I'm Not Dead Yet!

Note – this post was written earlier in the day time.

Hi again blog.

My mood has stabilized significantly since yesterday. The tears are still close to the surface but for now at least I don’t have to make a concentrated effort to hold them back. Tonight I’ll let myself be as emotional as I need to be and I’m going to do it in a healthy, nondestructive way. (That’s my plan anyway.) 

The two people I feel closest to in San Diego, (the only two people I actually feel close to) are going away and I’m going to be here by myself.  I plan on getting my ass out and making new friends in the trans community, but what if I don’t forage any close relationships with anyone? If that’s the case all that will be keeping me here is my job.

Once the dust settles from my divorce I’ll be starting all over again and I have to say that the idea of moving to a new city and rebooting my life is rather appealing to me right now. After everything is squared away between me and my wife I’m going to get an apartment in Hillcrest with a six month lease. That will give me time to get settled, to meet new people and to save money. What I do after the six months is up in the air.

If I’m happy where I’m at I’ll just stay here. San Diego is a pretty nice place to live and I have a steady job. If I’m unhappy then I’m going to move away IF I can make sure that I’ll have a job lined up for me. Also, I’m already half way towards retirement with the organization I’m currently employed by and it would be foolish for me to throw that away. (So I’ll be able to retire when I’m 41 if I want to, although I’ll most likely keep working as I’d get a lot more retirement money if I do 30 years vs. 20.) 

If I feel like it’s time to move on there are a few different places that I’m thinking about going. I don’t like to plan really far in the future so this is just for fun. Still, I’m used to moving around all over the place thanks to the Navy and after all that I’ve been through here it might really be a good idea to get a fresh start. Anyway, here’s what I’m thinking.

Florida – I haven’t said this since I was a little kid, but right now I really want my mommy. =(  I want to be close to my family and I could really use their support right now. I know also that there’s a great gender therapist over in Sarasota, which looks like it’s a really nice place to live. I’d be able to dive out on the weekends to visit my family and vice versa. The cost of living out there is super cheep and I could afford a nice apartment with just my VA check. Both Sarasota and South Tampa look to have thriving LGBT communities as well.

The problem with moving to Florida is that uh, it’s Florida. It’s kind of the deep fucking south which is not the friendliest place for gender variant people such as I, and of course I need to be able to work so that I can support myself somehow. Also, fuck fire ants. Seriously.

Chicago – I was born and raised in Chicago, so I have roots there and I still feel a strong connection to it. I also have family and old friends there and I know my way around. Chicago has a bustling LGBT community and I’m sure that I’d be able to find plenty of support there. Oh, and the food! Best food in the world. I fucking love Chicago.

However I hate the weather. In the summer time people die from the heat and in the winter they freeze to death. Also, while there are people I know there, I’m worried that it might be a bit awkward for some of them that I’m going to be so, uh, different than I used to be. One of the points of moving away from San Diego would be to have a fresh start and going back to Chicago might be defeating the purpose. There used to be a strong Navy presence there but they’ve moved most of the various schools to Texas so it would be hard for me to find a job.

Oh, and all the Portillo’s will make me fat. I’m so hungry right now.

San Francisco – The Gay Capital of America. This one is a no brainer. In San Francisco I might actually not be queer enough to be noticed by anyone. =P It would be the safest place in the country for me and it’s a beautiful, diverse and wonderfully weird place to live. Hell, even if I was heteronormative I’d love to live there.

If I could afford to. The cost of living in San Francisco is crazy and I’d have to be very financially secure to move out there. That’s the only problem I can think of. If I could afford it I’d fucking go now.

Seattle – I’ve never been there but I’ve always wanted to go. Washington is a beautiful State with a diverse ecosystem which is important to me because I love nature and I don’t like living in the desert like I am now. Seattle appears to be a very liberal city with a lot of culture. The LGBT community is huge and I keep hearing that it’s an awesome place to live if you’re trans. I just feel drawn to Seattle like it’s somewhere I’m supposed to be. I can’t really explain it.

I need to learn take a little vacation up to Seattle to check it out. There are a lot of Naval facilities at Bremerton which is really close to Seattle. (Hour long ferry ride.) If I can get a job lined up I’d really like to move there. It feels right.

That’s enough typing for now. I’ll blabber on about more pointless nonsense later!

Paige

On controlling the bigender “flip” and what it's like when everyone you care about goes away.

Hay there blog. Yesterday was a fucking catastrophe and today sucks too. My best friend who is also bigender is moving away. So now basically my whole support network is gone and I'm going to be alone here in San Diego. It seemed like one minute things had leveled out and now everything is falling apart before my eyes and there's really nothing I can do about it.

I've been in guy mode since I woke up this morning and I've been forcing myself to stay in guy mode all day. Uh, I didn’t know I could do that before now. When I'm in guy mode vs. female mode I have a lot more control over my emotions. As a guy it's easier for me to control and shut them down when I have to. In female mode I have to cry until I'm done and that's that. I need to make it through another day of work tomorrow so yeah. I need to be in guy mode right now.

So for any bigender person who “flips” between genders like I do, here's what I'm doing. (This is from a MAAB perspective, switch the genders as you see fit.)

1. No female clothing, make up, or any of that shit. I can only speak for myself, but my presentation has a HUGE influence over my gender state. If I look in the mirror and I see a female face, (or a close proximity at least =P) looking back at me then it's a guarantee that I'll flip.

2. Maintain a masculine posture. Most people don't think about this shit consciously, but when you're trans you have to learn how to not only look like the gender you identify as, but you also have to learn all the nuances that go along with said genders presentation. As a simple example, when women sit they tend to take up as little space as possible while men tend to sprawl out and claim as much space as they can. You have to learn about posture, speech patterns, how men squint and look down to the ground and how women usually have there eyes wide open and fixed on the horizon line, stuff like that. Focusing on only using the standard gender ques of the gender I wish to be in grants me another level of control over the fabled “flip”.

3. Mindfulness. This is crucial. (For me anyway.) Don't let your thoughts run away with you. Don't allow your mind to day dream or drift over to thoughts/emotions that your other gender might feed off of. Focus on your breathing, or the different things you see. Notice every detail. Listen to music and hear and feel every tiny note. Basically, focus on the exterior world rather than what's going on inside your head. I've been training my mind to do this for a while to help combat my depression and anxiety so I'm starting to get good at it. It takes practice but it can be done.

So I've learned/I'm learning to wield some control over the flip, but I also know that all I'm really doing right now is suppressing my female side and I'll have to let her out soon. My plan for tomorrow is to make it through the day, take care of all my errands and then I'll go into girl mode and confront all the feelings I'm keeping bottled up inside me right now.

The reality of my situation is that I'm completely devastated right now. My wife doesn’t want me anywhere near her and my one and only friend who also happens to be bigender and whom I regard as a kindred spirit is going away. My friend is my anchor and he makes me feel brave to be myself. I was a complete shut in until I met him. I'm still super shy, but I feel like I'm just starting to come out of my shell and his support has played a huge part in that.

I sort of assumed that he'd always be around. That we'd be friends, transition together, support one another when we needed it, have crazy gender-queer adventures together and we'd do all the stuff that best friends do. (Uh, when they're queer.) My marriage ending is killing me, and then to learn that I'm losing the only other person who I really care about in San Diego. . . fuck.

I'm really fucking weird. No one understands me and I have a hard time making friends. He was my bigender idol when I first joined the bigender.net forums and he was the one who recommended me to my gender therapist, who has literally saved my life more than once now.

Meeting someone like my wife and falling in love with her, (and having my love reciprocated) was a one in a million shot. I don't know if that will ever happen again. (I'm afraid that it won't.) The fact that my friend and I are both bigender, we're both weird, we both work in healthcare, we're both reasonably intelligent, (although he's way smarter than I am) we both seem to be going through the same shit together even though we're not really involved in one another lives, and we both think alike. . . It's like we were supposed to be friends and now that he's going away I feel like I'm being cheated; like this wasn’t supposed to happen.

I feel like we were supposed to have adventures together. He was going to take me to get my first bra fitted. I thought that we could go to San Diego Pride together to represent the bigender community. I was going to take him to get his first suit. His presence in my life has had an extreamly positive influence on me and I'm a stronger person for having known him. He made me excited to be bigender.

So when the smoke settles from my divorce what do I have left? Nothing really. I'll still hopefully have a job, but I need more than that to keep me going. I'm going to have to make some new friends and build up a support network quick or else I'm not going to make it. I can't do this alone.

I just want to go home, but nowhere is home to me anymore.

Paige

On My Marriage Ending

I haven’t posted for a while as I’ve been dealing with a lot of personal stuff, and I knew that the next time I wrote it would have to be about this subject and I’ve been trying to avoid it. Since I realized that I was bigender my greatest fear has been that this would end my marriage. Now I can say that it has.

My wife and I have been separated for a while now. I’ve been living in the bed room which I’ve converted into a tiny flat and my wife living in the front room which she converted into a larger flat. We have been sharing the kitchen and bathroom of course. This arrangement worked for me and having my own bit of personal space has been very liberating and stress relieving.

A few weeks back I heard my wife crying in the bathroom. I asked her if she was ok and she said no. Long story short, we had a long talk and between sobbing, we both decided that we had no future together as a married couple and that it was over. It was something that I kind of knew was coming, but it didn’t make it hurt any less. We agreed that we had something special between us and that we would always be the closest of friends and that we would always be there for each other.

Now let’s fast forward to a couple days ago.

I was in my room on the computer like the good nerd that I am when my wife came in. She started to cry, and then she told me that she needs to get over me and that she wants me to move out of the house. I was shocked. We had gone through a bunch of drama before about who was going to live where and I thought that we were both happy with the current living arrangements. I like the little nest I’ve made for myself and I feel safe and comfortable where I’m at.

When she told me that she can’t stand to be around me because it hurts her so much I felt all the feelings of guilt and shame that I thought I was finally getting over come back stronger than ever before. It’s not my fault that I’m trans/bigender, but the fact that I am I’m hurting her just by being near her makes me feel like shit. I love her and the last thing I’d ever want to do would be to hurt her. If she can’t stand for me to be a part of her life then I have no other choice but to move.

But that’s not going to be so easy.

First of all, it’s my fucking house too. I pay the mortgage and up until recently I’ve paid all the bills as well. I want her to be safe and secure when she gets out of school so I’m going to sign over the condo to her when she is financially able to afford to pay the mortgage. I’m giving her everything I have to give. Until then we’re both on the lease and I have every right to live here. 

Next, it’s really easy to tell me to move out when I’m the one who has to find a new source of income to afford a new place and she doesn’t have to change anything, while I keep paying the mortgage on the condo that I can’t live in anymore. Am I the only one who thinks that’s kind of messed up? I’m starting to feel like I’m somehow being placed in the roll of the bad guy and now I’m supposed to atone for my sins by making enormous sacrifices for her. Again, I DIDENT WANT TO BE BIGENDER. I didn’t fucking ask to be like this. It happened, I changed as a person and I had no control over it.

I didn’t do anything wrong so why do I feel like I’m being punished in some way?

She told me that I should rent my room out so that I can pay to get a place with a roommate which was an old plan we had before, and that she would accept any roommate that I thought would be good. I didn’t realize it at first, but she’s kicking me out and she expects me to find her a roommate so I can make this happen?

Not only that, but it’s not like finding a place for me to stay is going to be easy. I’m transitioning and I’d need to find someone very tolerant and in the safe parts of San Diego where I won’t have to worry about walking down the street and being accosted. Maybe she doesn’t realize just how difficult this is going to be for me.

I’m going to have a long talk with my wife when I get some and then I’ll finish this post. To be continued

_______________________________________________________________________________

I can't stop crying. I can hardly see the monitor through my tears. It's really over. And by that I mean that the most important person to me in the entire world want's me completely out of her life. And out of her house. I don't know how to live like this. We've been together the past 11 ½ years. Every thing was so perfect. I'd never been so happy. Now it's all gone and I can't imagine ever being happy again. Ever being loved again.

For this past year she's always been there for me and she's done everything she could to help me to be happy. That's what she told me just now and she's right. I DIDENT WANT TO CHANGE. I hate myself but I don't know what else I could do? What should I have done? I never wanted to hurt her. Not in a million years but I broke her heart because of what I am. I hurt her so bad.

I feel like a fucking monster. A creature that came in and devoured her husband and took over his life. We had so many plans for the future. I wasted her life. I just want it to stop hurting. I want to stop hurting her.

And so now the life that I've built up for her and I is gone and I have nothing. There's nothing left for me here.

I did everything for her. I woke up in the morning for her and I'd lie down beside her when going to bed I'd think about how incredibly lucky I was that I met the perfect woman for me. God I don't want to go to work tomorrow. I just don’t want to be here anymore. She wants me out of her life and I live for her.

I never knew anything could hurt this bad. I tried to explain to her that this is hard for me too and she got angry at me and yelled at me. She told me that any sane woman would have kicked me out six months ago. I CANT FUCKING HELP IT. I cant stop being trans. I wanted it to go away so bad. I used to be so happy and now just when I think I'm starting to accept myself. . . this. If something was wrong I could always make it better for her and this time I just couldn't. I cant fucking fix this.

My life is over. Ever since I first saw her back at Naval Hospital Yokosuka I knew that she was special and I wanted to make her happy. I've fucking failed. I just wanted to make her happy and instead I wasted her youth and ruined her life.

I got responsible. I got a good work ethic, I became good with managing money. She made me want to be a better man for her. I built up this whole new self and I grew up so I could take care of her. I tried to be a good husband. I thought that I was.

I don't know what to do. I don't know where to go. I never thought that I would be alone again. I thought everything was going to be OK and that there was nothing that we couldn’t work through because of how much we loved each other. I feel like I wasn’t alive before I met her. I don't remember who I was. Now that she's gone I'm completely lost. I've lost everything and I have nothing left.

I don’t know why I do the things I do. Why I'm even bothering to write this down. I know I need to go exercise and I need to eat. I don't have any reason to any more. I don't want to hurt myself because then I'd hurt my friends and my family but it's so fucking hard.

This is the worst day of my life. I don't know what to do. Everything I've loved and cherished for the past 10 years, it's gone and there's nothing left for me except unbearable pain. It hurts too much.

I'm out and proud! (Plus a public service announcement for any friend or family member who ever reads this blog.)

This has been an awesome weekend. On Friday I called my Mom and I finally came out of the closet. Once I got her on the phone I could hardly speak; I don't remember the last time I was that scared. She told me that she was confused, (which is very understandable) but that she loved and supported me.

JOY!

Then I called my sisters and they were both incredibly supportive and cool with it. Then I posted my Facebook note and I've been overwhelmed by how positive most people have been. Everyone who's not happy about this has kindly kept quiet. If I knew it was going to go this well I would have come out months ago. =P

I have a serious problem where I expect a worst case, apocalyptic scenario out of every life situation and it's NEVER as bad I'd feared. One of my sisters rightfully pointed out to me that for a person who doesn’t want to be judged I sure did a lot of judging. If you're someone I know and you're reading this – I'm sorry if there's anything in this blog that you find personally insulting.

Until Friday I felt so alone and I was terrified that I was going to lose the last bit of connection to my family. Now I feel more loved and closer to everyone that I ever have. I was so happy on Friday that I was sobbing. I've cried so much over the course of this past year; to cry because I was happy was a new experience and it felt wonderful.

And now for a quick public service announcement -

If you are a friend or family member reading this there's something you should know first. I created this blog for a couple reasons. First, it's a form of therapy for me. I've had to keep all this stuff to myself for a long time and if I didn’t get it out somehow I was going to go crazy. Second, I thought that by doing this then maybe down the road some other bigender person who going through what I have will stumble upon it and it might help them.

For this reason I have held nothing back in this blog. I talk about everything that's been happening to me.

Everything.

Including TMI stuff relating to my transition that might be good info for someone else who is in my shoes but that you probability REEEEEALLY don't want to read. I personally don't care if anyone of you read this stuff as I have nothing to be ashamed of. Just a friendly warning. =)

This public service announcement has been brought to you by the letters L, G, B and T.

Paige

Getting ready to come out!

The Stars Are Right!

No, Great Cthulhu isn’t going to make his return just yet, (Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn) but it IS time for me to finally come out of the closet as bigender to my family and old friends. After a lot of emotional turmoil, self loathing and unbearable guilt, I'm finally perfectly happy and proud to be bigender and I want everyone to know it.

I feel bad about keeping this from my family for such a long time, but until this point I just wasn’t ready to handle the strong emotion feedback I'll likely receive. Now I've been on HRT for almost six months and my former partner and I are separated. They deserve to know what's going on with me, even if they don't like it.

(Note – it makes me sad to type that last bit. We're still technically married and I don't know what else to call her. She calls me her “roommate”, but shes more than that to me. “Former partner” is the best I can think up.)

Until I'm out to the world I feel like I won't be able to fully claim my identity as a queer person. No one should have to hide who they are from anyone just because they are scared of rocking the boat. I don't want to just be out on the internet, but in the real world acting as an advocate for bigender and non-gender conforming people everywhere.

My biggest fear is of course rejection. I'm worried that when I come out, the people who I've known all my life will suddenly hate me, and I’m the sort of person whose not comfortable with the fact that there's people out there that don't like me. However, seeing how I'm now resting comfortable beneath the Trans Umbrella, I suppose that’s just something I'm going to have to get used to. I've never been super close to my family, but I still love them and I hope that they'll still care about me when this is over.

If not – tough shit.

If someone is going to reject me just for being who I am then I don't want anything to do with them anymore, be they family member or old friend. I've gone through hell and back over the course of this past year and I'm not about to let anyone’s bigotry invalidate my identity, nor am I going to let anyone make me feel bad for being me. I'm transbigenderqueer and I'm fucking magical.

I think that Friday shall be “The Day”. I'll call my Mum, then my sisters and then my brother. I think that my brother is the person most likely to accept me so if everyone else freaks out hopefully he'll have my back. I've prepared a message for Facebook as well, which is how I'll come out to the rest of my family and the world. I think it's pretty good but it lacks a certain warmth. I'll have another crack at it tomorrow. It has to be just right.

I'm feeling good, it's pride month and on the 18^th it'll be my six month HRT anniversary. Unleash the motherfucking rainbow!

Paige

On how HRT Changes you - Sex Stuff Edition

Before I begin, first an apology – I'm soooo sorry it's been such a long time sine I last updated my blog.  I'm currently going through a particularly rough patch in my life. I'll write about it soon, but I need to get my emotions in check before I do so. I make it a specific point to not hold anything back in this journal and that's never going to change. Which actually is a good transition into what I want to write about today.

Sex!

There, I said it.

It's weird – I'm a very sex positive, open minded person, but when I'm asked any question in the “real world” regarding human sexuality I clam up and mentally curl up into a little, quivering ball of insecurity. Since I was a child I've been conditioned to avoid and to be ashamed by the mere mention of any sexual topic thanks to my Roman Catholic upbringing. Hell, it took me forever just to learn how to masturbate properly, and let's just say there were many painful experiments prior to that. =(

While a part of my mind has always been female and most of my sexual fantasies involved me being in the female role, I’ve never had a problem or issue with my male sexuality. I’ve never been dysphoric about my “guy parts” and my sexual experiences have always been pretty typical of an average heterosexual male and that was totally cool with me.

That all changed when I went on estrogen. The first thing that happened is that I stopped getting spontaneous erections when becoming aroused, and then I almost completely lost my desire to engage in penetrative sex. That second one surprised me and ruined my sex life with my wife. Even though I was able to still maintain an erection at first, (and then with drugs) every time we tried to engage in sex where I assumed the role I had previously in our relationship I always felt awful afterwords. Even though I was able to get off I felt guilty because I didn’t enjoy it. I felt, “dirty” I suppose, and ashamed of the fact that I felt that way while being intimate with the love of my life.

Now this was something I sure as fuck hadn’t planned on and nothing that I’d read about anywhere before in the multiple, “How HRT will affect you” guides on the web. I had anticipated some of the physical changes but nothing like that. We ended up trying . . . lots of stuff, but eventually we just stopped having sex. I think what made it hardest for me was knowing that my wife is not attracted to woman and the fact that I always saw myself as one in the bedroom now.

Come to think of it, I just now realized that I’ve become asexual in guy mode. Holy crap.

When you’ve been on estrogen for a while the way you experience sensation is dramatically changed; it’s much more like that of a female. (DUH.) Before HRT my erogenous zone was basically my dick, although I loved touchy feely stuff too. Now my entire body is one big erogenous zone with some parts feeling especially awesome. Self love was a little awkward at first, but then it occurred to me that I ought to do take a cue from my FAAB counterparts and so I got a vibrator. HOLYSHITOMGWTFBBQ NO ONE TOLD ME HOW GOOD THIS WOULD BE. I certainly didn’t read about THAT anywhere either.

Everything is different than when I was on testosterone. I no longer have the urge to get myself off that must be fulfilled if I’m to get any sleep. Sexual desire is something I can forget about after a while now and I don’t obsess over it. Oh, no one told me about the multiple orgasms either, and ejaculation no longer equals orgasm like when you’re on testosterone. In fact, I’ve found that I can ejaculate without orgasming, and it leaves me feeling kind of empty and unsatisfied. The first time I experienced a female orgasm, (or as close to one as I suppose I’ll get with my girl cock) I actually started laughing because it felt so amazing that I could hardly believe anything could feel that good.

Shortly after my fourth month on E it was like someone flipped a switch and I went into heat. Really, WTF? I figured my sex drive would go away like I’ve read that it does for other MTF people. Again, wrong. However, arousal and attraction works differently than it used too. Now it’s more like my body is hungry to be touched rather than me wanting to put my dick into something. Men are starting to look better and better to me now as well. (As in OMG I want one.) This could be because guy mode seems to have lost interest in sex, and up to this part I was more attracted to woman than men in guy mode, and more attracted to men than women in female mode. (I’m going to have to think about this later.)

So that’s been my experience thus far. If you’re thinking of going on estrogen, keep in mind that it may change you in PROFOUND ways that you never expected. Some of them good, and some of them not so good. And I’m just talking about sex here. My wants, needs and desires are not the same anymore and I’ve changed as a person because of it.  It just doesn't effect your body but your mind as well.

So if you’re going to go down the hormone rabbit hole, please don’t tell your spouse or significant other, “I’ll always be the same person” like I did. Hay, maybe you will be, or maybe you won’t. And I’m just talking about sex stuff here. There’s a lot more to HRT than that. The fact of the matter is that you just won’t know until you’ve done it.

I wouldn't change anything.  I know that I'm doing the right thing, but it hurts and I wish I knew then what I know now.

Paige