Thank you all for your birthday wishes.
It's been several months since my last post to this blog and on my 80th birthday it seems the right moment to explain my absence. I've spent this time quietly working out who I am and how I want to live.
When I first realised I was trans in February 2025, it explained my life in a way nothing else ever had. A great many things that had puzzled me for decades suddenly made sense. Not as failings or weaknesses, but as inevitabilities, the simple truth of who I am finally making itself known.
Part of that understanding involved looking back at my appearance and voice. I've always had an androgynous look: feminine facial features, a soft expression, very little body hair, and a naturally higher pitched voice. For most of my life these things felt like an embarrassment, something that set me apart from other men. Now they sit very comfortably with my identity. Now I realise that they weren't flaws at all, they were early clues.
Like many people at the beginning of this journey, I went a bit crazy. I tried forms, bras, dresses, skirts, and stocking tights. Some of this stuff was exciting and affirming, some didn't fit my circumstances at all. Eventually I purged the lot. Not out of shame but because I realised that they didn't work for me, I just needed something I could hold onto comfortably and on a more sustainable daily basis.
Now I've just about found a middle ground that suits me. A way of being Christina that is close to being what I was but with a subtle, natural expression that feels genuine. A little subtle makeup, longer hair (growing very slowly), longer nails with transparent pink polish, an occasional bracelet, pastel coloured t-shirts and feminine cut jeans and jeggings. I've always been seen as rather androgynous with very feminine facial features. I'm now just trying to live in plain sight, much nearer to the feminine end of the gender spectrum. Nothing that disrupts my marriage or daily life and it seems to be working. People who know me just seem to see the person they've always seen. I get the occasional comment about my longer hair, painted toenails (explained as anti-fungal treatment) and smooth legs (I'm a cyclist) but nothing more.
Of course I should like to go further but for age, family and social reasons any form of transition is completely out of the question. These past months have been about settling into an equilibrium that that keeps me reasonably comfortable while remaining covert.
I'm occasionally gendered as a woman when I'm outside in boymode and more often, completely non-gendered to my amusement. It doesn't help to resolve the confusion when I give my unisex name!
Now, as I turn 80, I feel I've reached a place of calm understanding. I've stopped trying to be the man I'm not and I have, I think, become a gentler, calmer and more smiley person.
I lurk daily on SP and enjoy reading about the lives of your all and of so many experiences like my own. I have come to regard many of you as friends in a small way, after all you are the only people who know who I really am.
