Well, I've been lurking around for the last couple months, and I finally got the words to put into an introduction!
I guess the best place to start, is right here and now, and then we can recap some of the stuff that led me to transitioning, which brought me here.
Everybody, I'm Taius, or Tai for even shorter.
I'm a 21 year old pre-t transman who's come out to all of his friends and all of his close family except for his mother and sister, living in Washington state with my best friend who's been my lifeline since I started transitioning fairly recently.
I work part time at a local school, and fulltime as a freelance illustrator doing commissions for various clients. I've been drawing for just over a decade now, and have found that it's been the truest distraction, and escape whenever I need an outlet.
I have aspirations of becoming a successful freelance artist, who can support himself off of his art alone. Right now? I get by. It's a bit rough, but I've spent the last 5 years building my business to the point where I can use it to pay a couple of my bills, which is absolutely incredible to me.
I'm utterly obsessed with Star Wars, Criminal Minds, The Blacklist, Hannibal, Gotham, Star Trek, Harry Potter, D&D, and Anything Corgi, Owl, or Satyr related.
I love music from almost all of the major genres, and don't know what my life would be like without it.
I'm an avid PC video gamer, and love playing MMOs in my off time. I use games like Elder Scrolls Online, SWTOR, Neverwinter, WoW, and half a dozen others to keep in touch with my network of friends who I've made over the years, and spend time with the ones who've moved away. (Or more accurately, the ones who are where I used to live!)
On that note, I've...moved around a lot in the last few years. My childhood included growing up all over FL and CT, and then when I hit 17 I discovered the most incredible wanderlust inside myself. I energetically started landskipping, lived in NY, Toronto, backpacked around Eastern and Central Europe with my brother (Who lives there, running his own business.) came back to the US, moved to Alaska, then stayed in Moldova (A tiny country nestled between Romania and Ukraine) and Romania for a short while, and came back to the US where I moved into my current place in Washington, and I'm now looking at a small scale move an hour or so away to a charming little town, filled with exuberant youthful individuals, job opportunities, cheap rent, and a good platform to start making a long term foothold here in Washington, while I gear up for going to University next year.
It wasn't until that last trip in Romania that I realized...I have something much more chaotic than wanderlust going on in my soul.
When I was younger, I used to idolize fictional men. Men with great facial hair, like Riker from Star Trek: TNG. Men who weren't afraid to show off their chests, like Aladdin in his Disney movie. As a little kid I'd unbutton all of my shirts and run around pretending I was some handsome bearded shirtless badass.
Eventually when I was maybe 7...I tried to explain to my mom, that I didn't want to be a little girl. In the most honest, and direct way a child can, I tried to tell her I simply didn't like girl things. I liked boys toys, I liked looking like a boy, I liked boy names, and I didn't want to grow up to look like my big sister, I wanted to look like my big brother. She shut me down instantly, becoming angry.
As I became older I thought I might never come out, because I managed to suppress it so far down that I forgot it was there for periods of time. And things in my life started happening that distracted me from the dysphorias I felt, which I didn't have a name for at the time. Just...some sinking feeling in my chest, something like a heart ache when I'd look at myself. I ended up just thinking that I must be ugly, and that's why I felt terrible looking in a mirror.
I met someone, who I ended up getting married too, far too soon and am currently in the process of being divorced from. It turned out he parroted things he thought I wanted to hear, like being pansexual, or supporting LGBT individuals...He ended up being a huge biggot against homosexuality, and transgendered individuals. So I wasn't able to ever express myself with a feeling of safety, when I finally realized in the middle of that mess that what I was missing in life was glaring at me in the face.
With that situation gone, now I've gotten myself to a place where I'm dedicating myself to myself. Working on starting my transition, figuring out how to come out to my mother, and getting into a better living situation where I'm completely self sufficient.
I've just started ordering my first binders recently (And one of which I LOVED, but it was cheaply made, so it broke after a few weeks. Go figure! But what do you expect for a 7 dollar binder? haha. I'm waiting on a new underworks in the mail, which I just ordered last night. SO EXCITED YES.) and I need to find a place to grab some inexpensive new clothes. I have one guys shirt, that was a gift from a great friend of mine, who's been supporting me a lot since I came out to him, and need pants. These hip hugging monstrosities better get outta here.
I hope to start talking to a doctor about hormones and my options regarding them in the next 4-5 months, so hopefully I can start T consistently by the end of this year.
And you know, I'm really excited about it all. Everyone starts somewhere, and I think I found a good place to start in my life.
ANYWAYS I TALK A LOT
I'm one of the longest winded people.
So I apologize about writing you guys a huge post! I'm just very excited to be here.
