This year has been very tough for us. We have been mostly in survival mode and have not had much to say here since most of our trouble is not trans related and comes from dealing with the PTSD and other stuff from long ago traumas made worse by stress from work and conflicts in our congregation triggering our deepest fears combined with the large amount of anti-LGBT rhetoric in the larger world.
Things have eased up at church and work, so we have had time to deal with ourself more in the past few months. The biggest change for us is that our wife is changing jobs. The new position will be purely remote with her working from home full time. This is going to be a challenge since our main times to dress and let me-Amanda out to express myself has been the hour or so between when we get home and when she does. We are trying to look at this as an opportunity for her to be more comfortable with me/us being myself and being dressed around her. Maybe in time, she could accept us more and let us present as female to her at home some of the time. This has led to me-Amanda obsessing about whether she would be more freaked out seeing us as a bearded guy in a dress or by shaving as a sign of losing Maleme.
We have an agreement to try letting me have time when I first get home that I normally would have while she finishes up things downstairs in the guest room she is turning into her office. I had hoped to be able to use the guest room as an Amanda room and have more room for my clothes with space to hang some of them up, but the logistics would be challenging. The main issue is not having a connecting bath like the master bedroom. But, the closet layout and shelving would also make if difficult to access my clothing crates.
Our wife has tried so hard to be understanding in some ways, but is limited in others. She has suggested that we go to get a masculine styled main-pedi without nail polish when she gets her nails done. Maleme does not really care one way or the other and has only considered it as a way to spend time together. I do not think I can handle being there and seeing all of the pretty color polishes and not having at least our toenails painted, especially while seeing our wife get hers painted.
This year, the "new" choir director once again had us wear gendered, formal black clothing for our big Advent music program instead of androgynous, sort of like a dress choir robes. These times are difficult as I-Amanda see the women and wish we could be out to our church family and be wearing a long, flowing dress like them. Sadly, the age of cell phone videos and social media mean that we cannot be out there without being out everywhere. We are getting enough gruff from our hyper-conservative Evangelical relatives about us growing our hair out.
Lastly, we have been challenged by strong bottom dysphoria occasionally in the past couple of months. This has been distressing because we had not experienced anything like that before. This is also frightening because our wife has been very clear that any kind of physical transition is completely unacceptable to her. Our experience up to now has been closer to genderfluid and had hoped that we could get by with merely expressing ourself through dressing with the hope of someday socially transitioning.
The traumas of the past that caused us to become separated complicate figuring this out. Maleme holds out hope that healing the traumas will lessen our gender difficulties(especially the Little One wanting a different body to no longer have the parts associated with what happened in the preschool bathroom and not feel the horrible feelings anymore) if not eliminate them. Although, he is becoming more accepting that I will always be a big part of us even if we integrate. I seem to have been the repository for all our femininity and the associated dysphoria so we could hide this part of us away from our abusive father and pretend to be "normal". Our counselor thinks that we would have been transgender anyways without the abuse, but Maleme is not convinced.
