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.

Dreams part 2

I can't take it any more.

Today sucked. It sucked really bad. I can hardly formulate a sentence right now.

I may be bigender, but I'm incapable of being happy or comfortable in my male body any longer. I keep going back and forth, over and over again. When I'm in male mode I'm never happy.

One trend that's been obvious to me is that when I present as female everything changes for me. I don't look in the mirror and hate the way I look, I'm happy with my body, my cloths are comfortable and damn if I don't clean up nice with some makeup.  

I still hate the male secondary traits, but I've never hated the female ones that have developed so far. The more female I look the happier I am.

When I'm in female mode AND presenting as female I feel like I can relax and be myself. I like to laugh, make jokes and dance. I'm actually comfortable in my body, while presenting as male I feel like I'm about to squirm out of my skin.

You can probably see where this is going.

For a while I thought I was going to transition but then I decided against it as I keep flipping back to male mode. However, I'm not fucking happy with my male body. The notion of continuing on this way for the rest of my life is unacceptable and it's driving me into a depression that threatens to overwhelm me. It almost has a few times already and I don't want to go back to the hospital again.

So I have revised my plans.

I'm going to start electrolysis next paycheck. I get paid in two days. My gender therapist gave me a card for someone that some of her patients were really happy with. I will call them after work to schedule an appointment.

As soon as possible I'm going to try and move out to Hillcrest, the gay district of San Diego. If I can get a roommate to share the costs, I can rent out the room I sleep in now and use it to pay my part of the rent. I've talked with my wife about this plan and she thinks it's a good idea. If we can't rent out the room then I can still pull it off, but I wont be able to save much money at all and I really NEED to be saving my money at this time.

If the getting a roommate plan doesn’t work out, then I can just stay where I am now for the time being. Once my wife has steady work I will sign the mortgage over to her and get my own apartment out in Hillcrest. While I wait for that to happen I can at least still get electro.

I want to live in Hillcrest because as soon as I can get a bit more confidant in myself, I want to start living part time as a female. Hillcrest will be the most forgiving neighborhood for this, and it's where I'll be harassed the least. (Hopefully.)

The money I'll be saving by living frugally will pay for the electrolysis, and some will also go into a second fund. My goal is to have round two of laser resurfacing no latter than 6 months from this date. Then there will be a recovery period for at lest 3 months before I make any further decisions.

I will join a trans support group of some sort. I was worried about doing so before because I'm bigender but fuck it. I desperately need to meet more people like me. 

By this time I shall have my voice, walk and female gestures down. Then I will take a good hard look at myself and reassess.

If I'm still not happy with my complexion I will have to save up for one more round of resurfacing. I don't this this will be the case, but you never know.

If I am, then I will ask myself if I'm really ready to go full time, and if this is how I want to live the rest of my life. If so, the next thing I will do is FFS, the first procedure being forehead re-contouring, hair line decent and eye brow lift plus trachea shave.

After surgery there will be a huge change in my appearance and I will start to live full time. Then I can save up for the nose-job/jaw FFS. Once I'm happy with my face I'll take care of my boobs if necessary. As for SRS, I'm fine for now. That may change at some point, so I'm keeping that in mind.

The good thing about this plan is that I really don't have to make any major commitment until my first FFS. That's not going to be for a while and it gives me plenty of time to work things out. However, now I at least have a plan. 

Of course, this is very much like my old plan when I thought I was going to fully transition and then I decided against it. I no longer have any choice. I am Bigender. However, while I may flip back and forth between male and female I'm now 100% confident that I will never be happy until I can present and blend in as a woman. 

So there you have it, back to Transbigenderqueer or whatever I am. At least I'll die in the right body.

Paige Abendroth.

For Month HRT Anniversary!

As the title of this entry states, today is my four month HRT anniversary!  Four months ago when I started HRT I was all screwed up and now. . . I'm still all screwed up.  However, I'm not as screwed up as I used to be, so that's good.

Before HRT my biggest source of gender dysphoria was my body.  Now however, it's much more of a emotional and psychological thing.  Yeah I've said it before, but I'm still amazed at how well my body has taken to HRT.   It's gotten to a point where I think I think I look weird in guy mode but I look normal in female mode, excepting some stuff like my stupid brow ridge and my jaw which is waaay too big.

At this point in time I should note that I'm in female mode and that my opinion may change next time I flip. =)

The fact that it's only been four months is extremely encouraging to me and I can't wait till I hit the six month mark, which is a sort of milestone for people on HRT.  For transwomen anyway, I'm not sure about transmen.  I'm sure that I'll be on estrogen for the rest of my life, which I know that I'm cool with in guy mode as well.

Another thing that's going on is that I'm beginning to get over my social anxiety, bit by bit.   For years it's kept me from expressing myself and doing the stuff I wanted to do . Basically, I've run out of fucks to give about what people think about me.   I'd rather just be myself and if someone has a problem with that can fucking piss off.

So today I did something I've wanted to do for years – I got my ears pierced, and my eyebrow too.  I searched the interwebz high and low and it was obvious that the best place in San Diego was Enigma Piercing. http://enigmapiercing.com/  I went to their second location on Adams Ave as I flipping hate Pacific Beach.   The staff kicked ass!  They were super professional and personable.  Really, I felt like I was getting my shit pierced by a friend of mine and there was almost no stress.  Then again I was a Navy Corpsman for eight years and I'm been around tons of needles, so that probably helped.

On a side note, if you want to get a piercing but your scared of the pain just fucking do it.  (But check with work first. =) ) It wont be nearly as bad as you think it will be and afterwords you'll feel like a fucking rock star.  For me, it was a sharp pain that lasted like two seconds and then it felt fine. Easy-peasy.

A year ago, or even just a month ago I wouldn’t have been able to even walk into the place let alone get some piercings done as I used to be terrified of drawing attention to myself.  So yeah, while I'm still experiencing some social anxiety it's getting a lot better.   Now I need to thrust myself into some social situations in order to desensitize myself to them.

Last night I put a bunch of peroxide in my hair to make it more blond and bring out my natural highlights.  After the piercings I decided that my hair sucked so I gave myself a haircut. I'm happy with the results and when I was done I looked at my reflection and thought, “Ya know, I kind of look like I'm gay.”  I'm sooooo OK with that.  In a couple weeks I'm going to get my lip pierced and then I'll stop for a while.  I'd really like to get some tattoos also, but I need to start my electrolysis asap so I just wont have the funding.

Damn the torpedoes!

Paige A

"If I could have chosen, I would have been born a woman."

“If I could have chosen, I would have been born a woman.”

So I've written about the lead singer of Against Me coming out as trans already, but I have a lot more that I need to day about it.

I've already mentioned their song “The Ocean”, which is basically Laura, (the lead singer) screaming out to the world about her pain and desire to be the woman that she always has been. It's my new favorite song. Yesterday in 100% girl mode it actually made me realize something. Here is the second verse.

“If I could have chosen, I would have been born a woman

My mother once told me she would have named me Laura

I would grow up to be strong and beautiful like her

One day I’d find an honest man to make my husband

We would have two children, build our home on the Gulf of Mexico

Our family would spend hot summer days at the beach together

The sun would kiss our skin as we played in the sand and water

We would know we loved each other without having to say it

At night we would sleep with the windows of our house left open

Letting the cool ocean air soothe the sunburned shoulders of our children.”

Those are the most poignant and beautiful words I’ve ever read. While listening to the song for like the 10^th time that afternoon it suddenly dawned upon me.

I'll never have a man flirt with me. I'll never be swept off my feet. I'll never have a man (or anyone) awkwardly ask me out on a date. No one will take me to the movies or to a nice Italian restaurant. No one will ever surprise me with my favorite flowers. No one will ever make the first move on me, and therefore I won't be able to let him.

No one will ever get down on one knee and profess their love for me. No one will think I'm beautiful, even when I wake up in the morning and I look like a wreck. No one will make me his wife. I'll never be able to take care of the house while he goes to work, and I won't be able to run errands, do the shopping, exercise so I look good for him, clean the house and then cook a kick ass healthy meal for him so that when he get's home he can relax for a bit and we can spend some time together. When we're getting tired he'll never hold me in his strong arms and make me feel safe and wanted, and he won't kiss me like he needs to have me, and he wont lead me into the bedroom.

I will never be able to have children. I won't have an opportunity to dedicate me life to them, and I wont see them take their first awkward steps into the world. I'll never be able to call my husband at work to tell him that our child’s first words were, “Da, da”. I like to think that he would try to sound strong, but his voice would crack at some point and I would love him more than ever before.

I'll never be able to take them to school for the first time and cry as they enter the building. I won't watch them grow older and watch them as they become individuals. I'll never see them grow into teenagers and reject me as the enemy, and I won't be able to love them more for it. I wont be able to take on a new job to help pay for their collage, and I won't be there when they leave home to become adults.

Some day perhaps they would settle down and make a family of their own and then they would let me know that I was a good mother. If they chose to have children I would be a grandma and I would spoil the hell out of my grand-kids. Then my children would understand that all I ever did in my life was for them, and we would be closer than ever.

I would grow old and slow with my husband and I would give thanks every day that I was his wife. And when we both neared the end of our lives I would care for him, and even when the pain was awful I would cry tears of sadness for how much he was suffering, and tears of joy that I was so blessed to have been a part of his life, and that he loved me.

But I'm fucking bigender.

I'll never have any of that. It's hard enough for transsexuals to find a good partner who they can be open with, and here I am Bigender; not one gender nor the other. I can't transition to the other sex as my gender is in a constant state of flux. Who could love a person that is both a man and a woman?

Until last night I didn’t think I wanted those things in my life. I thought that said gender roles were ridiculous and outdated. But here I am tonight, wanting nothing more in the whole world, and dreading the moment when I flip back into male mode and I'll loose this part of me. I just want everything to stay like it is now forever.

Every day I die.

Paige

The shit hits the fan (Update part 1)

Holy fuck balls I don't know where to begin.

I'm going to try to sum things up as best I can. If I got into detail this post would go on forever.

As you may recall my wife went up to her parents after I pissed her off. While she was up there I fell into an even deeper depression that I was already in. Upon her return we had a talk and we decided that I needed to go off on my own (but not too far!) to find myself. We are like two pees in a pod, best friends forever; but my transitioning is driving us both nanners. So this made sense to me and I began looking for a way to make things work.

At first I thought that if I found a room mate I could live out in town. I know a friend who is also looking to move out of his apartment and I figured if we pooled our resources this might work. I went so far as to do some preliminary apartment hunting. (I found this cute place in Hillcrest right in the middle of everything that I would kill to move into.) However, upon further review of my finances it became painfully apparent to me that unless I was willing to make some MAJOR sacrifices this just wasn’t going to work financially.

This made me a sad.

It wasn’t that good a plan anyway because then I still wouldn’t be able to save money for transition, and and as I've just hit the “transition or die” phase of my life that's not acceptable. After wracking my brain the only other thing I could think of would be for my wife to move out until February when she completes school and gets a job. Then I would rent out a room which I would use to help finance my transition. Then after my wife was financially stable I would sign over the mortgage to her and move out on my own with a room mate so that I can save money for transition.

This plan sucked balls but at the time neither of us could think of a better idea. I don't really know anyone plus I'm trans/whatever so that makes things even harder.  She agreed to this, but as you can imagine, while all this was going on we had reached critical drama levels. We seemed to have things worked out and I started to feel a little hopeful. Transition is all I think about now. It's something that I'm willing to give everything up for. That must sound batshit insane to non-trans people, but what they don't understand is that it really can be a matter of life or death.

Once I thought I had finally made things work my wife started changing stuff around and she threw a monkey wrench into the gears of my plan. (Not that she was trying to do so, this is an extremity complicated situation.) This was three nights ago, so on the 17^th. We argued and I began to, for lack of a better term, freak the fuck out. I'm trapped in limbo, unable to transition when I can no longer wait. Seriously, I even considered defaulting on my loan for the mortgage and destroying my credit just so I could get an apartment to save money. (Turns out my wife's name is on the mortgage too so that wasn’t going to happen.)

As the night went on my depression became more and more profound. I couldn’t think of a way out and I was completely overwhelmed with hopelessness. I drew up and hot bath, got an old box cutter and I began cutting.

I used to do this in high school and at various points in my life when I've felt that all hope was lost. It's a very unhealthy and self destructive behavior, and I'm embarrassed that it's all I had to fall back on. At the time I was not in my right mind. I cut myself all over my body and when my wounds stopped leaking blood into the water I would scrub them so they would reopen. I kept trying to cut deeper, but I couldn’t bring myself to open a vein to end it all. At one point I finally came to my senses and I crawled out of the tub and tried to ask my wife for help. She was sleeping and when I tried to wake her up, blood trickling down my body from multiple incisions, she mumbled at me and told me to go to sleep. (She didn’t look at me and it would not be until the next day that I would learn that she had taken two ambian before going to bed, so no wonder I couldn’t get her attention.  At the time however I was very hurt.)

I then drove myself to the VA hospital ER and attempted to voluntary commit myself to the psychiatric ward as I was damn near suicidal. However, all the beds were full so they kept me there in the ER and observed me over night. I cried for hours and at some point I drifted to sleep for a short time. When they woke my up as they needed to move be to another room there was a huge wet spot around my head.

In the other room I could not sleep and finally my wife showed up. (By then it was like 0900.) We talked and worked some stuff out. They still didn’t have a bed open for me and I decided to go home rather than staying at the hospital. I was hospitalized for my depression once before for a three week period and I was miserable the entire time.

We finally got out of there at noon and I went home, got stuff cleaned up and called my gender therapist, who was able to see me on short notice. As always she helped me to put things into perspective and I'm going to be attending some sort of program that should help me deal with these kinds of situations in a healthy way. (DBT)

So, it's been rough. My body, especially my arms, are covered in scabs and I'm going to have to wear long sleeves for a while. Up until now I don't think my wife realized just how desperate I am to transition. I think she does now. This has also shown me that I need lots of outside support to get through this. For a shy, introvert like me that's going to be hard, but I have to do it.

More has happened since then, but I'll put it in a separate post to keep things organized and to keep my individual posts from getting too long.

A final note – if you are feeling hopeless and it seems like there's no other possible way out, please reach out to someone and get help. A few days ago I was desperately trying to work up the resolve to open up my veins so that I would bleed out into the tub, but now here I am typing up this post in a much better state of mind. I'm getting the help I need and there's always hope, no matter how bad it might seem at the moment. 

Paige

About last night . . .

Wow, so last night I was falling apart but today I feel relatively fine.  (If not tired from staying up so late.)  While I'm feeling pretty depressed in guy mode (which I'm in now) when I'm in girl mode sometimes the dysphoria is unbearable.  

I'm currently trying to get on HRT (hormone replacement therapy) but my psychiatrist is shit and he's not returning my calls.  Monday morning I'm going to call my regular Doc (who is awesome) and try to get her to help me.

I'm a military vet and I get all my care from the VA.  My plan is to get the hormones from them and to also get refereed out to see a gender therapist.  I have a fun weekend planned so I'll report when I return. 

<Sigh> One day at a time.