Naked as a Jay Bird

[Bmore]

I'm not sure where to put this, since I'm so new to this it is hardly the RLT but it is a little test, ok maybe a quiz. I've been going to a gender therapist 2 hours a week for about a month now, small beans I suppose but my male model of me seems to be holding up really badly. It's sorta like you turned the cover to Cycle Magazine and there's the contents of Cosmo or WHJ inside. I fillet pretty easy and I never realized how thin my male identity was, it just sorta all comes off without much work.
The weird part is just how I feel walking around, body language relaxes, the male stiffness goes away, the voice shifts as I give up trying to gargle with testosterone, but I feel Naked. The Guy was always there to protect me, keep me from looking/acting fem, keep trouble off the doorstep and step in aggressively if there was trouble. Then I realized he's not me, he's a fiction I've been hiding inside of. It's as if my body was spray painted with all this graffitti that says" Guy" and I just washed it off one day and something entirely different was underneath this.  What happens when my deeper self comes to the fore? I keep thinking people are going to think I'm so fem or so gay. So I get into that vague paranoia like when I was in HS dressing kinda andro and people looked at me weird. Yikes there's that Look again or at least that paranoid feeling!
Without the Guy I feel naked,exposed, and vulnerable. I suppose that changes even if the looks don't. Perhaps I'll learn to move with more grace and remember how to walk with love again in my heart for myself and others. I suppose you push at the envelope, things get normal, then you push some more...
I'm interested in what people come up with if they felt So Weird after their roof had blown off too and it was just them in the big blue sky overhead?

[madison]

Weird? So Weird! Like a mantra that I chant, a label that will never shake free, except it is ever so slowly.

I have felt so weird been referred to as weird both as a term of affection and a pejorative smack upside the head.

But then again, so much of that mental programming came from childhood, especially high school. In the years since high school I realized, especially observing older friends, that the judgements and fears often subside as we get older. Many friends I have that are in their 30's and 40's have tossed aside old inhibitions, old judgements, while teenagers and people in their twenties are so confined, so concerned about what others think. Who knows why, maybe as we get older we realize there just isn't enough time to waste worrying about the rest of the world thinks.

I just entered my 30's and that revelation is setting in. What in the world was I so afraid of? What are those other people so afraid of? And you one day you decide I'm not going to be afraid anymore, I'm going to live. I'm going to be me. That doesn't mean start acting crazy and being stupid. It means take small steps in the journey, experiment, and don't be afraid of reality, of the truth.

I'm not a therapist, but to me, feeling naked is a good thing. Sure you are exposed, but you also have nothing left to hide, there is nothing to be ashamed of. Behind the mask, when I was alone, everything was okay, to me. But in front of the world I was an abomination, a freak. So I reveled secretly in being a freak. But that wasn't healthy either. It only separated me from the rest of the world, and didn't do anything to make me more a part of it.

So now I live. And sometimes I feel naked, and sometimes I am afraid. But I am living. And more often than not I am perfectly content. We are all pushing at the envelope, testing out the waters, and as we become more comfortable with ourselves the rest of the world becomes more comfortable with us. Will I ever be completely accepted? Not a chance, but then I don't need to be. Not with my friends by my side. Nobody is ever accepted by everyone. But things do become more normal, because they are more normal to you, not because anyone else thinks anything is normal. It's all relative. I don't think Christians, politicians, or telemarketers are normal, but then I don't have to. And they don't have to think I am normal.

I am fond of the saying that all learning is remembering. You will remember to move with all the grace and love that you are.

I stand with you below the big blue sky, and isn't it beautiful?

[Jasmine]

Well I think the best I can do to help is tell you how it is for me.

When I first started transitioning, I bought some plain women's clothes from the city, and I wasn't comfortable buying anything that was noticably feminine, in fact a male could have worn them and not be noticed.

And now, I find myself buying and wearing more and more feminine clothes, to the point now where i'm almost ready to wear dresses. (yes.. I don't even own a dress..) So I think as time goes on you will become comfortable with each little step of your journey, and then you'll be able to move to the next.

[cindybc]

Hi

I have gone through that vulnerable feeling as well for a while after I had been attacked by a drunk trying to steel my purse during the early part of my living full time. But I am not the kind to get scared out of doing something I continued to work and live as a female, enjoying every second of how to feel and behave like a woman. I had lots of tutors, the ladies at my work. It wasnt long before I felt safe in my female skin again, exploring and learning new things everyday about living as a woman, and yes learning how to love again. Now here it is 8 years later and this one final change, I have not any idea how long or was it recently or sometimes back. I only just discovered that the memories of who I was before had all faded away. I don't have any pictures of me from back then and maybe that is for the best. I am a woman and the only person I know is me, the present me. I have all the memories of the other me just not the other me.

Cindy