Who I am...in a nutshell

Well recently I've really been thinking about how I really want a relationship. I haven't seemed to have much luck in this regard in the past so I think I'm actually going to write an entry about who I am and put it out there in the Universe...I'll see what comes back at me.

Okay, I am a femme, transsexual lesbian.

I get the impression sometimes that other lesbians don't really consider me to be one...even though in some ways (that I don't brag about) I'm almost comically a stereotype...like wearing out my Indigo Girls 10,000 Curfews cassette tape in one summer by listening to it on repeat so much.

I'm also a child of the 80's and 90's. Can you tell from my sentence above.

Of course I also don't play or watch sports, and I don't do drama, and I don't really watch a lot of lesbian movies.

I'm an Eagle Scout, and I am very proud of that, even if when I talk about it it really firmly establishes my non-female past.

I'm easy to become friends with but very difficult to get close to. I have been easily hurt in the past, and I very very cautious about being hurt again.

I genuinely love an awful lot of things, music, art, literature, TV shows, food, the changing seasons, road trips.....It isn't easy for me to share all that I love.

I am really, really conscious of other people's space. It isn't easy for me to make the first move...actually I have only ever been kissed, I've never kissed anyone...I can but I need clear permission.

I am not ashamed of my pre-op body, and I'll pose nude for paintings or photos or what not, and I do recognize the artistic beauty of a trans female body...but I don't like my penis. I don't want it to be touched and I don't want someone to see it who I'm intimate with, which makes physical intimacy a really hard thing for me.

Sex, isn't and never has been the most important thing to me.  I'm more interested in cuddling, and waking up next to someone and sitting around watching TV on a week night, and sharing something private and intimate with someone than I am interested in sex. But I also really want someone to make me feel desirable and attractive.

I'm really, really sweet, and even if I don't have a whole lot of close friends I genuinely care about an awful lot of people. It's hard for me to cry at funerals, or keep in touch with someone who lives out of town, but I don't ever forget people who have touched me, and never stop missing the people whom I've lost.

I can be a little aloof, but if you're willing to be patient with me you'll find that I'm actually very affectionate.

It doesn't take me weeks, or sometimes even months to tell someone that I love them, it usually takes me a lot longer. I used to be able to do this more quickly but I've gotten a lot of very negative reactions in my past...

I'm strong, I am one of the strongest people you will ever meet, I bore one hell of an emotional burden for a awful long time because I thought I had to. I expected to lose everyone I loved if I ever came out of the closet and I tried to teach myself not to get to close, and truth be told, I did lose quite a few people when I did.

I'm also a very genuinely happy person. I'm even happier because I have lost people I deeply cared about and I really appreciate the people I have now, even if it's not a really easy thing to show.

I'm extremely confident, more so than most people you'll ever meet, though when it comes to asking someone out, telling someone that I like them, or showing that I'm jealous (even when I have a right to be) I'm extremely shy about it.

I have very little patience for stupidity and incompetence.

When it comes to work, or projects, I'm a perfectionist. Most of the jobs I've quit, I've quit because I didn't think the work I was asked to do met my standards.

I also hate wasting time... this might have gotten in my way in the past and maybe still. I drop jobs when I don't feel like I'm getting anywhere, sometimes even when I need the pay. I drop people who get in my way, bring me down, or waste my time, though I think this has mostly caused me to have really high quality friendships.

I am complicated. I am both very open and closed. I'll talk about a whole bunch of things with people when I first met them, and I'll answer a whole bunch of personal questions, and I'll be totally open about things most people really consider private, but I still keep an awful lot to myself. I am both an introvert and an extrovert. Sometimes, it's hard for me to ask how someone else is doing and I'll go on and on about my projects and what's going on with me, but I'll also be the most quiet person in a group and I'll keep my thoughts to myself.

If I host a party I'll talk to everyone, if I'm a guest, sometime I'll meet no one.  And I don't like loud noises or big crowds...usually, except for when I do.

When I really like someone, I try to spend as much time with them as I can, and give up my independent streak a little. I have a tendency to do things and go places I want regardless on whether I do it alone or not.

Sometimes I just don't have anything to say, and I really appreciate people I can share silence with.

I also really appreciate people who are punctual, relatively speaking. I like people who show up when a party is starting not fashionably late, or who meet me somewhere when they say they will, or are ready when they say they will be. It's really attractive.

So it being straight forward with me, and not playing games.

In the past I've tended to fall in love with people who had not romantic interest in me, and maybe I'm still that person, but I really hope not.

Let's see, the little things. I'm a painter, a writer, a great cook, I throw great parties, I'm really good with people, I'm not shy about public speaking, I absolutely love dogs more than any other animal, I like looking pretty and wearing nice clothes, I like going to nice restaurants, and if I have money I like spending it on good beer, wine, and food.

I also drink PBR out of the can and thoroughly love it, and tell a lot of the same stories over and over again. But I think I have some pretty good stories.

I write because I have to. It's kind of like breathing for me. I can't explain it.

I like to eat, and right now I feel hungry.

Big week

Big week for me. I quit my restaurant job and I am now working full time selling insurance.

I'm really nervous about that...I have to make money. I have rent to pay, a car payment, auto insurance, food and what not and I'm about a grand in on a really really bad loan that I've been taking out to get started selling insurance.

Well one thing I learned transitioning was that you have to set your priorities. When I transitioned male to female I didn't let anything become more important to me...not friends, not family, not food.

Well I'm not going to succeed at insurance at the cost of family or friends I have to make the same thing apply.

Also I have no room in my life for negativity. It just flat out doesn't help. Even if I don't get the results I desire by being positive I at least won't be hindering myself.

On top of that I was interviewed by the local news about a VHSL ruling to allow trans kids to play on their respective sports teams. I think it's great and I'm on TV saying that. And a whole hell of a lot of comments, if not most of them below the story show that far too many people are not supportive.

I'm sorry if anyone says that I'm a man they obviously haven't ever spent any time with me.

All this ignorance that surrounds trans people is really infuriating sometimes.

I wrote this as a comment.

"A friend of mine put it best when she said “when it comes to identity, there is no compromising.” I think this is a very good step in the right direction. Gender Dysphoria is a medical condition; trans girls are girls, but even so, when it comes to averages males and females are much more similar than we are different, particularly as teens. Even when I was in high school before I ever took Estrogen there were girls my age who were taller than me, heavier than me and stronger than me. While testosterone does seem to make it slightly easier to build muscle than estrogen, and I have most certainly lost a great deal of my physical strength after having hormonally transitioned from male to female there wasn't such a huge difference to begin with. It saddens me that so many people who have never fought this battle with gender identity that I have are so quick to judge."

Cathy Brennan, Gay marriage in Virginia, and Facebook offering trans options for gender

It's nasty outside and I've spent most of the day inside, with a brief interlude to buy a day planner and can opener at Target, and later a couple of beers because I just needed to be around people for a bit.

Anyway, I've been inside all day. First thing that I came across on Facebook was Cathy Brennan's blog which is really sad to me.

It's sad that to her I, and every woman the same as I, are just men with some sort of delusion or kink or whatever. It's sad that she doesn't recognize the legitimacy of my lived experience, and that she is totally unopen to the experiences and insights of anyone with an experience similar to mine. It's sad that she is so adamant about her views on this matter, something which cisgender people cannot really understand, that she has to be extremely outspoken about it and use all her skills as a writer and lawyer to "prove" to everyone else that we don't exist.

I can't imagine that anyone who takes the time to get to know me can possibly think of me as anything other than a woman. I just can't imagine it.

But there's no point in arguing with someone who is so set in their belief.

I read one entry where she argued against points made by a trans woman, about the legitimacy of the trans experience. I didn't read a whole lot more. 

I wish I could share with her, and everyone else my experience with this but I can't. It's just something so out of the realms of cis experience. 

Basically what I took from her argument is that her opinion is that trans women are men who want to be or think they are women and that we do everything we can to fit into some mold we have in our head of what a woman is.

It isn't that at all.

It's almost like my identity as female is secondary to my experience of it.

Like, the reason I was taking estrogen nearly a decade before I finally transitioned. I've always wanted a female body since the moment I was born, hell, probably since I was conceived, but it wasn't about wanting to be female. For a lot of my life that was just a vague sense, something I couldn't quite put my finger on. It wasn't that I wanted to look like a "woman," it's that my waist waist always seemed too thick in proportion to the rest of my body, my chest always felt too flat, my skin always felt too course, my frame too muscular. I don't want a vagina to "be" a woman, I want a vagina because I don't have any clue how to relate to my penis, because when I think about sex, in my mind I already have one and I have never known otherwise. I wear skirts and make-up and my hair long and my nails painted because I like it. I feel comfortable like that. I feel authentic. When I'm out in public, or at home I'm not trying to pass, I just am. 

In my mind I've always been female, even when I was unaware of it. It's why prior to transitioning I very often preferred to be alone, so I didn't have to play a role.

She thinks I'm trying to be something...I'm not.

I'm not trying to be anything.

What dawned on me, when I was struggling with prejudices of my own which were very similar to Brennan's was. If I look the way I feel most comfortable looking, if I act the way feels most natural to me, if I have the body that feels most comfortable and right to me, I fall into that category of woman. 

I don't look, act, feel the way I do because I want to be a woman. I look, act, and  feel the way I do because this is just who I am. If I am authentic to myself, I come across as a woman, I look like a woman, I act like a woman, I have the physical features of a woman, most rational people are going to agree that I am a woman.

At the very least, it is very rare that anyone thinks of me as a man. I most certainly am not a man...not in any sense that anyone experiences a person as being a man. And as people generally assume that my genitals match their perception of me, or rather, their perception of me is more similar to how they perceive a female with female genitals than to how they perceive a male with male genitals, I would say that makes me pretty legitimately female.

But I'm not going to base this argument on how people perceive me, because I have been perceived many different ways.

I am everything you would expect a female to be had she been reassigned male against her will at birth.

But she'd never understand that, nor accept that, nor acknowledge my experience, nor value my opinion. So there it is.

Then of course Facebook now has more options for people to choose for gender, which is great! and I'm really excited about it, and a judge in Virginia has just ruled that the state wide ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional!

We've really been coming a long way really fast. When you think of how far we've come in 10 years it's really amazing.

Likening trans rights to gay rights, there was a time when people didn't view gay people as actually existing. I mean existing as in "this is who I am", not  "this is something that I do." 

Back when I was a closeted trans person I used to refuse to fill in a gender when it was asked for. 

People tend to think of transgender and transsexual as verbs. I "transgendered," or I decided to "transgender" but if reality I didn't it just is. I am a trans-female, and ultimately, though I did choose to seek treatment for a condition that I had, I didn't choose the condition.

On Facebook I'm going to keep my gender as female because that is how I identify. Boring and binary I agree but that's how I identify. I identify with other female bodied and feminine people, and "trans" isn't so much a part of my identity now but a part of my past and a part of my experience. 

I sought treatment for a medically recognized condition that I had and it has been very successful.

Basically though I do still require surgical intervention, that isn't the biggest part of my life. 

It's all too complicated to really explain anyway.

life before and after transitioning

Well, I have something to write about!

Okay, so it's been kind of hard to update as regularly as I would like. I mean, the further and further in the past it is the less and less I really have to say about transition. It's really surreal for me that I wasn't always as I am...or rather, because I've realized that transitioning didn't really change me, that I'm no longer living a life that felt wrong.

Actually, I've had two conversations this week that are kind of the inspiration for this entry, and it's something that I really have been wanting to write for a long time, and I probably have attempted to a couple of times but haven't ever seemed to really get down to the truth of it.

So the first conversation was on Friday night. I was asked how it felt to transition, did it feel like a huge relief? Yes. The other conversation was yesterday via texting, and I'm trying to describe what it was like to have a serious gender identity issue and what helped me work through it and I ended up, albeit lamely, just saying something along the lines of, "gender is a really difficult thing to struggle with."

To which the reply was, "I can't imagine." I'd like to clarify the "yes" and share my response to the second conversation

But first I think I kind of need to say some things about my previous life. I read a blog entry recently that really summed up gender dysphoria rather well “That was dysphoria?” 8 signs and symptoms of indirect gender dysphoria. I particularly identified with the part about counting down the days til it would be all be over. That was life. I stayed in bed as long as I possibly could every morning, got drunk as soon as I could and passed out as early as I was able in the hopes that I could drown out all the feelings of gender dysphoria. Or sleep as long as I could hoping that i would wake up one morning and find that it had all been just one really horrendous dream.

In a non-crazy way, life as a guy just didn't seem real. There wasn't really anything to work towards because...why? I did my best to continue and do what I needed to do and hope that someday everything would be all right. An awful lot of my hopes rested with the idea that someday I would marry the right woman and live my life for her and everything would be alright.

Also, I wasn't suicidal, and only intermittently depressed. Actually when my I came out to my mother as trans she told me I was bipolar and the trans thing was all just some illusion. But there are ups and downs with gender dysphoria. It was always intense and present, but there were the times when I'd psych myself up into believing that I could do something about it, ie: transition and I'd feel pretty good, there were the times when I didn't think I could do anything about it at all, the "I'm really just a boy, a really fucked up boy with really perverse thoughts that I need to get out of my head and I'd feel pretty shitty, and then there were the times I was taking estrogen and felt...normal.

Gender dysphoria seems to increase in the intensity that you feel it also. At twelve, for me it was kind of a big deal and I used to stay home sick from school so I could dress up as a girl. I thought it was curiosity first but then it kind of didn't go away, but my need to dress did. By high school I learned to suppress it a little bit, I still read about transitioning, and still thought about it all the time, and had a small box of clothes that I kept hidden in the back of my closet mostly, but I had kind of created some sort of an identity as a guy.

The feelings don't go away, and my opinion is that if you struggle with gender, like really struggle with gender, you might not need to transition but you are trans.

But there is no magic diagnosis. There was nothing, other than myself and my own feelings that I could point to and say definitively that "yes, I should be female and I need to transition." I firmly believe that my brain is hard wired, so to speak, to have a female body. I'll take it further than belief, I know that my brain is meant to have a female body. I know this only because of how transition has affected me.

Like, I finally realized, before the third and final time I started taking estrogen that the reason estrogen made me feel normal was because it was a chemical that I needed in order to function the way I was supposed to.

But...I started taking hormones the third and final time with an openness to maybe not having such a straight forward trans identity. Also, I had a prescription of my own, and I had basically already socially transitioned.

That worked for me. The relief of socially transitioning was pretty intense also. It felt like taking off a costume and laying down a script.

My life prior to transitioning was very scripted. Everything I did or said or to a certain extent thought was intentional so as not to be read as non-male/ not masculine. And the better I got at it the worse I felt.

But it was the ticking away days. I was raised in a Christian tradition and had always been taught to believe that life after death awaited me, that I could hope to spend eternity in paradise....and you know, no matter how much in denial I was about being trans, I could never bring myself to believe that an eternity stuck with (what I thought to be) myself could possibly be anything other than hell.

Life, pre-transition, was, in a sense, tolerable only because I knew it wouldn't last forever.

So I finally decided to transition. Or, actually what I could commit to was more like this."Okay I am going to go out as a woman and meet people and see how that feels and see if I really want to take it further, if I do I'll see what living outside of work as a woman feels like and I'll give myself a year to adjust to it before I take it further if I still want to...then....."

It happened much more quickly than that, because I found that for me living as a woman was immensely easier and much less hassle than keeping up the appearance of being a man. I barely lasted two months living part time as a woman before it just flat out became too difficult for me to present as a man.

Not in a physical sense. I started hormones one month after starting to live full time as a woman.

Hormones, as anyone who has transitioned can tell you go excruciatingly slow, and incredibly fast at the same time. I knew right away that I wasn't making a mistake in taking them. I started to notice my skin getting softer with like a week, and you know ever since then my life is a life of just being really really thankful.

Struggling with gender is really really tough, and my life prior to transition was rather hellish in a lot of regards, but I wake up every morning, or if I wake up in the middle of the night, and I just thank God. I mean, I love my breasts, and my body, and will even more so after I have my surgery, so much despite everything I feel is imperfect about it.

I'm not going to spout off that I don't have the same self doubt about my body, if not more so, than other women, but the thing I have because I am not cis, because I know what it is like not to have a female body, is just such an appreciation for what I do have.

I mean, it's waking up and feeling my breasts, looking in the mirror after taking a shower, catching a glimpse of my reflection while walking the dog, noticing how no one thinks it is at all odd if I choose to wear a skirt and leggings to the office, or that I have a bright pink overcoat, or for that matter wearing blue jeans and a t-shirt and still looking female. It's not having women put me in a separate category from themselves, and not having guys assume that I think the way they do. All these moments just constantly where I pause and just thank God, because this is what I always wanted, because I'm not looking enviously at some other girl because I want what she has; I have it. It's just so many things that I can't even describe.

And the thing about it is, I wouldn't wish being transsexual on anyone, and there are times when I really wish I wasn't, with so many people who don't consider me real, or who would be uncomfortable dating me, or who (ignorantly) put me in the same category as cross-dressers and drag queens, but then again I'm actually kind of thankful.

I mean, all this stuff that cis women don't even think about that I just appreciate so much.

And also the sense that I am a place in my life that for the longest time I didn't even think was possible.

I've lived the impossible. I mean, it really might be just a medical issue, and I do believe that it is, but it's also a miracle, and there is a lot that I have as a person that I wouldn't have had I not gone through the life I've had to live.

I think, overall, it's more of a blessing than a curse.