Thursday 14 February 2013

A date....

March 27th.

That's the day that I'll receive my first dose of E and anti androgen's*. To be overly dramatic, the first day of the rest of my life... again... hehe. Or to remain being dramatic, only slightly less so, I could see it as Dawn's birthday.

hrm, that's kinda cute.

My follow up went great, as it turns out my system is well balanced, all my levels are pretty much where they should be, and there is nothing to hold me back from doing this medically, I've got the green light. Becca even came with me to my appointment, which was pretty darn cool if you ask me :). Just like she can't really ever know fully what I'm going through, I can't really know what types of feelings she is having right now either. Once we got home at the end of the day, she gave me a big hug and held me tighter than she has in quite some time.

"I'm happy for you, I really am" she says softly in my ear...... writing that made me cry.....

So now I'm in a waiting pattern, overall, 42 more days to wait from the day of that visit. Am I excited?, well, yeah, but honestly, I don't think its quite sunk in yet. Nov 2011 I was putting my makeup on for the first time in years, and March 2013 my hormones start..... this wasn't ever supposed to be possible.... and while the past year has been anything but easy.... I've made it to where I've always wanted to be relatively unscathed..... so while it hasn't been easy, at the same time, it could have been so much harder, and I guess that makes me......

suspicious

(cue ominous music)

heheheheh, have I mentioned I'm a little paranoid? :P

I tried to go and talk to our HR director today, whatdayaknow, she leaves early, so I left her an email requesting a meeting to discuss something privately. I spent a bit of time today writing down talking points I want to go over with her, I have information from other similar companies ready for her on how they deal with transitioners, I know we have gender identity as a specified protection in our ethics manual, being Canadian I'm indirectly protected by our constitution, I got my shit in order.

I had figured that after 6 to 9 months that I would have changed enough for me to no longer pass for a guy, but now I'm not too sure about that, after all, I may look the exact same in 6 months, it's really hard to say. So if I wait 12, or even 15 months to transition socially, wtf am I doing talking to her now.... but like I've said before, I really don't want them finding out from someone other than me, I gotta be honorable about this type of thing and not hide away, I mean, I know where I 'm going right?.

Have to admit though, I'm still scared, what I wrote about recently, how I could survive as a boy has been on my mind, and lo an behold, someone on a forum I chat on just threw up her hands and decided to pack her femme self away, after already having started HRT, all to try and keep her family and life together. My instant reaction is to shake the damn woman and remind her how this shit doesn't go away, rip that band aid off, do it!, if your relationship wasn't mean't to be then it wasn't meant to be, your kids will be better off with two happy parent's who are apart than the inverse!

And so often, the advice we give to others is what we need to give ourselves.

In reality, I can't know her reasoning, I can't know if this is something she should, or shouldn't do, and who the fuck am I to say one way or another anyways, I barely know the poor dear. The advice I want to give her, truly, is intended for me.

While thinking about writing this post I stop off at the bathroom, and I look at myself in the mirror.... I look at her in the mirror, that androgynous chick in the mirror, and I smile, and I know I'm doing the right thing.

Yeah, I'm ready, nothing wrong with being scared, I'm not just getting a new haircut here..... HA!

Bring it


* testosterone blockers, my body will keep on creating it, but this will block the absorption of it which will eventually bring my testosterone levels down to that of a natal female.

Friday 8 February 2013

Passing..... pt. 2

There was something else I wanted to write about, and it deserves its own post.

I think I pass a lot better than I thought I did...

.... did that make sense?, lol

it's either that, or people seriously do not give a damn about me being trans. Maybe I look good enough, or act "ladylike" enough, or whatever enough in their eyes that my presence isn't jarring to their reality and they can accept me as a woman. I know for a fact that there are a lot of trans women out there who will get gawked at, glared at, and if they are seen in a bathroom by the wrong woman, oh boy.... don't need to describe the bad stuff that can happen there.

Yet I've been in a bathroom alone, with a father waiting outside for his little girl who is in the same bathroom as me, the mom came in to see if she was OK and tried to open my stall instead, didn't flinch at all when my almost 6' frame came out smiling.

I know that I don't pass face to face, we've been through that before the last time I talked about this subject, yet even face to face, at the check out, I barely even get that slight widening of the eyes anymore when they 'see' me anymore, if I don't have to use my voice at all, I think I pass completely to half of them....

do I really pass that well?
do people not care enough about people around them to notice that I'm ... different?
does every single person clock me immediately and simply no longer care?

will I ever know?

that's the killer with passing.... you never really know. You may think that you pass 100% and that no one has ever clocked you, but can you live with the idea that maybe a whole bunch of them are, and they just don't care?.

It's a fun mind experiment to play....

Another thing i'm going to be getting done in the next short while is voice training, I've got the soft gay feminine voice going, and it serves its purpose face to face to not jar too much with the way that I look, but on the phone, it just doesn't work, which is going to be an issue at one point. I don't mind people knowing that I am a transsexual woman, but at the same time, I don't want to have to explain every time that I talk to someone on the phone that yes, I am Mrs, not Mr, ugh.

And now, just because we're talking about passing, I'll leave you with my new favorite picture of myself :D


I can't wait to see what the hormones are going to do for me :D, I've been told by Becca's therapist, as well as my own, and my new doctor, that I am very lucky already with my naturally femme features (never knew I had those when I was a boy.. explained a lot), and that I should be really happy with how I turn out. Gawd I hope they're right, I tell myself that even if I don't improve at all from how I look now I'll be fine with that, but hey, a girl can dream can't she?

muah, till next time

.. and rollin and rollin....

Weeks have a tendency to slip by once one hits a certain age

I'm less than a week away from finding out if I can safely deal with the medication that I'll be taking, for most likely the rest of my life, in order to transition. Next Wednesday to be precise.... wish me luck.

If all that goes well, I take a month to store a bunch of swimmers, and that's it, we're doing this, FULL SPEED AHEAD

Becca and I are calmer, the sadness is still there, we had a huge blowup recently but as usual, we needed it. We keep talking, and while we're not always getting somewhere, the talking continues, which is great. It's like we've taken a step back from us, and we're removing our expectations of what we should be, and examining how we've gotten here, the good and the bad. We're not having the same conversation over and over again anymore, we're moving somewhere, not sure where we're heading to, lovers, friends, sisters, memories..... but movement is required, change is unavoidable. We're trying to figure out who we now are, how do we connect, it's most definitely an experience.

My buddy .... I honestly don't think I've named him yet.... lets call him Homer, hehehe. Anyway, he made a comment the other night while chitchatting, how this summer, I won't be able to just take my shirt off to lounge around.

let me repeat that

this summer... when I'm hanging out outside, or god forbid, on a beach.... and I'm not wearing my wig and boobs and makeup or anything like that, I'm presenting as male as I can.... I will not be able to remove my shirt

I'll have breasts... probably not much, but enough to be noticable....

whoah

Since I've gotten skinny (I was at 230lbs back in 2k4, now that I write it, that's quite a while ago now, lol), you can't keep a shirt on me in the summer. I'm a sweaty son-of-a-... and the less clothes I wear in our sweltering Montreal heat the better... I'm really looking forward to wearing a dress this summer... not looking forward to wearing a bra / makeup / wig during those months, lol.

another cool thing thats been happening lately, upon the therapists advice (both of em actually), Saturday I am Dawn, period, no matter what we're doing, or just lounging around the house, I'm Dawn. A way to force us to get used to the new normal, see if we are OK, if we can adjust. Due to this I'm spending more and more time with friends as my new self, going out to a friend's birthday dinner at a restaurant with a bunch of people, hanging out with a good girlfriend and chatting over a bottle of wine, things like that.

During this time, I've been having fun asking people, who am I to you now?. Am I male still?, female?, somewhere in between?... I make sure they know that I truly don't care about the answer, I won't be upset if they don't say "oh hun you're all woman to me", which is obviously what I would love to hear :P.

From the guys, I get a fairly constant reply, which is (a) definitely no longer male, there is no "guy" left in there other than the amount of "guy" a woman has who can hang around and spend time with men as well as women.... but (b) not all female yet.... they see me going in that direction, but I'm just not there yet.

The girls on the other hand seem to have fully accepted me as part of the gang... as it were. A very good friend of mine, Jenny (gonna have to see if I've named her...), made an interesting observation when I asked her... she said how now, when she is around me, she is truly herself. When I asked what she meant, she said that prior to spending time with Dawn, when she hung around me and Homer (we've all known each other for quite some time), she would put on her "boy shell" and slightly alter how she acted, spoke, discussed things, just to flow better with the guys. Now, with me, she no longer feels the need to put on that shell, and due to that, I am a woman, dangly bits or no, I'm a woman.

Another girlfriend recently said "I think seeing you as a guy would just be weird now".... lol... and this is a chick I dated briefly way back in the day, and was one of the best men for her wedding to her hubby which was only 2.5 years ago!, heheheh.

So yeah, things are progressing, quickly, looking forward to seeing what is coming next....

Take care all,
Dawn