Transition timeline, and dating and relationships in Transition

I consider my transition to have begun when I first started building a social identity for myself as Natalie. That was in April of 2010. It took me a couple months to have the confidence to introduce myself as Natalie, but prior to then I had always gone out with a group of friends or (more often) dressed privately. I think it's when I began to own my identity as a trans person that I began transitioning.

I came out to my parents in June of 2010.

I started living "part time," or I lived socially as Natalie but continued to work as Nathan in September of 2010.

I started seeing a therapist shortly after going part time and then came out to my mother again in October of 2010.

After Thanksgiving weekend of 2010 I quit my day job because I couldn't force myself to go out as Nathan any more. This was much earlier than I had planned. What I thought prior to transitioning is that getting to a point where I "passed" adequately as Natalie to live full time would be difficult and that it would take me a year to decide if I wanted to take that step. What actually happened was: it is so much more natural and easy for me to live as a woman than it ever was as a man and by Thanksgiving I was pretty much done with my life as a man.

I started estrogen for the third and final time on December 21, 2010.

I stopped teaching art lessons in February of 2011. I had been dressing as "Nate" for about one hour a week to teach art lessons to a 12 year old. I know my appearance was changing and I know that my ability to come across as a masculine man was very quickly slipping. I had definite breast growth, facial shape changes, and my hair had grown when I finally stopped teaching lessons. Actually, I was looking feminine enough that I'd step out of my car to pump gas dressed as a man and someone would come up to hit on me before realizing I "was a man" and back off.  At that point presenting as masculine was important to me only insomuch as I didn't want to come out of the closet to my student and his parents. Fortunately I never had to.

By July of 2011 I had built enough of a life and identity for myself as Natalie outside my kitchen job, and passed well enough that I was confident applying for other jobs. I left my kitchen job to work as a canvasser for HRC and to hold a job that I had applied for and gotten as a woman.

I had a rough couple of months due to poor planning on my part, got fired from a kitchen job, and got hired where I currently work. In August I broke ties with a male to female support group I had been loosely affiliated with because of political reasons mostly. By October of 2011, the hormones had done enough to my body that I looked female in jeans and a t-shirt. Since then I've continued to look less and less male.

From October until December I had my one and only lesbian relationship, spent some time homeless because of a dangerous living situation.

In February of 2012 I met a femme girl who would turn out to be the trans guy I had a crush on. "She" came on to me a little bit and invited me to her art show. I almost skipped it but something told me it was important that I go. "Her" paintings were actually good, which was much more than I expected, and I enjoyed being at an art opening again for the first time in quite a while. We met up for Karaoke later in the week. "She" talked my ear off at first and then when "she" realized that I had decided to give her a chance, "she" started pointing out all the other girls she was interested in and hitting on them.

I decided "she" wasn't interested afterall.

In March I met my first, (or second) transsexual friend, an ftm, whom I never would have read had he not outed himself to me. We all went to another bar. His girlfriend and I made out for a bit, him and I kissed, and we exchanged facebooks.

I started publishing my zine again, and the first trans guy who still looked like a girl started paying attention to me again, as a friend. "she" wanted to work on my zine with me. We bar hopped with another friend of mine and I read something about her that I found really attractive. "You're not really my type." I told her, "I look at you and see a femme. I'm not usually into femmes. I don't know why but you are the type of person I could really fall in love with."

"She" told me "she" was "ex-trans," that "she" had thought about transitioning but would end up a cross-dressing trans-man. I asked her what was wrong with that.

A while later "she" told me "she" was saving up for top surgery. Then a couple weeks later came out to me as a trans guy and started dressing more like a man. He started to make sense to me. I started crushing on him, but tried to suppress it.

In April my estrogen was doubled to it's current levels and my breasts grew from a B cup to a C cup and are still growing. This summer I had a great swimsuit body, and socially I got to the point where no one sees me as a man, or masculine person. None of my friends (I see regularly) can imagine me as a man, and I look better than ever.

Over the past couple of months I have been reconciling my guy self with my girl self. I'm incorporating more of my guy self into my girl self. It isn't that there was ever really a separation between the two or even that I suppressed my masculine side. I actually have been very good at not doing that. The truth of the matter is that I am starting to see myself as much more complex than a girl who was born with a boy body. I'm starting to think of my life more as a continuum than actually divided between my former life as a boy and my current life as a girl.

I have a greater understanding of my sexuality and basically I am bisexual, and I think I always was even though I was not a bisexual male; my sexuality involves my own body as much as anyone else's and two male bodies together is not something I find appealing, actually I really don't like it.

The thing about transition that I keep coming back to is that it really is a second puberty. It's like reliving the most difficult years of my life the way they should have been lived. Of course I only just turned 30. I don't know what it would be like to transition later.

One way that transition is particularly like being a teenager again is when it comes to relationships. A little over a year ago I had my first boyfriend, a trans guy who wasn't on T yet. It definitely wasn't anything serious and it was actually quite innocent. We didn't do much more than make out and sleep together. I dumped him after two weeks and then a couple months later dated a girl for about two months. I met this other trans guy after I broke up with my girlfriend, and at the time he was almost too femme for me to be interested in.

But hey, if I'm honest with myself I have to admit that I really find other people's attraction towards me to be very attractive. Of course he only shows that intermittently, not at all anymore. Of course I have been going through an excellerated puberty and my self in relation to him has been changing this whole time.

I think were I to compare where I am now as a woman to my growing up stages as a man, I would put myself at about twenty two. One year ago it would have been maybe fifteen, and in spring of 2011 I would put that closer to thirteen.

Keeping the comparison of transition with teenage years I would say I started my transition where I had stopped maturing as a female. For me I would say age 9 or so. That's when I really started making a conscious effort to be a boy. I think that during that time before I started hormones was maturing to the point  as a female to where I could begin puberty.

Which is where this trans guy, the one I was crushing on, is now.

I know it makes me sound a little sick for crushing on him, but keep in mind we all have some sort of sexual maturity that we reached through our original puberty. It isn't the same as a twenty two year old being into a twelve year old.

But it is reason enough that I really could never act on any type of attraction I have towards him.

I don't know what his transition entails. Transition is not about surgery or about hormones. It's only about self realization and actualization. Hormones have most certainly changed how I realize experience myself and my identity.

Transition has been an incredible healing experience for me. I wouldn't take that from anyone, nor expect anyone to give up that experience for me. And quite honestly, a huge part of the healing process for me was my sexual experiences with other people. Finding out that people were attracted to me, as I am, who I am, even without everything that hormones have done for me since.

But I'm getting off track from where I wanted to be in this entry.

Right now I'm starting to accumulate a group of trans guy admirers. I'm the really good looking, popular trans girl that all the trans guys want to be with. :)

That in itself is like reliving my teens the way I wish they would have been. And that is pretty cool.

I think in this regard trans people are really lucky. Here I find myself with a whole bunch of people who are going through the same thing I am (though in opposite directions) whom I am attracted to and who are attracted to me. Let's all be twenty something (and thirty something) adolescents together and date each other.

Oh I didn't miss out on the whole teenage dating/relationship thing afterall. I just get it later, when I can add in  alcohol and sex without fear of getting caught.