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.

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.

Who am I?

Over the past couple days I’ve been thinking about my identity. Recently I’ve been discovering parts of myself that I never knew existed. Wants, desires, dreams, needs. . . Then yesterday after work I was driving in my car when suddenly I came to the realization that I don’t know myself anymore.

Uh, this is something I’m actively trying to figure out right now so please excuse me if I’m a bit cryptic or I don’t make much sense. You’ve been warned.

I began to identify as Bigender about a year ago. Now, a lot of changes can occur to a person over the span of a year, but this year has been unlike any other that I’ve ever experienced. I profoundly changed when I joined the Navy and then again after I married my wife. Over time I’ve become much more responsible, honest and my work ethic kicks ass. But over the years there have been things about me that were the same since adolescence. Basic beliefs about myself and the world in which I lived in. 

I’m not the same person that I used to be a year ago. Not at all.

I try hard not to refer my male and female aspects as being two different people. That’s not the case and I don’t want to give anyone that wrong idea. (No, I do not have dissociative identity disorder.) However I’m going to do it in today’s journal in an attempt to help me to explain what’s going on here.

I’ve been suppressing my female self my whole life. As a child I learned at some point that I couldn’t like girl things and that I had to behave like a boy. It’s hard to remember that far back as I’ve only just begun to comprehend how being duel gendered has been impacting me from a very young age, but lately I’ve been recalling more. As I’m typing this now I just remembered my dad scolding me for playing with Rainbow Bright toys with my cousin. I loved; “Lala Orange”. Just typing that made me cringe when I know that there’s nothing wrong with it. 

That’s the power of shame and the effect that it can have on a child. When you’re young and impressionable you depend on your parents and other adults to explain to you how the world works and your place in it. Today I know that there’s nothing wrong with a child playing with toys typically associated with the opposite gender or even how they dress for that matter. However, I still feel a hint of that old shame and embarrassment when sharing that memory. 

I don’t remember the words that were spoken, but I knew that I made my Dad angry with me and that I was doing something that was WRONG and that I should feel awful for having done it. So I didn’t play “Rainbow Bright” with my cousin anymore, although in my childhood daydreams where no one could see me I would still sometimes imagine that I was her. 

Now that my female self is out it’s like she’s a child exploring the world around her and discovering who she is. I never wanted kids before and I most certainly never wanted to be pregnant, but when I’m female the fact that I’ll never be able to experience that hurts me, like I’m being denied of something that’s rightfully mine. I never imagined being married to man but now the idea is just as acceptable as being married to a woman. All these taboo’s that I’ve held in the past, many of them reinforced by my Roman Catholic upbringing and many from having been raised in a binary gender society are gone and now I’m finally free to grow.

My mind is consumed by wants and desires that I never could have imagined, and so many other things in my life that once seemed significant to me before have now become trivial. What and whom am I becoming? Am I losing myself and being replaced or am I evolving into something else now that the fear is gone? 

My face is so different now that I don’t recognize it mirror. I’ve tried to take a few new pictures of myself in guy mode to update my Facebook profile but don’t look like me and I don’t want to startle my family. It’s not that I don’t like my face; in fact for the first time since Jr. High I’m finally growing to be happy with it. It’s so unfamiliar, like I’m a different person, or like I’m becoming one. It's MY face, who ever I am.

I just can’t shake the feeling that something is changing me. I have no control over it nor do I want it to stop. I was so unhappy before all this began and I’m still unhappy a lot of the time. But as I discover all these new things about myself, as much as they frighten and hurt me initially, I begin to accept them as a part of me. I embrace them and I change a little more. 

I think I may have just figured it out. I’m not losing myself or becoming someone else. What’s happening is that I’m becoming the person who I was always meant to be. Wild, unbound and hungry for life. 

Annnnd once again I figure out complicated life shit by writing down the random thoughts going through my head in real time. Neat huh?

Paige

"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

On realizing that I’ve always been Bigender

Before I get going, I just wanted to mention how happy I am that President Obama came out of the closet (heh) in support of same sex marriage yesterday. He’s the first US President to do so, and it’s worth noting that every President who has championed a civil rights cause has had civil rights legislation passed during his term in office. Here’s hoping for another four years.

OK, I just wanted to get that out of the way. 

On Monday I saw my wonderful gender therapist and we were talking about my long battle with depression and social anxiety. She got around to asking me if identifying as bigender has changed how I look at it.  At first I thought that she was just asking about how it’s affected my mood since I first began to identify as bigender about a year ago, and I asked her to clarify what she meant. 

We got to talking and she helped me to realize that I’ve always been bigender, and that throughout my life it’s had an enormous impact on my depression and my social anxiety. It might sound silly, but I was so clueless that I never really thought about how it had affected me as I grew up. I'm almost embarrassed by the fact that this hadn’t occurred to me earlier.

Suddenly things clicked into place. Repressed childhood memories of liking both boy and girl toys and cartoons, wishing I could be a girl sometimes but not always, getting in trouble for messing with my Mom's makeup, (sorry I ruined your lipstick Mom) the feeling that I was different from all the other boys in my neighborhood which isolated me, my biological father’s attempts to masculinise me and stomping around in my Mom's high heels wearing a sheet as a dress came rushing back to me.  The clues from my teenage years have always been pretty easy for me to identify, but I’d never thought about how being bigender affected me as a child and what sort of impact it’s had on my long term mental health.

I didn’t have a happy childhood for other reasons to begin with, but it’s now clear to me that my gender nonconformity exacerbated those issues considerably. Everyone knows that being gay or being trans is not a choice; you’re born that way. (Well, there are some ignorant twats who refuse to believe it.) Makes sense that some people like me are born bigender. 

I’m confused about my own gender identity as it is, and I have the support of a tiny bigender community and the power of the interwebz at my disposal. Imagine what it’s like to be a little kid who has no idea why they are the way they are. That’s enough to screw you up reeeeally good. 

On a side note, it also makes me wonder if there aren’t a whole lot more bigender people out there who don’t realize it. Maybe with this media attention we’re getting at the moment, plus the fact that transgender people are becoming more accepted in society, more people will realize they they’ve been gender variant their whole lives and the pieces will “click” into place for them as well.

This is one of those night where I have a million things I want to say, but I'll save it for tomorrow. 

Cheers.

Paige

Just another status update

Hi blog. I'm supper fucking exhausted right now so hopefully this post isn’t too incoherent. Seriously, I fell like I got hit by a truck. Not much to report since the last post. When I went to work on Thursday there was a card in a sealed envelope waiting for me. I opened it up and it was from my boss, saying to take care of myself and wishing me luck on my transition. My day couldn’t have started any better. I've said it before, but my boss really is the sweetest lady ever.

My wife and I are getting along good. She was at her parents house the last few days and I had it all to myself. We will be moving into our separate parts of the house in the next few days now which is going to be a bit of work. My upper body strength is NOT what it used to be so I'm wondering how moving all this furniture around is going to go.

We had a friend over today to look at the condo and to see if he wants to move in. Looks like he probably will which is awesome as quite frankly he's the only person who we'd let in here. That will allow me to save money, which is something I really need to do.  (And my wife and I both think it will be kind of fun.)

As he left he mentioned that he was worried about me. I'm worried about me too and I think I'm trying to go way to fast in regards to my transition. It's something my therapist has brought up a couple times as well. I really need to give myself time to get comfortable with myself and to work shit out. Also as I mentioned in my last post, I'm starting to worry about not being able to pass as male in guy mode. I have a long way to go in regards to that, but as I begin to look more androgynous and my chest growth becomes more prominent (seriously, those little things are perky) this is bothering me a lot.

Is there a middle ground? I'm really not sure and this is just one of the reasons I need to slow the fuck down before I make a decision that I'll regret later. It must be nice to wake up in the morning and not have to think about what gender you are. Anyway, before I make any kind of permanent alterations to my body outside of the effects of HRT I'm really going to have to learn to accept myself as a bigenderd person.

I think the new game plan will consist of doing electrolysis over the next several months and then after I've saved up another 4 grand I'll do another round of laser resurfacing. I figure this will give me over a year to mull things over and to get well mentally with therapy and all that. (Well, I'll probably always be in therapy but I mean that I'll hopefully be in a better place.)

That's about it for the moment. Now I'm going to go play stupid video games until I feel like going to bed.  Weeeeeee.

Oh, NPR might want to interview me. Another day in the life.

Paige

Came out to my boss today. And other crap

I made the decision yesterday to come out to my immediate supervisor who basically functions as my boss, although there are even more people over her who I also have to answer to. Yay government bureaucracy! She is the nicest, sweetest lady I've ever met, and she has known that I've been having a lot of problems over the past year. She's tried to get me to talk about them, but I've always told her that I wanted to, but I couldn’t just yet.

When I had my most recent depressive episode she went out of her way to cover for me and to make sure I was ok. Whenever something goes wrong she's always been there for me. Seriously, the best boss ever. After this latest incident I decided that she deserved to know the truth.

So today we sat down and I filled her in on why I went to the hospital and the fact that my wife and I are getting separated so we can have some space. She was very concerned about my self mutilation and she expressed how worried she was about me.

Anyway, I eventually steered the topic in the direction that I needed it to head in and asked her, “Are you open mined?” She said yes of course, and then I told her I was transgender, and that's the reason that things have been so crazy for me. She was very supportive and made it a point to tell me that it's not a big deal in this day and age. Uh, she also recommended that I go to a church support group, but I figured I wouldn't tell her that I'm also an Atheist as dropping the trans bomb-shell was enough for one day.

When I came out to my wife about being bigender I bombarded her with information as I was desperate for her to accept me. That just made her more confused. So coming out to my boss I only told her that I was transgender, and that was it. If the person want's to know more information they will ask you. (Although you should let them know they can ask you questions, duh.)

She DID ask me the “how far are you going to go with this?” questions which of course means, “are you going to have THE surgery”, and I responded that I'm going to keep going until I can blend in as a female in public, which is the truth. I also assured her that I'm not just going to suddenly show up in a dress one day, which got a laugh. This is going to be a long process especially given my financial situation. Hell, she'll most likely have moved on long before I go full time.

I would have liked to have come out as bigender but again I thought it was best just to tell people what they need to know. When I come out to my family I'm going to do so as bigender and I'll send that spiffy Scientific America article to them. (I'm Science! After all.)

Speaking of which, I have decided that now is NOT a good time to come out to my family considering my rather fragile psychological state. My therapist agreed and reminded me that it hasn’t even been a week since I was in the hospital. I tend to move very fast on things. I haden't given that much thought before, but after my session with my therapist tonight I'm a little worried.

She was asking me about my mood and how it was changing. I didn’t know what she was talking about, but she said that in the 20 minuets that we'd been talking I'd gone though six profound mood swings. I'm not sure what the problem is, if I'm thinking happy thoughts I'm happy and if I think sad thoughts I'm sad, but she made a big deal out of it and it's creeping me the fuck out because she's a smart lady and I don't know what this means. It's spooky! OooooOOOOoooOOO. Just like that.

The only other item of interest that happened today was that when I came home my wife and I got along very well and we were affectionate to each other, which made me supper happy as I still love her to death. Last night when I tucked her into bed she told me, “every time I look at you I get depressed”, which set me off and I cried the rest of the night, up until the point until I got into bed. Then she put her arm around me and I went right to sleep.

Anyway, today I walked into the bedroom to find that she had taken all her decorations down. She had an entire wall plastered with old drawings and art projects from when she was a little kid up until now. I saw that blank, empty wall and again, I couldn't hold back the tears. We are not giving up on this marriage, but holy shit this is painful. Yet here I am, still kicking and screaming.

Paige