Apparently people actually read these introduction things and I should do one, even if it's nearly two years too late (I signed up for here in November 2011, and was probably lurking since May that year). I suppose it makes a bit of sense as I'm now daring to venture out of the FTM Transsexual boards into the rest of the forums. In other words, Jeebus found me.
So I'm Alex, and at the moment I'm in Suffolk, England, where I've lived in the same village since I was a year old. As some of you probably know seeing as it's all I seem to be posting about at the minute, in 26 days I'll be gone and spending a year in Hampshire on a naval base, and then hunting around for a roof over my head in Oxfordshire. So I'm moving halfway across the country for an apprenticeship as a railway signalling maintenance engineer, and if that isn't dedication then I don't know what is.
In terms of transitioning it's put me at a standstill for yet another year probably, seeing as I'll be expected to share a room with up to five others (females) and I don't want to make my family think twice about letting me go by reminding them of all the problems I've had with my mental health in the past. As my girlfriend keeps reminding me, it might be a year of hell, but at the end of it it's what I really want to do, and I was leaping around the garden when I got the phone call that I was almost certainly guaranteed a place if I wanted it. I'm also in hiding from my shrink because he's a sadistic piece of... nastiness, and don't want anyone remembering that they never did reschedule that meeting a year ago to discuss letting me leave his care. When I've got a room of my own and won't be coming out to over 200 hundred people I'll transition, but as long as I'm giving out male enough vibes for people to pick up on, I can survive.
Other random stuff about me is that I have a whippet, and currently an unhealthy obsession with the film Naked (Mike Leigh, 1993).