I'm in a mixed place these days.
On the one hand, I've been living full-time as Allison for about 3 months, and it's really nice. Actually, it is just feeling normal, but with moments of singing or dancing to myself and saying "I'm so glad I'm me." I'm still figuring out exactly who "me" is, but I'm enjoying allowing myself to do "girly" things if I feel like it. Like a lot of us, I guess, I'm torn between wanting to fit into the True Woman(tm) mould and wanting to just be whatever the heck I feel like being, but at the moment, that sort of debate feels more like a hobby. I'm trying to get the process going for SRS in a year and I've made a baby step or two. Mostly, I'm just getting through the day and doing stuff. Life, I guess.
On the other hand, there's this background level of something like anxiety (well, terror, actually) and desperation, like a storm cloud that won't go away and frequently has flashes of thunder and lightning in the form of my body wanting to clench my fists and screw up my face and shiver and shake as if I were in horrible pain, only I'm not (consciously) aware of any pain. I've been calling them "emotional flashbacks," on the assumption that they're when the feelings from the Hell of my childhood break through -- maybe I'm experiencing the pain that I felt when I was a child but couldn't allow myself to feel. Anyway, I'm working with a trauma therapist, but it's slow going and there's the feeling that it will never end. And these flashes take an enormous amount of energy out of me -- I end up feeling like just getting out of bed is more than I can manage and I just wish for the Dark Mother to take me and hold me and rock me to sleep so I'll never have to wake up again. Oh, and BTW it's impacting my work. I have a lot of trouble focussing sometimes.
All in all, I know all the way down to my toes that transitioning was the right thing, even if it's still a fair bit of work. And I tell myself, when I'm down, that the misery I'm experiencing is just part of the healing process. But it hurts. Oh, how it hurts, more than I dare admit even to myself most of the time.
