Overdue entry

This is the longest I've ever gone without posting and I apologize. I think this entry will just mostly be a general update on my current status to bring things up to speed so that we can get that out of the way for any future entries. After this I plan on getting back to my frequent posting schedule. This journal has been very therapeutic for me and it's one of those things that I need to doing for myself.

I'm currently living in Normal Heights, ranting out a small two bedroom apartment with my best friend.. Money is extremely tight right now but I'm managing to keep my head above water. Once my wife rents out my old room at the condo things should get a lot better. The apartment I'm living in is small but I have my own room and it's nice and quiet. The area is full of cool stores and shops and I can quickly get to anywhere in San Diego from here as we're centrally located now, so that's neat I guess.

As far as my transition is concerned, it's going OK but there's considerable room for improvement. My Dr. bumped up my estrogen to 40mg from 20mg which made me very happy, but now it's down again because my stupid prolactin levels were too high. After I moved out it was like the hormones started effecting me better or something because I recently started looking more feminine than I had before, which is awesome and I'm very happy about that. My breasts just had (or are still having) a little growth spurt and this weekend I'm going bra shopping. I'm both terrified and excited at the same time. =P

Today I flipped into guy mode harder than I have in a long time and I found it to be very uncomfortable. When I'm in guy mode now it's kind of like when I used flip to girl mode when I first started down this path, but without the body dysphoria thank the goddess. I'm still in guy mode right now, typing these words while I cook dinner. *Checks on curry really quick.* I have regular minor flips occasionally but most of the time I'm in female mode now and I'd prefer to stay there. I hope that over time this just stops and I wont be bigender anymore, just trans, but after today I'm a little less optimistic.

I'm still not going out in girl mode yet and it's a huge problem for me. My social-anxiety seems to be getting worse and I'm worried that the therapy is not helping. My depression has been very bad as of late also. I'm so lonely. I need to meet new people, make new friends that are like me but I'm having trouble going out in guy mode as it is. I don't know what to do to fix this. I'm scared that something is wrong with me and that I'll never be able to connect with anyone again now that my wife is gone.

I'm trying my best to hold it together. I'm going to have to do something soon though. I need to go out and start living my life as Paige. To experience the world as a female and to discover just what sort of woman I am. Something is going to break soon and I hope it's not my mind.

Well, I suppose I should count my blessings all things considered. I'm moderately healthy, I have a good friend close by, my kitty still loves me, I have a stable job, I've been blessed with an androgynous body and my family supports me. Also, I'm going through transition and a divorce, two of the most stressful events that a person could go through, at the same time and I'm still here looking forward to tomorrow.

If I can make it through this I'll be fucking invincible.

Well, that the short version of where I'm at. I promise to write more frequently!

Paige

P.S. - OMFG Chocolate.

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.

On how HRT Changes you - Sex Stuff Edition

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

Sex!

There, I said it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paige

Why I take the time to present as female when no one ever sees me.

So it's Friday night. I just got paid and I took the past hour painstakingly applying my makeup and generally making myself look as feminine as I can. I have a long way to go but I clean up pretty good.

Now I'm ready! Uh, to stay home.

It seems like a pointless endeavor and yet it's a ritual that I repeat almost nightly. I'm not getting dressed up to impress anyone and my wife sure as hell doesn’t care. The reason I do this is because I'm doing the only thing I can to reign in my gender dysphoria.

When I'm in female mode and I look in the mirror while presenting as a man I feel disgusted with my appearance. When I'm in guy mode I don't mind so much that I look a little feminine now, so that's not the problem. The only thing I can do to make myself comfortable in my body is to present as female.

As I'm getting ready there comes a point when I look at myself in the mirror and I can see my true face behind the one I've been stuck with, and when that happens it's like a heavy burden is lifted from my shoulders, the stars align and I can finally be comfortable in my body again. Just seeing myself as a female, despite all the major stuff that gives me away as a bio male, is an incredible relief and it's enough to get me through another day.

So some people dress as the opposite gender for fun. I do it to maintain my sanity.

What hurts is that I want to always look like a woman. I have an overwhelming need to go out and live my life as a female, but my social anxiety is a mother fucker and it prevents me from doing so. I think that if I could “pass” as female the male part of my mind would be OK with me living part time as a woman, but I have such a long way to go before I can blend in without being clocked.

I get dressed up every night and I want to live the life that's been denied to me for the past 31 years. When I'm in male mode, I feel like it's my obligation to make sure that I give myself room to grow as a woman, and when I'm in female mode I just feel lost and scared. I have to catch up on decades of knowledge and habits in a short amount of time, plus I'm just starting puberty so YEAAAAH. It's complicated.

Someday I won't be afraid any more. I’ll be able to go out, have fun, buy cloths, get my hair done en femme and I'll wont worry about what other people are thinking about me. Until then, yeah. All dressed up an no where to go. Story of my life.

Paige

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

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

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

Nobody knows

Where it comes and where it does, errr and all that jazz. This should be a pretty quick update. Yesterday I thought I had everything figured out and now I'm not so sure. In a nut shell, life is. . . complicated at the moment.

There's nothing I can do about that at the present moment, (my wife comes back from her parents in two days time ) but alas this weighs heavily upon my mind. Uh, yeah. Mostly what I think about all the time is -

A. - My body is all wrong and I hate it.

B. - I've married to the perfect woman for me but then I changed in a way that I couldn’t control and now I've gone and ruined everything, and I'm really scared regarding the ultimate outcome.

So - NOT FUCKING HEALTHY.

Today I've been thinking about purification. Not just of my body but of my mind and if it exists my spirit. Turning everything off, eating only simple, unseasoned food and foregoing my beloved energy drinks for water. I'm very sick in my mind right now and I've been that way for a while. Due to my mental sickness my body suffers as well. Today I woke up feeling great, but then at midday I suddenly became violently ill. I don’t have the flu, food poisoning and I was not hung over. I know what's wrong however. You become ill like that when your body is trying to desperately expel poisons from your system in order to keep you alive. I have inundated my body with toxins both mental and physical and I'm overwhelmed.

These past couple weeks as I've been home recovering from my not very effective laser resurfacing I've been poisoning myself with unhealthy self destructive thoughts, lack of exercise/fresh air, sleep deprivation, disgusting processed food as well as chemical stimulants. I don't have a good reason why, other than in the past this is how I've dealt with pain and mental anguish.

It's killing me and it has to stop right now. I've become so sick that I can't properly take care of myself. If you can't tale care of yourself you can't take care of anyone else. My wife needs me to take care of her, but I am a fucking wreck. This is a dilemma.

Being trans I must transition. I have no choice lest I go insane. It's now obvious to me that I'm never going to be happy unless I change. I now know what I have to do, but that's the easy part. Changing the intrinsic nature of a person, even yourself; that's something else. Everything must change, and we all know how humans love change.

Beauty is in The Eye of The Media. (And probobly copyrighted.)

Strap yourselves in kiddies, it's going to be a long ride. Tighter. No, TIGHTER. Thaaat's better.

Ok, so I've wanted to write about the transgendered Canadian Ms. Universe contestant for a while.

So as you may have heard on the world wide interwebz, it turns out that a candidate for Ms. Universe is a transwoman and she got disqualified for reasons which we all know are bullshit, but now she's being allowed to compete again because the corporate suits who run said travesty of a pageant know that transwoman = controversy and sex, both of which make great television.

If you don't read the news (and who could blame ya; it's really damn depressing) here's a linky. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/transgendered-miss-universe-canada-contestant-has-boyfriend-wants-kids/article2396043/ I googled her and this is the first link that popped up. ZOMG headline! A woman has a boyfriend and she wants to have kids at some point??? NEWZ.

I realize that trans-rights are just finally coming into the public spotlight and that we're going to have growing pains like this but really; the media is treating this woman like a circus freak and it's disgusting. Hollywood has a long history of sexualizing and vilifying transwoman, usually in a way that makes us look like we're either sad men hopelessly posing as woman, (depicting us as characters) or we're represented as femme fatales; trapping men in our little sexual web until we thrust out male identifying cock in their face at the last second. Ha! Fooled you! Now you're a pervert because obviously no real man would want to be in a romantic relationship with a transwoman!!!

And now back to our friend, the Ms. Universe Contestant, Ms. Jenna Talackova. She should obviously have the right to compete just like every other woman in the pageant. After all, they all look exactly the same. I mean, they all look beautiful in that strange, inexplicable way that I can only describe as being . . . completely generic. Also, they're all probably at least 50 percent synthetic anyway, so she's just as much a woman as the rest of em.

Which somehow brings me around to the subject of beauty.

I think that everyone want's to be attractive and recognized as such in their own way, and if you've somehow moved beyond that desire you're probably either -

1. Crazy, in which case you have bigger problems.
2. Beautiful already. If you were born that way then you have no idea how good you got it, and if you had to work for it you know just how fleeting it is.
3. A Buddha, who is beyond such things, but yeah. Fat chance.

Times will change, but there will always be pressure on various people who dwell within their particular social framework to conform to certain standards in accordance to their place in the society in which they dwell.

Look, what I'm trying to work up to is that woman face an overwhelming amount of media pressure to look a certain way. Transwoman experience this same pressure, but due to how our genetic code has effected the shape of our bodies this pressure can be even greater. Many transwoman are desperate to fade into the woodwork of society; to make a nice, new life for themselves where they where never ravaged with testosterone poisoning and they can live as they were supposed to be – as a woman. For some girls, especially those of us who have the fortunate opportunity of going on on AA blockers before puberty rides in on it's pale horse like Ms. Universe Canada; (remember her?) through the magic of hormones and some well placed implants can look just like any other genetic woman you may pass on the street.

For so many of us however this is not the case. Many transwoman don't transition until much later in their lives. Those of us who do at a younger age tend to see better results. (As far as the feminizing effects of hormones are concerned.) Those of us who do when they are older tend to have a harder time, and some of us just look like flipping lumberjacks regardless.

This brings me to a couple nights ago when I was staring at my acne ravaged face in the mirror. As I've mentioned here in this blog before, puberty kicked my ass like Bruce Lee on a PCP high and left me a battered, whimpering heap upon the ground. Still I'm actually lucky in a way; while my face was ground zero for the acne equivalent of WW3 it's like my body has been rejecting testosterone from the onset. Therefore despite me not starting HRT until I was 32, my features are rather androgynous and I seem to be taking to it well.

Still, I only tend to see what's wrong with my appearance vs. the good qualities, and the more feminine I look in my own eyes the more I see both the tiny as well as the (perceived) major flaws in my appearance. A week and a half ago I got laser resurfacing done to my face. It cost a shit-ton of money and I'm blowing all my vacation time to recover from it so as you might be able to imagine; I've had a lot ridding on it.

I'm not happy with the results. Just typing that really fucking hurts.

I know that it's going to keep getting better as time goes on and as my face continues to produce new collagen and shit tightens up and blah blah blah, but while there's some improvement that I can see I can't help but be disappointed. It's obvious to me that I'm going to need some major fucking surgery to get to where I need to be. Or where I want to be?

As I type this up now I'm getting very emotional because I'm so unhappy and ashamed with my appearance, but that's the reason I started typing this post in the first place. It's silly. The way I feel.

Pageant contestants like Ms. Jenna Talackova (yeah, she's still part of this conversation) make their living by exemplifying an almost super-human standard of beauty that the vast majority of us, regardless of whether or not we're genetic females, will ever be able to obtain without MAJOR intervention. (Be it surgical or otherwise.) I remember a time when I used to look at attractive woman with desire. Now most of the time, when I look at them I think, “I'm so inadequate.”

Uh, that's not a healthy attitude for any woman, but especially for one who's been female for less then a year.

Quick story on the most exquisitely gorgeous woman that I’ve even had the honor of gazing these tired upon. Dum Dum Dum -

So I was at one of those crappy Halloween costume stores that pop up every October and wandering the makeshift isles, which had long since been decimated by overly excited children and indifferent adults to lazy to put shit back from where they got it from. I rounded a corner and there she was – A New Creature. As best as I can remember her, She had jet black hair that was done up in a perfect liberty spike mohawk. She was rail thin with almost no bust to speak of, and she wore little makeup except for around her eyes which were black and messy in a very deliberate way. She was adored with piercing and tattoos, her tight, torn blue jeans clung into to her her long skinny legs and her combat boots looked so old that I was afraid that they were going to disintegrate right there in front of me.

It was like I was in a vacuum. As though nothing in the world existed except for her in all her grungy gloriousness. She flashed me a beautiful, casual smile and asked if she could help me find something to which I shyly replied "no".  She flashed me devilish but friendly grin and walked away. I've never forgotten her to this day after but a a fleeting 20 second second encounter.  How could one person make such a long lasting impact on me years later when I run into beautiful woman on a daily basis?  (This is Socal after all.)

There was no pretense or bullshit. She just WAS. The way she dressed, presented herself, her awful posture and the almost supernatural amount of confidence she exuded. Really, she was one of the most beautiful people I've ever seen in my entire 32 years on this desolate rock.

In the world in which you and I dwell, we have been conditioned to find beauty in conformity rather than in individualism. By looking at things with such narrow blinders we of course miss out on the big picture, the panoramic view of humanity in all its glorious variety. I'm NOT saying that we should negatively judge people who make an effort like Ms. Canada (yes, she's still on the hook) to dedicate themselves to becoming the living embodiment of what the media tells us is beautiful. We are all just silly human beings with fragile egos and an imaginary sense of self. We find self worth through the approval of others. That's not how it should be.

Try as I might to be mindful of such things, I find myself constantly forgetting this and I fall into the same trap that so many other people do. I want to blend in like most people as to avoid ridicule, especially now because I identify as a gender that I was not born as and suffice to say, I have a long way to go if I ever want to blend into the wood work. But why fade away? Is my happiness really dependent on my ability to conform to what everyone else thinks that I should look like? And if I eventually manage to do that, will I truly be happy with myself or will I just be in hiding, scared that at any moment my genetic status will be discovered and exposed to the world?

I think that real happiness comes from letting go of silly things like ego, vanity and jealousy rather than allowing said imaginary emotional constructs which can so easily dominate your life. And beauty? IMO, beauty is living a life that brings you happiness.  Beauty is looking like yourself and being confident in however you choose to express yourself through your appearance. If you want to eventually look different that's cool. In the mean time please know that you’re still beautiful. (And as painful as it can be and trust me I understand; try not to set unrealistic goals for yourself. It's hard, but we're only human.)

I think that's all I have to rant and rave about the subject of beauty. (For now.) All in all, we make ourselves uniquely beautiful by expressing our individuality, and if other people can't recognize it then fuck em. You're better off then they are.

Current events part, whatever. Who knows.

So I went to my appointment with the Dr. for my laser resurfacing and it went well. It's going to cost me 4 grand, but it's worth it as far as we're concerned. This is the next big step in my transition and I'm very excited. Work is bat-shit insane right now however so it might not happen until April, which would make us a sad. I want it now! Yeah, I know.

I look at old pictures and I compare them to current ones and I don't look quite the same. I was at McDonald’s this morning (yuck, but I was starving) and this cool girl with those silly ear-lobe stretching ear-things recognized me and we haven’t seen each-other for months. She commented on how different I looked and asked if I lost weight, which I said I had. People at work have asked the same. I haven’t even been on E for three months and my body is responding very well.

For those of you wondering what to expect from HTR – Here's my experience thus far, just short of three months and in a body that was always adverse to testosterone poisoning. (Still a newb.)

Warning – I'm going to be very honest here about my transition experience thus far and if you are uncomfortable about controversial subjects, human sexuality, or if you know me in real life and this shit is too weird for you then please skip the rest of this entry. I need to be honest with myself and to anyone else who is curious. Especially those who are going through the same sort of thing as I am.

The combination of estrogen and spiro has made my acne go away for the most part. I have suffered from severe acne from the onset of puberty until I started on HRT, and I didn’t start HRT until I was 32. In retrospect I think that I was never meant to be male and all my problems were a result of my body rejecting testosterone.

Sex drive is still there, but it's different. Before when I became aroused all roads basically led to my penis. Now when I become aroused I feel a sort of energy building up in the center of my being, and it spreads thorough my body. It's very tingly.

Most of my body is now a erogenous zone, but only when I'm in the right frame of mind. The desire is still there, but it's not an urgent, “I have to get off before I go to bed” issue like it was before. When I'm in the right frame of mind it's better than it's ever been though, and more satisfying. All that taboo shit? Perfectly acceptable now.

On to the nitty-gritty, I'm still able to achieve an erection, but not quite all the way without the use of medication. (Sometimes I surprise myself though.) As has been reported by other MTF people, my well appears to be running dry as it were, and yeah, draw your own conclusions.

Breast development. First my nipples puffed out, then the tissue underneath them began to lift them up. My breasts are at the most rudimentary stage of development, but I feel that they are just lying in wait for the next infusion of estrogen, that I provided them with earlier this evening. They are very sore and sensitive. I keep my ID and Credit Cards in my front left pocket, and I keep checking it to make sure I haven’t lost anything. (I'm supper paranoid about loosing my ID.) I keep smacking my left “breast” on accident to make sure I haven’t lost my ID, and it fucking HURTS.

Weight gain – I have gained weight in my hips and my ass, which both needed some weight and that's filling out my female pants in flattering ways. However – I still am cursed with “man pudge” around my belt-line. I think that after a year I will get lipo on it if need be. I will try to increase the strictness of my diet and increased exercise of course, but I feel really awful about it and I will do whatever I have to to make Page happy, so she leaves me the fuck alone.

In regards to my male and female half, at first things were better but now it's like the female part of me is waging all out psychological war-fair on me. (The male side, who it typing at this second.) I give an inch and she takes a mile. It's crazy, and I'll post about it another time. Right now I have to get ready for bed.

So sleep sweetly my pretties. Who knows what we will be upon the morrow.

Bonus - Angry bitch mode

 

Disappearing

I'm in 100% girl mode for the third strait day now. This afternoon we had a going away luncheon for one of our staff members at work.  My dysphoria was already bad, but when we all met up at the restaurant I damn near had a panic attack.  My body and mind are completely out of sync.  While I know that while no one looking at me and could possibly know what was going through my head, my brain kept(s) screaming, "I'm a girl" over and over again and I became convinced that my coworkers were going to look at me see how I felt.  (That sounds odd but it's the best way I could describe it.)

I was able to come home early only to find my wife distraught, as while we spend all our time together I'm really 100 miles away in my mind, desperately trying to come to grips with whatever the hell I am and am becoming.  

She told me, "It's like you're disappearing". I sort of feel like that, but it's more like the masculine part of me is disappearing and in it's place, well, I don't know. I don't want to lose my wife, and I don't want her to lose the person she fell in love with and married.

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

Trans-formation: My gender-queer manifesto

I'm weird.

I say that proudly, as I always have.

Since I was a young child I was the “weird kid” and that was my identity up throughout high school. I never knew why I was the weird kid , and my life up to this point had been a struggle to be taken seriously while still expressing my true self.

I made art. I did improve shows before my friends who would circle around me and wait for me to make them laugh. Who would make me laugh though?

I’ve always felt ostracized from society, yet I didn’t know why. I knew I was different and that something was “wrong” with me, so I had to act how people expected me to act so that I could function in our gender binary society.

<<Sit like a man, talk monotone, take up space, don't think about the fact that when you close your eyes that you see yourself as a woman. You're attracted to woman so that means you're normal right? As long as you don't act on your desires you're not gay. Don't stand like that! Legs shoulder length apart, don't put your weight on one leg. I want to be taken. Someone fuck me. Shoulders hunched forward. As long as you only fantasize about being with a man your not gay. Why can't I stop? I still like women so I'm OK? Squint your eyes. You can do this. Laugh at their stupid misogynistic jokes, at the stories they tell about your female friends. That's what men do and you need to be a man lest you be rejected. As long as you don't cross dress you're still safe.>>

Back then I played along but I hated myself for it. Now I feel like I'm finally growing in body and spirit while another part of me dies, or more accurately, I shed the false masculine armor that I've been entombed within over the years. It still serves me when needed, but I finally realize that it's not who I am, nor who I've ever been. Like a 17 year cicada I leave my shell behind and scream my song desperately into the night as my death rapidly approaches.

I'm not a human any longer. (I'm an Alligattoooooor! I'm a space man. . . Uh, Bowie reference. Yeah.)

I'm an heterosexual. I'm a gay man. I'm aggressive and submissive, a top and a bottom. A coward and a sadomasochist. I'm a woman. I'm a lesbian. I'm a strait female. I'm androgynous. I'm polly and monogamous. Gender is a failed concept to me; I'm a gender-queer outlaw and I don't care anymore.

Who are you? I want you for your compassion, your kindness, your tolerance, your art, your warm body pressed against mine regardless of it's configuration, your intelligence and your wit. I'm finally free from gender and it's limitations. It can be sexual. It can be friendship. It can be both. Love transcends everything. Above all, I want your companionship. I want to be your ally.

Up to this point I've been afraid to express myself because of how I thought others would perceive me. That shit stops today. As soon as I can I'm getting piercings, I'm going on hormones and by the time I'm done I have no intention of being recognizable in either gender binary unless I choose to present that way.

I am who I am, and I'm not a man or a woman. I'm fluid, I'm a contradiction, an alien, a nonconformist, a trans-person and above all an individual. I will sculpt and modify my body to reflect who I am inside and I don't give a damn anymore about blending into the crowd. I'm a gender binary smashing battering-ram and you can't stop me, or the thousands of others out there like me.

I've always been afraid to be myself because of the other people around me. I was terrified of being ostracized from the mainstream cisgender community, but in retrospect I've never belonged to them anyway and I've never felt comfortable in that world. (Nor did they accept me.) This is the end of that and the beginning of the rest of my life.

So now I am naked and unidentifiable. What am I? I'm a human being that lusts for life, love and community. That's something that we all have in common. If only we would focus on what we need from life as opposed to what divides us.

Until that time comes, I will not summit, not anymore. Today I march off to war with a flannel shirt, pink panties, combat boots, a frilly skirt and unflinching cold blue eyes. (The eyeshadow makes all the difference.)  My center of gravity shifts at random from my shoulders to my hips and I no longer try to hide it.

I'm an impossible conundrum and yet I live on, for better or worse. I may thrive in this brave new world or I may be killed without reason. I reflect upon those who have gone before me; They like to burn and dismember our bodies. I hear it's to erase our identities and to warn others - “This is what happens!” http://www.transgenderdor.org/?page_id=1663 It's the same with racial and religious hate crimes. Honor our sisters and brothers.

This is what happens when you are brave enough to be yourself. This is what happens when you try to live your life defiantly.

Yet I remain defiant, as I have no other choice if I am to live and love as I must.

I will fight to the bitter end.

By my hand upon this date,

A mammal.

A gender freak

A human

Someone who likes to wear mittens.

Thanksgiving. Or something.

It's late and I should be sleeping, but what else is new.

This has been a VERY turbulent year for me.  Just reading through my blog posts goes to show how emotionally volatile I've been.  My world has been turned upside down and my long journey has just begun.  I have no idea where the path will lead me, but I know that it will be hard, I will be hurt and I will hurt the people that I love, just to find some semblance of balance and peace within myself.  I have no choice in this.

I just want to be a average cisgender guy.  That's never going to happen though and I have to accept the fact that the proverbial Genie is out of the bottle and now there's no going back to how things used to be.  I'm a very queer, bigendered pansexual person who favors my female side. Soon I will be on hormones to develop secondary female sex characteristics. 

Many bigendered persons say that hormones balanced out their female side and their quality of life improved.  I've heard from transgender people that when you go on hormones you figure out whether or not you really want to transition.

What if I want to go all the way?  I feel like "guy mode" is more and more just a front I've established over time in order to conform to the male cisgender stereotype.  In reality I'm very feminine, and if I acted "normally" in my day to day life I would be subject to hostile discrimination. 

This is a scarey time, but despite all that's happening to me I still think that I'm very fortunate.

I have a roof over my head and I'm able to pay the bills on time.

I'm married to the most wonderful woman on the planet.

My health, well there's been problems.  However, for the most part I'm healthy and I'm not dead yet.

I have a steady job with good benefits and a great boss.

I have two cats.  This might seem trivial but I love animals and they mean the world to me.

Despite my world being torn apart by my gender issues I'm very blessed.  I'm very thankful for the lot I've been dealt, and I'll try to remain mindful of it.  What are you thankful for?

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.