Another unnaturally beautiful morning, I've been out all night and am woken at 7:30am by my phone ringing. I am waiting on a job offer so thinking it might be that I leap up and run for the phone I have drunkenly left in the front room. Once I answer it it turns out to be my Doctor seeing if I can come in earlier to see him. Sure, why not I am just round the corner and the sooner I get it done the more of the day I have to do other things. So I wash up get some clothes on and walk down to the GP in the amazing sunshine, I'm feeling pretty damn happy today.
I've been having real issues with my food over the last few months. I am a punishment eater, I don't eat for comfort I eat to punish my body or at least I have in the past. Stuff it full to bursting with any old crap I can get my hands on to hurt it. Since I have come out as trans I have been getting a hold of it, the idea that I could actually have the body I want or something closer to it has allowed me to take more control over my food and start working out and for the first time I think in my adult life, I am being body aware. I'm thinking about what I want my body to look like and I'm taking steps to try and achieve it.
In the last month or so though I was finding it harder and harder to stop going back to my old habits. Bit by bit I was slowly reverting back to the old tortured eater and would stuff myself with food I didn't enjoy as some way of blocking out the world and hurting myself and I think in a way it is also a way of hiding my body. I couldn't work out what it was that was bothering me and then I noticed it.
I don't know if anyone else plays this game, I expect they must because I think it's just human nature to do this. I play a game when I am out in the world, in my head I call it body shopping. I look around at guys and when I see a guy who's body I like, I think to myself I'll look like that one day. Or I'll see a guy and think I'd like to have pecks like that or legs like that. I'd stopped doing it and when I started to think about why I had stopped I realized I needed to do something about getting referred. Part of me very much needs to explore this option of body modification and though other parts of me seem content to carry on, this part doesn't think life is worth living if I don't have at least a look. So I guess this is a part of me that I have kept pretty quiet for a long time and now it's got a voice it is yelling at the top of it's lungs to be heard.
At first when I started just the possibility of being recognized and addresses in a male context was enough for this part of me it made me believe that that was indeed how people saw me and it gave me the space to start getting control of my eating habits. This only existed in a little bubble of space though and as I grew more comfortable with my male space I wanted to expand that out. I started to realize that I was still being seen as female especially in male company which made me want to revert back to invisible, because being invisible for me is better than being singled out as a girl. It was a relief to realize this in a strange way in fact any revelation be it one I want or one I don't is a good thing it helps to give me some kind of anchor in the sea of what ifs I seem to be constantly drowning in. They change too but for the time they are true for me it gives me a chance to work out how I feel about things and helps me to find enough clarity to make a decision or understand something about myself a little better. Sometimes that is all I can ask for.
Anyway back to the Doctors. He was very open and friendly today, such a sweet fellow, I do get the feeling that he genuinely wants to be of help to me and that for me is a very amazing thing. I told him about the call to the GIC and that they said I needed to be referred to a local psychologist. He said that they have one attached to the clinic and wrote out a referral letter for me and said it should take 2-3 weeks and if I hadn't heard anything by then to contact him. I don't want to rush this so I am almost grateful for the waiting, it can be deeply frustrating I expect, but I am trying to see these waits as positive. A chance to take a breath reassess and see if this is really where I want to go and to try and get my body closer to what it is I want.
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