new job same person, trans happiness and this whole gender identity thing

I started a new job yesterday. It's in the same neighborhood that I've worked in multiple times and I got the job based on a recommendation from Shannon, my old boss who employed me as assistant kitchen manager and had me on a salary of 30k a year; it was a mistake to leave that job. Actually when it comes down to it, I still think I had to leave that job. In retrospect I could definitely have transitioned there but I was never going to know it. I held a lot of responsibility and respect there. It's really really hard to come out of the closet to an employer as trans; I also quit an insurance sales job because I couldn't come out.

I don't want to write this blog about why I quit my job a assistant kitchen manager; it wasn't about transition,

The reason I mention it, and the thing that inspired me to write this blog is this: Four years ago I woke up every morning around 7, got dressed, shaved well, and put on make-up. Then I rode my bike to work, completed a prep list, and worked the line a little, and rode my bike home. At home I would change from my work clothes into a skirt, eat dinner, watch politics on tv with my dog and drink beer. Yesterday went almost exactly the same way except I no longer wear makeup in such a way that it can't be noticed, I don't have much facial hair left,  I have breasts that fill a bra, and when I came home I didn't change into a skirt to feel "girly" but rather because I had to wash all my other clothes.

It was even the same skirt from four years ago. Of course now it looks good on me.

I like this new job. I felt like I fit in well. Weirdly it felt just like working did before I transitioned, except now I'm a "she" and I used to be a "he." Which when it comes down to it is really the only thing I've changed.

Of course in making that change I've grown up a lot. 

But this isn't an entry about how I've grown either.

The thing that I find really curious about myself is why I had to transition. When it comes down to it I think I am the same person as a woman that I was as a man. I even look like the same person (except of course that I look like a woman), and yet I'm happy. 

Four years ago I had a better position than the one I just started, and I felt like I was not living the life I was supposed to be living. I don't mean that I constantly was thinking "I should be a woman." That thought was there but I was usually able to suppress it, at least enough that I wasn't consciously aware of that being the cause of my dissatisfaction, and hell maybe it wasn't the sole cause. I bitched about working in a kitchen, wearing clothes I knew were going to be ruined, getting off or work stinking and sweaty, looking like someone really blue collared.

Maybe it was solely about my need to transition. Okay I still don't particularly like how I look coming home from work but I don't mind it so much. I don't look like someone I'm not. 

Oh and it was actually easier to be my girly self in a kitchen surrounded by guys than it is in the lesbian bar. When it comes down to it I really like being the female in a male/female dynamic. I think, though this is off subject, maybe that's why my trans friends are pretty much exclusively female to male...but back to topic.

I think more than anything else I transitioned to feel comfortable in my own body. I feel so much more comfortable in my own skin than I ever did before. Even as a little kid I used to feel very uncomfortable with my appearance and I didn't even have an explanation for it. I hated that I looked like my father and little brother but not my mother but it didn't occur to me that it was because I didn't want to look male. 

Gender dysphoria is an experience that cis people can't even imagine. I know this because of how happy it makes me to look in a mirror and see a woman, and how happy it makes me to look down and see breasts, and how happy it makes me feel that I am allowed to wear heels, and makeup, and skirts and dresses and all the girly clothing that was denied to me for so long; that I am allowed to express myself as female.

Sometimes I am so jealous of cis women because they have always had this, they will never have any doubts as to their gender, as to being perceived as their gender, as to their right to express themselves as their gender.

Of course they take it for granted, and some call trans women shallow people who are trying to be stereotypes; you know it is actually difficult for me to publish that statement above about liking heels, and makeup, and skirts and dresses. I do, but it isn't a huge part of me and I don't like them all the time. I really like expressing myself as female. It feels natural, and comfortable, and right. And I feel more confident when I'm dressed in an outfit I like; a friend told me I "glow" when I like an outfit. To say I'm shallow for that, or that I'm working against woman's lib because of that is really unfair.

I have this happiness with my gender that most women don't get to experience. I mean, I know what it is like to be perceived and treated like a man, and for a female gendered person that is a pretty horrible thing. As bad as this woman thing gets it never compares with that.

And yet I'm still the same person I always was, and have the same dynamics with people I have always had. This gender identity thing is such a weird thing. It's so hard to actually define that were it not for my experience with needing to transition I wouldn't even believe in it.