December 18, 2016 - 9:53pm
Plans laid and plans ever changing.
We had originally planned to build our - basically, retirement home on our land up north. I hadn't even given any consideration to my current situation. Where we had planned to settle is one of those small towns with some kind of Baptist Church located about every 25 feet in any direction. At one point, I was confident that we could blend in with the people and culture there and have a happy retirement. Back then, I was still making what seems to be my last go of trying to be the type of person genetics had decided I was to be.
I love the peace and quiet of the rural areas, and especially the fact that people pretty much leave each other alone. That is, so long as one is seen as a reasonable fit for the community. Being seen as an outsider can provoke any of a number of negative reactions as evidenced by any societal group. They can talk all they want about being open but when the proverbial rubber hits the road, that's when reality sets in.
This is a fact not lost on her since I came out (sort of) to her as a cross-dresser in June or July of 2016. Since then, I have been wearing almost exclusively female clothing and jewelry around the house and in bed. It feels somehow comfortable - not so much in a sense that it feels good, but more that it feels *right*. I'm more at ease with myself this way and much more freely giving of affection.
The issue with where we had wanted to retire, is that I'm to a point that I don't want to hide myself any more. I've been testing the boundaries of what I can get away with as far as going out. I haven't been bold enough to go out fully dressed and made up but I have gone with the girls (breast forms) along to the bank drive-thru to make a deposit. From the third lane of the bank drive-thru, I figured there wasn't much chance of being read, especially with a guy manning the window. Thankfully, guys don't pay much attention to gender perception. The irony of the situation is that if one is "read" by a woman in day-to-day activity, not much will really happen. However, being read by a guy can provoke any reaction from a brief raise of the eyebrows to an episode of ultraviolence. Guys don't like to be deceived, especially when it concerns orifices in which they would like to stick something. When they get the idea that there may be an available orifice of the kind they prefer, they are generally not able to handle the realization that the target they have selected does not have an available franchise of their "Preferred Orifice". The more "alpha" a male is, the more poorly (or, violently) they react.
I'm going off on tangents more rapidly than particles in a nuclear reactor right now, it seems. I started writing this stuff last night as a sort of an outlet and it seemed like a good and natural (dare I say, therapeutic?) thing. Throughout the course of this writing, I have gone through two glasses of fifteen-year-old single malt and am considering going a third because I'm actually enjoying this very much. Though this may only serve as reading material for some future version of me (who is hopefully addressed as ma'am) (Author's note: As that "future me", I am reading this and I do get addressed as "ma'am" now). I can remember times when I used to hate writing assignments back in school. Maybe it was because I had to stick to a single subject or something to that effect. Some assignments, I turned in a series of blank pages and yet others, when I can get started and just let the words flow, some kind of magic happens and I turn I to some kind of unicorn, farting the most eloquent, meaningful literary rainbow ever seen by a high school teacher. (Hey, if I don't toot my own horn, who will?)
All things considered, this is where I am now and I have a more clear idea of where I want...no, where I need to go. I can't hold it back any more.
December 18, 2016 - 11:10pm
The long hard road ahead.
Am I really, as the term-du-jour seems to be, best described as a trans-woman? I've been struggling with that concept (if not in those exact words) for a very long time and always explained it away to myself as a passing interest, a brief sexual thrill which ends at the moment of orgasm, allowing my "macho self" to reassert itself and cast away any of those "deviant" thoughts.
I've read some of the accounts of other trans-women who have run the entire gauntlet from conflicted feelings to realization to transition to the logical final step of surgery to correct whatever it is that genes or nature, or nature *and* genes couldn't get right. (You had ONE JOB, darn it! ONE, and you managed to foul it up anyway!)
Most of the accounts I've read so far have described the author as so sure from early on who they are and what gender they are on the inside. I can't help but be more than a little jealous of some who started their transition early on in life and have come out of that situation as strong, confident women who basically took on the entire world and came out on top. Starting down the same path this late in life, I can only hope to fill a tiny fraction of their shoes (with my enormous feet). Still, as the saying goes, the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The next best time is today.
This is my today.
(That last little bit was particularly moving to myself and I cried a little when I wrote it. I'm still getting used to the concept of how crying is more than just debilitating emotion that serves no purpose other than to get in the way. I feel like such a fool for having ever thought that but, like a lot in the philosophy department, we will only understand something when we are ready to understand it. My only regret is, naturally, that I couldn't understand it sooner but that is tempered with joy that I am growing to understand it now. Even that idea is making me tear up again, but I'm perfectly okay with that.)
I keep thinking back to a scene in the movie, "Short Circuit", in which Ally Sheedy tells Steve Guttenberg that he is "the dumbest smart person she ever met". When my thoughts drift in these directions, I feel like I have my own Ally Sheedy telling me just that.
December 18, 2016 - 11:58pm
So much to tell.
I've been tumbling all of this around in my head for a long time now - probably since the time when devices such as the one on which I'm writing this were merely the stuff of science fiction.
In retrospect, the subject line, "So much to tell" leaves a literary Grand Canyon sized gap to fill with words. My fault for choosing those words, so what the heck, I'll try and fill in that gap with some eloquent language.
I started self-medicating with estrogen and finasteride (a DHT blocker) about 21 days ago. I'm not sure why, but it just seemed like what I needed to do next. As far as transition goes, I may be going about the whole thing ass-backwards. I'm given to understand that the procedure generally involves talking to a psychiatrist who specializes in gender issues before (maybe) being officially diagnosed with gender dysphoria and prescribed hormones for transition to what is perceived to be one's true gender. Maybe I haven't taken that last step because I'm afraid I might instead be diagnosed as some kind of "gender tourist" who only skirts the boundaries between genders in order to satisfy some carnal desire and once the point of orgasm is reached, goes back to his "Regularly Scheduled Programming".
To have that exact situation unfold would, in my heart, be devastating. I want so much to not be the person I described above, but in my own biased opinion of myself, I can never be sure without some kind of outside affirmation. This is the age-old choice to be made between knowing for sure or remaining blissfully unaware of the world.
I believe it's once again time to make the choice between the red pill and the blue pill. It's time for me to take the red pill, I think. Ignorance is bliss only if you are a character in Shakespeare's play where your every thought, word, and deed is carefully mapped out for you to follow.
I feel like I want so desperately to go tumbling down the rabbit hole and see just how deep the rabbit hole goes. I have to go about it rationally though, in spite of the impulse to just dive in headfirst and deal with the consequences later.
I need to take Baby Steps.
