A female cousin was in California on business yesterday and my two older sisters, a brother-in-law, my wife and her mother, and me all got together for a lunch date.
I've been on HRT 4 ½ months, and except for my wife no one who was there knows about me. I still have a short beard for reasons that aren't important in this, but even with that the comments I got were quite interesting. The compliments were tossed into the conversation very randomly as we sat and talked for more than an hour.
The comments were:
Every now and then my cousin would stare at me , and say something similar to "I like the new look. Besides trimming the beard, whatever you did looks a lot better. And I like the ponytail." She did this at least 4 times during the meal, and once as we said goodbye.
One sister said "You look much younger somehow. I guess your face changed a bit from loosing weight. Maybe it's thinner, but you look more even in some way."
The other sister just blurted out "My god Joe, you really look good and healthy."
My brother-in-law said "Retirement is being good to you Joe. You're looking younger. It's good."
Although I was flattered and happy that my appearance might have changed, I brushed the comments off with a polite "Thank you, I'm taking better care of myself ." JoAnn kept quiet about these little statements, but when asked directly how she liked what I've done, she said in a somewhat disapproving way "I guess it's o.k. for now." It's clear that JoAnn was hurt by all this since she's loosing Joe as I become Kathy. I need to talk to her this morning and get some of our frustration out before we stew on it too much. Especially since I have another injection appointment at 10 AM and these upset her
JoAnn and I are seeing my therapist together for the first time on Tuesday. I'm really happy about this, but my stress is building. There's some real dark stuff in my past, and I've told the therapist most of it, but no one should ever hear a few things. And the thought of having any of that come up is weighing on me. I know the therapist obviously won't say anything about what she already knows, but it's bugging me that I have a couple extreamly dark and painful secrets that I buried for real good reasons. I can barely stand to think of them.
The part about JoAnn and me is just some musing on life as it is now. But, on the first part of this post I'm wondering if anyone my age (old) got similar comments from relatives.
Kathy
