Even though I am quite new to this forum and also newly "out", I feel it is a good thing for me to do just a little bit of blogging. I am not a girl of too many words so I will probably keep it a bit short and with varying recurrence.
English is not my mother tongue so please go a bit easy on my writing and how I express myself.
So, who is Anna, this 62yo trans-femme lesbian?
I am out to myself since beginning of March and to my wife since mid April. Other than that, no-one knows but I know that people wonder a bit about my recent changes in hairstyle and clothing. I guess the kids (well, they're around 30yo) will also need to know, in due time.
Did I ever know or suspect anything before coming out? Oh yes! Ever since I was around 13yo I have had this longing, this wanting to be a girl, wanting to look like a girl, behave like a girl, be treated like a girl. I was never really part of things in school. I was slightly different from most boys. Not much, but slightly. I had en extremely easy journey with studying and grades. That combination was probably what got me a bit bullied and back in the 70's even just a hint about wanting to be a girl would have been an expressway to real bullying and guaranteed outcast. So the suppression was formed early on. I was not comfortable with finding girlfriends and also had some weird experiences with girls sexually. For a while I wondered if I actually was gay, but I realised that I wasn't.
Dysphoria has been a companion of mine for almost 50 years. Not a brutal and blinding dysphoria, but more of a half-strong or half-weak longing and just a slight "ick" with my male body. I have lived rather well, despite things. That is, until about 3-4 years ago when my recurring periods of privately/solo dressing, ecstasy, shame and a bit of self-harm took on a whole new dimension, a much increased strength and shorter and shorter cycles. What was a now and then with long periods of dormancy, dressing when traveling for work, slight experiments on myself - became frequently recurring s/m things, a bit more extreme dressing, more evident self-harm (evident to me, not to others), and a quite painful to my psyche. It got to the point where I with ice-cold realization saw that if I continue along that path it is just a matter of time until I either end myself, or make my wife's life a living hell, or both. I want to stress that I was at no point near such tragic events, but the direction was very clear and the realization made me choose life regardless of having to finally be really honest with myself and accept who I am and how I am wired. Cost whatever it cost, I just had to get out of that doomsday spiral.
Since then it has been so very rewarding. I feel good. No more of those weird/sick experiments and self-harm. No more shame-and-purge. No more daemons that cause pain. No more s/m cravings. No more porno addiction. All of that vanished immediately once I truly admitted to myself who I really am, that I am Anna, trans-femme, lesbian (so I actually was homosexual, but not the way I thought when I was young) and really soft. My male persona of 60 years has also been really soft deep down inside but it has been hidden under layers of "protection" and only come to light on occasion, with my wife and with really old friends. The dysphoria has changed a bit since I accepted who I am. No longer is it only about shape and curves, but more obviously about face, hair, and definitely a bit about the thing between my legs. About identity, about the ability to actually be and look like a woman. Again, not brutally strong and not really harming my life, yet.
As you may have seen in another post I have been blessed with a truly marvellous and very understanding wife. She gets the soft, caring, sensitive, sensual me - and she loves it. Our relationship is better now than it has been for many, many years. It is better in all aspects 😉. As she said (with more or less these words): So, you are a girl that likes girls...but you are so much more like you were when we first met, the soft and sensitive you has come out for me and all to see and I'm in love again.
How I was when we first met? My wife reminded me that I used to hang-out with her gang of girls while in university and that was perhaps the first time that I really was at home. I was seen as a friend, as wifey's boy-friend, as someone that belonged. They accepted me as a kind of member in their circles and I really enjoyed it. Then life happened and my femme-ish behaviour got buried under layers of protection and denial. Until she couldn't stay hidden any longer.
What happens in the future is written in the stars. For now I seem to be content with integration, making Anna become a mix of both worlds. Don't get me wrong, I'd hit the magic transition button immediately if it existed, but for now I don't feel the need, the urge, to transition. I will not push myself vs transition, I will let life and things have their way, but if I realize that I need transition then so be it. Wifey is not really comfortable discussing the maybe-possibly things, so I will not push those discussions. If they need to happen then I will bring them up.
My current style is andro-femme and I mostly go for combos with femme trousers, shoes, underdressing, but more male clothing above the belt. This is definitely by Anna's strong preference for an external expression that is matching physical looks and also by real problems finding femme-ish tops/shirts/blouses that fit my painfully wide shoulders (wide also for a male) and chimp-alike arms in a stylish way. I am growing out my hair so that I can have a more androgynous hairstyle. The wavwiness of my youth seems to still be there, so it looks a bit promising even though it is now salt-n-pepper and with a bit of receding hairline.
Well, that is me. I'll come back later with a bit on how I experience the integration of Anna into the world.
/Anna
