On moving to Tumblr and how things have changed this year

Late last night I migrated my old blog to Tumblr.

This is my new blog! 

If you are reading this on blogger; this is the last time I will post here. If you are reading this on Tumblr – Hi! I'm Paige, a nerdy pansexual transbigenderqueer girl at your service! When I first came to the realization that I was bigender I began searching the internet for bigender blogs and the few I could find had very little content. Sooo I decided to start my own and here I am, 28 days away from this journals one year anniversary.

There were some formatting problems with the import, so earlier today I went through all my old posts and tried to clean them up as best I could. Working my way backwards through the old entries, I was amazed to see just how much things have changed for me over the course of the past year. I had this surreal feeling like I didn’t write those posts, even though I know I remember doing so.

I began this bigender journey as a boy that was sometimes a girl, emotionally devastated by the gender dysphoria that would come and go seemingly at random and terrified that this was going to destroy my marriage and the wonderful future my wife and I had been dreaming of. Today I know that I'm a girl that is sometimes a boy, I am transitioning so that my body will one day hopefully always look female and I'm in the process of getting divorced. A year ago I never could have imagined where my life would take me, but what I think would have surprised my past self the most is the fact that despite all the fear, pain, self loathing, emotional devastation and heart break that I've gone through – I survived.

And I'm getting stronger.

I feel like I'm nearing the half way point of some wonderful evolution of both my mind and body. I don't know where I'll end up or what the future has in store for me, but I finally feel like things are going to be OK in the long run. I'm not saying that I'm not terrified as I am. Transition has been the most intense and challenging thing I've ever had to do and I have a LONG way yet to go. Still, I'm hopeful, which is a far cry from where I was at a year ago.

If you are bigender, confused about your gender identity and you've just stumbled upon this journal I want you to know that you should be hopeful too. Because one day you'll know who you are and what you have to do to be happy and be at peace with your body. One of the reasons that I'm still sucking air is because of the awesome support I received at http://www.bigender.net/forum/index.php?sid=873fb4d43dc19804f924275fa9dac51e If you are bigender and you haven’t taken advantage of this resource yet I strongly encourage you to do so. You are not alone.

So that's enough for now. Sleep sweetly my friends.

Paige

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

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.

On emotions between Testosterone vs. Estrogen

Hellooooo.

It’s been a while so before I delve into today’s topic I just wanted to bring you up to speed on what’s been going on in my life.  At the moment my friend has moved into the condo temporarily and it looks like we will probably get an apartment together out in town.  My wife/ex wants’ me out of her life so the sooner the better.  Over the course of this weekend I need figure out how to go about renting out the room I’m currently staying in and I also need to do some preliminary apartment hunting.

My dysphoria has been bad lately.  I know that there’s only so much I can do regarding my physical appearance, but in my eyes I don’t look nearly feminine enough to ever blend in.  Sometimes I really just feel like a tall awkward guy in drag and it sucks.  I kind of bounce back and forth from being really happy with the changes that have occurred to my body, to feeling like I’ll never be accepted as female no matter what I do.  I have a male mind also and while in guy mode I’m perfectly happy with the feminization of my body (as I realize it’s the only way I’ll be happy) I also balk at the idea of going all uber fem.  I’m just a very non-conforming person and it’s complicating my transition, which is already a complicated process as it is.  Yay transbigenderqueer.

What I really wanted to write about today are the changes in my emotions that I’m going through on HRT.  It’s been five months since I got my first shot and while I’ve undergone some major physical changes I’ve also been experiencing various changes mentally as well.  One of the most profound changes is how I experience and express my emotions.

I’ve been a sensitive and emotional person all my life.  However, on testosterone I never really wanted to express those emotions to anyone in a significant way.  Men are typically taught that non-aggressive emotional expressions are a sign of weakness, probably because said non-aggressive emotions are often times associated with femininity.  By that logic, society teaches that women are inherently weaker than men, which goes to show you how deeply ingrained misogyny is in our culture.  But I digress.

In addition to being taught not to express my emotions as a male, there’s also a hormonal factor that plays into it which most people aren’t aware of.  Since I’ve been on estrogen I’ve noticed a huge increase on how powerful my emotions are.  It’s like as a male my emotions were present, but they were dull and fuzzy like the image on an old CRT television set and now as a female I’ve switched to a big screen plasma HD television and all my emotions are bright, shard and vivid. 

Now I find myself wanting to talk about my emotions with other people and wanting them to empathize with me.  Also I want other people share their emotions with me as well and now I user stand why many women have such a hard time communicating with men, and why they sometimes complain that their boyfriend/husband is emotionally distant.  Men are not from Mars and women are not from Venus; they just have different hormones plus cultural conditioning.  It’s actually pretty cool to have experienced it from both sides and now I have a much better understanding of how those gender differences play out in interpersonal relationships because of it.

All my emotions have been turned up to 11 now.  Before estrogen when I’d see a kitten I’d think, “Awww, that’s cute.”  Now it’s more like, “OMG IT’S SOOOO CUTE!!! SQUEEEEEEEEE!!!”  As a man I would cry sometimes, but typically not for more than 10 minutes at the very most.  Now I can literally cry for hours sometimes and I can’t stop the tears until I’m “done”.   I’m also experiencing a strange desire to hug people.  I don’t know if that’s an emotional thing or what.  It’s weird but it all feels natural.

 If I could travel into the past and tell myself about how my emotions were going to change I bet it would have freaked me the hell out.  Now however I wouldn’t trade this for the world.  I feel so much more alive now, like this is how I was always supposed to have experienced the world.  I always used to feel so detached from reality where now I feel as though I’m a part of everything.

Hormones – they’re neat!

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

Getting ready to come out!

The Stars Are Right!

No, Great Cthulhu isn’t going to make his return just yet, (Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn) but it IS time for me to finally come out of the closet as bigender to my family and old friends. After a lot of emotional turmoil, self loathing and unbearable guilt, I'm finally perfectly happy and proud to be bigender and I want everyone to know it.

I feel bad about keeping this from my family for such a long time, but until this point I just wasn’t ready to handle the strong emotion feedback I'll likely receive. Now I've been on HRT for almost six months and my former partner and I are separated. They deserve to know what's going on with me, even if they don't like it.

(Note – it makes me sad to type that last bit. We're still technically married and I don't know what else to call her. She calls me her “roommate”, but shes more than that to me. “Former partner” is the best I can think up.)

Until I'm out to the world I feel like I won't be able to fully claim my identity as a queer person. No one should have to hide who they are from anyone just because they are scared of rocking the boat. I don't want to just be out on the internet, but in the real world acting as an advocate for bigender and non-gender conforming people everywhere.

My biggest fear is of course rejection. I'm worried that when I come out, the people who I've known all my life will suddenly hate me, and I’m the sort of person whose not comfortable with the fact that there's people out there that don't like me. However, seeing how I'm now resting comfortable beneath the Trans Umbrella, I suppose that’s just something I'm going to have to get used to. I've never been super close to my family, but I still love them and I hope that they'll still care about me when this is over.

If not – tough shit.

If someone is going to reject me just for being who I am then I don't want anything to do with them anymore, be they family member or old friend. I've gone through hell and back over the course of this past year and I'm not about to let anyone’s bigotry invalidate my identity, nor am I going to let anyone make me feel bad for being me. I'm transbigenderqueer and I'm fucking magical.

I think that Friday shall be “The Day”. I'll call my Mum, then my sisters and then my brother. I think that my brother is the person most likely to accept me so if everyone else freaks out hopefully he'll have my back. I've prepared a message for Facebook as well, which is how I'll come out to the rest of my family and the world. I think it's pretty good but it lacks a certain warmth. I'll have another crack at it tomorrow. It has to be just right.

I'm feeling good, it's pride month and on the 18^th it'll be my six month HRT anniversary. Unleash the motherfucking rainbow!

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.

Dreams

So I’ve been going through some kind of strange, personal evolution as of late. Before, I never really looked forward to the future. I had gotten so used to my crippling social anxiety that I just assumed I wouldn’t ever be able to do many of the things that I wanted to do. So I’ve been living a half life for years; meandering from one day to the next, never venturing outside of my comfort zone.

I have a looooog way to go, but I’m feeling optimistic and I thought that for fun I would list some of the things that I’ve always wanted to do but couldn’t because my social anxiety held me back,

So for fun I thought I’d write down some of the things that I want to do; stuff I didn’t think I could do before because of my anxiety, stuff I didn’t even know I wanted to do before I embraced the female part of me and then just other random stuff. Some of these are also just going to be wishful thinking, but a girl can dream can’t she?

I want to – 

Learn a foreign language (Prob Spanish but French would be cool too)

See the ruins of Chitiniza again

Live in Seattle Washington

Go camping by myself, and just to go camping more frequently in general

Learn to kayak, and then do it regularly

Live in a comfy cabin on a lake in a rural area

Learn to fish like a boss

Go to movies and eat at restaurants by myself

Take a month off to travel around the country

Go to Europe!!!

Visit Japan again, especially Hakone where I had one of the most amazing experiences of my life

Ride a horse

Date a man

Get a dog

Have kids

Keep a house

Transition

Have a large garden

OK, I fucking have to stop here. This is the shit that it keeps fucking coming back to, over and fucking over again.

I’m really frustrated. I don’t really know what else to say. Sorry this entry got so depressing.

Paige

Note – I wrote this earlier in the day. I'm going to do a follow-up post later after some very heavy thinking.  I can't keep doing this to myself.

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

Who am I?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paige

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

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

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

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

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

My mother once told me she would have named me Laura

I would grow up to be strong and beautiful like her

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

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

Our family would spend hot summer days at the beach together

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But I'm fucking bigender.

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

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

Every day I die.

Paige

An Ocean in my Soul

Hi,

I'm feeling rather moody today. Down in the dumps and all that. I was just reading the Rolling Stone article about the lead singer of Against Me coming out as transgender. https://imgur.com/a/hydSB I'm super happy for her and I also find it very encouraging to see such a high profile person coming out in public like this. At the same time, I'm envious because I want to transition too and I can't.

Maybe I should mention that I'm writing this in girl mode.

When I'm in girl mode I'm basically a transsexual. I experience the same soul-crushing gender dysphoria and all that, but if I was to fully transition I'd just end up being miserable because eventually I always go back into guy mode. I know I've said this before, but sometimes I wish guy mode would just go away. Thing is that when I go back to guy mode I won't feel this way at all. See the paradox there? It sucks.

I think that I'm going to have to put a lot of work into my appearance if I'm ever going to get over my dysphoria in girl mode. AND I'm going to have to come out of the closet. I need to be out to my family and out to everyone else I know. The fact that I'm keeping such an important part of my life hidden away like some sort of shameful secret is making things worse. I'm NOT ashamed to be who I am and I don't want to live this way any more.

Explaining what it is to be bigender is rather complicated. For example, if I had to pick between one gender or the other I'd pick female in a heart beat. That's because I'm in female mode. Whenever I flip back to guy mode I'll prefer to be male. It's such a dramatic change in how I think, yet still I'm the same person and I like the same things for the most part.

I've decided to keep a detailed spread sheet in order to track when I flip back and forth, how it effects my mood, what makes me feel better and so on. This way I can at least be proactive and find a way to deal with this the best as I can. I have a pretty good idea already, but there may be little factors that are playing into it that I haven’t noticed.

I'm going to listed to “The Ocean” for about the 50^th time today and then I'll get right on that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvWeP18RpmM

“There is an ocean in my soul where the waters do not curve.”

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 Paige and The Pendulum

Hello bloggy, my old nemesis. At least we meet again, although this time - we fight to the death! Have at you!

Sorry, just trying to spice things up.

So for the past few months I’ve been pretty dead set on transition and I’d lost most of my male identity. Then over the course of the past couple weeks I’ve been in guy mode more and more. A lot more. My therapist told me last night that my gender “pendulum” is swinging back the other way again, but I already knew that.

In a way I’m disappointed. As I’ve mentioned in the past, when I’m in female mode I can’t imagine that I’d ever want to be a man and I get rather obsessed with the idea of transition. I really thought my gender identity had stabilized enough that I could make a flexible plan in regards to my future, but it seems that’s not going to be the case. I had already decided that I needed to put the brakes on everything and to slow down until I was in a better place mentally before I came to this realization, so it doesn’t effect anything too profoundly which is good. Still I’m a little bummed out.

A little bummed out vs. profoundly depressed, which is what’s happened to me when going into this state of mind in the past. Now that I’ve been through this a few times I think I’m getting a little better at dealing with it. Like riding a wave instead of letting it crash over my head, pulling me underwater. I can’t control my gender changes and I may never be able to. That’s something that I’m going to just have to accept. Maybe down the road something will change, but for the time being I have to learn to accept the fact that my gender may never be static.

Acceptance is the big word here. I need to accept that being bigendered is an intrinsic part of who I am, and I have to accept myself for whom and what I am, regardless of what gender I happen to be. I think I’m taking my first steps towards that, but I have a long way to go. Still, I can tell that this is getting easier over time and that’s a reassuring feeling.

Elsewhere in the news I start DBT this Thursday afternoon. Group therapy quite frankly scares the shit out of me so I’m both looking forward to it and being terrified at the same time. Perhaps if I could combine those two emotions I’d just feel indifferent about the whole thing?  Paige Abendroth - emotional alchemist.  Eh, maybe not.

Someone relatively new to the forums over at Bigender.net had made a post yesterday about how she felt like being bigender and what she's currently going through, and that same post could have been written by me maybe nine months ago.  It's amazing how we as Bigender people share this unique experience, one that the average person could never really understand.  Heck, I don't even completely understand it myself.  It made me a little happy to think about how far I've come and it made me a little sad, to see that someone else is just starting to go through it. 

Yesterday evening I was on the phone with someone and she asked me to describe how I know when I'm a woman vs. when I'm male.  I said something like, "if you took away all of your physical characteristics how would you know you're still female?  It's something that you just KNOW."  Your average cisgendered person never thinks about this stuff because they don't have too.  But if you fall somewhere under the trans-umbrella you become hyper-aware of your gender(s).  (Or of course you can have no gender at all for that matter.)  

I afraid that when I tell people I'm bigendered they're not going to understand and they'll assume I'm a cross-dresser.  (Not that there's anything wrong with being a cross dresser mind you.)  I don't "pretend" I'm a woman for fun, there's nothing sexual about it and I don't dress in frilly pink dresses and prance around the house.  (But again, not like there's anything wrong with doing that if it's your cup of tea.)  I wear the same types of cloths in both modes - a black shirt with a band logo on it and blue jeans.  Whoo-hoo.  They are of course male and female tee-shits and blue-jeans though, and that's just to make myself feel comfortable.  

I guess that part of accepting myself will be accepting that other people don't accept me.  That's something to think about.  I think that's a good spot to end this entry, have fun and take care.

Paige

Came out to my boss today. And other crap

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paige

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.

Alas, yet another quick update in which I have little to say

Aaaand yet I post anyway, because writing this crap is like therapy to me. My gender therapist told me that I would be crying a lot for no reason due to the HRT. I AM crying a lot, but I think that I have some pretty damn good reasons for doing so. Last night it was really bad again. Didn’t get to sleep until aprox 0200. Right now I'm literally living for the weekend, because that's the only when when I can get some fucking sleep.

I tried yoga as mentioned in a previous post, as I was looking into doing some more “feminine” (gender labeling, I know it's silly) exercises. I tried a few different instruction videos and I felt really awkward and not at all comfortable with them. I got frustrated and I started to feel sorry for myself, but then I said “fuck it”, and I proceeded to work out with my kettle-bells which kicked my ass and made me happy.

So I know that I need a high activity exercise to keep me interested. Kettle-bells are amazing as they work your core muscles while still giving you an amazing calorie burning workout. I've been doing interval training with them and it kicks the shit out of me.

Things are going better at home and at the same time it's also awkward. My wife seems to be a lot happier which is awesome as I've been worried about her. However, I currently have a platonic relationship with my spouse which feels strange and is a HUGE change from how our old relationship was like.

Last night she mentioned that things seemed better between us and I agreed, but I also tried to attempt to address our personal issues as they have really been bothering me. Our conversation is personal, but it ended on an awkward note and instead of addressing the issue she put on her headphones. In her defense, I was scared to go deeper into the conversation and I failed to speak up, afraid of what the consequences might be. I was hoping she would say something first. What I'm trying to say is that I'm pretty scared. It's hard for me to imagine us not being together but at the same time I can't see us going back to the way things used to be. She's not going to suddenly become a lesbian and I'm probably never going to be comfortable assuming the aggressive male role in the bedroom ever again.

We have an open relationship so maybe that will keep us both from going crazy. Maybe we will find our own lives outside the house and eventually drift apart. Maybe we will remain the awesome kick ass team that we are, and we will just have a very unconventional relationship that is still beautiful and lasts through the years. Maybe she will grow disgusted with me and it will end in a bitter divorce. Maybe I will come to a point where I feel like my relationship to her is holding me back and I will have to end it, which would be fucking awful of me and also lead to a bitter divorce. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

The worst thing about this besides the fact that I've messed up all our plans for the future is the uncertainty. We pretty much had the rest of our lives mapped out before this. Now? Who the fuck knows. I need her and for now she needs me. I just wish things were simpler like they used to be when I knew (or I thought I knew) where my life was taking me. We are both stuck in a holding pattern over a major city and we are slowly running out of fuel.

Page J. Abendroth

(P.S. - Any advise would be very welcome right now.)

Gasping For Air

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Page

A post in which I just kind of go with it.

All dressed up and no where to go as usual. I'm feeling very happy with my presentation today. Happy but realistic. I'll never pass at this point, but I've made a lot of progress and that makes me smile. I just feel this scene that all is right with my body, biochemically speaking, now that I have estrogen coursing through my veins and spiro blocking off any latent testosterone in my system. I feel calm, fuzzy, snuggley and tingly.

Now that I have some money in my transition war-chest it's time for action. Tomorrow I'm calling the plastic surgery place I picked out some months ago for a consult to get the laser resurfacing done to my face. My face is. . . .I really, really hate it and once I heal from the procedure I plan on starting to go out in public. The night before the procedure I'm getting my ears pierced too, or maybe right after I heal, who knows. Maybe I'll get some other stuff pierced too! That'll be fun.

I'm in a much better place today than I was yesterday, that's for sure. Last night I met with with two people from bigender.net, one who I know and one who I hadn’t met yet. They are both super nice and awesome people. While I'm doing much better on the shyness, (I was wearing women's jeans and a female cut shirt, which is something I never would have been able to do before) I'm still very socially awkward. It sucks and frustrates the hell out of me.

As I mention frequently on this journal I'm an introvert and I love being alone, but I still like people and I want to make friends. I'm a pretty weird person, even without the whole bigender thing, but just simple stuff like small talk and casual conservation is a struggle. (I DREAD small talk.) I don't know if it's just that I have nothing in common with anyone, I'm so out of practice socializing that I forgot how to or maybe it's just that because I'm so weird that I need to figure out my own way to interact with people?

That last idea gives me pause and warrants further investigation. See, I knew there was a reason for writing this shit down. Maybe I'm trying to hard to act normal? I should just act like the weirdo that I am?

Leslie was saying that she want's to take a few days vacation from the house to rent a hotel room and just to be alone while she does her school work without distraction. I'm totally cool with that. Is that wrong? We have an interesting relationship.

OH! Another reason I've been depressed is that I ran out of my anti depression meds. Cause and effect, no? On Wednesday evening I have an appointment with my shrink to get some more. During the day time I also have an appointment with my general practice doctor who I haven’t seen in a while. Boy is she going to be surprised. =P I think what I'll say is, “Doc, have you ever had a transgender patient?” and let it go from there.

I think it's time to end this stream of conscious entry. Damn the torpedoes.