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

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

Moving along

Hello interwebz. How are you? I'm good, but I look like I was suntanning at ground zero. Actually I'm pretty happy with how fast my face is healing. I overestimated the improvement that I'm eventually going to see as my face heals and I now think it's more in line with the 30-40 percent that the Dr. promised me, but I'm still cool with that.

Anyway,

I'm going stir-crazy here in my little condo. Today I felt a lot better so I cleaned the kitchen, the bathroom and I took care of a couple other things that I'd been neglecting. By the time I go back to work in a couple of weeks this house is going to be flipping spotless. I made a tasty dinner of fishies and miso soup which turned out awesome. (So I was in house wife mode today. =P ) Tomorrow when my wife is at the library I'm going to FINALLY watch my voice training thing. Other then that not much to report.

I've been worried about my wife. For a while she was getting out and doing stuff but now she's back to sitting on the couch in her pajamas watching Netflix all day. Yesterday evening she started crying and when I tried to get her to tell me why she said that she didn’t know. It's of course because of me and my gender identity, but either she couldn't articulate what was going through her mind or she just doesn’t want to talk to me about it.

Later we had a good discussion about our future together and it went very well. I keep feeling guilty and acting like my trans-status is like some huge betrayal but she doesn’t think of it like that at all. It's just been a difficult year. Getting all that stuff out and laying our respective cards on the table really cleared the air and today we've been joking and laughing about our situation all day. I'm very lucky to have such an unconventional relationship with my weird and wonderful wife.

Oh, my new shoes arrived today! I guess that's not actually a big deal but they are my first pair of general all purpose shoes that I've ever bought so it made me happy.

These are the shoes. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00336FVUW/ref=oh_o00_s00_i00_details They are very comfortable and I may get the same brand again after I buy me some female style combat boots.

And speaking of combat boots, that somehow brings me to my strange, constantly evolving gender identity. If I had to describe myself, I would say that I'm Transbigenderqueer. Really, my gender is all over the place and I don't conform to typical cisgender norms for the most part. The cool thing is that I'm starting to become more comfortable with that, but it will make things more awkward when I eventually have to start coming out to my family and work. I mean, I'll probably just say I'm trans since I identify more as female than I do male and that's how I will primarily present myself as, but I'm still the weird nerdy person that I always was and I don't see myself going all stealth mode and assimilating into society as a standard, generic woman.

Eh, I actually wanted to write about a specific topic for this entry but then I started typing and just went with the flow. Next time bloggy.

Page

Maybe I should start to spell it Paige? Hmm. That's the cool part about being trans; you get to pick your name. I think everyone should get to pick their own name when they turn 18. Uh, Ok. This time I'm really logging off. Promise.

Edit - I LIED!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Here's a cute link just for fun.  =D   http://chotpot.tumblr.com/post/20436491880/people-are-butts-about-gender-sometimes-so-here

That's more like it.

I actually had a good weekend, believe it or not. I woke up on Saturday feeling well rested and in a much better state of mind. In the evening I meet up with two other bigendered people and we went out to Mo's, which is the most popular gay bar in the city. So it was my first time at a bar, let alone a gay bar. It was supposed to be girls night out, but I'm not quite ready to go out in “full” girl mode so I just wore a female cut shirt and jeans. Actually, in retrospect I was in full on girl mode, the only difference was that I didn’t have any make up on, so I suppose it was girls night out after all.

I thought that I would be freaked out being in such a loud place so full of people, but I actually felt really comfortable. Hillcrest is now my favoretest place in San Diego. (Well, Balboa Park is the coolest, but Hillcrest is a close second.) If I didn't have the condo and I was still renting I would totally move out there, but I only live 10 minuets away so it's not a big deal.

Today I attended a gender-queer meeting near the clinic where I get my HRT stuff. I was impressed and fascinated by the different types of people there. The one thing we all had in common was that we did not conform to the gender binary, and everyone expressed their gender identity in different ways. Despite being shy as hell and being very nervous I had a good time and everyone made me feel really welcome. I will surely be attending the meetings as often as possible.

Regarding my transition - I thought that I’d been on HRT for three months now, but a friend pointed out to me that it's only been two and sure enough, he was right. I had a feeling that I was going to take to estrogen well, but I'm pretty surprised at the changes that have happened in such a short amount of time. Tomorrow I will confirm with my boss when I can get the time off for the laser resurfacing. (Pew-Pew!) Most likely my leave will start the last day of this month, and that same day I will get the laser treatment. Considering how far I've come in such a short amount of time plus knowing that the laser is really going to help my complexion, I'm feeling pretty good right now.

I still identify as bigender and I still have a “guy” mode, but it's not really masculine at all. It's more like androgynous mode. I think about all the things I want to do as a female and I get excited.  Shopping, going to clubs, actually DANCING.  So I'm still am leaning heavily towards the MTF end of the transgender spectrum. The one thing I'm sure of is that I'm in a transitional period in my life, (in more ways than one) so I'm not going to write anything in stone. Anything can happen, and as is recorded in this blog my gender identity is all over the map so I'm going to take things slow. Step by step, one day at a time.

In summery, it was a good weekend. Page is now out in the San Diego LGBT community and I'm really excited about that. I'm going to start looking up transgender support groups also in case I keep going down that route. You know, I'm normally terrified of social situations but I'm really looking forward to going out again. The gay community is awesome and I feel like I finally have a group to which I belong.

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.

A little comic I made today

First!

Jello!  Since I came to the realization that I was bigendered a few months back my life has been undergoing some rapid and profound changes.  In an attempt to put things in perspective and to document this new chapter in my life I've decided to start a journal. 

I'm doing this for myself as a way to express my thoughts and emotions regarding what is to me a very personal, private and sensitive topic, but if any one else  out there get's anything out of this project than that would be wonderful.

I have a lot to say so hopefully there will be many posts forthcoming.  Thank you for reading!