Breaking down those walls of stone

    If someone had told me I'd see over forty transgender people in a room expressing something approaching agreement, I'd never have believed it. We are by our nature a very diverse grouping, you might say a broad church. You could safely expect an argument over whether the sky is blue on a clear day.
     But yesterday it was something of a surprise to see just that. Stonewall, the national LGBT campaigning charity, were holding one of a series of consultations on a document intended to lay out their trans strategy now that they are embracing the T in LGBT.
    Stonewall, you see, are an organisation with a bit of a problematic history in these matters. In the past, they have quite happily pretended to be LGBT when in fact they were more LGB, or a bit more accurately, LG. If you're being brutally honest, LG. Even LGGGGGGGGGGG, some people will tell you, such was the attitude of the coterie of middle aged gay men that once held sway at its helm. They'd take money on an LGBT ticket and even talk to politicians on that front too, but when it came to the crunch they'd throw us under the bus every time. Thus you'd see its name sometimes written as "Sonewall", because there's no T in it, or even occasionally "Sonewa", because at times there could be precious little L either. Not an organisation that had much trust from within our community
    A couple of years ago against this backdrop along came a new Stonewall director, Ruth Hunt. She immediately set about refocusing Stonewall to be genuinely LGBT, and to facilitate this she had the organisation recruit a trans steering committee. This committee put together the draft document, and yesterday's event was one of a series in which they placed it before the trans community.
    It was a document into which a lot of effort had been put, and it shows how much they have changed. In front of us we had a well-thought-out enunciation of trans rights and experiences, both as they are and as they should be. And here we come to the agreement between the attendees, while there was plenty to tweak around the edges the tone of the document was as far as I could see universally approved.
    Since I was there wearing my trade union hat I made a few suggestions on workplace rights. I always feel as though I've said too much or even made a fool of myself at these occasions, let's hope I made a valid contribution. We'll see the completed document in the coming weeks, and then its contents will be the subject of Stonewall's campaigns on our behalf.

    A long day involving a sprint across London between connecting Tube stations to get back home for another engagement in the evening meant I couldn't afford to hang around and socialise. My fellow attendees were a diverse bunch among whom was my friend Paula, and there could have been a lot to chat about had I had the time.
    I'm still beset by the crushing onslaught of my recent GD relapse, which isn't ideal when you're in the icily polite loneliness of a packed British commuter train. A self-important middle aged lawyer kept trying to invade my space with his elbow, then fell asleep and toppled onto me. I proceeded to invade his space with my elbow, placing him upright and awake in no uncertain terms.
    Before my evening engagement, an online conference for one of my current part-time employers, I went to the toilet in their office building. In the mirror, despite all the annoying stuff, I saw an image I liked.
    Pictures of me are not common, so it was the first time I'd been tempted to take a selfie in many years. It shows how far I've come, even if in some ways I'm no further forward.

Dog's life

    It's really nasty, getting a cold at this time of year. Well, colds are nasty at the best of times, but as spring slowly morphs into summer the traditional winter response to a cold of holing up for the duration seems inappropriate. And this one's particularly annoying and long-lived.
    So here I am, between bouts of sneezing. Yesterday was a perfect May Sunday here in my part of the world, so as well as getting a load of essential tasks done I took my parents dog for an extended version of our normal walk.
    The picture is of one of our local ponds, sporting an early season algal pattern. Hidden away from view and in the shade, I spent quite a while sitting on the bank, the dog happily stretched out in a patch of sun.
    My friend R remarked not so long ago that in my scruffy guise I am now visibly leaking girl. I guess I ain't the bloke I used to be, what with the beard removal, long hair, and given a few years of anti-androgens, a few extra curves here and there.
    Looking in the mirror and seeing the girl looking back at me does help. But it doesn't fix anything, really. I know sometime soon it all ain't going to work no more.
    By coincidence several friends have had GRS in the last few weeks or are likely to do so before too long. It's funny, I find myself slightly envious of them, not for the procedure itself but for the moving on. Time will tell if for them it marks the end of their quests or if they become members of that group who protest just a little too much, but wherever they end up I can't help feeling a little more isolated.
    I tell you who I really envy though, that dog. She's a rescue dog, formerly feral in one of England's larger cities, so living in a small village with plenty of food and lots of exciting places to explore is an existence in which she is very happy indeed. In her patch of sunlight she lay with her belly lapping up the rays, not a care in the world.
    Wish I could do that.

Anger and stress

   There's too much to be angry about. Idiot politicians, stupid churchmen, the more sinister of my former schoolteachers, even the silly young feminist I encountered last night who could rationalise trans people - MtF and FtM - as OK because they were "victims of the Patriarchy". Oh yes, the Patriarchy, that handy common enemy that removes the need to think.
    It's not easy sitting at work, a scruffy bloke with stress issues. Blimey yes, the scruffy bloke. Whatever happened to him. I think he started to fade about this time last year.
   There are times when this becomes rather onerous.
   Still, silly feminist students aside last night was interesting. A panel discussion of trans politics with a well-known activist, an NUS trans person and a trans comedian. And a first for me, going out in my home town without any pretence of being incognito. I've been so careful for my wife's sake all this time, but she's no longer worried in the way she once was. So off I went. And got bloody cold standing outside with my friend R afterwards while she had a fag, but that's the way it goes. Girly jeans are thinner and tighter than boy ones, you have to suffer for your art.
    So another month passes, only six months to go 'till my GIC appointment. It's looking better than it was a week or two ago, but I can't help wishing I had a crystal ball.

About two years.

    Just from curiosity I took a look back on this blog at what I was up to at this time last year. Bin-diving to save R's possessions. That was fun. Then a further hop, to this time two years ago.
    A question: "How long have I got?". Meaning of course: "How long before I can't take all this any more and can't go on any longer as a bloke?".
    You learn stuff, given enough time.
    I've learned that it's not a black and white thing. You can always hang on just that little bit longer, I've been doing it continuously for the last few years. And while I feel sadly a lot closer to the edge than I was a couple of years ago I've also had a couple of extra years practice at making it go just that little bit longer.
    All the same though, I can't help thinking that my answer back then was "About two years".
    Ah well, another year chalked up. My answer this time next year may or may not be "About three years", but I know for now I have to hang on.
    Just that little bit longer.

DD

    No, it ain't the result of some new magic bustline treatment. Dysfunction & Depression, the happy couple.

    Have you ever seen a magician spinning plates? Loads of them to tend to, eventually plates start falling? That's me at the moment. Can't really elaborate on everything here, but I have much preying on me. Family, responsibilities, my wife's career choices, random worries, and my ongoing GIC counseling which I sometimes feel is doing a fine job of pulling the rug from under my feet.
    All this, and the muse has departed me. Several things I wanted to write about have delivered a paragraph or two and petered out. Perhaps that's as well, they'd probably have come across as rather sour. I'm not at my best, writing while depressed.
    So if I seem a little quiet, either here or elsewhere, that's why. These things are usually temporary, but they're very annoying while they last.

On loose hairs

    One of my perpetual annoyances when I was much younger, still living at home with my parents and my sisters, was finding my eldest sister's hair.She has enviable hair and she wore it long at the time, so long reddish hairs would attach themselves to furniture, clothing and a multitude of other surfaces. Because I was a teenage spotty young oik at the time and very deep in the closet, I decided that this was icky, pertaining as it did to girls.

    Teenagers ain't the sharpest tools in the box, are they.

    I guess it's my sister's turn for a laugh at my expense now, because as my hair has grown out to a rather unambiguously female style, I'm finding my hairs everywhere. In fact, it's my wife who seems to find them more than me, and she's not entirely happy about them. Oops.
    When I say my hair is unambiguously female now, I'm not joking. My hairdresser has done an amazing job. I get away with it when presenting as the scruffy bloke by letting it air dry so it looks a bit lank and tousled, and because those not in the know see what they expect to see. But even in that lank bloke look it's got body and a wave that some women would kill for. If I blow dry it I get that curl at the bottom that would have made me very fashionable in the 1960s, shame I can't see the Mad Men look working on me.
    So with long hair, and beard in remission, I'm starting to blur the edges of gender presentation. If I look in the mirror when being the scruffy bloke, I can make the girl appear simply by changing my expression. And if I present as female it doesn't take much makeup for the bloke to go away completely.

    I never expected to reach this position. Especially not while still living most of my life as a scruffy bloke.

    A few years ago one of the biggest walls keeping me in the closet was the thought that I would never be able to present as female with any pretence of looking female. There is nothing more depressing than putting on female clothing and seeing a man wearing a dress in the mirror. I have a feeling one or two of my more whiny and depressive early posts on this blog explored that theme.
    The trouble is, with this evolving female presentation comes fresh stress. As if I needed that. It's better by far than the crushing depression I had in the closet, but it's a fresh reminder that this is a downward slope.
    With the stress of seeing the downward slope I have a lot to talk about in my counselling sessions. They are uncomfortable in themselves, forcing me as they do to confront things I might wish to ignore.
    It's funny, I have a sense I've never had before, that of leaving the bloke behind. I used to be a bloke who had rather a lot of the girl about him, now I have this feeling of having to make something of an effort to be the bloke. How on earth did that happen!
    Still, even if I ain't exactly winning I have to keep trying.
    Keen followers will have noticed that I've been away from here for a while. Work has been busy and I've been burying myself in some other things to try to keep my mind occupied and away from annoying thoughts. You know you're spending too much time with your Wreck when you start double-declutching your modern car.

That's the trouble with partners of transvestites...

    "That's the trouble with partners of transvestites, they can be such a problem".
    I looked at the speaker, slightly shocked. Dawn, our host, widened her eyes in disbelief. I wasn't that bothered at being called a transvestite even though we were talking about my progress through the GIC. That was par for the course from this particular source. But calling my wife 'a problem'? She was extremely lucky that my wife wasn't there to hear it
    I should have expected it. Not many years ago the speaker was a bloke in his mid fifties. Older then me, with wife and grown-up kids. Since then she's transitioned and reinvented herself with a rather preposterous back-story ignoring a hilarious number of inconvenient truths. Now she's married again, to an inoffensive transvestite who she's banned from dressing. The hypocrisy meter is on overload.
    Quite simply she's the most deluded trans person I've ever met, and that's from a pretty strong field.
    Hers is probably the most blatant example I've encountered, but I've noticed a consistency among a significant section of our community in forgetting where they came from.It's simple and self-evident: if you are an MtF trans woman then you too once had a life as a bloke, and probably a depressed one at that. No shame there, after all, you've escaped him, well done!
    The reaction of such people to those among our community who still have something of the depressed bloke about them is very telling. People who are secure in their own skin do not react in such a way. I'm thinking in particular of another acquaintance, a rather pretty early-40s transwoman with a slight, feminine build who is paranoid about those around her outing her to the extent that she outs herself by drawing too much attention her way.
    It's funny, I have another acquaintance who is a full-time TV I would judge to have something similar to the sexuality of a gay man - tried hormones, but I suspect gave them up when her bits stopped working. My two acquaintances above are a lot more at ease with her than they are with me, it's possible that people like me remind them too much of where they came from.
    How people behave is up to them. But I have evolved a very short fuse on these matters. It's easy to damage a trans person pre-transition, we're a vulnerable bunch. I'm happy to be friendly and supportive to anyone I meet in this community, but if I'm likely to be damaged by their actions then I'll drop them like a hot potato and make it very clear why I have done so. My store of second chances is exhausted.

Letter to a friend who went deep stealth

Dear A,
    Earlier this year, you had your GRS and promptly disappeared. You dropped all your friends and moved house. I wrote a blog post about it at the time, about my sense of hurt and loss.
    I'm told that the other day you unexpectedly visited a mutual friend. You now live only a few miles away, you've changed your name again and nobody in your new life knows your past. Our mutual friend tells me you'd like to meet in town sometime, maybe have a coffee or something.
    Y'know what? I'd love to renew our friendship, I really would. But before that happens I need to know which A I'm getting to know again. You see, I'm in a somewhat fragile state, just as I was in April. I'm on hefty anti-depressants, I need medication to sleep, and the slightest upset affects me deeply, makes me cry and ruins my confidence for days. You may remember this, it's a side-effect of living with a condition called gender dysphoria. I've been fighting it for a very long time and though I'm not giving up it's a battle I may lose.
    So if I'm going to meet an A who feels quite happy knowing a scruffy bloke but would drop me like a hot potato if I turned into an oversized woman, then no. You've hurt me once by doing that, and I'm not going to willingly set myself up for another shot. Run away and have a nice life in your closet.
    But if the A I'm getting to know again is here for keeps, then I'd love to welcome back the attractive and funny girl I last saw in April. If you're going to be there for me no matter what, then so am I for you. When the inevitable happens and someone figures out your past, you've got a local friend to hold your hand if you need it, I'm not going anywhere else in a hurry.
     So which is it to be? If the latter, then mine's an Americano, black.
Jenny
 

Sheer bloody-mindedness.

    If you have never cooked hotdogs with a Trangia storm cooker on a cliff top overlooking the North Sea, you haven't lived. If you have ever walked over a moorland summit with breathtaking views only to find yourself in a local dogging hotspot judging by the litter, you have my commiseration. My wife and I are back from a week's holiday doing all the above and more; wandering the Yorkshire uplands by day and sampling the Local Delicacies in the evening. Fish and chips, for example, taste best when bought from a chippy over the road from the quay on which the fish was landed earlier in the day.
    That has been the good part of the last week. The annoying part has been that we're both suffering from interrupted sleep. Sometimes my medication doesn't help much, and my wife has also started having problems remaining asleep.A less-than-comfortable British seaside guesthouse bed didn't help either. Fawlty Towers? In part a comedy, the rest a documentary.
    So I'm back in front of a real computer again, a week's blog posts to catch up with. A week without letting the girl out of the bag has weighed heavily upon me, yet again I'm left with the feeling that I'm not winning this. More than one person has talked to me of the moment at which they realised they had to transition, I have to admit to having reached the point at which I can empathise with that position. I don't want to get up in the morning and be the bloke for the day any more. I should have that particular chat with the psych next time I'm up at the GIC, but I won't. Instead I'll stick to my line, hang in there for my wife. The really sad part? I think she's reached the conclusion that I'm not going to win as well, and since I'm bringing her down simultaneous with doing all this for her that's rather upsetting. Sheer bloody-mindedness, or just stupidity in the face of the inevitable?
    Good holiday though.

Leaking here and there

   They say some people become like their animals, and I certainly know enough middle-aged British women who resemble their horses to give some credibility to that.
    I by comparison have started to resemble my car. Just as I have picked up a miserable cold and am leaking into a constant stream of tissues, so the Wreck has done something unfortunate to its internals and has started leaking oily soot from its exhaust pipe on startup. That coupled with an alarming consumption of oil tells me that a piston ring may have given up the fight against age, allowing oil to find its way into an upper cylinder.
    All I have to do is wait and the cold will go away. Sadly the Wreck will need considerably more attention, I may try to nurse it over to C's house for a diagnostic session, and then some intensive and fiddly rebuilding effort may be called for. Remind me again why I have this machine? Oh yes, it's fun to work on. Damn. Serious car nut, me.
    It's difficult to feel like anything but a very scruffy bloke when you are under the weather with a nasty cold. Particularly as there is an interaction between my sleep and cold medications that means I can either sleep, breathe easily, or do both and risk liver damage. I chose breathing easily last night, tonight I think I need to sleep.
    Current woes are masking a more long-term and annoying realisation, that I am not winning here. I am not happy in my daily life and have not been so for months, and it is that unhappiness rather than the fact of my being trans that my wife finds upsetting, it preys on her and makes her unhappy too.
    As always, no surrender.
    I was disappointed yesterday to read in a blog comment the suggestion that we who resist transition perhaps don't actually need to change sex. I guess you gotta love the girl you married enough to live the dream, to understand.

The bottle and me

    A few days ago we had the perfect summer evening here in my part of the UK. Warm air, just a bit of cloud and a spectacular sunset. I spent it in the garden of a local pub, looking out over a river and a patchwork of flood meadows.
    My tipple of choice? Weston's Country Perry, a dangerously quaffable still perry (For the uninitiated, perry refers to cider made with pears instead of apples). At the end of the evening I had a clear head, but the perry had definitely gone to my legs and I was ready for bed.
    I don't think I'm alone in finding a drink helpful in dealing with the aftermath of a bad day. It's a worry that I could make a habit of  cracking open a beer or cider when I come home form work. Just the one would turn into a couple, and before I'd know it I'd be getting through a crate of bottles in a week. It's not a coincidence that I know more than one person in this sphere with a drink problem. One or two of my acquaintance have in my view allowed it to wreck their lives.
    My medication bears the warning that alcohol is best avoided while taking it. Since I prefer to sleep I think that's the factor that has saved me from getting into the drinking habit. But like so many demons that lurk below the surface of the gender dysphoric, I know that one could make itself felt.
    It might seem odd therefore, that I make cider in near-industrial quantities. But I have made cider for many years without over-imbibing and the cider-making rather than the cider itself  is an escape from some of my troubles. Or an argument could be made that my cider is so dangerously unpalatable that one could never drink enough at a sitting to risk one's health, I dunno.
    But it's a serious issue. I suspect I have this in common with many other gender dysphoric people, a lifetime of this has left the GD as just one of several problems. I know more than one post-transition girl who's realised that all they've been through hasn't cured their depression, and if that happens to me I don't want to find myself using the bottle as a crutch. Because at the end of an annoying week in which the noisy girl and a lot of high-powered work meetings have left me worn out I know that the world as seen through the green glass of a cider bottle could look mighty attractive.
     And I don't need to be told that tomorrow morning or indeed any morning thereafter, that wouldn't solve anything.

That's new

    Annoying, all this, isn't it. A new facet of the wild and wacky world of gender dysphoria has edged into my experience these last few weeks. Getting down when confronted with happy attractive women is old hat, but here's a new one. I've found myself being pushed over the edge by middle-aged blokes. WTF? I hear you say?
    I guess it's the summer weather and the industry I work in, I seem to be seeing a lot of Typical British Middle Aged Blokes at the moment. You know, paunchy, losing hair, slightly unkempt. And I'm seeing a possible future for myself and thinking "I don't want to end up like that!".
    Crazy, isn't it. But that's the way of this annoying existence. I'll get over it. And hey! I've got Finasteride and they haven't! Funny, talking to blokes on that subject, they have a morbid fear of the Family Jewels not working but they hate the hair loss. I'm beginning to realise new extents to which I'm not one of them.
    So normal service will no doubt be resumed in time. I'll answer the comments on the last few posts that I feel guilty about neglecting. And life will go on. A bit more annoying, that's all.

Overheating

    The Wreck and I are each experiencing problems. The solution for the car is simple: replace the geriatric thermostat and hope no lasting damage has been caused by the engine being cooked. For me, sadly, it ain't so easy.
    The problem is, depression hasn't gone away. I'm depressed, and my depression has dragged my wife down too. Medication has helped even off the troughs, but hasn't fixed anything. My wife put it bluntly, that if this was to be our natural state then we would both be better off I were to give in to the girl and just go for it.
    I can't do that. Everything I'm hanging in there for is at stake. But to hear her put it that way is uncomfortable: I could do it and let's face it if I had no ties I probably would be well on my way by now.

    In simple terms, she's right. I'm just not prepared to give in. Like I said, it ain't so easy.

    On Saturday I'll be making my way to Manchester to spend a day at Sparkle. I'm not sure what I'll get from the experience but it's one of those things to try. My sister lives up there, so I'll be meeting her for the day. The first time any family member will see me as anything but the scruffy bloke. Part of me is looking forward to it, the rest of me is scared witless.
    Life doesn't get any easier, does it.

Plan B

    I should move to Mount Athos or something.
    Seriously, the south of England on a warm summer's day was not a good place for someone who is gender dysphoric. Beautiful women aglow with happiness everywhere I look.
    Antidepressants are great. They really do work, at least for me they've suppressed the emotional reactions I was suffering to any of life's stresses. I might not be fixed, but I can do normal everyday stuff without bursting into tears.
    What they haven't done though is entirely fix the underlying depression. Sounds odd, you'd expect that from an antidepressant, but I guess fixing the annoying symptom is better than nothing. So I've found myself dwelling rather a lot on my inner girl. You might say she's becoming oppressive.
    I feel rather guilty saying this, but knowing I could go for it makes it hard not to think about it.

    There, I've said it. For someone who's so set on avoiding it, right now I can't stop thinking about going full-time female, transitioning and not looking back. Not just idle thought, but almost feeling as though I'm plotting it.

    Is this what if feels like to reach the point of no return? It had better not, because I'm sure as hell not giving up without a hell of a fight. My wife, quite simply, is worth it.
    But it ain't going away, is it.
    What is there to be done? The fight back starts here I guess. I do need to face up to something though. I could lose this one. My wife is no fool, she's perfectly aware of that. And as part of the fightback we need between us to face up to it. What happens if it does all go horribly wrong?

    In short, we need a Plan B.

    If this were some kind of make-believe world, I would smoothly transition (with no associated problems, naturally) and she'd declare herself delighted with the result and we'd happily stroll arm-in-arm into the sunset as a lesbian couple.
     But in the real world, she married a bloke. She's been amazing so far in the level of tolerance she's shown for her bloke as his inner girl struggles to get out, but she is not a lesbian. The make-believe world scenario is not going to happen.
    And then there is me. I'm acutely aware that everything is up for grabs for someone on HRT. I have never fancied a bloke in my life, but I'm not naive enough to imagine that would remain the case were I to receive that prescription. It would be too much to expect for my wife to put up with that.
    So enter Plan B. Whatever eventually does happen, we need to decide now rather than in the heat of the moment how we're going to deal with it. It is our observation that the more chaotic circumstances come to those onto whom this is thrust in short order, therefore we should use our luxury of extra time to think about it carefully.
    There are so many factors to consider. Would we stay together? If so, in what form? What about a family? I want one desperately no matter what, but would she? How about housing, for that matter?
    It is important to realise that this is not in any way a capitulation. I'm still hanging in there because despite the annoyances life is throwing at me I have more reasons to hang onto the scruffy bloke than I do to become the oversized girl. But if I am to do the best I can by the woman I care most about then the least I can do is remove some of the uncertainty that surrounds our situation.
     We're off to spend a day walking over the Downs in the rain. Somehow I think this will give us plenty to talk about.

A whole week.

    In the past eighteen months I have surprised myself with the frequency with which I have updated this blog. I have enjoyed writing it and through it I have both explored the mess in which I find myself and made friends who have been of amazing support to both me and my wife.
    I thus feel rather surprised, looking at the date, that I haven't had anything to write for a week. Normally I've found a blogging formula in writing on matters pertaining to my gender issues when I have something to discuss,  random other things that are happening around me when I don't, or when I just need a pick-me-up to take my mind away from sleep deprivation, depression or the other annoyances of life dealing with a noisy inner girl.
    But this week: nothing. I have sat, looking blankly at the screen, wishing I could find a way to say what is on my mind, and I've failed. I have even been too apathetic to answer some of your comments on previous posts.
    My problem is easy to spot, I'm off to the GIC in just under two weeks and it's weighing heavily on my mind. I will sit in a doctor's office in an anonymous West London clinic, and not a lot will happen. Nothing new there, I've known what they can and can't do for me for quite a while now. But somehow it's now a lot more real, while previously it was sometime way off in the future.
    So I'm sure my turmoil will be short-lived, I'll have my day in London, get it over with and life will go on. At least I have something to look forward to, following the success of our outing a couple of weeks ago my wife would like us to do it again. I may not anticipate much progress from London, but that's not the only direction from which progress can come.

In which I lose a friend

    A month or so ago I lost a friend at the hands of a surgeon, on the operating table at the Nuffield Hospital in Brighton.
    I first encountered her last year, at which point she had been full-time female for less than a year. An attractive girl a few years older than me, her strident views and combative nature didn't do her any favours among the orthodoxy of the community of trans people through which we knew each other but we both got on pretty well and I came to regard her as a friend. She was fortunate in her build and in having visited a good facial surgeon so she had confidence in her appearance and I never saw her have any issues with being spotted.
    Unusually she claimed never to have suffered from gender dysphoria, presumably meaning that she didn't suffer from the crushing depression and hopelessness in being male that a lot of readers will find familiar. Her path took her through the private healthcare system rather than the NHS, so as far as I am aware she began hormones before going full-time and the diagnosis criteria were different from those we might find at an NHS GIC.
    She took going off hormones pre-GRS harder than most. For the first time, she said, she understood gender dysphoria. Better late than never I suppose, but it must have been a shock to her. Because almost immediately on her return from the Nuffield following her GRS she announced that she was now going stealth, and that she no longer wished to associate with her trans friends.

    And that's how I lost my friend.

    Good luck to her I suppose. If she can do it. She wouldn't be the first trans woman to go stealth, though she's the first I've heard of doing it before her surgery has healed.
    But I can't help feeling sad at the abrupt loss of a friend, concerned for her wellbeing and above all shocked at her path through the medical system,
    Sad at the loss of a friend, because it's as if it were a bereavement. When she made her announcement it hit me hard. I retreated into my shell. It always hurts a little when a friend makes a great stride in transition that you can't, but for her to make such a stride and then dump everyone really hurt. I can tell she meant it when she said she never really experienced gender dysphoria, because had she done so she wouldn't have treated in that way those among her friends who do experience it. Hell, it wasn't as though she had to face the embarrassment of being associated with a Widow Twankey Tranny, she only once ever saw me as anything but the scruffy bloke.
     Concerned for her wellbeing because I don't think she's dealt with her issues. I think she is only now discovering that there is more to this than acquiring a pretty face and other female enhancements from a surgeon. If she locks herself into the closet that going stealth can become then she will find it very difficult to find help, and as someone who still considers herself a friend I wish I could avoid that happening.
     And shocked at her path through the medical system because I do not believe her doctors to have been acting in her best interests. As far as I am aware she went through the entire process in the absolute minimum time possible under the Standards of Care, and given both her obvious issues now and that she claimed all along never to have suffered from gender dysphoria I find wanting the medics who authorised her treatment without significant examination of why she took that position.
    I hope her going stealth was simply due to her being in a hormonal mix-up following her surgery and I hope she'll pop up again as if nothing has happened. With luck she'll be wiser for the experience. But if she does I hope she also realises that her path was not as smooth as it might have appeared to her when taking it, and takes the time to face up to the consequences of that.

   Because you know what? I'd hate to lose her once again, this time permanently.

(Edit, Dec 2011: she has surfaced, but I have mixed feelings about it which I've detailed here)

Roadworthy old wreck

    This morning a bloke in a tin shed on the edge of an English village spent half an hour poring over the Rusty Old Wreck before pronouncing it roadworthy and issuing it with an MOT test certificate. It is now legal to drive on the Queen's highway for the next year, given a quick trip with the certificate and its insurance details to the village post office for a tax disc which was free on account of the Wreck's historic vehicle status.
    Such are the minor annoyances of British automotive bureaucracy.
    It would have been the perfect start to the day, except that the Wreck's clutch is slipping. Fifty year old springs are not doing a very good job of keeping the plate pressed against the flywheel and it is very difficult to make the car go any faster than thirty miles per hour without a sudden burst of revs as it loses adhesion.
     How unfortunate. Luckily I know another bloke in a tin shed who can help, sometime soon I'll be off to the lair of someone who is a World Expert on Wrecks and who I am sure will be able to sort me out with the parts I need.
    Every branch of motor enthusiasm has a bloke in a tin shed somewhere catering for its adherents. Everyone I know with a Wreck has the World Expert on speed-dial, and similarly my motorcycles and the Turbocharged Rollerskate are tended by equivalent experts in their own fields working out of anonymous industrial units.
    There is a cosy certainty to a conversation within the fold of similarly afflicted petrolheads. In the world of the true enthusiast there is no room for hierarchy or snobbery, from the rustiest Wreck to the shiniest concours d'elegance winner they are all machines and thus fascinating to the born fettler. I can no more explain the attractions of a detailed conversation about the different clutch parts fitted to pre- and post-1963 cars as I can the attraction of a Little Black Dress to someone who looks like me, but strangely they both fulfill the same function: that of keeping the brain occupied. Which is important when you are trying to stop yourself going potty.
     It's been too long since I last drove the Wreck. I was worried I'd not rediscover the spark, but today has been a good one and the girl has not intruded too much. Something which given the experience of my last few weeks can only be a positive thing.

A year in her shoes

    Just from curiosity, I took a look back at what I was writing here a year ago. Nothing much changes, I was fettling the Wreck, I'd just been out with some local t-girls and I was periodically plagued by the noisy girl. Amusingly I thought I might have the Wreck on the road within a month, only a year later am I about to send it for an MOT test.
    One personal anniversary is in the offing though. A year ago, give or take a few days, I finally took delivery of my wig. It had taken a while because I'd taken pains to get the right wig - I've paid less for Wrecks in the past - and I'd had to have it altered for my oversize head.
    But for the first time I could stand in front of a mirror and see something more of the girl than the scruffy bloke wearing her clothes. Straight away I gave myself a shock when I saw something of my sister looking back at me.
    I've come a long way in the last twelve months. I've come to terms with some of my demons, not least  my height. Going out as girl has become less scary and a little more routine, though I've not pushed my wife's comfort zone by doing it too close to home. I'm in the queue for the GIC for whatever help they can offer someone in my position, I'm in a much better job and some of last year's worries for the future have receded. Looking forward I'm slowly growing my hair out and in due course I'll no doubt be savouring the joys of having my facial hair lasered.
    So I have a lot to be thankful for. Unfortunately though I'm still as far away as ever from being at peace with all this. I can't quite escape the nagging fear that eventually it'll all go pear-shaped anyway and I'm just stringing my wife along. She says not to worry as we'll deal with everything as it arrives, but I can't help it. I am incredibly lucky to have married someone who has been able to come to terms with having a gender dysphoric husband to the extent she has, but I have no wish to push her beyond her limit.
     I can't put this back in the box. I tried that for years, and it nearly killed me. If I am to successfully pursue my aim of hanging in there for my wife I must face up to the crushing gloom of a lifetime of this stretching away before me. However at this point I feel I can take hope from something a friend pointed out to me: that dealing with this is not a process that starts at the point of going full-time female, at GRS or any other milestone, instead it starts at the point at which you come to terms with your female gender identity and thereafter all steps you take represent progress along a path that is never fully completed. Within that scope I feel I have more room for manoeuvre, and that at least is something to be happy about.

Get a grip Jenny

    Sitting on the wall by the school playing field on my walk home from work, there they were. A group of teenagers. Nothing special, nothing nasty, just kids. Probably not too different from me an age ago, just sitting on a wall and enjoying a spring evening.
    I could see them from some distance. And as I walked towards them I could feel a rising terror. What if they noticed me, what if they said something?

    Get a grip.

    My everyday persona is not as the very tall girl I'd like it to be but of her giant-sized scruffy male alter ego. In short, someone capable of giving a teenager far more to worry about than the worry a teenager is capable of giving him. It's a side-effect of being oversized that I don't really like but it's a sad truth, if you're going to be a bloke, be a very big one.
    So being scared of a fairly harmless group of teenagers is pretty damn stupid. I think it's a symptom of how far the girl has triumphed over the boy in my head, that as I sit all day in an office letting the girl have free reign between my ears I find it difficult to remember that I don't need to succumb to her worries. It's been an annoying few weeks.
    So I'll say it again.

    Get a grip, Jenny.
     

Confusion in clarity

    This afternoon, sometime after three o'clock, I was sitting at my desk feeling pretty good about the world. I'd just had a meeting with a couple of female colleagues at which we'd explored some really interesting stuff in the context of our work over some really nice coffee, and I had one of my more fun work projects back from my boss for a few tweaks. I was sitting there and I thought "Y'know what? You're not troubled at all by gender dysphoria right now!". And it's true, I wasn't, I had clarity of thought, momentarily I was in complete command of the task in front of me. And it all felt so silly for a moment, that I could lose control of myself to that extent.
    If only I could hang on to the moment. I could have used that at five o'clock this morning when I was lying there awake having been dragged awake from a girl dream that got a little too upsetting, and trying not to wake my wife. I could use it now as well, sitting on the sofa with the laptop, alone in the flat while she's off at her gym class.
    This is going to sound rather crazy, but I rather dread those rare moments of clarity like this afternoon's one. Because they sow momentary doubt, and doubt is dangerous. GD is a royal pain in the arse, but at least I know what it is. I certainly wouldn't have chosen my girl's brain had I been given the choice, but a moment considering what might be were I to not be so reveals something far worse, for then the only explanation would be insanity. At my most depressive a few years ago that's a destination I've been uncomfortably close to. At least the thought I have a normal brain, albeit one from the Other Side, is reassuring in that context.
    On a completely separate note, I scored a couple of very small victories for the greater understanding of transgender issues in the last week. One of my employer's products featured something slightly misleading relating to us, and with the aid of my two colleagues to whom I'm out I was able to ensure that it was corrected. Pretty minor, but because the product reaches far and wide it's something I'd like to hope will help someone indirectly in the future.