The Appointment..

On the bus on the train walking round the streets in a daze it feels like I can't seem to catch my breath right now. I feel like something shimmering in between, both excited and afraid of what I may find in the time ahead of me. I make myself small and invisible and yet still feeling eyes upon me as I walk by I can't help but find myself questioning this path I have chosen for the millionth time again. All the upheaval all the disapproval of it. It would be so much easier and safer to stay locked away safe in the darkness of my secrets. Is this what it is like to be in the closet? Funny how I have spent my whole life out of the closet only to find I was in one all along.

Back on the street my feet taking me closer to the place of no return finally setting myself on that road. Step and step and step and step, not much longer now, step, step, you don't have to do anything now you can just take your time, step, step, I'm at the door, looks like a door to a fancy house, only it's not a front door it's a side door off the main street in a building not attached to the Hospital campus with signs that talk about mental health. I can't help but feeling a wave of irony touch me. Here I am coming out into the world stepping out into the sunlight so to speak in a little side road through the metal health door. I guess this is a day for readjusting my perspective.

My appointment starts on time my mind is shutting itself away tucking up tight like a child hiding under the stairs, I need to be able to talk, tell her how this works for me, why I need this. Panic rising and pushing up against my mouth like a bitter bile it freezes my tongue. The answers to her questions are short and superficial, I feel myself cringing inside scrabbling round for some semblance of eloquence in the hope that I may rescue myself. The hour lingers on almost as if time has slowed down to give me the chance to save myself, but there will be no saving today I fear. 'Do you have any questions you want to ask me?' I look at her blankly my face impassive while my mind races round like a hamster trying to grab hold of everything at once, anything for once. 'No I think I'm fine.' I should of just shot myself right there and then and now it's gone the moment passed she's walking out the door and I am left to pick up my stuff and go, dismissed..

Whirlwind

Since I have started this journey, a lot has happened. It seems silly to say I guess, but when I take a look back over these last few months. Look at where I started and where I am now it is lightning fast. For me it doesn't seem that way because in actuality I have been bursting at the seams for these changes since I was 15 when I first told my mother I wanted a sex change.

I remembered this while talking to her and my dad today. We were having our general catchup chat and she was asking that usual mum questions, so how are things, anything new going on? I am seized by a strong urge to say, well you know that whole trans thing we were talking about a few months ago when I said I wasn't going to do anything, well I am and I've kind of started, made appointments, got referrals. I can't tell her this over the phone though, not any of my family I have to be able to look them in the eye, so they can see my eyes and know this is not something I have undertaken lightly. I know they would not think I would but I have noticed more and more when taking to people who do not have a disconnect with their gender that they really don't understand what it is to not be the gender you are identified as. It really is a deeply alien thing to them and unfortunately it is not an easy one to explain.

There is not quick dirty combination of words that's snaps them into enlightenment for this, or none that I have found yet. I keep hoping I will think of them, I don't want the next time they see me to be a me so changed from what they know that it becomes even harder.

When I started this journey in October last year, I could barely say the word trans, I was afraid to tell people and afraid their reactions would be negative. Sometimes I am still afraid but not so much now. I was lucky to fall upon a group of people at Wotever who let me just be me and are supportive and encouraging when I make decisions but don't try and force me to do anything more than I have decided. It could almost be considered nurturing, yes that is a good word for what I have found there.

They respect my identity in a way I don't find anywhere else, I have other groups of people who I love, some even more deeply than those at Wotever but they don't really understand what my identity means to me right now, just how delicately balanced I am between joy and despair when it comes to finding this real me. It's been a part of me so long and parts of me want it so so much, but at the same time I have learned to live with what I am and I am afraid of what I could loose as I keep moving down this road. A part of me desperately wants to be more male, have a more male appearance, use the mens, be called Sir and not then correct to Miss, be one of the guys in a way that doesn't lead to me being singled out as a girl 5mins into the conversation.

I also don't want to stop being one of the girls though I don't want to loose my sisterhood ( for want of a better word ) I'm not going to be a man, I don't want to be a man, I'll be something in between. Not a negative, neither man nor woman, but both man and woman I think there is something beautiful about that. I don't want to deny my femaleness, I just can't find out what that is in me until I have gone through this. I can't explore anything male or female really because all I can explore is the disconnect, I am an uncomfortable me, trying to present me but being called out as something else by people around me.

So now I've started getting referrals and I am telling people about it, I am getting a lot of "But I thought you said you weren't going to do anything about it?" It must seem confusing to them one minute it seems I am hell bent on not, then I am. What I say is simply this, I can't work out what it is I want and what I really want to do unless I start doing it. I can spend my whole life asking myself, do i or don't i? Yes I am scared for a million and one reasons one of which is the very real fear that I may do something irreversible that I don't really want, but I am going to have to just trust my judgement here. I am just going to have to believe that I am smart enough not to do that. I can't of wanted to do this for this long and still want to do this without there being something very real about it and I must now in earnest ask some very real and difficult questions of myself. I need people who have seen it all before to help me deal with those questions one at a time. Work through them, keep me focused on them and that is what I am hoping for by starting this, I need grounding and a bit of reassurance that this isn't something new. I have to do this because if I don't I will just keep running around in circles and getting nowhere.

Afraid..

I am afraid, afraid that you think I came across this easily, that somehow it is some childish whim, this dialectic between body and mind. I am afraid that because I cannot find the words to tell you, that the best I can do is point dumbly at a TV screen when something similar to the way I feel comes on. That you see me as some kind of perverse child pointing out the latest toy of obsession from the Saturday morning advertisements. That I am somehow playing with fashion, a desire to be special and cool like the other kids. Not that this has wriggled around inside me for decades, that it eats away at my flesh from day to day. Each time some stranger sees me, the not me, not the me, each time a friend calls me out exposes my un me ness to someone I have just met and am hoping for a second or two that they may see the me ness and know me thus.

It is like I am a boy in a dress, I know I am a boy yet everyone can only see the dress. They do not care that I walk and talk and feel like a boy, they only know that girls wear dresses and so I am a girl. I cannot take the dress off, at least not easily and I am afraid that if I do take off the dress then I will loose a part of me I can never have again. What does it all mean, what does this mean? Am I imagining this? One day I am sure I want to take the dress off and the next I am clouded with confusion, drowning in questions and self doubt. Waiting for some magic answer to answer all my questions and set me down on the road I need to travel.

It's not like this body and I do not share intimacy, we have shared the same space for 30 odd years now, felt the same joys and pains. We have known love and self destruction together and survived and although I know it is not mine I cannot deny like my oldest of friends this body knows me. It bends to my will, whether it wants to or not, whether I want it to or not. I am afraid that if I finally give in to this need to change this body I will be doing it for the wrong reasons. Afraid that in change I will become part of the problem and not the solution. Where does my responsibility lie? And yet here I am again and again and again, the same question, the same need to rid myself of this body and find my body, to keep this body and learn to live with this my body. Over and over again, I am exhausted by it, demoralized that I have come so far and yet it is the same set of questions over and over that I still cannot answer.