It's starting to get better

More and more frequently when I look into the mirror I see a woman looking back at me, and she’s always a welcome sight. Sometimes I still look hopelessly male and I curse my reflection, but most of the time now I see the woman who I was always meant to be taking the place of the male body I so loathed, and I’m filled with overwhelming joy. There are some major male identifiers that won’t change without surgical intervention and I can accept that now. If things keep going the way they have been it will be just fine.

Ever since puberty I’ve had a major body image problem. Most of it had to do with my acne, but when I looked at the faces of other men I never saw myself in them. I always thought something was off and I could never put a finger on it before. When I first came out to myself the body dysphoria I experienced was soul crushing and it nearly overwhelmed me. After what I’ve been through up to this point, it’s hard for me to describe how wonderful I feel now. Even with still having a long way to go things are significantly better that they were before, and the sensation of dysphoria which once seemed to be so pervasive every waking moment of my life has greatly diminished to the point where a bad attack of it is rare.

It’s not just about my physical appearance though. My behaviors, likes, dislikes, the way I filter information and the way I perceive the world around me has changed as well. I think a lot of it had to do with moving out of the condo. There was a part of my brain that was clinging onto my masculinity for my Ex I think, and once I was in the new apartment the female side of me took over for the most part. My roommate says that the changes in my behavior have been profound, but I never really noticed until he pointed it out to me. (Apparently I’m a typical shy girl or something like that.) I just act normal and go with whatever feels right.

When I flip into guy mode now it’s just as disarming as it used to be when I flipped into girl mode. In guy mode I’m not dysphoric about my body; I’m dysphoric with my brain, which probably sounds crazy. It’s like something is off with my mind and my way of thinking. I’m kind of repulsed by my male brain and I wish it would just go away.

I don’t always notice the switching. I was watching something on TV with my roommate maybe a week ago and he made an innocent, jokingly suggestive comment and I burst out laughing. He told me that he could tell I was in guy mode because in girl mode I would have blushed. (I’m very bashful.) I suddenly felt almost ashamed, like if someone was to have told me that I was acting like a girl back when I primarily identified as a male. Am I that different in guy mode vs. girl mode? And how can one person be so different and still be the same person? Being bigender is confusing.

But still, even with the flipping I’m more convinced now than ever that transitioning is the right thing for me. I used to be afraid of the male part of my brain getting body dysphoria the more female I appear, but that hasn’t been the case at all. In fact, I can’t wait till I get to the point when I can’t pass as male anymore. I already did 31 years are a male and I didn’t like it much. I think female will suit me better, and I make a better looking than I ever did a man anyway.  Heck, I might even be pretty someday.

Paige

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

Dreams part 2

I can't take it any more.

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

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

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

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

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

You can probably see where this is going.

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

So I have revised my plans.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paige Abendroth.

This may just be my worst entry ever.

Jello blog.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So that's my cryptic post for the evening.

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

Paige

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

Paige Abendroth

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

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

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

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

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

My mother once told me she would have named me Laura

I would grow up to be strong and beautiful like her

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

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

Our family would spend hot summer days at the beach together

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But I'm fucking bigender.

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

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

Every day I die.

Paige

Perky!

Hi there ducky!  I've been in guy mode a LOT this week but I'm back in female mode at the moment.  Not too much has been going on in my personal life, but of interest is the media attention Bigender people seem to be getting due to the SDSU study that I've mentioned in this blog previously.  On the Bigender.net forums it seems that some people are not happy about the study, or the way it's been reported in the media, or. . . something.

Queue rant.

For the life of me, I can't figure out what the fuck problem is.  The idea of "Bigender" is less than a decade old and almost no one knows about us.  Well, now they do, and not only is this a golden opportunity to show people that we exist and that we're normal people who just experience the world differently than the average person, but perhaps through the study of our unique life status scientists will be able to learn more about the human brain.  I mean, this is amazing just for the scientific aspect alone, but we should be embracing this using the media attention to educate the public and let other gender-variant people know that they aren't alone.

A friend of mine got this whole study started through shear force of will and today he made a post where he apologized for it because a few people are taking this personally for some reason that I can't fucking comprehend.  WTF?  He doesn't have a damn thing to apologize for and I'm pissed that other people would make him feel bad seeing how because of his efforts we're currently experiencing an amazing time for our tiny community, not to mention the fact that we might be able to contribute to a deeper understanding of the nature of gender and identity, and how it's programed in the human brain.   Fuck, fuck, fuckedy fuck.

End rant.

Elsewhere in the news, today I bound my breasts for the first time.

OK, they're tiny, but they're also damn perky, or pointy or whatever.  When I wear most of my regular shirts and work shirts I now have two sharp points sticking out which kind of gives my game away.  So today I took an ace bandage and strapped them down, which wasn't hard because there's not really much of anything there.  =P  So it's not proper binding in the traditional FTM sense seeing how I have very little to strap down, but it's something.

Anyway, now it just looks like I have regular guy pecs and I can wear all my old cloths again.  Yay!  I'm only into hrt four months so I'm not sure how much bigger they will get, but I imagine not very much.  I'm both relieved and disappointed at the same time.

I think that's it for now.  I've settled into living in my bachelor/bachelorette pad and I love it.  I started to put my loft bed together today but I hit a point where I'm going to need help so that will  have to wait until my wife comes home tomorrow.

Yup, that's all.  Sleep sweet!

Paige

Oh, this is me making a funny face.  Weeeeee.

The shit hits the fan (Update part 1)

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

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

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

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

This made me a sad.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paige

HRT kicks ass

I kind of have a body image problem regarding my female presentation. (OK, so it's really bad.) A little while ago I was going through and purging all the old pictures on my phone when I came across one that I'd taken before starting hormones. (A pic that I'd originally took to document how I used to look before HRT, and had subsequently forgotten about actually.)

Anyway, I was checking the calendar and I was surprised to see that it's only been four months since I started on estrogen and even earlier on Spiro. (Jan 13th to be exact for the E.) I thought it was six. So four months ago almost to the day this is what I used to look like pre hrt-



And about 10 mins ago -



Umm, that's not quite what I had expected on the low, newby dose of estrogen that I'm on. (Hopefully they will be increasing said dosage next week when I see my Doc.) Seeing how I'm 32 I figured that hrt would hardly effect me at all, but even though I'm super critical of myself even I can't deny that I look different. (In a good, more feminine way.)

Moral of the story - hormones kick ass, (if taken safely under a doctors supervision blah, blah) and if you feel like you need to be on them then do so as soon as you can. Don't let anyone try to tell you to wait if you know that it's what you need to make you happy regardless of your life situation.

Quick edit - If anyone has before and after pictures they feel comfortable sharing that might be nifty.

Happy New Year

With all the commotion of the holidays I haven't had much time to post lately.  Suffice to say, it's been an "interesting" year.  If my blood work comes back normal I will begin HRT on the 17th of this month.  Obviously this will be the begining of a major change in my life, and I like the fact that I'm going to begin this journey at the start of the new year.

In regards to me gender orientation I still consider myself bigender.  Sometimes I lean hard towards going MTF, but I always come back to guy mode.  Lately I've been worried that once I start hormones I might slide all the way into that camp, but worrying is a lot of work and I'm going to do my best to just take it one day at a time from now on.

My dysphoria has been very bad lately and this is the year when things will finally start to happen to change my physical appear to better reflect how I feel inside.  As I mentioned hormones start on the 17th for one.  Secondly, I have a follow-up appointment with the dermatologist and I'm going to see if the VA will do the laser resurfacing that I'm going to get done for my face.  They proboboly won't, but if they can it will save me a ton on money so it dosen't hurt to try.  If they say that they won't, I already have a Dr. out in town who I would like to do it and I will call for a consultation that same day.

So that's where I stand today.  I'm sure it's going to be another "interesting" year.  Hopefully it will be one that brings me closer to finding inner peace, which is what I wish for everyone.

Love,

Page

The face in the mirror (Edit)

Edit - I need to like, proof read the stuff I write before I put it up.  What a concept huh?  Anyway, I fixed this post to be somewhat coherent now.  Sorry.  =P

___________________________________________________________
Who do you see when you look into the mirror?

When I was a child I was fascinated with my own reflection and I would stare at it for long periods of time in the giant mirror that my grandparents had in the living room. My grandmother would yell at me to stop, but I don't remember why.  Probably because it seemed narcissistic, but I'm not sure if that was the case.

I just could never really except that it MY face. I was looking at another person looking back at me. I made funny faces and he made them right back at me. (Alas, to this day I am the king/queen of funny faces.) Who was this boy in the mirror? Why did he look like me but was not me? (And me at the same time?) 

When puberty hit my face betrayed me. Have you ever seen an acne ad where they show a person with the worst possible acne in the world?  That was me.  No exaggeration.

I'm not going to be a misery dick http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=misery%20dick right now and go into my teenage years but in the aftermath my face is a ruin of scars and craters. I hate my face. Where it once held fascination it now mocks me and yet when I encounter a mirror I still have a hard time looking away. Ok, I can't NOT look away.

“That can't be me,” I think. But yeah, that's my mug staring apologetically back at me, as if to say, “Sorry Bra, not my fault your hormones are all out of wack.”

I learned to live with my face as a man because men can have scared, craggy faces and still be excepted by society because that shit sometimes happens to “us”. When I came to grips with the fact that I'm (mostly) a woman trapped in this body that all changed.

I remember an incident that occurred shortly after I finally “came out” to myself and accepted the fact that I was bigender. It was probably a day or two after I had done so. I stepped out of the shower, looked in the mirror and saw someone else looking back at me. I was a woman in mind and spirit, but my reflection was that of a pasty white, overweight male slob with a ruined face. I threw up violently in the toilet for several minuets.

That was my first real taste of gender dysphoria, and it's something that I still struggle with every day.

Right then and there I changed the way that I live my life. I eat healthy and mostly vegetarian, I do moderate exercise for an hour a day, I went to the dermatologist and I'm on retain a which has thus far had a noticeable impact on my skin quality. Les and I have two grand saved up for either dermabasion or laser resurfacing for my face, which will hopefully either eliminate or greatly diminish my acne scaring and smooth out my complexion.

I still have “man fat” around my waist that makes me feel disgusted, but my body looks sooo much better than it used to. I've trimmed at LEAST 30 pounds of fat and I had to pull all my old pants out of storage. (Despite all the problems it's raised my wife says that realizing that I'm bigender was the best thing to ever happen to my health.)

But back to my face. While there used to only be one reflection now sometimes there are more. There's the “Ugly Reflection” where I see every issue with my face that I could probably imagine amplified by 100 times. Sadly, that's the one I see the most. Then there's “Guy Face”, with his strong jaw, steely eyes and serious expression. Then Androgynous Face, still masculine by birth but soft and feminine. I like that one.

But sometimes, I look at myself and I see a phantom face behind my own. That of the woman who I so often am inside. It's like I can't focus on her, but she's there, trying to manifest herself in my world. “I'm here!” She screams, like someone trapped on the other side of a mirror in a twilight episode. “See me!”  (Don't you dare start singing The Who right now.  Well, hell, let's at least sing it together. . . )

As I modify my body through surgical intervention and as I feminize myself with hormones will her reflection become clearer? And once I can look into the mirror and see her, will it finally be myself looking back at me? Or just another stranger?

Page Abendroth