Happy Thanksgiving

The day before Thanksgiving four years ago was the last time I went anywhere as a guy. I wore a fedora, black and white wing tip shoes, a vintage skinny tie and I don't remember whether it was my dark gray suit or my black one--guess it doesn't really matter, they looked the same.

I had started living socially (aka: "part time) as a woman for my twenty-eighth birthday two months earlier. It had been my plan to live that way for an entire year and transition to living "full-time" for my twenty-ninth birthday. By Thanksgiving weekend that year I was "passing" in most situations (even though I wouldn't start hormones for another month) and surprisingly I had found that it was easier and much less stressful for me than "passing" as a man. I was looking forward to my four day weekend and not having to worry about doing the man thing.

Actually, my ability to "pass" as a man was really suffering. Clients were noticing. It isn't that I'd changed much physically or that my mannerisms were effeminate, but something else. My last client that day was a woman nearing seventy who had seventeen cats. She loved me. She told me I had a really sensitive soul. We talked for about two hours--I never got acclimated to the smell in her house.

I ate Thanksgiving dinner by myself at Shoney's. My parents were out of town, but honestly having just come out to them I didn't want to spend the day with them anyway. All weekend long, no matter where I went people called me "she, miss, and ma'am." No one gave me any second looks. When my alarm went off on Monday morning for me to go into the office (as a man), I just couldn't do it. At that point there was no turning back. I haven't gone anywhere as a man since.

I guess I could bind my breasts and cut my hair if I ever wanted to be read as male again, but honestly that isn't something I could do. I really don't have that ability anymore. I guess that's why telling me I'm doing such a good job at being a woman is so insulting to me...it isn't really like I have anything else to choose from.

And still people think this isn't my authentic self...in subtle ways. Every time I'm talking to a lesbian and I see she is attracted to me and then immediately I see that it scares her and she dismisses it--just how many people would never even consider dating a woman like me. The TERFs who call me a rapist, people who care about me mis-gendering me because they don't/won't understand that things like that can get me killed, the fact that as a trans* woman I have a 1 in 12 chance of being murdered, the fact that if I am murdered my killer will likely only serve three years (if that or any) because "trans panic" is still a viable defense and lawyers will say I tricked my killer into thinking I was a woman, or the occasional gay guy who thinks I'm like them, or for that matter how incredibly unbelievable it is for so many people that I am exclusively attracted to woman--I've been told I'm lying about that so many times. Or how people see maleness in my proportions and size even though something like 60% of all women share my proportions and that I am hardly outside the average size range or American women (actually I'm thankful for those two facts)

Really, as important as I think it is to be out as a trans* person I really feel how being one really negatively affects the quality of my life.

Still, I'm thankful. I'm thankful in so many ways that I couldn't even begin to explain, like the feeling the softness of my breasts when I wake up, and not feeling like a clown every time I have to dress up, and not dealing with the [masculine] gendered assumptions people used to make about me from the moment they met me, or for that matter people don't tell me I'm a "really weird girl" like they used to tell me I was a "really weird guy," and knowing my instincts are "normal."

Everyday I wish I was born cis-gendered. I wish I could have the childhood, and teens, and early twenties years that I missed out on, or even that I didn't remember thinking my life was a horrible weird nightmare just praying I could wake up and it would be over.

It is over. And every morning the first thing I think when I wake up is "Thank god! thank god! thank god I'm a woman."

Not going home for the holidays,

That Arctic cold front has hit and it's getting chilly outside. It's chilly in my apartment so I have the oven cranked at 500 and the door open, as well as a space heater going. The thermostat is not hooked up properly and my apartment is really drafty. It reminds me of the house I grew up in.

It really reminds me of the house I grew up in. That house has since been demolished. I liked it. It was on a 365 acre farm, in the Northern Neck, and it really wasn't that dilapidated--just old and drafty. Anyway, I'll never be able to share it with my future wife and kids.

Well don't know about the kids anymore. I don't think I was put on this earth to be a parent.

Anyway, I was talking to a friend today about surfing the internet back in the early nineties, looking up the personal pages and blogs of other transsexuals, waiting five to ten minutes for each page to load, and feeling guilty about what I was reading, thinking it was along the same lines as porn. (I kept a solitaire game and ready to click on, and my email in another window in case my mother or father walked into the office where I surfed the web)

So, weirdly, perhaps nostalgically I felt like getting on line in this chilly apartment and blogging about being trans*.

No, not about being trans*. I transitioned. It's in the past. Thank GOD! (if you want to read about it click here!)

So my mother is rather pissed off at me right now. I'm not going home for Thanksgiving. Nor will I go home for Christmas. I won't say never again, but definitely not this year. It would be too stressful for me.

One thing I've realized over the past few months is that I definitely have some PTSD related to my life before I transitioned. So the Northern Neck is a trigger for me, my brother and I do not get along, and I've (guiltily) been contemplating cutting him out of my life entirely--we've never really gotten along, and this year he's sent me some texts that I found particularly offensive, and both of my grandmothers will be visiting.

One grandmother sent me a very sweet letter when I came out, that I really appreciate and still have on my fridge (and perhaps always will), but she's gotten really senile since and last time I saw her constantly messed up the pronouns even so bad as to call me a man. The other never responded when I came out...I wrote three letters, and I am a little embarrassed about what I wrote (I was very much an adolescent girl). I'm done justifying myself.

It's a combination of all these factors. It hurts every time someone calls me he. (That's another trigger) so with both grandmas and my father messing up the pronouns all day, my grandmother who has never responded to my coming out, my brother, and being in the Northern Neck is just too much.

Despite what my mother told me on the phone last time we spoke, I am an adult and I'm not being selfish by refusing to put myself through that.

If I hadn't transitioned I'd be dead right now. I did what I had to do for my health, my sanity, and my life, and now I am basically living the life I wanted to live. I am not going to put myself in situations that make me feel like my transition never happened. I do not deserve to be punished for the decisions I've made.

Oh yeah, my mother told me that I couldn't live in a bubble with people who don't ever refer to me with masculine pronouns, and that I made this decision and had to live with people mis-gendering me--I don't and I can.

She must not see me. I can wake-up hungover, throw on a guy's t-shirt without a bra, not shave, not put on makeup and walk groggily with unbrushed hair to the convenience store (or grocery store, or laundromat, or where ever) and people will still call me "Miss" and "Ma'am," and refer to me with female pronouns.

It's been four years and getting the pronouns right isn't that hard. My senile grandmother messing up I understand, my father I grit my teeth and correct him. But it really hurts...especially coming from people who know and love me.

Other people have written about what that feels like, and believe me it feels awful (it says that you think I am wrong in my most basic understanding of myself among other things) so I won't write too much more about it. Or how if you're accidentally messing up on my pronouns at home you're going to slip in public sometime and you and I don't know that that person at the next table or in line behind us isn't one of those transphobic people who would come after me and kill me. Yeah, it's that serious.

Did you know that in the United States "trans panic" is still a viable defense for anyone accused of murdering a trans* person. It usually results in the charges being reduced to manslaughter.

I am not mis-representing myself when I say I'm a woman.

And as a woman, I don't feel like I need to put myself in an environment, or surround myself with people who constantly refer to me as "he and him." Nor would I work with someone like that, nor do I tolerate that. I also don't think I need to justify myself as a woman. I am because I am.

But anyway...I don't even need to explain this that much. I do not need to go to my parents' house for Thanksgiving. I did briefly want to talk about it because of my mother's manipulative reaction--I found out (from my therapist) a very typical reaction of bi-polar people, and that the best way to deal with bi-polar people is to set firm boundaries.

Which was really nice to learn. For one, I don't have to repeat, or fear, that type of manipulation in my relationships. It isn't normal or healthy. Also, my firm boundaries that I have with most everyone suddenly makes a lot of sense--two things I've wanted to leave behind, and two things that have been very destructive for me in trying to find a fulfilling relationship.

Also, apparently in our thirties we start to separate ourselves from our nuclear families...I'm developmentally doing (by taking this firm stand with my mother that I won't go home) doing exactly what I should be doing. So contrary to what my mother told me, me not going home is not me being a child, it's me being a grown woman.

Well, at any rate, (and I told my therapist this) I can't go home now; my mother would continue to use guilt trips to get me to do what she wants. Quite honestly she doesn't know what is best for me anymore.

And on top of everything else, I really like the direction my life is heading in, and I'm not going to let something like family derail that.

Since leaving home I've found the entire holiday season to be really depressing, but I think I'm going to have a good holiday season this year. I'm not going to put myself in the stressful situations I did before, and I'm not going to feel guilty about it.