While out celebrating my birthday today, the people I was with and I found ourselves with opportunities to show off less than flattering pictures from our younger days. They shared with ease, however, being only a wee bit over a year old (even though we were celebrating my 36th birthday. FT for me was Jan 11th, 2013), I didn't have many pictures of
me to share. So, I let my guard down and shared a pre-transition pic of myself. The people I was with had never met that guy. They knew I'm trans but they'd never seen a boy pic of me before. I'm happy to say I did get to enjoy a moment of glee when one of the people I was with said, "Oh wait, that's you!?!" And then she went on to comment how she didn't know the person she was looking at in the picture. She only knew me, the woman, Paige.
I got that feed back before too. While I went through my self imposed RLE, I was studying with people for one of my classes so they only knew me, Paige. But one time I was surprised by one of my study buddies arrival and I didn't change, I just went down to study. Talk about awkward! She and I opted to go out to grab dinner after studying but before we left I had to excuse myself to high tail it off to my apartment in order to change first so we would be comfortable together.
I'm not going to deny that showing pictures of the boy and man I looked like along with his name does give me pause when I choose to share them over worries doing so will besmirch my womanhood but, it doesn't seem to. Learning or starting to learn that, is a nice birthday present eh?
