Getting set up for the future (Update part 2)

So much has happened since my I last updated my journal that I'm posting it in a few parts.

So my wife and I had a plan where she was going to move out for a bit, (Only because I'm not in a position to do so) so that we could have some space and I could rent out part of the condo to make extra money so that I can transition. Her therapist actually thought this was a good idea, but I hated it as I love her very much and I felt like a horrible person, asking so much from her. At the time however I couldn’t think of any other way to make it work.

She told her parents about this plan and now they apparently hate me. My wife told me that her dad thinks that I'm trying to push her out of the condo so that I can leave her high and dry and that he apparently want's to kick my ass. Her mom want's her to get a lawyer so that she can get my promise to sign the lease over to her once she has a stable job as a matter of record, or something.

First of all I'm sad and hurt that they don't like me any more. I came from a dysfunctional family and when I met my wife I couldn't believe how wonderful her's was. They have always treated me with caring and love. There's no way they could ever understand what's going on, and I suppose that I'll just have to live with their scorn.

Secondly I'm a little pissed off. I've loved, supported and provided for my wife for nine years not counting the year back when we were in the military and she moved into my tiny barracks room with me. Even when she was still active duty and earning money I payed the bills so she could save hers. (Now I pay them all, except she pays for the car insurance with money from her GI bill.) Because she has been going to school for what seems like forever now, I do the VAST majority of the housework, cooking and so on. Everything I do is for her. I'm even prepared to sign over my GI bill to her so she can pursue her masters if she wishes.

Now all of the sudden I'm some sort of villain. I don't completely blame them. They only have a sliver of information regarding what's been going on and they are trying to make sure that their daughter is safe and protected. There's no way they could understand what I'm going through and the drastic measures that I have to undertake in order to preserve my sanity at the moment. I don't think that any of them are familiar with trans issues and I'm confidant that her old fashioned conservative father most certainly is not.

I never wanted her to move out of the fucking house. That's the last thing I wanted. However, neither of us could figure out a better option at the time. Thankfully, since then I've gotten creative and worked out a solution.

I've been looking into space saving websites and I've figured out how we can set up the house so that we can still rent it out and have room for both of us. My wife and I were initially going to bunk together in the same room but she INSISTS that I take it for myself. What I'm going to do is convert “my” room into the TV/REC room as well as my living quarters. This way we keep everything open to everyone, but if I need my privacy I can close the door. (And going through what I am right now that means a lot to me.)

We plan on renting out the living room for 450 a month. We might already have a renter, and it's someone who I trust and respect so if he takes me up on the offer it would be ideal. (My wife loves him too which is important as she's apprehensive about bringing a stranger into our house.)

If he chooses not to rent here then I am going to hit up craigs list and look for a roomie. It's going to be complicated because it'll have to be someone who's trans-friendly, lgbt friendly and female. I like the idea of renting to another trans person myself, but we can be an unstable lot so we'll see. It will be like living in a dorm, but it's the best solution I can think of given out current situation. It might actually be fun.

The current plan is that when my wife get's out of school in February and then find a stable job I'm going to sign the mortgage over to her and then I'll get a place in town. Then I'll be able to save up serious money and I'll be out in the city alone, where I hope to continue to grow as an independent woman. (It's kind of funny to type that in guy mode. Gender is weird.)

Her parents might fucking hate me but what they don't fucking realize is that this whole time I've been working on setting her up for her future. I have a lot invested in this condo and I'm willing to give it up for her. Everything I've ever done has been for her, but being transgender I HAVE to transition. It's not an option and they don't understand that. I've heard the term, “transition or die” many times before, but now truly understand what it means.

I remember one point where I was desperately trying to think of ways to pay for this and I jokingly thought to myself, “maybe I could just whore myself out.” All the sudden I was hit with the sad realization of why so many trans-girls resort to sex-work. We really are that desperate, and I'm in the fortunate position where I at least have a steady job and a roof over my head.

I don't know if my wife and I have a future together. She's not bisexuel and as I transition into a woman it seriously hurts me to know that she's not sexually attracted to me anymore. She loves me and I love her, that much I do know. We had all these little dreams that we would discuss while we would snuggle in bed. Moving to some little town when we retired, getting horses and a cow. (I always told her that she would have to clean up after them. HAY! I'm from the suburbs of Chicago after all.) We marveled at how wonderful out marriage was and how it would last forever. Everything was perfect.

But I'm fucking trans.

When you're transgender it's very important that you except yourself for who you are. It's not something that you have control over. My wife keeps reminding me of this but when I think about what we had together, all the dashed dreams, of all the pain I'm putting her through and the uncertainty it's very hard not to hate myself. I'm really trying though. I'm trying so fucking hard.

I knew that being trans would alienate people from my life. It's look's like my wife’s family are the first people to reject me. None of them have bothered to contact me to hear my side of the story. I hope that over time they will reach out and we can ay last come to some sort of understanding.

It's late. There's more stuff that I need to write about, but that will have to wait. Thanks for reading.

Paige

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.

New Creatures

I feel a lot better today than I did yesterday.  Anyway, I just dropped in to post a little poem I just wrote.

New creatures

Blister and slither

Beholden unto nothing

New Creatures are Born

The infallibility of infancy

The quiet decay of another day

Erupting forth from graveyard wombs

New Creatures come out at night

Bent and beautifully twisted

Wrapping around long spindles

They collapse and relapse

Well rehearsed decimation

Unnatural alien masses

Beautiful wild and lustful

Shrilly screaming triumphantly

As they murder the dawn

The New Creatures are coming

The gibbering mob crescendos

Spilling out unstoppable

Looting dirty looks and spit

Ravaging small bruised towns

Fucking on park benches

Glorious monsters rise

They sleep together now

huddled little horrors

In abandoned cars and mouldering cathedrals

Incubating abomination babies

Waiting to claim this world as their own

The New Creatures are here

Paige

Nobody knows

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

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

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

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

So - NOT FUCKING HEALTHY.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which somehow brings me around to the subject of beauty.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Moving along

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

Anyway,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Page

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

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