The past few weeks, the Sturm und Drang of the previous months is gone.  I feel like at some deep level, I'm waiting.  I'm no longer impatient, things will happen or need to be done when the fullness of time calls for them, not when I say.  Reminds me of how Richard Adams describes the rabbits waiting to leave on their journey in Watership Down.  Not waiting for a clock time, but for the time to be ripe.

Everything outside myself is a little dim.  My self, not just my conscious mind but my whole self, is centered around whatever is happening inside me.  My conscious mind is not directing anything, I feel like I'm just being carried along with the tide.  My conscious mind doesn't need to understand what is going on or what I'm becoming or to do anything to help the process; in fact, it's better if it keeps its fingers out of the works and I just go on with my life.  And all this understanding and perception is purely intuitive; I couldn't explain it if my life depended upon it, I just know it's so.

I keep wondering if this is a little like what it is to be pregnant, especially for the first time.  I've never had the equipment to be pregnant (more's the pity), so it's all second-hand at best, but from what I hear, there's also this sense that your body is doing things all by itself and your task is to not interfere and not make things worse.  And that your body will let you know what you need to do and when.

It's funny, but I started coming out to people outside my trans circles in early March and I plan to stop being <deadname> as of early December, which amounts to 9 months.  The first trimester was kind of discovery, the second was all drama and feeling torn apart and reassembled, and now, the third trimester, is me just waiting while the me that's not my conscious me transforms me.  In three months, I'll give birth -- to myself, my as yet not fully formed trans self, who will then need to be nurtured to the point of facing the world.

I wonder if there's a trans equivalent of What to Expect When You're Expecting.  They have baby showers and wedding showers -- do they have transition showers?

This is so so beautiful.  I've been in a discovery phase, still will be for who knows how long, and despite my enjoying some aspects, others are killing me.  I'm not really planning anything, because I don't even know how.  But things are starting to plan themselves, and I am learning, albeit slowly, to just go with it. 

I truly feel, and believe, that my future is amazing.  And that my present is the start of reaching that future.  Thank you for your words, they really spoke to me.  This journey is fraught with uncertainties and novelties and oddities..I'm glad there are others on it with me, at every step before and ahead.

That's a wonderful way of putting it! I would consider my new self as having been "concieved" in 2010 when I first discovered the term genderqueer. For around four years prior the sperm had been swimming to the egg as I discovered myself and my orientation, first sexual and second gender. Unfortunately, I did go through a bit of a period of self-denial after being told "THERE ARE ONLY TWO GENDERS!" but now I feel largely comfortable with being GQ again, especially as it's becoming more accepted as a gender option.

My "birth" will be when I come out. I can feel the figurative contractions right now and I actually considered coming out yesterday on NCOD but decided not to for various reasons.