ok, *other* things

I checked out a random post from before the crash and I see that my concerns are still the same. Is transition all I think about? Actually pretty much yes, but with good reason: thanks to my addressing this lifelong issue I am going back to my creative forces and to what makes me me (even if it's something I've redefined completely during the last year). Ok, this is complicated enough already. Examples:
I've been thinking about going back to learn languages (one of my true vocations). I'd love to take japanese but I believe I've got a natural ease for romance languages and thus would be better off starting there: italian, portuguese, french are my most likely first courses. It's damn costly though! :P
I'm also dying to become the woman jazz singer I always wanted to be... like Isabella Rosellini, "the blue lady" in Lynch's "Blue Velvet". If not a jazz singer, then a rock singer like Shirley Manson from Garbage! That would be SO cool.
I didn't want to mention transition issues in this post (at least directly he he :P) but my voice has imporoved lots from my early days. It still sounds a little fake, but if it is as my friend C. said that it's "very good, almost natural" (actually she gave me a big explanation, this is the cliff's notes), then I must be doing good. I got ma'amed on the phone and have been for a while now... it's just that I don't make *that* many phone calls! I'm SHY! Someone recommended in a web site to pick any number and call to ask nonsense like prices and opening/closing times... but I'm TOO SHY! Also, with two full languages and lesser bits from others running around my brain... it gets hard in full panic alarm! :P

Ahh... so fun to write again.

hi!/me/ft

I've been putting off this "comeback" post for so long it doesn't make sense.
Yes, I'm sort of here again :) Having gone through one of the worst depressions in my life, here I am again... I hope that for a long while (though with me regarding matters of constancy it's always hard to tell).

What's on my mind now? ummmmmmm Forefront in my mind for the past few days has been the announcement by one of the girls in my circle of friends to finally go FT. That is, Full Time, change name, change everything, live as a woman, the boy relegated to the shadow of the past and a few bodily scars.
I'm so happy for her; liberation from the chains of the given is what we all seek as TS girls/women and being ourselves unrestrained in the world at large is truly living for the first time. I wish her the very best in her journey ahead.
Another girl of my circle will be FT also in about a month, and then she'll be free to explore her life. She's getting facial surgery early next year too, and then bye bye to all passing concerns. With facial, wven if you do *tell* people you were not born a woman, their gut feeling will wrench them otherwise and your gender place in everyday life is secure. Isn't it nifty?

Now for the expected "but": I'm still the only one with transition plans sort of on hold. Like the last single girl in a group of friends where everyone desires fervently to be married, I can feel the tremors of spinsterdom, of being left behind and failure. More importantly, one begins to ponder on the why's and if still hopeful (like I am), the when's. If one is in total desperation (like I was), the "why me"'s and the "why she"'s take hold with an maddening iron grip.

Don't get me wrong, I have found genuine happiness in seeing my friends do well and for that little fact I am very grateful to HRT (hormone therapy) and self-discovery.
I am though a bit afraid about my future. I walk the path as fully as I can for now but the bi-gendered/nongendered experience of living is very, very trying. More so when you genuinely don't care for it and just want to make a clean crossing over to the other shore where your soul was born.

anyway, see you on the next post :)






A brief note on Full Time:
Of course, and this is for people who do not share the experience of being TS, FT is no bed of roses. After successfully becoming yourself legally, still jobs may very well not take you because of your transition history (which you have to disclose if you don't want to be an adult with no work experience) when you fill out the dreaded "Have you ever been known by any other name?" blank. Current name: Susan, formerly known as James. Also, if you're not a petite, pretty, outgoing, cool-as-a-cucumber femmy thing chances are you *will* be read (regarded as TS or worse, "man in a dress" comes to mind). That brings us to the problem of finding someone to be with during the pre-op state where your body is obviously defective for anything beyond kissing and caressing.
But do you want to know something? FT is the dream we yearn for. At least we TSs who have felt the wrongness of our given place for ever (me anyway). All the steps forward in this journey are such treasures and feel so *right* once we're there, FT with all its imperfections is a life of immense bliss. It's one of the things most dear to our hearts.

ramblo undetermined

Strangely, I guess, everything figures with my latest moods as I prepare to re-enter the world and its influence, back from isolation.
So watching both Groundhog Day and Mulholland Drive on the same day has brought to the light some of my most persistent fears. Such as that of failure, as mirrored by the doomed life of Diane Selwyn in M.D. or that of being left alone like the sarcastic and barren know-it-all Phil of G.D.

What do I know now?

The past is our anchor to reality. If good, it's reassurance, if bad it's heartache and doubt/shame, the suicide stone. Letting go of the old and accepting there might not be much "new" to embrace for a while is paramount to my moving on.
No, I was not born rich, talented and beautiful or any combination of those and for the longest time I thought I had to "make me" like that. This has left me with a deeply skewed version of myself

I can be myself in the world, that is a woman. I went out dancing with the girls for the first time last week and had oodles of fun but also my fair share of paranoia. Is everyone reading me? Do I pass? If so, what percentage of the time? In which situations? How close?

I can convince others who appreciate me in any way of my unworthiness very well.
I have become a master (mistress, *whipcrack*) of crushing others' good feelings about me. In deep denial that people can see and expect something good of me, I do my best to convince them of the contrary. I'm convinced I'm just this fake, failed, unattractive and sad person and I work actively to set others' ideas accordingly. Originally, this was a cry for help (I guess it still is, but it works in reverse.
Few people survive this onslaught and eventually everyone buckles to a certain extent given time. D and S are some of the only people who have gotten close to the dark poisonous flame inside me and still like me.
I need to stop it and I've been trying, though at this stage it still takes a. Lately I "screwed up" again with some people, but not *that* much

I don't want to end up like Diane.
Failed starlet Diane Selwyn succumbs under the pressure of her own crushed high expectations of herself, much like me. If I had taken drastic measures during one of my darkest depressions, our lives would have been very similar in their rise and fall.
Like me, she comes from abroad in search of her destiny and to realise her dream of being a star. She from Deep River, Ontario; me from the boondocks. She to Hollywood, me here.

There is a future, or at least it's worth investing in staying around. Mincing no words, I have been thinking of dying lately a lot. This was never a natural way out for me but in the last months this has been more and more persistent in my mind. During those long crying depressions the assertion that there is no hope has become stronger. I need to get out of this terminal stage.

Love cannot redeem me. Friendship cannot redeem me. Success cannot redeem me.

I hate myself too much, and that is serious stuff. Everyone who cares about me has felt this in a way. Self-absorbed in my hatred, I cannot feel empathy for others or their problems. Who cares, right? No one cares about MY problems which are *bad* enough anyway. Such thinking is poisonous and has finally added more self-loathing as I get further and further of the nice and sweet human being I want to be.