I am in a weird place, in transition, MTF. First, I'm 55 and don't look the slightest bit feminine. So, my thoughts about my appearance don't have to do with appearing pretty or passing.
Talking to people in forums and email lists, I get about a 10% match between what I think I am saying and what people seem to think i am saying. I've been alone for a decade, have no friends and no family. But, really I've been isolated since a catastrophe when i was 20 years old and every one of my friends turned against me.
My image of what human interaction is supposed to be, is like what that is for a 20 year old person. So, I'm stuck at 20. But, of course, I can't hang out with 20 year old people, since that is considered creepy and 20 year old trans girls are typically gorgeous and date people.
As far as having elder trans people as friends, my interests are childish, so I don't fit. I can't relate to the normal life of an elderly person. There are few things I hate more than parties and the types of gatherings elder people who are not isolated, typically have.
I am renting a room from a trans woman, but she is not out to people in the apartment complex. So, on top of not really being out, to my work, to the world at large and to my estranged blood relatives, I can't walk out the front door in a skirt, for example, until I am out of this rental situation.
At a support group, even though people want to be supportive, I don't fit in, because I don't experience the same problems other trans femme people do.
My transition, for me, is primarily about shedding male traits that I still have, but don't want. My transition overlaps with feminism, introspection and psychology. I've occasionally tried to find a like minded person who is focused on changing from the inside, but haven't found anyone.
Further, if I try to discuss "deoafing", as I think about it, because of the language used by anti-trans people, I can easily be misunderstood and offend people if I tell people what I think about to myself. The broadest topic is whether or not I am "a woman".
Since reading about TERFs and having talked with some of them, on twitter, a year ago, I've learned the context of comments about biological sex. Before that, I used to say that I don't call myself "a woman", because knowing what that means, entirely, is something I don't expect to reach in a lifetime. But, now, if I say that, it's assumed that I mean the same thing that transphobes mean. So far, no matter how I try to word things.
Being reassured that I am valid and am supposedly "female enough", isn't reassuring, because that is right in the heart of where my transition work is. Asserting that I am done transitioning doesn't work, since I am not done transitioning, and don't think of things in that way. I don't have to convince my reasoning self, my child mind or wise mind, knows bull>-bleeped-< when it sees it.
I don't consider it to be bull>-bleeped-< when another trans woman says they are "a woman", because I am familiar with a context in which that has a different meaning than when i talk about my dysphoria.
I think of my transition as forever being in a process of discovering what i am not. It is the same thing as spiritual growth. Or, it is a major aspect of what is spiritual growth, to me. Whatever I think I am, is certain to be wrong. When my growth is stalled, it is when I am identifying with some illusion about what constitutes me. Stability, for me, is being "not male".
Anyway, my overall plan is the same as it has been for years: To accidentally encounter people who have similar interests to me. That is proving very difficult for me.
