Virtual Self Esteem

Virtual Body Image Issues
Being broken down as I am I find I'm stuck with a lot of free time. That's why I fell in love with Second Life, it gave me a way to live without a life.
Now I'm not recommending everyone give up hours of real world living for pixelized pastures, but it does make a great little escape once in awhile to go somewhere that gives you the chance to be almost anything. Except some of us don't really change much, as I recently realized.
In real life I'm an intersexed woman, a lesbian with a permanent strap-on. The disabilities that limit my social opportunities aside, I'm what a lot of you might call a Shemale, a girl with a cock who will always have a cock. This isn't by choice in my case, but it technically shoves me into that category. I have a blood disorder that means a surgery as invasive as a Vaginoplasty would almost certainly kill me, and when tests confirmed this I was told short of an unlicensed quack in Mexico, no serious surgeon would touch me. I had no choice but to make peace with the body I was stuck with.
That was 5 years ago.
In that time I've had ups and downs, ranging from attempting suicide because I didn't think I could cope knowing I'd never be a "real girl" as they say, to wondering defeatedly if I should just get my tits cut off and resign myself to being an unhappy man. Eventually I did make peace with it. It's a bit of skin and blood vessels, it doesn't define my heart. I know I'm a woman, as do those I care about, and anyone who disputes it can suck it.
Which leads me to Second Life.
I've reached a point in my life where I can't be bothered to create the little illusions we all have, I'm crippled and I'm too old to care. I have a wonderful wife who loves me as is, and I'd rather be hated for exactly what I am than loved for being something else.
So my profile on SL is honest, I admit I'm an it. Granted my avatar there is thinner and prettier, and has cat ears and a tail, but aside of that, it's me unembellished, I don't roleplay being anyone else but me. (Well, except when I pretend I'm a bitchy cyberpunk with a gun and stilettos on the post-apocalyptic sims).
Being me includes a penis.
I was cuddling with a lover online one afternoon, virtually of course, when she asked me about it. She wondered why I had bothered to buy a cock when it was a world where I could be normal, where I could pretend I had the body I thought I should've been born with. She wondered why I didn't just pretend to be a normal girl with a normal pussy fucking normal men and women, especially knowing that by having it and being public about it I was leaving myself a tempting target for trolls.
She asked me why in a world where I could be anything or anyone, why be myself?
I thought about it for a moment. I wondered if I should explain about my blood disorder, or being disabled, or any of the other factors I've told you folks. But in the end I just smiled and typed my answer.
There's nothing wrong with who I am, and I don't need to pretend I'm anything else.
We now return you to whichever life you're living.
Virtual Body Image Issues
by Penny Sautereau-Fife