottom of the mountain I had just conquered, I sat, filled with indignation and fury, “No! I climbed my mountain! I am NOT climbing another!” And I would sit there, stubbornly.

Three years later. The guide wanders by, finds me still in the same spot I landed after she pushed me, but now I am digging a hole. She asks, “What are you doing?” to which I answer, “Digging a hole.” The guide might cross her arms and say something like, “You know, I am not going to force you to do anything, but your next mountain is still over there…” I might glare, “I am good, thanks…”

Looking back at my posts after July 2013, I saw the not-so-slow decline of my mental state. I have already described my challenges with health care following my surgery, my trouble with anxiety, and even my eventual detransition in 2016, which I described as being the path of least resistance. I notice how my writing, which I admit was never great grammatically and structurally but was still somehow me, declined in frequency and arguably in quality. To borrow from my analogy,  the guide told me that my next mountain peak, my next challenge, was at the top of another mountain. That mountain was waiting for me whether I recognized it or not.

Today it is July 2026, ten years after I had entered the “path of least resistance”. I did absolutely crazy, self-destructive things in that time in the name of that path, which in reality was the path of utter resistance, far from “least”. This path did not lead to success; it led to collapse.

You see, when I was all proud of myself and on top of the world, I believed that I had conquered life. That from then on things would be okay. I would live my life, the semi crazy hippie chick now with fixed plumbing. I neglected to realize that the journey was not ending; it was just beginning. That there were still low points ahead, still hills to climb, and yes, another mountain to overcome.

I can look back and kick myself all I want about the things I sacrificed on this leg of my journey, but there is little sense in that because, in truth, even missteps eventually become a part of moving forward. Am I better for them? Maybe, maybe not. Can I blame the medical community for them? Yes… and no. I did need care I didn’t get; there is no question about that. But in the end, the decisions were mine to make, and looking back, I made some devastating mistakes. I decided my anxiety was caused by my being a trans woman; it was not. I decided that to move forward, I had to buckle down and be tough; that was an unsustainable path I traveled. Worse than all of that, however, I believed that my new batch of problems was yet again representative of my lack of worth, that I was flawed so deeply that, of course, this was the outcome of all my struggles. Again, I was wrong.

The truth was, I had challenges ahead; they were not caused by my weakness, my transness, my lack of strength, my laziness, or my self-worth. They were just problems; everyone has them. Being a trans woman was never my problem, just a fact. A thing I had to learn to live with to move forward in my life, which I did, though very messily. So now here I am, climbing that next mountain, which turned out to be a whole mountain range.

I can almost see the guide, wandering by yet again. “Oh, there you are. Took you long enough…”