Hey All,
Yep, been four years since taking the leap, and funny thing, I had forgotten all about it. If I weren't hanging out here with y'all, it would have passed unnoticed like my 2nd and 3rd anniversaries did...
To me, that says all I need to know. My Real Life Experience, is now just my real life.
I am trying to think of something profound to say, or share, or whatever, but I am just really kinda coming up empty. Again, I think that says it all. I have pretty much forgotten all the misery of waiting for surgery, wondering if it would ever happen. The 'do I pass' thing, yeah, I stopped worrying about that every minute of every day after my surgery, too. Funny, that little operation opened up so many new doors for me, in my head, as well as in my 'real life'. When I meet a hot guy, I don't have to worry much, yeah, I do think about my history, but I don't worry about being killed if he finds a schlong in my panties, nope.
Hmm, well, yes, there are still tough moments, but they are moments, not that continuous grind that was life before HRT and presenting as a woman. Yeah, the first 6 months were all about me being paranoid, and for two years after, until shortly after surgery, my face still looked male to me in the mirror, but now, nope. I still see T damage to my facial structure, but I see my face post-FFS pretty clearly now. I will get there someday, I don't know how, but I will. For now, I focus on real life. My interests, hobbies, friends, family, my long-term return to deep-stealth is a favorite topic to research and explore mentally. I like new places, new people, new adventures, new lives. I'll be fine.
What else?
Oh, yeah, earlier versions of the SOC were pretty vague about us intersex people, but the SOC 7.0 kinda pulled us back under the same regulations as transgender folk. That rankled me a LOT, but mostly because had I had the money during SOC 6 or earlier, I could have avoided the one year RLE thing, I think it was 6 months for intersex in 6.0, and no RLE previously. But, honestly? Even with no Y chromosome, even as CERTAIN as I was that I needed nothing more than HRT and carte blanche to transition, and a fast track to surgery, in hindsight, the regulations did me a world of good.
Had I not been compelled to get my HRT letter through gender therapy, I would not have delved so deeply into finding my XX intersex truth, nor the truth about having been mis-gendered, and forcibly re-assigned male, nor uncovered the rape/incest traumas of my childhood, nor would I have eventually found out that I was a highly dissociative creature. My initial gender therapy led to trauma therapy which lead to a C-PTSD diagnosis, which lead to a DID diagnosis, which lead to both trauma and integration therapy, which revealed over 3 dozen alters of all ages and genders that had been actively living in my life. Through DID therapy, 35 of them were able to come forward, speak openly, tell their stories, and begin healing. Without that process, I would never have become a whole person again, as I am now. As I am now, I am a planet with almost 40 moons, but they are only moons, and though they exert a tiny bit of gravitational pull, they circle around me as I traverse the heavens on my own route. Without compliance to the SOC, I would still be floridly dissociating, living chaotically, and dangerously, through the minds of children, teens, infants, and men. I am very happy to be back in control of my executive functions. I will now live long and prosper, but without wholeness, it was just a matter of time...
Yep, four years since donning my only skirt, a blouse, some flip-flops, and marching down to the apartment manager's office and declaring I am a woman, get used to seeing me around. Four years since I resigned my alpha male status and all my privilege and let go my little empire, my fake life, my false relationships, my make-believe status. I was now free to walk away from all that nonsense, no matter how valuable it looked from the outside. It was pish-posh.
As I have said elsewhere on this site, I am much happier being just another lady searching through the clearance bins at the supermarket than being that smart-aleck, cocky, entitled, arrogant dude flirting openly while buying seafood and Angus steaks from the poor woman working her third job at the fresh seafood/meat market. I can't say what anybody else should do, but shedding ALL that pretense, instead of bargaining, and negotiating, and still pretending to NOT be a woman, was perhaps the most liberating choice I ever consciously made in this life. I do not regret the losses a single bit. I do regret lying to my ex-spouse all those years, and manipulating her to stay, and each and every hurt I brought into her life. But I do not regret setting her free. It was the kindest hurt I ever bestowed upon her. Now she is married to an actual man. And now, though I never, ever dreamed I would think such a thing a good thing, I am now free to do the same.
Life is funny, so much we think we know, so little we actually do know. But this is how life is, it unfolds before us, and for those of us that are willing to seize the day, we are rewarded with new life, to replace that which no longer serves.
Four years, and a lifetime of new experiences.
REAL life experiences.
It is all in the name.
Missy
