I know this is old news but going back to the ridiculous male pretense this morning feels so strange. I had a nice chat with a vendor lady this morning and she didn't hesitate to call me "ma'am", even after me giving her my boy name. I also called Bose to check on an order and the guy was totally ma'aming me and being nice.

What a stupid charade.

Btw... I'm listening to some music from an unpublished new friend I met last weekend at a gender conference and to be honest it's pretty good. And I am *not* a friendly critic... ever.

Everything turned out OK yesterday , yay!

* D. had her corrective lipo and it went really well, she is now recovering at home, yay!

* S. is back from GRS, yay!

* I got to talk to N. and she's coming over next tuesday, yay!

As for me, I'm ok. Going through a period of emotional indifference to transition issues which I hope will last. I am also flooded by the good vibes from D. and S. They are so happy!


In an effort to understand S.'s GRS (and total morbid curiosity) I watched a slideshow of Meltzer performing a vaginoplasty.
It did stir me a little all those feelings of "never" I have, but I'm ok. I'm trying to see it in as clinical a way as possible, no emotional involvement.

Warning: *VERY GRAPHIC*






And it's a beautiful friday morning.

*yawn*

I'm sleepy... zzzz

*yawn*

Today is going to be a long day. Not a bad day or anything though. I'm going to watch over D. while she has some surgery and later at night going to pick up S. to the airport.

Feeling kind of like "k whatever". More than a tad cynical and on the verge of having my transition issues in the forefront, but for now I'm holding on. In the last few months not only did my friend S. did have GRS but another friend had FFS. Also lately I was reading this board and found out about lots more people having GRS ('tis the season, getting ready for summer) and about one very young and pretty girl having FFS (which I always thought she never needed). She was working as a waitress last I heard so I wonder where she got her $40K. Parents probably. Some people have cool parents in this world, yeah. And some of them are even rich.

Overall, feeling "blah functional", which is the blah where you can still function with your friends and family without making an issue of your internal state.
Feeling *very* avoidant though. Don't want to have any kind of contact with anyone but my family and friends.
I am also feeling like I don't give a heck about passing or anything like that. I'm just content with my androgyny for now; like the David Bowie song says, I feel that "there's no point in re-exposing you". Myself, in this case.

Anyway, got to do some work. Hope it's a sunny day outside.



The Motel
David Bowie

(excerpts)

For we're living in a safety zone
Don't be holding back from me
We're living from hour to hour down here
And we'll take it when we can

When nothing is vanity nothing's too slow
It's not Eden but it's no sham

lol

Lots of TSs who are about to undergo or that have had GRS are afraid of the surgery, of the anesthesia, of this of that. Also they say that they dread the dilations.

*shakes head*

I would be so happy that the only nervousness I could have would be of sheer excitement. Dilations? Ever wonder what the dilations MEAN?

When you've had it easy it seems that priorities get confused.

/cynical

But GRS is not for me, right?

*sigh*

Just be...

...whatever I can. This non-existance is not worth prolonging. It won't happen in the next five years: get over it. Not as a reprimand, but as a thought worth considering. Options are depleted for now: I depleted them. I have done everything I can. Like hormonal changes, it is just incertitude and time. That's all there is for now. Incertitude and time. Hitting my head against the wall won't move the granite wall, only make me more bloody. I'll have to wait for another chance and take it.

Just be as me as much as I can. I know these empty words will mean NOTHING by the time of my next depression, but I need to contend with the fact that I am going to be adressed by my boy name, that I will have to work as a guy, that people are going to treat me as a freak.

There will be happiness too, but everything related to transition as a process will be downright depressing. Ok, I'm sure my hormonal changes will still delight me and make me smile, like other nice things in my life (which I will list in a future post) and that I acknowledge exist.

It feels bad. I entered transition not with a timetable (since I knew this day could eventually come) but with lots of hope and wishes for the future. I still have hope, but it's been *greatly* diminished, a mere fraction of what it used to be. My wishes are in cold storage. Keeping all that up has been a tremendous effort which I can't muster anymore.

So, something should come up. I guess. In the meantime I'll see what I do with my life. I can still play PS2 (hehe), that is a relief. I'd been thinking about taking singing classes or a language course but I guess not. Not for now. At least not while I cringe every time someone "he"'s me. Besides, even if I got myself to do it I'll be under such mental pressure it's not worth it: people I don't know, being looked at in that strange way, etc, etc. Not worth it.

Just that.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

tuesday tuesday and more tuesday

Welcome back to the world of the Dummy Masochist!

Seeing (in pictures) or reading about people done and happy with their transitions makes me so sad. Sorry people, I still wish you the very best, but it really hurts sometimes. Why don't I just learn that I can't visit TS boards anymore?

Went to lunch with my niece and her mom and couldn't help not being all that happy. I am always playing around with my little niece but this time I couldn't help being blahish. It's only gotten worse.

tuesday tuesday

The early week lumbers on as usual. Today my jets seem to be fueled enough so that the dark cloud of All Those Bad Things About Transition doesn't engulf me, so my mood is not completely spoiled.
No, jet metaphors aren't very girlie. Awful modern though. Almost futuristic.

Anyway. The thought of GRS I'm still able to brush away and focus on something else, but (the dreadful) Living As A Young Man doesn't spare me a day for punches.

It gets worse, so go read a more interesting, happy blog if you will. You've been warned.


I was pleasantly ma'amed on the phone again today. I'm (gasp!) sort of used to it by now. Even yesterday as I was getting gas service for my new apartment, the nice lady who helped me through the phone with it called me Ms.[lastname] even after she asked for "your" name and I (had to) gave her my full boyname. She was very nice, sweet people make your day. It's true what they say about smiles and niceties, offer them whenever you can.
I am facing some sort of frustration with my physical appearance. It hurts when sometimes all your effort at just conveying who you are gets slammed in the mud by one or two dummy details. People stop seeing you as female and as their eyes grow more distant, you are relayed to the category of Gender Contrivance or worse, Weird Man.
Would that stop with FT or GRS? (ahhh, clever tie-in) No, but when you can dedicate yourself to just being you, everything changes. It changes radically after FT; it changes more after GRS. How do I know? I've read, I've listened, I've seen. You don't have to be awfully perceptive to realize that something has changed (and I count myself as fairly perceptive). It's like the day you "come out to yourself" or when you start HRT. Those I know :)

It's a road with milestones and thousands of little flowers to pick. Too bad it is so hard for some of us.


My mantras du jour:

"Teach us to care and not to care. Teach us to sit still."

"This too shall pass"

"Chance is a kind of religion when you're damned to plain hard luck"

Temperatures are a-risin' around here so on Saturday I wore a skirt for the first time in months. I love skirts. Last year when I went to Daytona Beach on vacation I packed nothing but skirts so I could make myself face the fear of wearing them. Up to that point I had worn women's pants for months but I couldn't bring myself to do the skirt thing. You see, I did NOT want to be seen as a man in a skirt, so I was really afraid.
Transition-wise everything went fine with the trip. For the first time I was tasting what walking around mostly unnoticed by people meant, not being sir'd and (so cool) my friend D. and I be called "ladies" once. I was walking on clouds.

D., who was my SO at the time, didn't have a good time at all. These were the days which finally brought down our prior relationship. It was a beautiful sunset beach we were walking when I finally gathered some courage and told her I wanted to go ahead with full transition. I had been four-five months on HRT then but it was all so clear, totally clear from the first week really. I didn't know all the particulars and how it came to figure in every aspect of my life, but I was sure at heart that that was what I wanted. It hurt. We had been together for 8 years and she was/is the love of my life.
There followed terrible months where everything hurt. From my full commitment to being me to she dating others (which was a way to find herself too). But eventually we made it through and we are now more than best friends. We recently moved together to a new apartment with two separate bedrooms and we enjoy the freedom to be whatever we want to be.

*sigh* These past few days I'd been reading someone's diary who seemed in a similar rut as mine: longing for FT and GRS but with not much hope (still, she had lots more possibilities). I also could relate to her observations and feelings a lot.
Poking around her website I learned she had GRS not long ago and I only read up to the moment when she comes upon some money and starts on the path to surgery.
That's it. I couldn't read any more. Transition is for everyone some kind of path that leads them as far as they want to go. There's pain along the way, but all those willing transition in a few years. Not for me.
On the internet there's a website that's big with TS people, a young girl's diary that relates her transition from nothing to FFS and GRS. Everyone always refers to it as "inspiring", for me it's downright depressing.

So anyway...
I've come to the conclusion that even if I could go FT and all, I don't think I could: I don't have any money or a big CV or a good job (read: good paying) where I could transition. My actual job is the antithesis of that.
I should get off my ass and find some new job where I can get better paid... but I cringe at the thought of yet again having to prop up as if he existed at all.
When my first big problem is cleared (I *pray* for that to happen) I'll still won't be able to go FT, but that is small potatoes, really. Being poor is nothing compared to the other thing.

I'm afraid my transition could never happen or that it could come much later in life. My instincts tell me I *will* be suffering this same thing for years to come. How many? 5? 10? 5 seems solid, but 10 seems excessive. Some kind of solution should pop up before then. 8 looks good.

Who'll believe my psychic proddings anyway? I wish they told me I was to transition fully during next year, GRS and all (I'm not asking for much, am I?). And then they would come true!

Sure.

Suure.

I'm feeling better this morning, don't know if it's the laser session yesterday, having slept 10 hours last night or just the wave of sadness letting on a bit. I saw a post today about someone's experiences after GRS and it was like a strong wind shaking my walls though. I didn't stay too much on the board, for now I still have the sense (or the strength) not to dwell on that.
My 6th laser session yesterday went really well. The power was amped up to 30j (the highest it's ever been) and believe it or not, this is the first time since I started having them that a session hurt *less* than the one before! Yes! The 5th was the cusp of pain but also the one that gave me best results (I rarely if ever wore anything more than powder after it), I was talking to people up close and I wasn't being read. That was major cool. Today my face is looking bad mostly because of the swelling that hasn't subsided, and my face is not full of red areas like last time. It really looks like I'm "beyond the curve", that my facial shadow is going FOR REAL!

I washed my hair yesterday and it's looking super-curly :P Not really a "guy" look but what the heck, the only place where I'm consistently a "guy" is at work and it's quite obvious that everyone can see I'm not "just a guy". I wonder if anyone has noticed my breasts yet. I wear a uniform three-four sizes bigger than myself, a sports bra and a T-shirt underneath, but they are still noticeable, specially in the rounded shape of my upper torso.
I can still pass as a guy if I want (no, I don't). It's mostly about voice and slipping into the solid guy stance I learned in my teens (I guess all of us mtf TSs can). But being able to doesn't mean you *want* to. Doing a guy voice for example feels like killing my feminine voice and behaving accordingly is almost plain impossible... it's like going against your own self. And it brings bad, bad memories and feelings.
No, I don't do it if I can help it :)

Or a father. Or a family? Yes, a family now that you mention it, why not? Not just a bunch of... ack anyway, what gives.

I guess being geographically away from my family saved me a lot of pain and suffering in the early stages. I can only imagine my mother's cold look or my father's anger. But what do they know? Nothing. They worked SO hard to keep me from emigrating and now they say it's the best thing I could have done given the bad, bad situation where I'm from. Another of those situations they would ignore my opinions about stuff only for it to come true afterwards.

Some day I'll write a decade-by-decade story of my life (there's only two and some of those now anyway) or maybe in five year intervals. What I wanted to say is that my GID kept me apart from not only my parents but the world in general, but no one cared to look beyond the walls anyway. I stopped confiding in my mother when I was about 13 or so, whenever she was mad at me she'd use what I'd told her against me. Also, she would divulge it to my stepfather. Great.

Hey there...

I've been trying to post stuff but I just delete it after writing it. It all seems so stupid.

I miss having a mom. I used to think a loooong time ago that my mom loved me, but years of her have firmly convinced me of the contrary. Same for my father and my stepfather. They care less about me now than they did before and that is something to say, I tell you.
I wish I had a mom who cared about me, who was interested in who I am and who wanted to stand by me. A mom who accepted me and liked me as I am.

Don't misinterpret this... I tried giving our relationship a chance after years of not communicating in any way and she just stopped writing when past chit-chat time and the how are you doing's. She wasn't interested in working out the kinks of our relationship. For her there was nothing wrong with it, only me.

A mom to share girl stuff with. That would be nice. Someone I could go buy clothes with, that I could sit down and chat with, that would give me motherly advice and be proud of me. Someone I could help with christmas dinners (strictly *help*, I suck at cooking :) ). My bio mom was the "recipient" of some cool family recipes from my great-grandmother and my grandfather. Would have been nice, even if I was going to screw it up with my cooking skills.

A mom to talk about guys I am (hypothetically) going out with, a mom I could hold and comfort in her low moments (even though parents generally comfort their children :P)

A mom proud to have a daughter like me.