Estrogen and Emotions (Anger/Sadness)

Today I thought I'd write a little about some of the ways that HRT has effected my emotions thus far. I've only on estrogen for four months, so maybe things will change down the road and of course your experience on HRT might be totally different than mine.

The biggest change has been how I process anger and sadness. Before estrogen when I'd get upset about something I'd get pissed off. Now instead of getting pissed off I cry. I mean, I fucking cry rivers. Uh, at least every other day in fact. I mean, this is a very difficult time in my life and I have some good things to cry about I think, but wow.

My gender therapist told me that I was going to be crying a lot and holy shit was she right. The weird thing is that going from T to E, crying instead of getting angry now just seems like the natural thing for me to do, depending on what gender I am at the moment. Here's a good example that happened today -

I got out of work and I had to head strait to my therapists office to attend a DBT group. Instead of getting on the freeway I needed to, I went into auto pilot and started driving to my house! When I realized what the hell I was doing I was already at a point where the only thing I could do was to head towards home and then take the route that I normally take to her office if I'm leaving from my house.

I HATE being late. (The Navy beat that into me pretty well.) So I arrived just a few minuets late, yet my stress levels were climbing. So far I have hated my DBT classes and today was no exception. I sit on my ass for eight hours at work and then I have go to the meetings where I have to sit on my ass for another two and a half hours. About 30 minuets into these things my butt starts to hurt and I want to fucking get up and do something constructive.

It takes forever to go over a simple concept and we move at a snails pace through the lesson plan. I just want to get the fuck up and leave. I have shit to do and I feel like I'm wasting my time there. Every thing we go over I already know for the most part and the skills we are learning are ones I already know.

Anyway, the fact that this is not working for me makes me really sad as I had high hopes for DBT. So I sit there for two and a half hours, feeling miserable. There was a bunch of talk about the term, “Man up” for some reason, (act like a man) which bothered me because it enforces the gender binary. Oh, and I spoke up for myself and asked for the facilitator to call me Paige for now on, which was good, but she replied, “yes ma’am” which fucked me up because I was in male mode at the time. Yes, bigender is complicated.

All these things were making me feel worse and worse about myself and my situation. I toughed it out until the end and then I went and sat in my car for an hour and a half. Why? Because during our session on Monday my therapist told me that she wouldn't be in next week and that she wanted to see me one more time before then, so we scheduled an appointment at 1830. I sat in my car and ate my crappy fast food sandwich until it was time to be seen.

I went back inside, waited half and hour past my appointment time and then I texted her asking what the hell was up. She called and told me that we were scheduled for NEXT Thursday, not today. I swear that she told me it was going to be for today, but quite frankly, ever since I started E I've been even more scatterbrained than I normally am, so she's most likely correct.

She tried to say some nice stuff to me but I had to hang up on her because I had started to cry again. I bolted out of the building and hid in my car for bit while I pulled myself together.

Wow, that was a long tirade but here's the thing – When I was on testosterone all of these little things would have compounded until I'd have gotten extremity pissed off and I would have brooded about them for a while. Then when I was tired of being pissed I would just stop and forget about it. However, every now and then that memory might have resurfaced and I would have gotten angry again and felt the same level of anger I had previously experienced when it actually happened to me.

On estrogen, I get sad instead. It's confusing to me when I'm in guy mode but in female mode it feels perfectly natural. By the time I was leaving my therapists office I had flipped back into female mode and I was chocking back tears. I started driving away, and all of the sudden, (I had no control over this) I shouted, “this is fucking bullshit!” at the top of my lungs and I punched the steering wheel. Urges to cry – gone. I was pissed and I had flipped back to male mode.

So regarding my experience with estrogen as a bigender MAAB person, hormones have had a huge impact on my emotions, but what gender I am seems to have a significant effect as well. Ha, I was originally going to go over some other emotional stuff but this entry is long enough and quite frankly I'm sleepy.

So goodnight! May you dream the dreams that you dare not share.

Paige

This may just be my worst entry ever.

Jello blog.

Yesterday was fun. I was invited to go on a walk with a friend, but there must have been some communication breakdown as it turned out to be a run, which was fine with me but I wish that I wore looser clothing as I was trying to dress queer and my pants were waaay to tight to sprint in. =P It turned out to actually be a profound, thought provoking experience which I really hadn’t expected, but I was grateful for it. I think I'll save that experience for a latter post.

Afterwords we went back to his house in Hillcrest, he made an awesome diner. Then we wandered around the gay district for a while, mostly people watching. So, I saw dozens upon dozens of gay “bros”, muscle bound macho guys wandering about – but where are all the whisper thin artistic types??? Are they all already taken? Maybe they're just avoiding the clubs. (Mental note – look up “queer open mike poetry readings in San Diego” tomorrow.)

We ended up at some tiny club/bar that was mostly populated by lesbians and queer people. I liked it because it wasn’t so overpoweringly loud and they were playing 80's music, which I love. =P My friend seemed to like it too, but I wonder if it may have been because he spent a lot of time time checking other people out. ;)

I got back from Hilllcrest at 0200 and I went to sleep at 0230. I woke up at 0700 so yeah, not much sleepies for me. =( I snuggled up with my cat until around 0800 and then I got up as it was obvious that a full nights sleep had once again alluded me.

After I got cleaned up I walked over to the new Panera Bread that just opened near my condo in the hopes of getting some early morning exercise and a healthy breakfast, but I was disappointed. They got my order wrong and when I got the right one the egg whites on my sandwich were paper thin, cold and rubbery. AND it was on white bread, which is nutritiously worthless.

After that I wandered over to Walgreen’s to get some other supplies *whistles* and then I headed back home. All in all it was a good walk, especially since I'm still wearing my hoodie to cover up the wounds on my left arm and I got hot as hell. Those wounds are going to leave some nasty scars and seeing that the hot San Diego summer is rapidly approaching I'm going to have to stop worrying about freaking people out and just wear my normal clothing. It's going to be hard to explain them when coworkers see my arm. The department picnic is next week and I don't want to go.

I spent most of the rest of the day practicing mindful meditation. It was very hard for me to let go of some of the issues that I'm dealing with at the moment, but I did a pretty good job I think. I mostly focused on environmental stuff; first the breeze blowing through my window and later in the day some classical lute music I have. No complementing the empty nature of reality for me today.

I'm still having a very hard time figuring out who I am. When I look at myself in male mode I see myself as a man, but then I take a picture of myself and I'm disgusted by my appearance. I'm still not who I used to be. It's like how I used to be in female mode. Everything is wrong with my face and I refuse to look like that any more. I was in guy mode most of the day but I still wasn’t happy with my body. It wasn’t until I presented as female at around 1800 that I finally felt like myself.

It's weird; all my muscles relax and I feel loose and comfortable when I'm like this. I might still be shy, but I actually feel like I'm comfortable in my skin where normally I'm super awkward and clumsy. Normally I'm in another body that I'm trying to control, screaming instructions desperately while it flails about.

When I'm in female mode and I can present as such, everything feels right. And, when the dysphoria isn’t to bad, I feel happy. I mean, REALLY happy. But of course, I've never even been out of the house nor has anyone other than my wife seen me present on female mode. Maybe this is all a delusion and I'm just in denial that I'll never be accepted by anyone as a woman.

Can I be happy if I transition to female and still accept the male side of me? Will they blend together? I spent all last night and this morning being unhappy with my appearance. As soon as I presented as female everything was OK.

I'm afraid that eventually I'm going to have to pick between one or the other lest I go insane. If it comes to that, I know which one I'll pick and it scares the hell out of me.

Uh, on a happy note I actually wore pretty stuff today and if I might say so myself; I looked damn good in it. Most of my outfits are just like guy mode – black shirt and jeans, except that in female mode I wear a large Jr. tee-shirt and size seven flared pants. After I put my face on and got dressed I was so happy with my presentation, but I felt sad as it's not like anyone would ever see me. I think that I need some social validation so that I can start living part time in female mode.

This is why overcoming my social anxiety is my top priority in life. I NEED to be able to go out as a female and live my own life. If I'm always worried about other people judging me then I’ll never be able to grow into my own person.

So that's my cryptic post for the evening.

TLDR – I'm a woman and I just want to live the rest of my life as one. Uh, I think. Check with me tomorrow. =(   I just want it to stop and I want to be a woman.  Or a man.

Paige

TLDR – I'm a woman and I just want to live the rest of my life as one. Uh, I think. Check with me tomorrow. =( I just want it to stop.

Paige Abendroth

"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

Dandelions and Snapdragons

This is a poem from my male aspect to my female aspect.  It was formulated in my mind while in guy mode, but I didn't actually write it down until I was in female mode just now.  As a result this brought out a lot of strange, conflicting emotions in me.  I cried very hard writing this, because I was so sad and because I was so happy.

Dandelions and Snapdragons -

It's taken me so long to remember you

Climbing the old willow tree

Jeans ripped at the knees

and covered in fresh grass stains

I scaled the brown branches

And I surveyed all that was mine from my platform in the sky

I saw you looking up at me.

Being awkward and alone

Neither boy nor girl

Unable to fight

or play football

Or relate to anyone I knew

Scared and confused

But you where there all the while

waiting for me to turn around and smile at you

And I never did

The onslaught of adolescence

Ravaging our body

Simple times split asunder

As our world grew darker

You called out for me

pleading

And I ran away as fast as I could

Life is a blur with many points of light

Like silver stars in the sky

But those beacons are few and far between

Suspended in darkness

For so many years you tried to make me see

But you were just a child

and I was a man

And I was terrified of you

And then came the day

When I broke into two

Unable to maintain this quiet facade

Shattered - I had no where left to hide

No place to run

And I could no longer deny

That I saw you

Your long, dirty blond hair

Sky blue eyes

And crooked smile

With jeans still ripped at the knees

Covered in bright green grass stains

I had almost convinced myself that you weren’t real

But you've always been there

Waiting for me

I've hurt you so much and I'm sorry

But this time things will be different

We'll be children again

Running through the woods

The sound of our small feet rhythmically drumming against the earth

Leaping over small creeks

Stopping to check for tadpoles and crayfish

Lying on our backs in the meadow

Hand in Hand

The bright sunlight warming our skin

laughing about nonsense

Watching the clouds drift by lazy

As if we had all the time in the world

For now on we'll be together

I will give you all the time you need

I will nurture and protect you until you grow strong

Forever shall I love you

And when you fall and skin your knee

I will lift you up in my arms

And I will give you a bouquet of

Dandelions and Snapdragons

Gasping For Air

I've reconciled the conflicting gender identity’s within myself and I now identify as just “Page”, but when I say that I mean that both of the perceived male and female aspects of my personality have come together and there is no longer any major gender conflict.

It got so bad for a while that I was thinking that one part of me was working against the other, and I was starting to view male mode and Page as two distinct entities. Really, the conflict was being generated by my inability to accept myself as female, which I am. I felt like I was being assaulted by my female half: like she was waging physiological warfare against the male part of me in order to take over.

Really though, it's just who I am, and I accept that now, with all the nightmarish implications that go along with it. I'm not going to rush things and I am going to try my best to take my transition as slow as possible. I've accepted that I can and very likely will loose everything that I currently hold dear in order to do this, but I can't go on living as a male any longer.

My dysphoria has been overwhelming the past few days. I hate my male body sooo much, and I resent the fact that at this point I can't pass as female, so I'm stuck living this lie.  I have to try and find a way to hold out just a bit longer.

Some positive news, I ordered a feminine voice training program from deepstealth.com, and I'm REALLY looking forward to getting that ball rolling. My laser resurfacing will be next month sometime in April. My acne scaring is my number one cause of dysphoria, and once I've healed up from the procedure I plan on finally going out en femme. This (the laser) is the next big step in my transition (as I've mentioned before) and I'm very excited about it. I only wish that I could do it sooner, but I've been stuck as a man for this long, so I suppose I can wait a bit longer. (As if I had a choice.)

Once I've healed, I plan on working on my presentation, and when the time is right, only presenting as a man while at work. (Most ladies seem to say that one should come out at work last, which is what I plan to do if possible.) Once I'm at that point (where I am reasonably comfortable with my presentation) I also plan on joining a trans support group. It will be great to meet other people like me, and quite frankly I desperately need the support right now. I'm barley able to keep it together as is.

My next step after laser will be electrolysis once my face has sufficiently healed. Then while that is going on I need to save my pennies for forehead recontouring, an eyebrow lift and a tracheal shave. After that – who knows? I don't want to put anything into stone, but those are the things that I feel need to happen at this point.

It's funny; I had everything I ever wanted out of life, and I used to think I would be dead before I was 26. I worked hard, turned my life around and married the perfect woman for me. Then – SUPPRISE! You're a tranny! Kiss your life and everything important to you good by!

It's hard not to hate myself. I keep repeating my mantra, “I love myself and I love all other sentient beings” in my head, but that which once comforted me now rings hollow. I don’t love myself at ALL. Things have to change before I can't take it anymore. I have to be myself or I wont be able to last much longer.

Page

Gender Euphoria (AKA - This isn't going to end well.)

So here I am, a woman trapped in a man's body.  I'm ok with that however, as I know that over time, with HRT, surgery, lot's of hard work, blood sweat and tears that can be corrected.  Right now as I type this I feel like I could take on the world. 

My dysphoria is gone compleatly as I know that I will one day I'll be a woman not only in mind but in body as well.  In the mean time there's very little I can do about my present condition so getting strung up won't help my cause any.  My whole body is tingling from my scalp to the tips of my toes and I feel a joyful warmth deep where I imagine religious people think the soul might be.  It's as though the fog has lifted and how my path to womanhood has been laid out before me.  I am Page and Pete is gone.

Since I began this journey I've never felt so wonderful, like everything finally makes sense and that I know what I am and what I have to do.

Very soon, I'm going to fall.  HARD.

Gender Euphoria is not an uncommon experience to many in the trans community.  While someone who might identify as a trans-man or trans-woman feel as though they are one gender trapped in the wrong body, a bigendered person experiences both genders (or more, or sometimes none) at different times.  (Many people experience gender in different ways so please don't be offended if you don't agree, I'm speaking in the simplest terms that I can for a general audience.) 

So for me, right now I am ready to live the rest of my life as a woman.  I have my five year plan ready for my appointment with the endocrinologist on the 20th and if I never shift back to male I plan to stick to it.

But I'm Bigendered and I WILL switch back, as this is not the first time this has happened to me.  All of the sudden I will think to myself, "The rest of my life as a woman?  Surgery?  Why the hell would I want to do that?"  I'll empathize with my female side, but I won't understand what it felt like to be her.

That might sound like I have two personalities but that's not it at all.  It's two different genders. (Uh, sometimes more.)  When I flip from one mode to the other you won't even notice.  With the exception of subtle differences in my speech patterns, the way I move and carry myself I'm the same person.

I've never felt more like a woman and I love it.  But while I still have so much to learn about myself at least I've gained a tiny bit of wisdom thus far regarding my bigendered nature.

"Everything changes."

I'll try to enjoy it in the mean time though. 

Page

Stuck in female mode, other random bits of info

Sorry it's been so long since I wrote.  I've been pretty busy lately.

As for the work situation - no one has said anything.  All they would know anyway is that I've been diagnosed with GID (gender identity disorder) anyway, so it's not like anyone could do anything to me.  As a helpful person on the Bigender.new forums pointed out to me, there are no laws protecting trans people from being fired just for being trans, so coming out at work ain't gunna happen.

I had my first appointment with the gender therapist and she is wonderful!  She has apparently delt with the VA beffore and she has put me on the fast track to getting HRT.  My first appointment with the endocrinologist is December 20th.  According to the woman I spoke to at the clinic the second or third appointment will be when I get my prescription.

I had a weird episode where I woke up as Page and I was stuck in female mode all day.  Now when I'm Page I feel like I want to spend the rest of my life as a woman, and due to the fact that I couldn't switch back I started to think that I was transgender and that I was going to have to start planing my transition.  (If you haven't noticed, I can get very neurotic when I'm in girl mode.)

The next morning I woke up in guy mode and as always, I couldn't figure out why the hell I thought that way.  Some people on the boards have had similar situations, one person going into female mode for weeks at a time for example, and their advice was very helpfull to me.

I met with the UCSD researchers again today and I guess that they're going to do some tests on me, which I think is supper neat.  FOR SCIENCE!

Final note, I've just learned what Pansexuality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pansexuality means and that's apparently what I am as opposed to being bisexual as I've been describing myself up to this point.  Gender is pretty much irrelevant to me and the penis and vagina are just two sex organs you do different things to in order to make them feel good.  Yeah, more labels, but labels help us to communicate who we are to one and other in the most simplest terms.

OK!  I think I've covered the most important stuff that's been going on.  I promise to update more often.

Good! No, Crap! Uh, Good Again!

This was an interesting day.  Sick of the VA dicking me around I went ahead and scheduled an appointment with the gender therapist myself.  This will be tonight at 2030.  After I got her email this morning and confirmed the appointment I was ecstatic.  Yay!  Things are finally moving forward!

Then I left a nasty-gram at the patient advocate office as they have not been at all helpful and they still hadn't faxed me my letter authorizing funding nor have the been returning my calls.  I just figured that I'd pay out of pocket for tonight's appointment and that the letter should arrive in the mail before my next.

I guess my message lit a fire under the patient advocate's ass, because some hours latter one of the head honchos who works in admin came downstairs to my office with my fax!

"Uh, hay.  I found this sitting in the fax in-box with no cover-slip on it.  I know that it's confidential medical information so I brought it down to you right away."

"Hay thanks Greg!"  (Names changed of course.)

"No problem Jargo.  Take care ok?"  And off he went.  He had put a cover sheet on the fax, so I took it off to look at the funding request.  NAME - JARGO ABENDROTH (not my real name but I like it!) DIAGNOSIS - GENDER IDENTITY DISORDER.  There was all kinds of highly sensitive personal information on there and SUPER VISIBLE OMG LOOK AT THIS WEIRDO.  So whoever got the fax now knows all about me, "Greg" knows, and anyone else who happened to wander in to see if they got a fax knows.  And you know how rumors can spread in a small office environment.

I fell off cloud nine back onto earth completely horrified.  I didn't know what to do.  I was shaking and afraid to leave the office.  It was lunch time so I got some chow and gave myself time to work things out in my mind.  So my grand plan is -

If one person says anything about this to me I'm coming out at work.  Fuck it.

I'm sick of being ashamed of who I am.  I feel like my life has been out of control and I'm fed up.  It was supposed to be my decision when I came out, and in fact there's only one person who I work with that I ever planned on telling, and it was not going to be until I was ready.  That's been taken away from me and I'm pissed off.

I'm always afraid of what other people will think of me, of being judged.  That's going to stop right now.  I might just come out anyway.  The Department of Defense is an equal opportunity employer after all.  If I'm discriminated against or harasser I just need to go to HR to get their ass fired, and if that doesn't work I'll sue like crazy.

So what I think I'll do is take is slow, asses the situation over the next week and then make my decision after I've had time to mull this over.  (Unless someone say's anything, then it's "come out as queer time.")  I refuse to be a victim and this situation will only make me stronger.  Now I need to exercise and get cleaned up before my appointment.  RAR.