This last week was very tough. I had back to back sessions with the therapist Tuesday and Wednesday, each slightly over an hour, all squeezed into a hectic work schedule. They were mostly cathartic disclosing all my gender issues and concerns. I was unable to sleep Tuesday night in advance of The Wednesday afternoon session. Following this session I was physically and emotionally exhausted. The next session is scheduled for Tuesday afternoon.
My therapist clearly was making an effort to determine if I was struggling with crossdressing as a paraphilic or fetish behavior vs. struggling with internal female gender identification. By the end of the second of these sessions, hearing myself openly explain how I feel and how dressing carries absolutely no erotic or sexually exciting qualities for me, I am more convinced than ever of my deeply rooted gender misalignment. It seems that is an important function of therapy, perhaps obvious, but one I had not recognized previously.
With compassionate encouragement from Moni, I reassembled my thoughts after this trying week. Luck would have it, my wife had plans that caused her to need to travel out of town Friday, arriving back home evening today (Sunday) giving me free run of the house for the entire weekend. I carefully thought through a plan to test out a microscopic version of "real life experience" spending the entire weekend in "Steph Mode." The purpose was to test a 2 day uninterrupted stretch of existence in female mode determining its effects on dysphoria and underlying mindset. Moreover, I wanted to see how the recovery, going out of Steph Mode back to my usual guy mode existence existence would feel and whether there would be an accentuated wave of dysphoria following the weekend.
As part of the experiment, I decided I needed a simple nightgown for sleep. Solving this problem required a trip to the local Macy's to buy the garment. I went to Macy's after work Thursday in my usual guy mode work clothes, went ti the womens department, right into the intimates section and browsed for somthing on the order of a half an hour. I had a sense of purpose and felt surprisingly little anxiety, not feeling conspicuous of out of place. There were several women shopping inn the department in very close proximity who paid no attention. I had a great time! In the end, I bought two, was treated without any apparent second thought by the sales person when I checked out. Off to a good start.
The weekend was terrific. In the interest of brevity, I wont describe it in detail. Basically, I came home, climbed into comfy clothes, had something to eat, did some work on the computer, watched a bit of TV, hung out with my cats. It all felt very normal. Into nightgown and off to sleep.
Saturday was to be a big day of catching up on work, but instead became a lazy day at home. I rarely if ever afford myself such personal time. Better yet, it was spent in Steph Mode. It was a wonderful dysphoria-free day.
In the evening, I made the minor error of watching Amazon series "Transparent." I had been wanting to watch but could not bring myself to do it having seen the trailers, it seemed to be too close to home and somewhat anxiety provoking. Well, Saturday night I watched the entire first season, fast forwarding through some of the cheesy side plots. It was indeed anxiety provoking. I found I could identify with the transgender main character and her situation more than I had expected. Overall, it was not a bad night. Into the nightgown and off to sleep.
Today started as a quiet Sunday morning. Breakfast sitting in my kitchen in the nightgown. I cleaned up the kitchen, did a few things around the house, fed the cats, answered some emails, and then faced the reality of Steph's weekend coming to an end. I packed up all my clothing and stuff, got into a plain old tee shirt and Levis and here I am.
So far, I'm still on the momentum of the weekends good feelings, without dysphoria. Nevertheless, I can see the wave forming in the distance. I am trying to put the whole thing into context. I see how this weekend fully confirmed to me the absence of need to specifically crossdress. As I wrote earlier, this was not about the clothing. I am amazed how dysphoria free I felt even through only 2 days in Steph Mode. The extent of dysphoria rebound will be the next important observation. The reality of all this is not surprising but unsettling to me. I cannot deny the strength of the evidence before me. I cannot deny the way I felt through the weekend. That said, I still am overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task unable to see myself strong enough to psychologically survive transition. Watching a season of Transparent seemed to reinforce these fears.
I was rereading several threads I've been following. I am debating the wisdom of a trial of low dose estrogen in my situation. I suspect I, like many others on this forum, would find relief in it. I just cannot see the larger plan at the moment. I suppose I could do stealth estrogen for a limited time as yet another, albeit larger experiment. While I could stop in principle sometime prior to "male fail" I doubt I would choose to do so if I felt better on it. I don't have a complete grasp on how transition would play out for me, work, family, and friends so am reluctant to commit until this path is clearer.
I just wanted to update the thread with the recent developments in my journey.
As everyone here knows, this is hard work.
Steph
