Am I satisfied?

So I just got home from a day trip to DC. I spent a little bit of time with an old friend whom I haven’t seen much of in the last few years. She asked me if I was satisfied.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I mean are you satisfied with life.”

I answered briefly that I am not satisfied with my career, that I want better friends, as in I don’t have very many close friends, that I don’t want to remain single for the rest of my life (even though I’m kinda beginning to lose hope that I’ll ever find someone) but that I am very thankful for what I do have.

It’s a strange question. It’s a very probing question that really asks me to think. We were close before I transitioned, and her ability to challenge me was something I always liked. I feel bad, because I feel that I pretty much just talked about myself and didn’t try to find out to much about what has been happening in her life since we talked more often.

I have gone through a lot in the last few years. She told me I never seemed to be inauthentic before I transitioned, that I always seemed to be sincere. “Unhappy,” she said, “but sincere.”

I will say that she is one of the few people that I didn’t hold much back from, though I’ll also say that she is basically right.

I am the same person. In fact I’m very much the same person. I’m living basically the same life I did before…well with a few exceptions. I’m generally a much healthier person, and I think that I am better at dealing with my problems.

I am more satisfied with life. I don’t feel that my life is completely wrong, (even if not much has changed) I feel like I match. I don’t feel like I look like someone different from how I feel.

Is that to say I feel like a woman? Well yes, and no. I feel like myself, like I’ve always felt. There are things about my appearance I don’t like sometimes, but basically I feel that I look like myself and I act in ways that feel natural for me. I mean, objectively speaking I look and act like a woman and feel very comfortable with that, much more comfortable than I ever felt when I looked and acted like a man. I have no way of defining what it means to “feel” like a woman, but I am pretty confident in saying that if I try to define myself I fall pretty squarely into the woman category.

Gender is a really tricky thing. I felt completely mismatched as a “man,” but to a lot of people who knew me I seemed perfectly normal. I mean, I was never a butch guy, and I did come across as Trans to quite a few people, but I didn’t seem as blatantly wrong to them as I did to myself. If I hadn’t experienced just how real it is, I would want to conclude that gender is meaningless.

Then again, if I feel like myself, and I’ve always felt like myself, and I self-define as a woman, then I’ve always felt like a woman. If I’ve always felt like a woman then I never felt like a man and I have never experienced having a male gender. All I can really say is that my gender hasn’t changed, which means, I have no special insight into the male gender.

Weird, huh?

May 24^th marks the two and a half year anniversary since the last time I ever presented as a man. It was the day before Thanksgiving. Outside of work I  presented as a woman. I had a four day weekend presenting only as a woman. Monday morning I woke up and could not force myself to present as a man ever again. I realized that for better or worse, my female gender presentation was all I had to work with.

That’s a weird experience also.

Am I satisfied with my decision to “change my sex?” Well, yes. Every morning when I wake up, and before I go to sleep and at odd times in the day when it occurs to me, I thank God that I am now living the life that I am living, and that I now have the body that I have. I’m even thankful for the little things like not having to use the men’s restroom at the Greyhound station. In another sense, it’s something that I am, not so much something that I did. Am I satisfied with being a woman? Well, I guess. It’s hard for me to imagine anything else. I mean, irregardless of how masculine or feminine I may be this is who I am.

Am I satisfied with my life? Well…

Last week I wrote a blog entry about once again getting a “thank you for applying but…” letter. I went home later that night and lay in bed praying for quite a while. “God,” I asked, “What mistakes have I made that this is my career?”

I fell asleep and had a dream. In it, I was sitting outside on a patio, around a table with about five or six other people. Some were people I knew, some were people I had never met and I was feeling disappointed that a Trans guy I once had a thing for couldn’t be there, wishing things between us could have been different. Someone commented on how big my breasts had become (which isn’t that unusual for people to tell me) One woman, a larger type, not unattractive but not my type said something about her breasts being larger than mine. “Of course,” she said, “Mine are implants.” Somehow she told me that she was Trans and that we were all sitting together to celebrate my birthday. “This is all for you.” She said referring to the group I was sitting with, “Today is your day, you’re the guest of honor, so today we’re going to serve you.” Then she gave me a birthday card.Inside there was a long “inspirational” poem. I skimmed over it, I didn’t know this woman and I wasn’t particularly interested in her advice, but I didn’t want to be rude either.

I woke up, and had to rush to get ready for work.  I wasn’t particularly happy about going to work.. About two minutes into my walk my radio shut down and refused to start playing music again. So I had my entire walk (about an hour) to think. I tried to remember what was written in the woman’s card. The closest I can remember is “Always remember that there are no right or wrong decisions. There are only choice that you make to become the person that you are.”

This actually made me feel quite a bit better about being where I am right now in my life. For one, it takes a lot of pressure off of me in trying to decide what I am going to “do” about the things in my life that I’m not satisfied with, and it makes me feel a lot better about the decisions I have made that have put me where I am right now.

In some ways Transition, once I was able to accept it, was one of the easiest, most natural things I have ever “done,” but only because it is who I am. My transition was never about trying to act, and look more like a woman. It wasn’t about learning to “pass” as a woman. It wasn’t about changing my sex. All it was was deciding that I was going to make choices to be true to myself. 

This is why it is so odd for me to ask myself if I am satisfied with my decision to change my sex. It wasn’t so much a decision as it was the only possible outcome of a bunch of tiny choices in which I could not have chosen differently and have remained true to myself.

When I was contemplating transition, I always tried to figure out why a “boy” would want to be a “girl.”  It’s the first thing people always ask me when they find out I’m Trans, and it is what makes Trans people absolutely baffling to Cisgender people. There is no answer; it’s the wrong question. The question I asked myself that finally allowed me to make sense of myself was “what if I am a girl, how am I any different from how any other girl would be given my situation?” and the answer is I’m not.

Transition is this thing that I dreaded for most of my life and then I went through and it was wonderful and now it’s in my past and I still don’t really understand it, but I am satisfied. I’m still the same person.

I don’t know. I feel like in my transition, and in everything else, there aren’t any right or wrong answers, only choices that I make to become someone I already am. I think really the only wrong choice is to choose something that isn’t who I am or what I want.

Am I satisfied with life?

In so much as it is mine, I am very satisfied.

dissapointment about my post college career, and what everyone wants to read about: 2 and a half years on hormones!!!

Well, I'm writing from the library today so I don't have much time to write.

I got yet another form letter of "thank your for your interest in working for....but we have decided to hire someone else." I quit. A decade after graduating college and sending out hundreds of resumes without any interviews I think I have to admit that my degree is essentially useless. I'm sick of it. I wish I could go back to my 15 year old self and tell "him" not to take that first job in a restaurant. I wish I had never seen the inside of a kitchen and didn't even know how to blanch green beans, but oh well. I hate my profession, and I think most people who work in my prefession grow to hate it, but I'm give up. It's the only thing anyone is willing to pay me for.

Which, sucks.

I think I'm really, really smart, and know a lot of things about a lot of different things. I think I write well and am good with people. But I guess it doesn't really matter what you can do, or even what you do well, just what you've already been paid to do. Or, what you studied in college.

The thing is, and "art" is suppossed to be free. So if that's what you want to study, better be prepared to work in some other career, probably with a bunch of people who stopped their education at high school

I've worked with some of the most intelligent people I have ever met in restaurants, and some of the most educated also. What I don't understand is that with all the low paying jobs I could have found why do I end up in something loud and fast paced. Something that gives an adrenaline high that people ride to late nights of drinking and (other drugs). As a kid I like board games and reading books maybe taking walks or playing with my dog.

Oh well.

I guess I need to write about things people want to read about: how I've changed after two and a half years on hormones!!!!

Well, I have C-cup breasts. They're pretty wonderful. I like them a lot. My body fat has shifted so that my ass is plump and my waist is relatively narrow. I had a 39" waist 6 months before starting hormone and worked that down to 36" and now without having done much of any exercises for my waist since starting hormones I have a 34" waist. It's also a little higher than it used to be. Of course I also have a bit more of a belly than I would like. I'm losing weight but  it seems that more of it stays right out front giving me a "pooch." IDK. I don't think I like that even if it isn't all that rotund. I guess as one of my friends once told me "all girls complain about being to fat and eventually either they put up or shut up."

I have no intention of doing hundreds of crunches every day so well...that's how it is.

My body hair has diminished a lot, which is also wonderful, and another thing that I think is great but I wasn't really expecting it is that my hairline is filling in and become more feminine. I was never really losing my hair but my hairline did get to be very masculine. Anyway now it is growing back in and becoming closer to what it was like when I was a child. My facial hair is softer and I think lighter. I've been working at getting rid of it for quite a while now and slowly I have less and less of it, but I don't really have a shadow when I shave. Of course I have light hair. Actually, people now tell me I'm blonde, which I also like. I guess estrogen did that.

I'm less muscular than I was. I'm built like a woman. I can really feel that in my shoulders. There isn't so much muscle mass between my bones and skin anymore, also my arms look less defined and more slender. My hips are wider but I think my bone structure hasn't really changed.

As far as how I feel. I am more in touch with my emotions. I wouldn't say I'm more emotional just more awared of them. Like, I used to supress my emotions until I exploded and now not so much...less explosions and compulsive emotionally based decisions. I do think somewhat differently but I can't remember exactly how I used to think. I think I'm slightly less linear in my thinking than I used to be but I also think it is much more complicated than that.

My sex drive has increased a lot. I actually think about sex fairly frequently now, I didn't used to. Of course at the same time my need to masturbate isn't really their much any more. It's complicated. I honestly kind of see it not so much as a change to my libido but my body coming to match my sexuality much more closely.

Oh if you haven't checked it out yet, I'm on facebook :)
www.facebook.com/thinknatalieblog

People not knowing I'm trans. Thoughts on going "stealth," and keeping my transition private. Also my new facebook fan site

Well I went to Karaoke last night. Like I have been doing every Monday night for a couple of months now. I'm a karaoke person I guess. Anyway, I recognize other karaoke people form other bars they sing karaoke at and they recognize me. One guy even gave me his karaoke singing business card.

But on another note....

I ended up talking to this girl all night. Well sort of. she came up to me when she came into the bar and struck up a conversation. She tried to buy me a shot...but...well, I don't take shots. I'm not interested in getting as drunk as taking a shot could lead to. She was kind of there, and after last call I walked with her and some guy named "Two Dicks" to her place.

She recognized something about me but couldn't quite pin it down. "As soon as I came into this bar I came up to talk to you and I never do that." She said. "You're different. There's something about you that's really different than other girls."

I actually was expecting for her to figure it out but she never did. She came as close as saying that I was so feminine but masculine at the same time, and she called me really pretty. Okay, also I was wearing my kitchen clothes, which, although I definitely look like a girl in my kitchen clothes, they're not as feminine as I prefer.

I wonder about that, how feminine I look in my kitchen clothes. Recently I've found out that several of my co-workers had absolutely no clue I was trans and were shocked when they just recently found out. And people tell me I look cute in them...so....I guess it's a whole thing about self perception vs reality, which I have to admit I have no idea sometimes how I look to other people.

Before I become too much of a rambler in this entry I want to get back to what I wanted to talk about as far as that girl (and others) is concerned, STEALTH.

I never told her I was trans, and she never figured it out. More and more I'm finding that in my interactions with all sorts of different people, they don't pick up on me being trans. I don't know how they see me exactly, but they're not picking up on my being trans. Actually, one of my co-workers didn't pick up on me being "gay' recently. He was like "You're going to find this funny, but I had no idea you were gay." to which I kind of had to respond with "Huh?" because I didn't know exactly what he meant by that. I gambled and assumed he meant that I like women, so I was like yeah, but barely; the last person I slept with was a guy.

...and that get's all confusing because of my anatomy and what I have and what people assume I have and blah, blah, blah...

Labeling my sexuality is too confusing for me to even attempt right now.

Back to the subject...again...I'm kind of in this place where people don't know, and I don't want to tell them. Actually, considering recent comments about "So you're really a guy?" that I just flat out deny without any explanation, unless someone is to specifically ask me if I'm a transsexual I'm not likely to fill them in on it.

And then I write this blog, and publish it to my facebook, and have a fan page devoted to it, and want to promote it, and want to pursue a career working with and helping other trans people. How can I go stealth?

Or rather. What is the line that I draw between people who know and people who don't?

So I was talking a girl at a party about my blog and she asked what it was about. "Transition." I told her, and  this guy who was in the conversation also asked for clarification on that.

For me Transition begins with a capital "T" but others don't necessarily know what I mean. Transition between jobs? etc.

Writing about and explaining Trans issues is really important to me but as far as that goes it isn't all of me and I kind of have it in this box that exists only in my blog and youtube videos.

If I move to another city (after I have my operation) will this whole transgender thing just be something in my past? It's weird. I grew up very aware of being different. I mean, I don't know what it is like to grow up gay, but I imagine that experience of being different is similar. But now I'm not so different, and I don't feel that different and I don't particularly identify with a queer subculture.

When it comes down to it, I fit in much more in an open minded straight bar than I do in a gay bar. When I go out to gay bars it's kind of like, "Why am I here?"

I don't know. It's this experience of wanting to transition, transitioning, and then having transitioned. Feeling different and being very fearful of being found out, very much in the closet. Coming out of the closet and being very very queer for a couple of years, and then everything settles and the hormones do their work and all of a sudden you're kind of this basically normal person without really trying.

I knew when I crossed that line of looking like a very feminine man to looking like a masculine woman when gay guys stopped being flirty with me and lesbians started. And then you stop looking like an interesting person.

It's what I always wanted. Though it was kind of nice to be REALLY interesting for a while.

Oh, and check out my facebook fan site (and see what I look like) at www.facebook.com/thinknatalieblog. Like it. Share it.

Something I'm proud of

Well, not much to write about today.

I put in a resume to work with a non-profit. I would be an HIV testing/prevention counselor. I really hope I get this job. I won't write to much more about it.

One thing I did want to write about, just because I'm kind of proud of myself. I went out on Saturday night and this girl who doesn't really know me but has seen me for a while came up to me and bought me a drink. She's a girl who is in Babe's every Saturday night and was always very sweet when I would come to pick up glasses off her table, but we've never really talked. Actually I kind of read her as FTM the first few times I saw her. Anyway she had a friend with her who leaned over me to say, "She tells me you're really a guy."

"I'm not." I answered. I think she repeated herself so I pulled out my driver's license. She examined it until she saw the little "f" written on it.

"You're the first girl whose ever shown me her driver's license..."

Anyway, I'm kind of proud of myself for doing this. For one saying I'm "really a guy" is just flat out ignorant and untrue. It implies that how I act and appear is really just some sort of costume that I shed. Also I'm tired of justifying my gender top anyone. I dress the way I like to look and feel comfortable looking. I act in ways that feel natural for me. It isn't a compliment to me to say "you perform this woman thing really well." I don't perform.

I guess the thing is I am legally, socially, and physically female. What I have or had between my legs is non of your business unless we're about to sleep together.

I think helping cis people understand trans people is important. But honestly it isn't my responsibility when I'm out at a club, or walking down the street, or grocery shopping or where ever else. Fortunately I pass well enough that this type of thing only ever happens in gay clubs when someone outs me.

Also though, it doesn't hurt my feelings really. Ask me once and it was an ignorant question, continue to assert that I'm really a guy and well I'll cut you out of my life, be it that we just met or I've known you my entire life.

And I kind of just wanted to re-emphasize that when I say I'm trans I don't really mean transgender. Being trans for me is a physical reality, it doesn't really speak much to being a gender non-conformist or feeling between genders or whatever. I am actually very normal and not much of a revolutionary. I'm not really very "queer," and it seems like, especially in gay bars, when people are like "so you're really a a guy," it's like they're paying homage to a queerness that doesn't really exist in me. I don't know, it's really hard to explain.

On the plus side I got an email from someone who watches my vlog. I'm glad to know people are reading and watching my entries. That makes it seem a little worthwhile.