Mar 26 2017, 11.23pm
What started out as a positive day ended on a down note.
We started out with a nice brunch at Denny's today. We were both so glad that, in spite of us getting there so late, Shelly, our favorite server, was still on shift.
We got greeted by a pleasant, "Hello, ladies" which gave me a little glow inside.
From there we went over to Big Lots and then to Jo-Anne Fabrics where I managed to find what I thought were perfect replacements for the button I broke on my favorite purple button-down top.I was glad for finding those and also at the prospect of only having to sew one button instead of redoing the whole set. Not that I have any doubts as to my sewing skill, but sewing buttons is just plain time-consuming. I suppose, though, I could do it while sitting in front of the TV like any reasonably well-adjusted American.
Afterward, we went over to the mall and had smoothies made by a rather surly young lady. They tasted good, so no harm, no foul. Then, we were off to Belk's where I had hoped to pick up the Tresor gift set I had been eyeing for a while with the 1oz perfume bottle and tubes of both shower gel and body lotion. Of course, they didn't have any of the gift packs on hand so the lady (Mika) at the Lancome counter offered to order it for me. I figured that would be fine since the last things we ordered from Belk's came in a pretty timely manner. I gave her all my information to put in the computer for the order and we ran into a brick wall. For special orders, the machine would only accept cards as payment.
That was when the trouble came up. Thinking in hindsight, I should probably have given her 'Cassandra' as the name for the order instead of '{DEADNAME}'. I guess I'm still not 100% comfortable using that name for day-to-day stuff. Now, had I not been presenting as female and at the same time, pushing my voice into my "girl-voice" range, this may not have been as big an issue for me but when she got distracted and was jetting back and forth between her counter and the one where the order was being filled out, she kept calling over to me, "Sir, I'll be right with you, okay sir? I'll just be a moment sir."
Over and over, like a belt-fed Machine Gun, she fired a withering rain of "sirs" at me. It would not surprise me in the least if I were to wake up one night in a cold sweat, having had some kind of flashback to this casual verbal battering. It took a conscious effort of willpower to withstand this fusillade without returning fire with my own arsenal of lexical weaponry. I think what made me hold back on that was that I wasn't sure if it was deliberate or something she was just doing unconsciously.
I ended up just buying the 1oz perfume bottle and she gave me the 15% off coupon they were offering as well as a sample jar of moisturizer. I walked away and met up with my wife who had gone to sit down by the fountain while I was lost in the fog of war by the cosmetic counter. I had thought that I wasn't going to let the whole incident bother me that much but I suppose she could see that something was wrong. I held back for a time and said that nothing was wrong but after a short walk, I confessed that something was indeed wrong. I told her about those few minutes dealing with the sales lady and the barrage of 'sirs' I had just endured. I told her I didn't think that sort of thing would bother me that much until it actually happened today and that it did bother me - a lot. It bothered me to the point that I spent a good part of the evening in tears, both doing some cleaning in my closet and giving the boys (kittens I adopted a year before) some attention. The cleaning helped, but spending time with the boys just made me feel worse. All of the regrets I've had in keeping them confined to only half of the upstairs because they don't get along with the other cats, came flooding back in a rain of tears. As I had no tissues or anything of the kind, every time I sniffled, I startled the poor dears. Once I had had all I could take, I went back, finished tidying my closet and got to feeding the cats their dinner.
After everyone was filling their bellies, I decided it was time to go and fill mine, but not before taking off my now surely annihilated eye makeup.
This, if nothing else, may serve to drive home the point that I'm ready for a switch in gender pronouns.
Mar 30 2017, 10.56pm
I've been sharing my experiences with "L" lately, and I've got to say, it's a lot less stressful to have a friend to share this stuff with. We went out to lunch yesterday with a couple of the other ladies from work and she mentioned that since starting transitioning, I seem a lot more at ease, especially when we were out to lunch that day. Thinking about it, I tend to agree. A year ago, I would have either said almost nothing the whole time or might not have even gone along in the first place.
She said that there had been questions about me like, "What's with the jewelry?" and "Is he gay or goth or something?"
I've been expecting questions like that, especially the gay question. I've half a mind, if asked that question directly, to respond with, "Not exactly," though I'm not quite ready to start dropping more blatant hints to my co-workers.
We all had a good time during lunch though. I felt like I fit right in.
Another experience I had that same day was another female coworker with whom I was conversing started to tell me some details about her neighbors' abusive relationship which recently resulted in a miniature episode of 'Cops'. This segued into her own story of living with an abusive spouse. Stories like these make me feel like the "river of >-bleeped-<" trans people have to swim through just pales in comparison. Granted, I've only dipped my big toe in this river so far, so I have to give nothing but respect to the women who have survived years living in emotionally and sometimes physically abusive relationships. The fact that they have come out the other side and survived intact is a testament to the strength within (I hope) all of us.
In spite of having grown up assigned male from birth, it still boggled my mind that guys like that are so common out there in the wild. Then again, I never really got the whole 'machismo' thing that seems to rule the lives of so many men and boys.
