Friday 23 September 2016

Why didn't I say something sooner?

-Is a question I'm sure you are familiar with if you are in anyway trans.

Even if you are not trans, I'm certain you ask yourself this very question when you have a regret that you are dealing with.
"Why didn't I tell them sooner" or "Why didn't I do something when this all began"?

Regrets are common place, but they seem to be part of a process, and blogging about this stuff is cathartic for me, putting things in black and white is a wonderful self analysis tool.

-What are you banging on about?
Great question my dear, I'm glad you asked!

So last night I came out to my parents.
If you need info on why, now, at 34 years of age, I'm now coming out to my parents?
Read the last blog I published, it has way more context than is necessary for my tale, but your insight into 'why' will be easier for you to understand.

I'd woken up yesterday morning, I was actually off to get my bloods taken (My GP has referred me to a GIC, and it's their policy that baseline bloods are taken to be analyzed for the referral criteria.)
But the first thing I said to my wife that morning, before I even opened my eyes, was
"I want to come out to my mum and dad"

"It'll probably do you good" she said. I love this woman, she only wants me to be happy (Love you Em!).
I'd been awake until 1am, waking at 8am - On leave from work, so nice lie in really. I would have gotten more sleep, but I spent 3 hours reading people's coming out tales online.
Some made me cry with joy for the person, others made me weep with sadness at the hurt.
I was those people as I read their tales, because each one told me a future I might be facing.
Each one loaded my emotional cannons using a short fuse.

I went about my day, went for bloods, took the Mrs to work, started a first draft of a coming out letter, (I want it to be perfect - it needs work LOL), then I went down stairs.
(My parents would be due over with my birthday card (25th by the way - 2 days away) as they would be busy over the weekend. This was to be the day.)
I sat for an hour, no TV on, just though, pre-planning what to say with my coming out letter fresh in my head, ideas were frequent but fleeting.
I planned a whole speech, it would have to do.
Then I saw them pull up outside, so I boiled the kettle and made tea while they let themselves in.

We did the usual family thing first, tales from their recent holiday, bitching about the plumbing in our rented house. The usual. But I was tensing up the entire time.
I waited for a drop in the conversation, and then said,
"Right, so there is something I need to talk to you both about. And I need to tell you because this will effect my future."
They nodded along, allowing me the floor,
"It's something I've held on to for over 20 years, denying it, ignoring it, repressing it and recently accepting that it is just who I am. The feelings are only escalating, and I can't make them go away.
I'... I'_...."
I lost it. The pre-planned speech vanished from my thoughts.
I stopped, took a breath and...


"I'm transgender"


I silenced like I was expecting a bomb to go off in my face.
My dad was first to open his mouth,


"I thought you were ill or something, don't worry about it, we still love you"


My mum chimed in


"Me and ya dad are proud of both of you, (referring to my brother 2.5 years younger), we couldn't be happier with how you were raised. As long as you're both happy and healthy, then we are happy for you".

The next 90 mins were a blur, honestly, I don't remember half of what I said.

I must have hit them with what seemed like a shotgun of things I wanted to talk about after the sheer relief. But instead of giving them information, I think I just peppered them with buckshot introductions to concepts and matters they had no idea about.
I did tell them I was sorry for lying to them, they said they understood, "that I just wasn't ready to tell them yet".
I told them how shame was causing me to feel isolated and that I'm looking to break the cycle by coming out to family and friends, eventually the world. That my feelings were that only by 'normalising' a trans person and allowing them to be who they are can you escape the image of seedy crossdresser.
Do you know why people think it's pervy?
It's because you keep it a secret that people may assume it's something to be ashamed of.
And you know this. And you also know that the only way to stop the shame is to break free.
And that's what I did last night. My chest breathed in volumes it hadn't felt in days.
Much more was discussed, but for the purpose of the blog, it isn't necessary.

-Why the regret then?

Because if I'd have been certain that my parents wouldn't have reacted badly, I'd have told them ages ago. That this is who I am, and I need to get it off my chest.
I regret not telling them.
I guess the process involved in regret is understanding yourself. I'm already starting to feel that my dad said it best - "You just weren't ready" and he must understand me better than I do myself.
Because he's right, I probably wasn't, this is a progressive problem with progressive milestones.

You know what. Fuck regret. With a spikey one.

Damn that felt good. :D

Wednesday 14 September 2016

I know, I know, I've been away for ages...

But I do have something of an excuse.

So most of you know me as Samantha, the crossdresser/transvestite.
It's been a facet of my identity for some 20 years or more.
Like many I would steal, hide and lie my way to a compulsion I did not
 fully understand.
Through childhood there was shame, guilt and denial.
When I started to buy my own female clothes the guilt and lies (to my, now, wife) ended, and then shame fell off too. I started to feel less grim about my gender presentation.
I'm still lying and for the most part I'm still hiding, just not in my own home now.
And life was good this way. I've spoken before of the freedoms agreed with my wife, so I won't go into detail.

But lately, I've begun to recognise feelings. Some have always been present but never meant anything by themselves and perhaps worse, I never added them up. Some feelings are new though, and some old feelings have evolved or are evolving.
And it's the combination of these old and new feelings, now added up, that make me question my gender, the one that I present to the world every day.
I'm questioning if I need to pursue transition as the answer I never knew I needed.

It's the feeling's, described above, I am going to discuss here.

I've always felt different.


Yeah, I know we're all beautiful, unique snowflakes, but I never felt that I was normal at my core.
I've always felt like a freak. Even with my best friends, I don't feel that I am 'like' them.
We share the usual roots of solid friendships (shared interests, history, care for one another), but I never ever feel I belong. Never did.
After years of living this way, I began to assume that this is how everyone feels, but they just never talk about it. But the closer I get to my friends, the less I believe this to be the case.
The only person I don't feel like this around is my wife. I shared this with her over the weekend in a heartbreaking wave of emotions in the second long talk we had this last week about why I believe I could be transgendered.

I've always hated the classical male characteristics of my body.


That is to say, I've always disliked my body hair, facial hair, I hate that my scalp hair is thinning. But again, I knew that everyone hates things about themselves, but they don't really talk about them (at least men don't) and I thought this to be an aspect of self loathing. (Another reason I never linked this to crossdressing was that I have never hated my penis, and nor do I today. It brings me and my my wife a great deal of enjoyment, and it was my assumption that all trans women hate their penis.)
But as time moves on, I find that I'm disliking more and more of my own outward male reflection in the mirror. My jaw and chin, my nose and my brow being the worst offenders. I want bigger hips, I'm getting breast envy. I'm noticing myself seeing the shape of boobs under the clothing of women in the street/at work/everywhere and thinking
"I want that, I want to be like her". I am aware these are not typical cis male thoughts, which leads me to question myself.
I am either indifferent or disliking of how I look as a male. But when I present as a woman, I feel good about myself, I actually like how I look. (I still dislike my male aspects and characteristics, but I feel about 80% better about it).

Dealing with depression.


I've been through depression. The worst time was due to external triggers (money, environment, work/home life balance) and that was cured when all of those factors changed for the better.
But even after sorting my life out, I still feel like something is still not right, something inside me. 

When I wrote earlier about my friends and how I don't truly feel like them, I feel like a facet of this is linked somehow with depression. Like the two are intertwined in a 'chicken and the egg' conundrum. (Did the depression cause the feelings of being different, or did those feelings cause the depression). I can't pinpoint when the feelings started, but I definitely had them throughout highschool.
Now I begin to wonder if those feelings and the depression are markers for internal conflict.
I've never hidden the fact that crossdressing and presenting female are not a sexual or fetishistic act for me (It was, when I was a kid, but that has faded with time. Generally if I'm presenting as a woman and I feel aroused, it's likely that I would have been aroused just the same in drab). 

For as long as I've been buying my own clothes and talking time and effort in my presentation, I have been dressing for me. Dressing to make myself feel better, like a crutch for the stress I live(d) under. A coping mechanism to deal with life.
And that's how I had always accepted crossdressing in my life.
But as I find less and less of my masculine traits to be acceptable and as I see more and more everyday women that I instantly get jealous of, I have to question why this is.
I question how much of my depression is linked with my transgenderism.
Because like my depression, the white noise of dysphoria is silenced when I'm having fun or am otherwise distracted, but once I'm resting or otherwise idling, the noise is right there waiting to turn up the volume again. Same with
 alcohol and other intoxicants, I could always feel better in depression with some social lubricants. Only for it to return once I'm sober again. The same is true of my questioning internal monologue.

Envy


The 6th deadly sin. (OMG did my catholic up-bringing show, there?)
I've brushed over this, but I feel like it deserves attention, because of all the new feelings I've realised in the last few months, this is the strongest.
I'd previously discounted envy as a symptom of being transgender (ie needing hormones and 24/7 living) due to something I read on a forum (can't remember which one) a long time ago. A particular user was asking about breast implants for crossdressing, which in honesty, I recognise to be a wrong move for a CD who wants to live mainly as male. The user spoke of 'boob envy' and how they longed for real breasts.
One of the replies to that person was something to the effect of.
"Every crossdresser in a low-cut dress wants boobs"
And with that, my thoughts of Envy=Transgender were shot down.
I've had boob envy for a while. But recently, a deeper form of Envy or jealousy has sprung to life. It's no longer mere aesthetic parts like hair, nails, makeup, bigger hips and breasts. While these are aspects I wish were mine, (which is why I attempt to emulate most of it when I dress), but now I feel like I want more.
Wishing I could be like any other woman on the street just going about her business. Being jealous of women's place in the world and how they are treated never used to be an issue. And here's the crux of my issue, I'm aware that women are proverbially shit on constantly, whether in their salary, their place in society, or are viewed as inferior when they earn positions of authority or power...
But I'm still envious of being able to live a life that is authentically female, despite the limitations and inconveniences that it brings.
Even for the sake of going into Primark looking around in the womens section, picking up a basket full of stuff, trying it on, buying it and nobody batting an eye.
Going to a Mac counter and having my makeup done in public and picking up a few things while I'm there, and nobody would stare.
And yeah, even down to waking up in a morning with bin-mouth (breath) and having my hair a mess and mascara smeared across my face and pillow before having to go shower to rinse and repeat.
I used to think that envy was wanting something beautiful, and to an extent it still is.
But I'm begining to think that wanting to be beautiful has more to do with envy than anything I previously knew (but that just might be another deadly sin manifested as vanity).

-----------------


I kept the feelings from my wife for a couple of months as I didn't want to go to her with fleeting ideas, it would only upset her and I would lose her trust and respect if my mind changed. But it didn't, it stayed the same. 
Nagging me. 
Relief sought in distraction as normal, and this worked , but only until the distraction was gone.

Last Thursday (today is Wednesday), I needed to make the guilt stop.
The last 5 days since I came home from work after breaking down in tears on the job have been a mess. 

I'm not pouring out the details of my marriage on the internet for all to see, but I think it's enough to say that we're still together, we still want children, neither of us wants to lose the other.
The hardest thing is that I'm still looking for answers as she begins to look for them and this creates uncertainty for our future. A future I believe my wife is mourning. Because worst case scenario for our marriage is that I need to go and live as a woman, and my wife isn't attracted to women.
And I have to accept that.
Many tears have been cried, many words have been spoken, much alcohol has been consumed. And all of the above will come in greater amounts in the future, I'm sure.


After some discussion with my wife in the last few days, I went to my GP yesterday morning and asked for a referral to a GIC and to a psych. who has some kind of background in gender therapy. 
My GP was lovely, asking about how I and my wife are doing, how I'm likely to feel better for taking this step and how she admired me for my bravery in taking action to find my answers. She assured me she would send the referral to a GIC (either Sheffield or Leeds) and that she would speak to local psych. Doctors about possible counselling/assessment for the interim period (the waiting time for GIC appointments, as of August this year is 86 weeks).

Also last night, my wife and I went to a local trans support group. Mainly due to my wife's request to attend such a thing, she needs answers as much, if not more than I do.
It was nice to see other trans people in the world, but I was so nervous and the group was so small, it felt awkward. I might go back, we shall see.
It didn't really give me any sort of clue to an ultimate answer of any sort. But I know they are there there and, really, that's sort of enough for now.

I'm still really confused. I don't know what any of this means anymore.
I am not a typical crossdresser, I know this for sure. I am transgender, I also know this for sure.
What I don't know any more is where I sit on the spectrum of TG identity.
Am I in need of transition to cure the internal struggle? Or is it possible that coming out as Non-binary/Gender Fluid to my family and friends may help by allowing my feminine self to be a bigger part of my life in general?


Any advice, comments or questions are welcome as always.

TTFN
Samantha -x-