Back To Counseling

After so much time, I am more than a little befuddled as to how it seems like the universe is finally conspiring to make this all happen. In a couple weeks, I have my first appointment with the psychologist since last year. Amazingly, I have my Mom to thank for that. I was king of scared yesterday to send her the cost of the appointment. I was frightened that she might scoff at the cost and that I would have to look at other avenues for it. People just continue to amaze me. Rather than saying anything negative or even mentioning the cost, my Mom remembered my fairly long standing aversion to a counseling or psychological process and was just glad that I had found someone that I was willing to go back too. I have found in my life at least that when something is meant to happen, things will fall into place to where it just happens.

I mean, there are times when you bang your head against the wall and don’t really get anywhere. Then, you have to pretty much just go back and re-evaluate why you are bothering to bang your head against the wall at all. A little over five years ago, I remember that I was attempting to join the National Guard. I went through the whole process. I filled out all of the forms. I went through everything on the tests. All of it. All I had to do was a brief physical examination and athletic exercises. After that I was in. There was something called the ‘duck walk’ that they wanted me to do. As I went down for it, my knee twisted. All I had to do was stand up and run. I could not. The doctor looked at my knee and I was told it was ‘muscular weakness.’ That was it. It was done. If I had wanted too, I could have gone back and done it.

Something told me to just leave it alone. The circumstances had changed. I had gotten a new job that paid more. It just did not seem to be working out at all. So, I stepped back and let the determination be the determination. Later on, at the new job, I was working the over night shift. One of the guys that I was working the over night shift with was in that same unit. After about three months on the job, the unit was sent to Iraq during the surge in the war. They were over there for two years. Technically, I would have been on computer repair but it was still straight up in Bagdad. I just was not meant to be there and something happened to where I was not there. During the time that I was supposed to be in Iraq, I ended up moving to another part of the country. Also, my Dad died during that time. Ultimately, it was just revealed that it was more important for me to be home. Now, essentially I am too old and all of the circumstances have changed. I am proud of myself for at least trying but I am glad that I was ultimately unsuccessful. There seemed like there was a certain… dignity in the attempt.

Wherever it may lead, my Mom is just glad that I am getting help and I found someone that I was comfortable getting help from. That sort of makes me feel like since I just started writing about this with no other reason than I needed to that the end goal would actually be somehow met. I had no reason to, but I figured just start writing. It sort of reminds me of a John Candy movie that I saw where he decides to write his life until the actual life catches up with the writing. I wrote down a list of about 39 goals. There were a fair number of them that had to do with transitioning. What I have found when I did this the last couple of years is that one of three things will happen, either the goal will be accomplished, I will lose interest in the accomplishment, or that I will feel like ( in failure) that I took the goal as far as I could. Failure is really nothing more than a fully answered question.

At any rate, successfully achieving a large goal means that you successfully achieved many smaller goals on a daily basis. The most important part is to just have a manageable amount of things to do pertinent to your overall goals that you can do on your daily routine. I have seen progress on what seemed like ridiculously long goals on small amounts of daily effort. For instance, daily I will tweet 120 characters of the Bible in sequential order. After a couple years, I am up to Genesis chapter 20. I have also set a goal of getting the Nest Egg achievement in Mafia Wars. I deposit off of my properties ever day. I started on January 1st, 2012. I am now near 5 trillion. That means at roughly January 1st 2014, I should have accomplished the goal. it’s a lot of little things that I do to see progress on goals. So that my overall goal (which is this ) can look more reasonable in small steps. I am trying to do things right.

Just thought I would update.

Despite it all, I believe I am happy.

Till the next time.

I Told My Mom

The other day, I started to write a post on this blog. I had seen a photo album from a friend of mine. The photo album was titled “Before I Was A Woman, I Was A Man, and Before That I Was A Girl/” I got out some pictures of when I was younger. I saw my white blonde hair. I saw my slight build. I kept trying to write about who I was. I just could not finish the blog. I could not talk about it. I just kepy closing it. Then it hit me. It hit me that I needed to be writing this to my Mom and not to the general public. Or at least the general enough public that reads these types of things. So, I sat down and started writing. I wrote and U wrote and I wrote. I wrote till I did not have any words left. I wrote the whole thing. I looked up and it was like 3000 words. I saved it to my drafts. I sat down like “Am I really going to send this?” I did not know what the urgency was. I started to think “I am not going to sleep unless this is done.” So, I looked at it as a draft.

I waited and waited and sat there looking at it. Finally, I added one more line. I added it to the top. I wrote “This is the hardest thing I have ever written.” I went to sleep. I did not know if when I work up my Mom was going to talk to me. I don’t even know why. I slept well. When I woke up, there was an alert o n my phone. I saw that my Mom had responded to my email. Again, I sat there looking at it. I did not honestly know whether I wanted to read it or not. I was so scared. I just wanted everything to be ok. I had been so incredibly scared for so long. And then….

The first words of her response was “I love you…” I cried. I honestly cried. She told me that she understood and that she would help pay for counseling if I needed it. Not only did she not hate me, she was offering to help me. She talked about my Dad. She talked about how he was always haunted by unfulfilled dreams. She did not want that particular fate to happen to me. She even said that if it took her one day death and my inheritance to get my dreams then that is what I should one day use it for.

I don’t think I have ever been humbled by anything more than that. I can honestly say that my Mom loves me. L can honestly say that my Mom loves me unconditionally. I don’t know what else to say on that. I remember a couple of years ago, I was reading an email from my Mom. She was with her boyfriend. She met a gay friend of her boyfriend. At her age, it was her first gay friend. This has been a deeply religious woman all her life. I had always been so scared. But she had honestly learned Christ’s teachings, the teachings of love that is unconditional.

I am more sure than I have ever been that this is actually going to happen. I feared telling my wife. I feared telling my daughter. I feared telling my Mom. I fear telling work. I have told 75 percent of the base that needs to be told. Work will come. I just have a lot of love and support. Even if I only end up with like three face book friends and have to completely rebuild ( which won’t happen), I have the important people on my side now. I don’t how I ever felt so much love and support. Now, I know that I will have counseling. I know that I am going to start taking steps perhaps as soon as next year.

Ultimately, all my Mom wanted a relationship with me. I have held this and everything else in for so long that I had really shut her out most of my life fearing that the knowledge would cause her to shut me out. I talked to her about things going all the way back to when I stopped really talking to her. I mean we talked but there had always been that wall there. I think that she decided whatever it was that was eating me all these years was going to be ok. She just had to wait for me to break down. Eventually, I did.

I have no idea what Dad would have said. I don’t think I could have said anything while he was alive. One day, there is always another side to count on that. I think that everything happens for a reason. I had never in my life had such a powerful urge to anything in my entire life. I just couldn’t not do it. When you have something that powerful, you have to, That’s all I have for now. One day, I will be who I want to be. Those closest to me are now invested in it.

Till later.

Maybe a Break

It is kind of neat when you can kind of start to see the light on a few things. I think things might be shaping up to where medical insurance may start to become an option. That is good because the open enrollment time for work and insurance is starting to come up. In order to get the ball really rolling, insurance is kind of a necessity or at the very least a flexible spending plan for medical expenses. It is odd. None of my goals really involve money but money is necessary to accomplish my goals. I tend to want just enough to accomplish my goals. I need money but I don’t really feel like I am a greedy person. Money is not the focus in my life. However, since it is necessary I am excited that there might potentially be a little more of it around.

Recently, I have started to allow myself to look at clothing and things for form fitting online. For a long time, I kind of shied away from it because it was a little bit depressing. Now, it seems kind of encouraging. Like I said, once I go all in, I am not really going to go back. One of my main rules is to not give up the progress or any progress that I have made. I have been excited about things before and been kind of let down. Therefore, I don’t want to get too high on anything. I try not too. I remember when I started writing, you get this idea in your head that your book or whatever will hit amazon.com and brava there will be a million dollar check coming in the next month or so. After that, you learn more about realistic expectations.

I remember being a freshman in college. I got a class that allowed me onto the local tv student station. After the first episode, I had this feeling that suddenly I would be known all the way across campus. I learned the next day that practically no one watched it. After the next couple, I kind of learned that I was doing the show mostly for my own enjoyment. Then a few weeks later, one person came over to me and was like “I WATCH EVERY SHOW!!! ITS GREAT!!!” That is the only conversation I ever had with a ‘fan.’ The people that were on it with me? We still talk about it all the time with fondness. The point? When the ‘fan’ did finally appear, it was so far above my dashed expectations that it was truly a joy.

I write all the time. My work appears on the internet all the time. Practically no one ever really comments on it. I just keep on writing. On the basis of that writing I was put on the newsletter for my work. I wrote something for it that I considered to be pretty common. I mean. I liked it but it was far from the best that I have done. Maybe, it is the standard that I have gotten used too. Maybe it has been so long since I have introduced myself to a new audience, but people stopped me at work to tell me it was a good job and they loved it. I was actually standing having a conversation about something that I wrote. It was something that when I started writing I thought I would have every day but after so long, it was legitimately a joy.

I guess it is kind of like being in a play. You read through the play. You laugh at the jokes. You get emotional. Then? You go practice the thing for a couple of months. You have your part memorized. You have everyone’s part memorized. Then they finally give you an audience. What happens? You tell a joke and people laugh. It is honestly so jarring that it almost takes away your rhythmic motion the first time. You forgot that you found it pretty funny the first time as well. Then people clap, and your remember that you were not just doing this because it had become some sort of weird habit.

It really is amazing what can manage to become a routine. The people you wake up in your house. The car you get into. The job you go too. Everything about your life is the result of a conscious decision at some point. It seems so routine now that you hardly realize that the next conscious decision is really going to affect your life. You do things every day that affect your future but you are so accustomed to your routine that you have no real idea that the present will ever change. This is true even though you are not doing anything the same way that you did it three years or so ago.

I have learned to grow hopeful for change. I have learned that the human consciousness almost abhors shock even though a shock may arise. You really do start to incorporate it into your consciousness as best you can. I can feel my mind adjusting to that. It will just be a shock to every one else.

Until later.

All love

Sherry

There Is A Plan

“A goal without a plan is nothing more than a wish”

Herman Edwards

It is one of the more sage things that I have heard in a while. I have a plan. I just need the will to actually execute it. You can feel your self drifting towards a certain area. I can feel that the surroundings that I am currently in will be as transitional as I hope that my body will one day be. Realistically, the oldest child has three years until she graduates from high school. The youngest child has three years until she enters high school. I have three years until I am 40.

That sort of sets 2015 as a goal type year. The goal for me at least is to have started hormones by then and then move in order to live what they call full time. I have my mom’s wedding as well as my high school reunion next year. I have had 2013 marked on my calendar for some time now. My current thousand day ‘wheel’ ends in January of 2014. To me, a lot of it seems natural about going full time in 2014-2015. Of course, there is also counseling and a lot to happen before that occurs, but I can see it. I can see how it can be done. The negative part is that I would probably still have to take a job in the profession that I have been in for the last decade for some form of continuity, but if I can successfully get a job as the new me – then I can settle into almost any environment. It just seems like 40 is a good target year for a lot of things. It seems like 2015 seems right to me on the level of a nice slow orderly transition. Of course, a lot can happen between now and then. There is even the chance that some of it might actually be good.

I keep checking the savings and know that 2015 would probably have enough to save up for at least the start of a successful move. The lease ( if going year by year ) ends in July. Of course, there is a good chance that we might move to a new location between now and then. I have got to make counseling a priority in the next two years or so as well as some sort of medical insurance. That is how everything really starts as an idea in the back of your head. That idea starts to develop as a plan. Then the plan moves to execution. Then, you get to move on to telling people that you would not reveal your master stroke if they had any chance at all of stopping you. Do, I did it 35 minutes ago.

It would be fun to tell the masses essentially after hormone replacement therapy had a few months to take effect. I have found recently that I have trailed off on the urge to tell at least for the time being. My wife has known for years. My oldest daughter has now known for about a month. The three people that I decided to tell on Facebook essentially offered some kind words and encouragement for a few days and then it was not mentioned much again. I think on some level my fear of telling people is starting to dissipate a fair bit. I know that it will flare up and blow over. Coming up with a coherent plan of how to live and how to manage work is something that I need help with in the counseling department. I know that there is practically a corps of my friends who will support me even if there are some that do not. I do not actually plan on going through the whole trans deal of putting much out there other than it is happening. I have never been any kind of activist. I have always hated parades. No changes will be immediate. I think that there is a feeling that as some sort of trans, there is some sort of role that you need to play.

I remember when I got divorced when I was young. I remember that when it got past the emotion to being able to sit down and rationally discuss what I wanted to do and how we wanted to divide things, that was when it was really going to happen. I think that at this point, the children’s personalities are pretty well to the point where they can accept it. You never really know who will be accepting or who will not. I believe when I turn forty that I will have earned a little bit of a right to relax and simply live how I want too. I live a lot for others. I have given myself totally and completely for others my whole life. I think that those others can take a chance at having one time in their lives to actually just allow me to be me.

I can’t really say Till Tomorrow but it will be Till A Tomorrow at least. It is a Tomorrow that I am looking forward too.

Oh what the hell…

Till Tomorrow.

Brooks Was Here

You never want to have a day at work like I had today. The odd part is that there was a lot of ups and downs to it. The actual work today was not all that bad. It was just that there was an email in the queue from the site director. To keep in line with the over all theme, a man I will call ‘Brooks’ passed away suddenly. There are actually times when news like this does not bother you on anything more than a “Its just sad to see a human life gone level.” ‘Brooks’ was a bit different and bit more. The email said that he had been working there for a long time. That did not really tell the story.

‘Brooks’ had been there long enough to be able to choose his own schedule regardless of what schedules were being offered. For those keeping track at home, that is over ten years. ‘ Brooks’ was almost an old world character and a gentleman. He had slicked back greasy hair and a big bushy beard. He wore rainbow suspenders and a belt. For the record, ‘Brooks’ was a huge mass of a man. He was getting on up in years and walked with a cane. The cane kind of added to the overall effect.

‘Brooks’ was on my team last year. He sat a couple rows behind me. He always had a booming voice and very infectious laugh. He wore glasses that could more accurately be called spectacles. The last time I really talked to ‘Brooks’ was earlier this year. We were both in an advanced troubleshooting course together. There was another older black woman in that training who walked with a cane as well. On the last day of training, we all pooled our food on a training table and the three of us talked and had a good time. ‘Brooks’ took forever to walk. I walked with him out of the building. The journey seemed almost impossibly slow and he gabbed the whole way. ‘Brooks’ was one of the people who you just felt better about your self after you spent time with him. He was always entertaining and part of you felt like you were in line for a merit badge.

The older black woman never forgot that I was hungry. Every day after that, she would pass by my pod and give me leftovers from her meal. When she did not have leftovers, she would just give me money. One day she stopped stopping by. I heard she lost her job. Honestly, with all of her medical conditions, I was glad that she was not dead. Unfortunately, ‘Brooks’ has now passed on. I read the email over and over. It talked of his devotion to the company. It talked of how he will be missed. I read the attachment on dealing with grief. The attachment cleared up a lot of things for me. It said that in grief it was important to maintain a routine and not make to many changes.

‘Brooks’ is now not only an inspiration but some one who reminds me of fictional characters. I think of Brooks from the Shawshank Redemption who had become institutionalized by the jail. I think of the old horse in Animal Farm. He was a good worker. He gave everything he had to the company. He will be remembered fondly by all who knew him in the company that he would never leave. There was a quiet dignity to ‘Brooks’ that you had to admire. I loved the guy. I respect him and I will miss the hell out of him. His dignity is not a dignity I want. It is a dignity that I think we need more of. He found his company and stayed with them through thick and fine. He was a fine man.

I think a lot about The Shawshank Redemption. For the first real time the most trendy phrase in that movie has hit me square in the face. It took ‘Brooks’ passing to do it for me.

‘Get busy living or get busy dyin’.

One of the few other trans I knew well in person used to say it all the time. Somehow, coming from them, it just seemed really selfish. Of course, I think that they missed the point of much of movie other than that you can really have everything that you want. They lacked a lot of patience. We all have our failings. They had not earned ‘get busy living, or get busy dying.’ It was not written anywhere in the building but it was everywhere that I looked today,

‘Brooks was here.’

Part of me wanted my legacy to be that I walked away one day. So that the writing underneath it would read ‘so was Red.’ I’m going to miss ‘Brooks,’ but I am always going to keep the things that his life and eath taught me. I am starting to think that it really does not make sense to live any other way than simply the only way that makes sense to you.

It is perhaps poignant that my team at work celebrated a pot luck today. One of our members is moving on to a different job in the company. There was a ton of food. There was a great cake. It was all really sweet. I did not know where to go with my emotions. I was happy for the woman moving on. She had gotten together with our manager after tell our manager that she wanted to leave. They found a plan and a place in the company for her. I saw the lesson in that one as well. I started to think that one day they might even find a place in the company for the real me. I just have to put my numbers in line before I can feel comfortable asking.

Today, I saw an ending.

Today, I saw a beginning.

Today, I got a hint of the bread crumbs on the path. I had to find a place during my lunch break where no one would see me to cry.

‘Get busy living or get busy dying.’

I think I am starting to get it now.

Till tomorrow.

Living In Fear

I live in fear. I live in constant unending fear. It gets so tiring some day, I can barely even take it. I fear that I will not be able to take care of bills. I fear that I will not be able to take care of my family. I fear that I will be discovered for being what I am or who I feel I am. I was watching Outside the Lines today on ESPN. It concerned a former owner of the Pittsburg Pirates. He was scared that people would find out that he was gay in the macho world of Major league Baseball. Almost immediately, I understood his story. Especially when he said that he lived in fear of coming out for 25 years.

Much of my fear is tied to finances. Frequently, I have to ask for money or practically beg. Frequently, I have to tell people about my financial failures. At this stage of my life, I was really hoping to be past all of that. I don’t have much to begin with. Holding onto that is much harder than it might seem. Every month seems like a struggle against getting thrown out of the apartment. Every month seems like an admission that I failed. The worst part is that I can’t imagine much of a time when I would be financially secure enough to be able to tell the world who and what I actually am.

It is fear. Every time I go to a meeting with my boss at work, I fear that something will be found that will end up letting me out the door. I feel like I am perpetually on the edge. Then there is all the medical trouble that has cropped up this year. Personally, I spent two weeks in a hospital earlier this year in a life threatening situation. In the last month, my wife was in the hospital no less than three times with a follow up visit as well. Everything manages to just add up and conspire to bury you.

They say that money cannot buy happiness but I could sure at least use some peace of mind some days. Life does not play to your strengths in any way. I feel like I keep falling in to one job after another. I also fear the laughter. I have been made fun of a lot in my life. I fear that if I do tell people, they will not take me seriously. I fear that they will just laugh about everything that I take so seriously. A lot of it gets back to my Dad. He always wondered why I never told him anything. Yet, whenever I did tell him anything, he tended to treat it as a joke. Finally, he learned that if he was told anything, then it had already been done. I got tired of not being take seriously. I don’t know how I would react to it now.

I don’t know how to conquer fear. I wish I did. I have lived with it for so long that it has just become a fact of life. The sad part is that I think that I think I inspire a fair amount of fear. In my kids. In people that I meet up with at work or in a public environment. People see me and are naturally scared. I worry about getting found out but I don’t think anyone would ever dream of what was in my heart. They don’t know how I wish I would see myself in the mirror. I know how I do see myself in the mirror. I practically recoil in sickness from it. I write this because I know that there are those out there who identify with me and what I am saying. They live almost every day scared as well. Scared of losing everything. Scared to do anything that they truly want to and trapped in the trappings of everything around them.

I know that people look at other people’s face book and see others lives. They just assume that everything is going well for everyone in the world and they are in their own privately fearful hell. It is occasionally reassuring to hear from a fellow confused near desperate individual who feels like every day is a struggle to get something right. There are of course the few days when you shake your head and just have no idea where the next day is coming from or how you survived all of the days up to this one. You always make it through … somehow. There are days when that is good enough and there are days when it is not. You just want to get ahead just a little. I know. I have tried. Every time I start to want a little you know extra, then life kicks you back so far back that you are struggling getting on your feet again. You just have that little bit that you keep trying to defend.

The weird part is that what ever you may have, some one out there is jealous of it. Believe me, I know that one to be true. Personally, I am jealous of nearly anyone born female. Ironically, that encompasses everyone in my house who is not me. All around me, I am swimming in a femininity which I feel like I am not allowed to participate. Fights, complaining, all of it… I just feel like I am trying to swim to the surface and there are tentacles always trying to pull me down and drown me. I feel like it has always been this way. I fear ir always will be. It just seems like I have unnaturally bad luck. That may not be the case. I think that it is more accurate that there is a ceiling from which I cannot seem to break above. In my present form, I fear that I never will be.
I know that there are those out there that know what I am talking about.

Till Tomorrow.

Born Wrong, Died Wrong

I can tell you that I am not suicidal. I can tell you that I have not actively thought about killing myself in a long long time. I am not currently thinking in any way about killing myself. I cannot tell you that I have never been suicidal or have never thought about killing myself. That would be a lie. Here of all places, I have resolved not lie. There are certain facts which I have chosen to withhold but I have never actively lied in what I said here.

I remember the day I wrote what would have been my suicide note. My whole life came down to four simple words. I read them over and over. I thought a lot about them. Ultimately, I decided that the truth of those words was why I could not actually kill myself. It was not the epilouge that I wanted but if I had done it, it was surely the one that I would have had.

“Born Wrong. Died Wrong.”

I thought about it. Why make it easy for anyone else? Why make it easy for myself? That had not been the way of my life. Why should it be the way of my death? Eventually, I tore up the paper that it was written on. It was like watching Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story and seeing him having his head smashed into his own tombstone.

One of my Dad’s favorite past times was reminding me how ‘easy’ I had it. He would often tell me about his hard scrabble life growing up in the Mid West. He would make my life sound like the nicest, softest, easiest thing that he had ever seen in the world. He was also fond of saying “I hope this is the worst thing that ever happens to you.” It was a phrase that forever trivialized every single major problem in my life. It was that as well as him saying that the “first complainer did not have a chance.” was the basic reason I stopped telling my Dad any of my problems that did not require his assistance. Read into this that only financial problems ever required his assistance. This did not stop him from offering unsolicited advice for everything even when he had no idea what the hell was actually going on.

I found out a long time ago that having a positive day was little more than a really pissy form of rebellion. Even on the phone, I don’t allow them to damper my mood to where they can actually hear my mood being dampered. That just gives the ones that want it a victory.

“Born Wrong. Died Wrong.”

I have learned to fear those words. I have learned to fear crawling into a grave. Another part of Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story talked about how a lifetime lived in cowardice was a failure, but a single day without it was a victory. There is a chance that I do not watch the best movies. Earlier this year, I had a chance to die. I could have put off a visit a couple more days and just let that thing on my face kill me. I realized then that if I died, no one would ever have any chance of knowing who I really was. At least now, should I die, then there are people who know what this blog is and know that I wrote it. Then anyone who wants to can go back and read what happens when I sincerely tell the truth about things.

If you ever saw the movie Good Will Hunting, then you might want to be familiar with the story of William James Sidis. Sidis was a phenomenal mind and a genius who went to college earlier earning advanced degrees. Then after an arrest during a protest, Sidis seemed to drop off. Sidis took a string of middling menial jobs. It all seemed like such a waste that no less a source than James Thurber went to the trouble to actually call Sidis one in the pages of the New Yorker. When Sidis died, they found a treasure trove of papers. Sidis has written about black holes before it was ever a popular theory. Sidis had pen names and had published academic works under them. Apparently, Sidis at one point studied a Native American tribe that held making a contribution in secret as a virtue. As such, Sidis did as well.

Part of the reason why I don’t want to die is that it would just make things too damn easy and comfortable for the rest of the world. Why should I allow them to live without me when on some level it would be far more entertaining to see them try and live with me. The other part is my family. Not the family that made me by any means, rather the family I live with and have in my home. They support me. What am I going to do? Try to avoid scarring them with knowledge of being transsexual by scarring them with the knowledge that I killed myself? It all seems more than a little like a rather cosmic joke to me.

I just want people to know that on some level it is ok to face there mortality.. It takes people perpetually to a dark place that you do not want to stay in. I do not really encourage suicidal thoughts in any way. I just know that I have rather fully thought about it. I have prayed for all sorts of things in my life. There were times when I even prayed for death. I have prayed for cancer (but only it would ravage and contribute to removing certain unwanted parts of my body.) In elementary school, I prayed to Satan if he could make me female. I am guessing there is someone that I don’t currently owe my soul too. I thought of it as interesting at the time that neither God nor Satan was that willing for my soul if the price for having it was changing the sex of my body. Again, life lessons right?

I remember a few years ago that I was at my wife’s grandmother’s house ( which she was very close). My wife and daughters were upstairs with her Grandmother having ‘girl time’ which I was pretty ironically excluded and just having a wonderful time talking and laughing up there. I was downstairs. I had been left alone. She had Christian symbols everywhere in her house. I thought about death and dying. I thought about Heaven. I thought about the promise that you get a new body in Heaven. I thought that in Heaven I could be a woman forever. I could be the woman I would have been if not for this disastrous mistake of life. After this shell is gone, then I thought I would finally have the meeting of mind and body I always dreamed of. It was a comforting thought. I never stood in that house again. My wife’s grandmother died later that year. It was a little comforting that if I ended up crawling into my grave in this body, then there would be a possibility that in the after life I could be me forever.

Oddly, that thought keeps me wanting to live.

Till Tomorrow.

Lifestyle?

I had a friend online today mention the word ‘lifestyle.’ I read a number of transitioning blogs as well as stuff about transitioning to try and mentally prepare myself as much as possible. I don’t think that there is anything that can, but there are a few stories that tend to stand out in my mind. One of the first blogs that I read on a regular basis was by a woman who I started really reading about the time that they got a facial feminization surgery. Eventually, I followed their online journey until they went to the Suporn Clinic out in Thailand to complete the sexual reassignment surgery. As many of us do, she had a wife and children. The wife had started talking again to a guy that the wife knew in high school.

They fell back in love and wound up getting married. Here’s the deal though. They wanted the returning woman from the Suporn Clinic to take care of the kids on the honeymoon. The alternate catch is they decided that inviting the woman whose blog I was following (that fathered the children) to the wedding to be a ‘distraction.’ This was after she had gotten excited, picked out a dress and everything,. So, they actually went from the wedding to the house of someone that they had not invited to the wedding in order to drop off the kids before whisking off to a honeymoon. Really? Is that the way that you treat …anyone? With many people after the surgery (or as far as they go to be comfortable ) is completed, there is often a feeling of what now? This gets back to the whole term of ‘lifestyle.’

I was reading recently about a friend’s blog on here where there was a bisexual man who regularly dressed in women’s clothes. They married another bisexual woman who was initially very understanding. Before the transition to female, everyone loved this person. After she was fully female, then the old crowd ( including the bisexual wife) kind of flittered away. No one could really feel out why there had been such a seismic shift in a situation where everyone had been very supportive, tolerant, and loving towards this person previously (and now shunned them.)

On this, I got to thinking about quite a bit about what had actually changed. There is absolutely nothing threatening to anyone about a gay man who regularly wears women clothes. Women are free to hang out because he has no interest in them sexually. They can pick out clothes, do make-up, and never have to worry about the one thing that this all gets down too. Competition. Women are raised almost since birth to be competitive with other women. It may not seem like a big shift from a gay or bisexual man in a dress to an actual woman however to other women, this change can occur on a Richter scale. It is one thing to watch a gay man in a dress flirt with other gay men or bisexual women. If you are a woman and not interested in gay men or bisexual woman, then the parameters are clearly defined. Also, it is all the benefits of friendship with out any of the drawbacks that often occur in female friendships. Once, that gay or bisexual man in a dress becomes another woman, then all of the sudden the same rules apply to this woman that apply to every other woman. You may have loved her as a homosexual or bisexual cross dresser, but may not even know them or trust them as a woman. In a way, it is the best validation that you can get that you are actually now female in the eyes of other women.

The other issue with the term lifestyle is the unfortunate side effect of the transitioner perhaps enjoying the ‘lifestyle’ aspect of it too much. Rightly or wrongly, we live in a world dominated by a twenty four hour news cycle. If we are also honest, attention is a bit of an aphrodisiac. When in a transitioning ‘lifestyle,’ their can be a lot of wanted as well as unwanted attention. You can actually get used to that. It is like a drug. After everything is over, you can find yourself needing it. The thing is that the mind wants to achieve a certain level of equilibrium. I have seen “Changed from man to woman” be told as part of a person’s life story as breathlessly as “Moved from Indiana to Iowa.” It was just something that kind of happened. People generally will naturally drift to focusing back on their own lives once yours has finally been ‘sorted out.’

In short, congratulations, you have achieved your goal. You are now the gender that you always knew you were and people accept you. Wonderful, isn’t it? The trouble sometimes is that the process of transitioning is exactly what gave you that feeling of attention that you on some level needed. Transitioned means that the ‘transitioning lifestyle (if you got into it as such)’ is now over.

In short, I have seen people unable to adequately deal with the ‘lack of turbulence and drama’ in their lives. It is like a drug that they have to recover from. I read a blog once from a woman that was entitled “READ THIS BEFORE YOU TRANSITION!!!” Basically once they had the sexual reassignment surgery, they went off on the community for encouraging them to transition in the first place. Specifically, they considered being a woman absolutely useless because they had failed to achieve a clitoral orgasm and men had apparently been enjoying them. I read the blog several times and wondered more of the exact circumstances of everything. For instance, they admitted at one point that wearing women’s clothes gave them a sexual thrill in ‘the beginning.’ I am guessing after the hormone replacement therapy, that ‘thrill’ sort of wore off. They said that they wished they had been encouraged to explore their femininity in other ways than becoming a woman. Part of me wondered if they had cut corners or said what they believed needed to be heard in order to achieve a result. There is nothing at all wrong with being a transvestite, That is different than actually being a transsexual. A sexual thrill from wearing women’s clothing would seem to be the textbook definition of being a transvestite. That particular thrill is hard (excuse the pun) to achieve after hormone replacement therapy and impossible to achieve after the sexual reassignment.

The whole thing made me wonder if I was even reading a true account. If achieving an orgasm as a woman was your entire reasoning and you consider being a woman to be useless after not achieving orgasm, then there is an excellent possibility that you never had the slightest inclination as what ‘being a woman’ meant in the first place. I read the blog first nearly seven years ago and thought about its ‘warning’ ever since. It is like the claim that a Genie ‘twists’ your wish. This is person to whom the Genie said “OK, you’re now a woman” and they were left living out a wish that they did not understand in the first place. As I have mentioned before, The Genie merely grants the wish. They provided the service. They do not take responsibility for ensuring your everlasting happiness as a result of the wish that you made.

I have worked for internet service providers. You merely make sure that the internet is active in a person’s home. Ideally, the customers now believe that you are responsible for their router, wireless, and well as their computer and every other device in their home properly getting internet. It is amazing how quickly people will give up any sense of personal responsibility on anything. If you ask them to do something over the phone, it is a relief because now you are immediately responsible for seemingly everything that happens after you give that instruction.

People love to be on the last end of any circuit of responsibility. It is like the wide receiver position in football. The level of personal responsibility in that position boils down to next to nothing. They catch a ball and run a pre prescribed route. They are quick to point out that they did not call the play. They did not throw the ball. They merely had to be in the right place at the right time and had to rely on everyone else to get them to the completion of a successful play. If anything goes bad, then it is the quarterback’s interception or a quarterback’s completion percentage that is affected. It was every last year or the year before that a wide receiver for the Buffalo Bills dropped a ball and clearly messed up. Later on, he tweeted “Why you got to do me this way, God?” It makes you wonder when personal responsibility is accepted anymore.

Again, I am not any kind of activist, I don’t really plan on starting to be one. I want to transition. I want to be a woman. That will not make me any kind of expert on gender issues. That will not make me a critic who sees gender in everything. At least, I don’t think that I will. I want to get to the other side, then I want to be forgotten about as far as it ever happening. There fore, I don’t think I will be using the term lifestyle unless I get impossibility turned on to Dominant/submissive relationships. Trust me, they use that word with pride all the time.
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The main thing is not to get trapped on mountaintops. You’ll freeze to death or wither away trying to re-capture it. When the apostles saw ghosts on the mountaintop, they wanted to live there forever. Jesus encouraged them to come down from the mountaintop. I worked in the Philippines on a corporate account for a while. I was provided with all my needs and seen as a rich important American. It last a few months. It got addictive. I was sad when I had to go home and just be me. It took a while to adjust. Through that experience, I feel like I learned a lot about having to let things go or forget about them all together in order to just move on. I don’t know what my transition experience will be like, but I certainly do not want it to be a ‘lifestyle.’ I want it to be a journey and not simply a stop. Again, no real answers.

Hopefully, till tomorrow.

What Are My Goals?

There is a difference between wants, desires, and goals. Goals need to be realistic and achievable. In order to achieve wants and desires, you first need to quantify goals. I remember reading about basketball coach Lawrence Frank. At a very young point in his life, he mapped out all the goals that he would need to do in order to become an NBA head coach. As ridiculous as it all seemed, it was a plan that eventually worked. He got so detailed right down to going to Indiana University just to join Bobby Knight’s staff as far as being a trainer. Being a trainer for the Indiana University Hoosiers was an absolutely essential part of his plan. Frank’s plan worked and he has been an NBA head coach now for two different franchises.

That got me interested in goal setting. The reason why goals tend to seem impossible is that when you say “I just want to go from point a to point b” Then it is impossible. My current goal is the following. I need another counseling session. I had one two hour session last year. It is my understanding that I need at least 16 hours in counseling to qualify on any level for hormone replacement therapy. My goal in counseling would be getting the option of hormone replacement therapy. It is all in where the counseling actually takes me.

I like an example made by Ian Malcolm in the book Jurassic Park. What is a person’s goal in going into some type of martial arts? The goal is to get a black belt. Why do people want a black belt? They want to be able to kick ass. So, they take years to get a black belt. They can now kick ass. They can probably kick the ass of most anyone that they have or will come across. Yay! However, they have also now been immersed in about seven years of eastern philosophy. They have learned how to meditate. They have learned calmer ways of thinking. They have added all of these positive traits. The have sparred. They have taught. And you know what? They now have the ability to kick ass but no longer possess the desire to kick ass. So no matter what the goal is going in, once the goal is achieved then it might not have exactly the type of result that had been intended.

That is probably because they did not understand what they were asking for in the first place. I remember when I was younger, I prayed to have patience. I heard that patience was always granted. I prayed for wisdom. I had read that wisdom was always granted when asked. I also prayed to be a writer. I wanted to be a writer. I just figured that I might as well take the freebies as well. I also pretty continually prayed to be female.

I might as well have gotten on my knees and said “God, could you please give me as hard a life as possible?” I have answered the phones for customer service or tech support for over ten years now. I can absolutely guarantee you that I have now achieved patience. I have been through so many bad situations ( and failed horribly at them) that it would be impossible not to have achieved some small modicrum of wisdom. In addition to that, I am regularly paid for being a writer. Now, it is kind of time to focus on moving on to a relatively late in life transition. But, the current goal has to be the counseling. You can’t just jump over to the end. First of all, you’ll never get there. Second, there might be something along the journey that changes your perspective about the journey itself.

That’s the kind of scary part. I know that even when you achieve your goals and everything you want to happens – it just never seems to turn out like you think it should. I have literally had situations in which I was right about everything and accomplished all my goals in a situation. Did it have the desired results? Yes. Did it actually turn out the way that I thought it would? Not even close. It is like the parable of the black belt. You can make a journey for an intended reason, but when you achieve the end result of that journey, you realize that your motivation for taking the journey has effectively changed.

That is why goals have to make sense, be realistic, and achievable. My current goal is to have another counseling session. I have seen what happens when you starting planning based on an assumption of the result of the next move. It is like determining your response in an argument to a response that you have not yet heard.

I can tell you what I want. I can’t tell you what will happen. In a way, that’s a little comforting. I can tell you my next goal and that I am working to achieve it. Once that is achieved, then I can set another one.

Till tomorrow.

Miss Me?

When I was about 15, I took a trip with a few of my cousins to Florida. I will never forget standing on the Daytona Beach. It was my first ever beach in Florida. I remember that I also went to Disney World for the first time as well as going to Universal Studios. Even though my favorite cousin later told me to consider him to be dead to me, I will always remember the good times. At any rate, I remember the feeling that I felt on the beach. Everything was just ok. The wind was blowing in my face. I was on a beach but it was my mountain top.

Since then, I have ;earned to kind of become weary of the ‘Florida Feeling.’ The next time I experienced it was in Iowa. I was visiting my grandmother and I woke up at about 5 in the morning. I was just walking around the house. I found this little ‘mood card’ and put my thumb on it. It was interestingly enough after reading about a transsexual comedienne in the National Enquirer of all things. I remember her saying that she just ‘had to become a Barbie doll.’ I could see myself becoming a Barbie doll and touring the country making jokes. The mood card said that I was calm and I was at peace. I went back home a few days later. A couple days after I returned home, my Dad had a massive heart attack. What did I remember? How at peace I was that morning in Iowa.

I know the ‘Florida Feeling.’ It comes over me like a wave. I did not write on Saturday because I worked 11 hours that day trying to get a little bit ahead. Yesterday, my wife was not feeling very well and we spent half the day in the emergency room. She has bronchitis. It has been a really rough year. As I was in between shifts on Saturday, I walked over to a local mall. I just walked around. As I was standing outside on an outside sidewalk, I just felt it. Fleetingly. It was that Florida Feeling. It was that feeling of calm that everything was going to be ok. I had just made a call to assure that rent was going to indeed get paid. Everything just felt ok.

Today, we as a family were in the emergency room. It goes that quickly. I don’t know what it is really. Every time I try and get a little bit ahead, it seems like I am destined to get kicked all the way back down into begging. In my heart, I just strive for everything to simply be ok. I just want to have enough money to get through. I want my family to be healthy. I would like to get moving on some of my bigger goals in life. I don’t really believe that these are ridiculous goals. I often reflect that I would be fairly satisfied if I was merely myself the way that I want myself to be. I have found that I would go through hours and hours of work fairly easily if I was ok with myself.

In order to accomplish that though, I would have to get really far ahead on a really regular basis. This is something that I have never really managed to do. I have been close a couple of times to really rolling on a level in which I could finally start to getting to real goals and every time it seems like everything gets torn down. It may have been that that simply was not what was in God’s plan for my life at the time. However, I fear that it will never really be in God’s plan or that I will have to fight it all the way. I wonder from time to time if the reason why I am not a success is because the reason why I want success is to transition. I have often said that if I won the lottery tomorrow, people would be shocked how bold I would get in telling the world exactly who I was.

I have found something interesting about telling people. Or at the very least the ones that I have told. It was a discussion for a couple of days and from there it pretty much just kind of blew over. They just kind of know. I do know that my daughter now asks me for tips on wardrobe as well as accessories every day before she walks out of the house. On the flip side, I write a lot of stuff. I have a few blogs. I do not advertise this one to much of anyone that I know. This blog has more followers and more likes than any blog that is actually done by ‘me.’ This actually tells me two things.

First, I am a pretty decent writer no matter what I choose to call myself. Second, people love me as a woman. They want to love me as a woman. I love myself more as a woman. I am a happier, more upbeat confident person. People see that person in this blog. I tend to like to think when I write this that everything is already done. It gives me a time of day to just be me. People seem to really respond to that. There are people that are privately prepared to never call me anything other than Sherry ever ever again.

There are days like Saturday when I wonder why I have not told every one . There are days like today when I know exactly why. However, it is precisely that type of unpredictability in life that makes everything so important. I mean, I have spent more times in the er this year for myself and others that you really do not have any kind of tomorrow promised. I had today all planned out and the day did not turn out anything like I thought it would.

The best way that I can sum it up is that Life is just the next phone call away. The next phone call can be your child calling to say that there was a shooting at the school or a text saying that someone you love and care for is in the emergency room. You can read a face book update that someone is dead or in the hospital. Nothing is confirmed about tomorrow, despite my or your best planning. Then as suddenly as something is fluid, all of the sudden it settles into the concrete of your experience. It is part of you. It is set. It is done. Everything that you knew has adapted into something else.

In a way, it makes no sense to procrastinate telling people. It also makes sense not to potentially alienate people who just helped me get to rent.

I don’t have answers. I just want to be on the right road eventually.

Till tomorrow/ What ever that may hold.