Well. Here we are.

    It's a thing, in our community of transitioners, that people fade away. The challenges of getting through all this are overcome, they have whatever they consider makes them a Real Woman, and they're gone. We've all lost friends that way, the old internalised transphobia making them drop their trans community like a hot potato, in case they are reminded that they too are one of us.

    It's now about 18 months and a bit since I had my surgery, God knows how many years down the line along a very difficult path. That's not the end of my transition, because in reality transition never ends. You're always learning new stuff, and things come along that remind you of the time before. Regognising that is the key to coming to terms with it all, not running away.

    For someone not running away though, I've been a bit absent. Truth be told I've had a difficult time, probably some of the worst mental health problems of this whole sorry episode. Trauma accumulates, and after so long fighting it all came out. Stuff from the last decade, stuff from school, stuff from the frankly shitty so-called medical care I've had from parts of the gender medical service, and stuff from crappy employers. My counsellor has helped, now over the phone rather than face to face.

    It's been a bit of a struggle, but I have a feeling of coming out of it. Writing is coming more easily, the muse that had completely departed me at times is back. Oddly the COVID-19 lockdown is helping, while no social interaction is hard, the removal of some stresses has helped. But a whole load of new challenges emerge, and despite people talking about the end of lockdown I don't see it going away. Take care of yourselves, folks.

Oh it must be so nice...

    "Oh it must be so nice to live out in the country!" they say. I don't quite know what they really mean when they say that. It's an aspiration thing I guess, when they say that they're thinking Darling Buds of May, an extremely bucolic never ending summer.
    They don't think about the moment the countryside slides from autumn into winter, when the first winds come howling in across the North Sea from the Urals and the gold of the retreating season turns into the rotting vegetation of the next. They probably aren't considering the gelatinous mud that pervades every moment outdoors either, nor are they contemplating the crushing loneliness of life in a settlement where you rarely interact with anyone else.
    The fact is, it is nice to live in the country, but not in a way anyone who is whisked from Chelsea Tractor to centrally heated des res and never really comes into contact with the place at all will understand. It's nice to have a mental map of miles of countryside with a detailed knowledge of where the good blackberries are, where you sometimes find mushrooms, or where you can find a pear tree unexpectedly growing in a hedge. It's also nice to have a store of hidden places, small turnings from the beaten track into which you can fade away if you want to avoid being seen, corners you've known since childhood that are magic even in a cold and damp October.
    With the advancing winter comes something I remember from years ago when I last lived here year-round. Your life shrinks to the domain that remains comfortable, so the horizon moves a lot closer. And with that comes that loneliness I mentioned: for the first time in years you find yourself caring about TV schedules.
    I have to move on a bit, but I don't know how. I remarked to a friend a couple of weeks ago that I hadn't really realised how much my travails over the last two years - my mother's death, departure of Mrs. J, my problems at work - had affected me. She said it had been rather obvious to those around me, I had a period of losing interest in life. I guess you could map it here, count the number of posts by month over that period.
    I don't know how to move on really because I haven't moved on in myself as much as I'd like. Losing a partner is something I'm not sure how to get over, I'm certainly not there yet. But even if I was, how on earth could I move on? Dating? Wasn't really something I cracked back in the day, I can't honestly see it being a success now. What do I even want from it anyway? All I ever wanted was to settle down and have a family, something which seems a very distant possibility at the moment.
    I'm spending my days at the moment building a small business. An abrupt right-turn from my original business model into my training as an electronic engineer, and making some electronic stuff for a living.
    So how's about this for a pitch, I'm in my 40s , live at my parents house which is miles and miles down bad roads, and have a small business that's yet to make any money to speak of. And I'm looking for a relationship.
    I can see them falling for that in droves, can't you?
 

On the edge

    There has been something missing here of late.  Regular readers might have noticed their reading material has strayed into the mundanity of rural life and random political rants. This is a transgender  person's blog, so where's the tranny content, damnit!
    The answer's a bit complex. On a simple level I do not wish to simply churn out an endless transition diary or scorecard of the glamorous and exciting transgender lifestyle, whatever that is. In my view the best offerings from this sphere are those from bloggers who happen to be transgender, rather than those from transgender bloggers which can get rather stale.
    But on a more complex level there are issues that need to be confronted, yet that it is difficult to talk about. Things that involve my wife, for example. I feel that while I can talk about myself in specific terms it is unfair on her to talk about her in the same way in a forum on which she can not speak for herself.
    So what can I talk about. Guilt, I guess. All the walls, roadblocks and barriers behind which I've spent most of my life hiding have now fallen away. My wife has made it pretty clear that we'd both be better off were I to move forward. I can do it too, I'm confident in the world presenting as female. I shock myself with how well I manage at it. I don't have to deal with wigs or trowel on the makeup, I have an employer with whom I could transition tomorrow and nobody would bat an eyelid and I live in a place that's about as good as it gets to be transgender.
    Yet I'm hanging back from the edge of the abyss, scared even to peer over it.I've really tried these last few years to hang in there, to manage this condition and find a way to be the husband she deserves, and to move forward would be a betrayal, a failure and a waste of all that emotional investment.
    Some people write endless screeds justifying why they should transition. Maybe they need to convince themselves it's the right thing for them to do. I guess I've known for years it was the right thing to do and I've done the opposite, trying to convince myself that it's the wrong thing for me to do. That was a big waste of time, wasn't it.
    In January, I'll be seeing my specialist at the GIC again. By May I'll have been with them for a couple of years and they'll discharge me if there's nothing more they can do for me. So I have a few months in which I have to make up my mind. If I want to transition under their care then January is the time at which I have to start. Not the end of the world, for theirs is not the only path through this mess, but a pretty stark choice nevertheless.
    You see, if you are going to transition it has to be for the right reasons. I've seen enough people doing it for all the wrong reasons, caught up in the pink cloud, and I have no wish to emulate them. The pink cloud has long ago departed for me, but I need to have better justification than avoidance of a delay in the medical pathway. There is more at stake than just my path here.
    So there we go. I'm standing on the edge. I don't need pushing from either direction and surprisingly thanks to the help of my counselor and others things are pretty good all round, but I can no longer dodge the decision. I'm beginning to think it'll probably be a yes, but that's by no means certain.
    Strangely enough, that admission in itself brings a feeling of relief. Unexpected, that.

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.

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.

Orange seagulls

    Getting out of a car without flashing the world is not easy when you have very long legs and have decided that it's warm enough to break out the floaty number. Oh the tribulations of the oversized!
    Last night brought an unexpected chance for an evening out presenting female, as my wife was at a friend's place the same evening as a regular t-girl gathering at a very nice restaurant pub near Reading. So a quick phone call to my friend Dawn, and we piled into the Rollerskate for a blast down the motorway.
    There is something I still find incongruous about doing something like going to a pub that is normal for me as a scruffy bloke, yet as a woman. It makes me laugh as well as the satisfaction of presenting the way I feel, to look down and see this girl, where there used to be this bloke. And when I pass unnoticed in broad daylight it just gets funnier. I'm glad it works that way for me, knowing other people in my situation who to my mind look a million times better than me yet who are gripped by terror at the thought of venturing beyond a safe space, my just seizing the moment and going with it is infinitely preferable.
     Last night's gathering was a chance to dress up a little. Or more to the point, dress up, but not a lot. One of the fortunate things about our community is that you can almost never be overdressed, but it pays not to overdo it. As always my outfit had to pass the "would a natal woman like me wear this" test, and I hope with a knee-length summer dress, smart LTS jacket and no heels I didn't draw attention to myself. There was another "These people must be really unobservant!" moment on the way into the pub, but I guess the blokes with their eyes on a cool pint of Stella Artois just didn't give us - a tall woman and her old lady friend - a second look on their way to the bar.
     It is always something of a smack in the face to remove the trappings of femininity after such an outing. I needed last night badly having spent the last week or two in something of a state, but every time going out as girl becomes a little easier to do and putting it away afterwards becomes that little bit more of a wrench.
     Driving back home through town the car was surrounded by wheeling seagulls in the orange sodium light. The tourists and revelers leave discarded food everywhere and our feathered friends turn up after hours and clean it all up most efficiently. To be honest I was glad of them, they took my mind off more annoying matters. Gulls are not birds you want to get on the wrong side of, but close-to in flight, especially on an atmospheric evening in a near-empty town centre, they are quite a sight. I wish I could call them up to banish the girl blues at other times.
   

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.

It's 2011, right?

    Today has been a particularly nice one here in Southern England. I spent most of it out in the open, cleaning and fitting interior parts to the Rusty Old Wreck. I can almost feel it ready to go!
    At the end of the afternoon I exercised my parents' dog in a countryside basking in March sunlight. I phoned my friend Dawn, after last night's support group meeting she looked so sad when everyone went their separate ways so I wanted to see all was well with her world.
    About a week ago a friend of Dawn's died of a heart attack. Some of you might also have known her personally but I only encountered her online. She was a very spirited lady of advancing years whose very late transition gave hope to all of us younger people who have no route forward.
    When I rang, I found Dawn upset. She had been told that the family are insisting on having her friend's funeral conducted and having her buried as her former male self. She spent a lifetime escaping the bloke, and having achieved her aim her family are to go against her wishes in death.

    This is 2011, right?

    As I stood talking to Dawn this tree was in front of me, lit starkly by the sun as it fell towards the horizon. I know what it will remind me of every time I pass it from now on.

Ending it all

    The other night, I very nearly shot myself. Before you become too concerned, it was one helluva weird dream. The usual one about going to the GIC and coming away with a prescription instead of the words I'll be given in reality, except with the weird twist that the prescription gave me hallucinations: that I could reach through solid objects as though they were jelly. Yes, you don't want to venture between my ears, it gets pretty odd in there.
    Anyway, the final plotline involved my taking a handgun and being about to shoot myself in the head, at which point the hardware interrupt triggered by what passes for self-preservation subroutines in a human brain kicked in and I was dragged abruptly into wakefulness, the dark and quiet of a very early morning, my wife slumbering peacefully beside me. Probably the only reason I can so vividly remember the events of my dream; when I wake up at normal pace any recollections are hazy.
    Other people might shrug off such an experience as just a bad dream. Forget it, turn over and go back to sleep. But this one stuck with me because I've been there, I know I have that capability within me and having banished that particular demon I am particularly keen not to grant it re-admission.
    I never went as far as choosing my preferred exit route, back when I was deep in the closet. It certainly wouldn't have been a handgun, leaving aside the British legal framework which makes them almost impossible to own legally I wouldn't have the first idea how to use one. I'm guessing most Americans know more about cricket than I know about handheld firearms. Television drama has taught me that handguns have about a thousand rounds in their magazines and never need reloading though, and that every shot from a police handgun is a lucky one with pinpoint accuracy being preserved no matter the distance, visibility or wind.
    Instead, I found myself planning. How would I leave my affairs in order, how I might ensure my wife had a solid financial foundation. This became a constant refrain alongside the thoughts of suicide, which made things worse in a way, the last thing you need when you are suicidally depressed are money worries especially when you are on a sound financial footing.
    Having left all that behind it all seems rather stupid, looking back. But the experience never completely goes away, there is always that worry somewhere not far below the surface that it might return. My wife and I agree that if I fall down that particular hole again then saying the right things to the folks at the GIC and embarking on the road to transition would be my only option, but risking one's life in that way to get there does not seem like a sensible path.
    Gosh, what a morbid post! My apologies. It's been something of a brain-dump. I'm not going back there so no worries, but when your unconscious mind confronts you with these things you have to work them through.

One more lap

    My day today was spent in the winter sun and cold fresh air of my parents orchard, pruning apple trees. Pruning being a restful occupation I had plenty of time to think. Last night my wife and I attended a restaurant outing of about forty t-girls, a friendly and boisterous gathering that left me as always a bit down this morning, having been my normal oversized scruffy bloke for the occasion.
    Give or take a couple of days, it's a year since I had the Long Chat with my doctor. I think I'm in a significantly better condition than I was then and I've come a long way, but I have also remained stuck firmly in the same place. Winter has arrived and with it has come my sleep problems, girl fog and all its accompanying joys. Medication controls it this time, but at the cost of leaving me significantly below par. Only ten posts so far this month, if that doesn't indicate a lowered brain capacity I don't know what does!
    So when I finally reach the GIC it'll be about eighteen months since that chat last year. I'm told that's about average so I've got little to complain about, but I can't shake the worry that they'll have little to offer me. When I last saw my psychiatrist I addressed that to him and he reminded me that while it may be true, at least I'll be seeing the experts, people with the most experience in the matter.
     This time next year when I've completed another lap of this circuit as the 25000 metre long distance runner I'll no doubt have watched a few more of the sprinters break the tapes and leave the stadium.
     I'll still be running.

That magic pill

    I've heard this more than once over time: "If you were given a magic pill that turned you into a genetic female, would you take it no matter the consequences?". I believe it's supposed to be some kind of test of how trans-whatever you are, if you wouldn't jump at it then you can't really be very serious about all this.
    If my doctor proffered such a pill, I'd be hellishly tempted. But I wouldn't take it there and then, not without my wife being on-side. When the consequences affect someone I care that much about, I just can't. Not without one hell of a fight.

    Obvious trans-lightweight me, not serious about it at all.

    If my doctor produced a pill that did the opposite, "Take this risk-free pill and it'll give you a bloke brain, make you a bloke, and happy to be so!", I'd take it without hesitation. Make it all go away, fit snugly into the life I already have? You bet! Not because now I want to be a bloke, or am particularly happy trying to be a bloke, but because to be rendered content with the excessively bloke-suitable physical lot I've been landed with would make both my life and that of those around me so much easier.

    Unfortunately Harry Potter does not work in my doctor's dispensary. All he can give me is antidepressants, sleeping pills and something that might or might not stop my hair falling out. And very fortunately for us, all but the insane fringe of the medical profession learned years ago that trying to change GD sufferers to fit something their brains were not made for just doesn't work.

    But in a make-believe world of magic pills, I'd still go for that last one. My commenter from a few posts ago would take that as conclusive proof of her assesment of me, but I don't care. For me the most important desire in all this is to simply make it all go away.

Reality bites

    Every now and then one of the many cogs that drive the NHS moves a little and something happens. A letter from my psychiatrist for my files.
    In three short paragraphs, a summary of my last appointment and further details about my referral to the GIC.
    I was feeling pretty good after work yesterday. I met my wife in town, we went for a coffee. I remember thinking as I walked, that the girl had quietened down a little in the afternoon. Then the letter on the doormat on our return, and suddenly the next forty years stretches out in front of me. All that lies before me is this.
    One day at a time.
   
   

What's brown, and comes out of Cowes?

    Ah, the sights, sounds and smells of the British countryside, marvelous! My dad has spent a short time in hospital for a minor procedure, something we expected around Christmas but that happened now due to the whims of NHS waiting list planning.
    So I've found myself going back to nature for a couple of days, over at my parents place keeping an eye on our small herd of cattle. Not an onerous task, but I guess mucking out isn't to everyone's taste. I couldn't escape the stuff, yesterday afternoon when I went out in search of blackberries I managed to tread in a cowpat, thanks ladies! Maybe wellies would have been a better choice than trainers to cross the field, I've been gone too long.
    There was a time many years ago when I saw myself one day taking on this herd when it became too much for my dad. How much has changed since a younger me thought anything was possible. It's not just the effort required or the meagre financial return associated with small-scale farming but the less pleasant side of it. Cattle are not objects, mindless automata dedicated to taking in fodder and producing milk, beef and manure. Instead they are complex and gentle creatures, to get the best out of them you have to get to know them and understand their ways. They are all different, just like us.
    I don't know our current animals as well as I knew the generation before them. They know me and accept me grudgingly because they've seen me with my dad, but I don't think any of them would let me near a calf. I was rather glad of this unfamiliarity yesterday as I was mucking out, some of the animals were steers destined for market within the next few weeks.
    I am probably too sentimental about all this but I guess it's the way I'm built. I should be a vegetarian, but don't have the guts.
    Elsewhere this morning I harvested some of the apples that will make this year's cider. It's going to be a good pressing.

Part of the bloke departs

    Our oven died this evening. My wife nearly cried. What happened? An electronic component fried itself in the power supply and filled our flat with the unmistakable aroma of burned circuitry. It turned out we'd neglected one of the air intakes on the back of the machine and it had become clogged with dust over the couple of years since we last moved it, this might have contributed to the unit's demise.
     I am an electronic engineer by training. Not too long ago I'd have had the back off the unit in no time and there is a good chance that I might have been able to fix it. I have the skills, even if I don't use them for a living any more. Tonight I recognised that there was a good chance that if I tried to repair it we'd be left with yet another project, so we pointed this web browser at Argos and reserved a replacement oven for pickup tomorrow afternoon.
     I can't help thinking that yet another piece of the me that used to be has just departed. Tinkering with machines used to be almost what defined me, yet here I am throwing in the towel at the first tendril of smoke. There is still a chance I'll take a look to see what failed, but by then a new oven will be in place. Part of me feels as though it is missing.
    The new oven is a direct replacement from the same manufacturer for the one that failed. If you are looking for a combination microwave and fan oven then I can heartily recommend a Panasonic inverter oven. Just because ours died after six years doesn't mean they aren't damn good pieces of kit if you clean their air intake!

Guilt

    There's plenty to feel guilty about, in this game. If you spend a large proportion of your life living some kind of lie, even if it takes you a long time to understand the true nature of the lie you are bound to have executed some deception along the way. And if you're built like I am, guilt inevitably follows deception if the deceived are people you care about.
     Guilt about the effect you have on those around you, guilt for things you did years ago. Guilt about stupid things you did in front of friends, guilt about that recurring daydream where upon having a referral to the GIC you just go for it. Guilt for feeling guilty about all of the above and more.
    My mother tells me feeling guilty like this is a female response. I think that's a genuine reaction, she's not saying that to try to make me feel better. She's a retired teacher and she has that annoying habit teachers have of making every conversation a lesson.
     I don't spend my days looking for evidence of female traits or mannerisms in myself, but if I did this wouldn't be one I'd choose for myself.
    My wife tells me to stop feeling guilty, forget the past or the future and live for each day. Good advice, but I don't find it that easy. Does anyone?

Busy in a good way

    It feels strange to be sitting down in front of the Blogger writing screen after such a gap. Only a few days in reality, it seems like forever. It's not that I've had nothing to say, it's just that I've not had the time to say it. It's been a busy week.
    The job's turning out well. A lot of my colleagues are female so the contrast could not be greater with my previous employer. And without the stress from an annoying commute and the office atmosphere I'm feeling a lot better too. I looked in the mirror the other day and saw the whites of my eyes. Not bloodshot, for the first time in nearly a year.
     Last weekend brought little opportunity to sit down either. The support group meeting on Saturday was followed by a motorcycle rideout on Sunday. Saturday evening saw a new frontier for me, I drove home in girl mode with my wife. Though I got changed at my friend Dawn's house, her comfort zone has not previously been relaxed enough for us to do this. In reality driving a car for an hour in the dark is just as unexciting in girl mode as it is in bloke mode, but that's not the point, it was a step removed from our usual safe space. If anyone noticed the extra-large girl who parked up in Dawn's road that evening I hope they'd have seen her confidently making her way, I certainly felt natural and in control rather than nervous.
    Then on Sunday, a rideout with a difference. By coincidence on the same weekend as the support group, five t-girls on bikes, two genetic girl pillions and one t-girl in an insanely fast car thrashing their way round the Berkshire and Wiltshire Downs. At the end of a perfect day we spent an hour just sitting in the sun near the Uffington White Horse gazing out across the Vale of the White Horse, perfect atmospheric conditions meaning we could see five counties.
    As all's going so well it seems unfortunate that I report I'm still feeling the pangs of GD. In fact I'm feeling more of the girl about me than ever just as I write this, even though without the extra stress I've had in previous months it's a lot more bearable than it has been. I can handle being girl-brained just at the moment if the rest of my life is in order. A surprising conclusion is that there is a positive side to not being able to shake the GD, it helps lay to rest that lingering fear that all this might be some kind of delusion. A crazy thing to worry about, but everything's crazy in this game isn't it.

A glimmer of hope

    Waking up having fallen asleep in the daytime is a particularly stale feeling. When my wife and I arrived home a few hours ago we sat down on the sofa and were both so tired we were well away, fast asleep before we realised it. We had just returned from my second appointment at our local hospital with the psychologist who is the first port of call for transgendered people in this part of the world.
    I first saw him back in May. Back then he listened sympathetically, but had to admit there wasn't much he could do for someone in my non-transitioning position. He was happy to give me a diagnosis to cover my arse with respect to my work, but beyond that his message amounted to not much more than "Come back when you've started to get worse", about which I probably wasn't as charitable in my post-appointment reaction as I should have been. When the letter confirming the diagnosis arrived as requested though, he asked me to book a repeat appointment and for me to bring my wife with me, he wanted to see her side of the picture. I think he's more used to people whose path is very much to go forward rather than to stay where they are.
    So this afternoon we found ourselves in an impressively dismal waiting room. Continuing my survey of NHS magazine choices: a great pile of the Sunday Times magazine, another pile of the Waitrose (UK supermarket chain) in-house food magazine, an out-of-date copy of the Daily Mail (rabid headline decrying the justice system for not spotting criminals before birth) and the hospital trust's own in-house PR magazine. Inspiring stuff.
    It's not easy to sit next to the person you really care about and listen to her detailing the strain your own condition is putting on her. I have had people congratulate me on my good fortune to have an accepting spouse when so many leave, however the truth is not quite what the word "accepting" might lead you to believe. "Accepting" might suggest that she's fine with all this when the truth is closer to "tolerant" and she's certainly had a toll taken on her by everything. So this afternoon's appointment was a no-holds-barred exposé of a transgendered marriage, and it was pretty strong stuff from where I was sitting. Which is good, being able to talk about this, and especially being able to do so in front of a professional, is one of the things that is enabling us to stay together.
    My question at the end, "What can be done for people in our position?" was one to which I didn't expect much of an answer. But having now seen our situation from both viewpoints he at least could appreciate that while the standard NHS "GIC for RLE, hormones and eventual GRS" path had nothing to offer us we could really use something more than the "Come back when you've gone potty" I came away with last time. So he's going to consult with the colleague who is his liason at the GIC to see if there is anything further that can be done for someone in my position. Which can't mean much more than further talking therapies, counselling and the like, but is better than nothing and at least offers some hope.
    After the drama of the last couple of weeks, a work flood crisis for my wife, all my new job worries and the emotional load for both of us in dealing with the issues confronted in my T-Central piece, I guess it's not surprising we were both so tired. We made our way to our neighbourhood café for a restorative meal and a bout of people-watching among the Friday evening revellers. A good way to end what turned out to be a far more positive day than we expected.

Hit the buffers

    I guess it had to come after so much happening in such a short time. I've hit the buffers, I need a rest, my creative fire has been all but extinguished. Code has not flowed easily from my keyboard, a couple of promising blog posts have languished half-written in the Blogger back-end, and I need to get some serious sleep.
    In a short while I'll be launching into the madness of a British trunk road at rush-hour, I think I'll make a detour on my way home to pick up some comfort food. I feel as if I've earned it. I've come a hell of a long way in the last couple of weeks.

Lament for a lost friendship

    A school is often not the happiest of environments for anyone who is a bit different from the norm. Children are free from the social niceties, rules, checks and balances with which adults police themselves and they have little thought or care for the effects of their actions on others so they are ruthless in their treatment of those who do not fit in.
    At my school, I did not fit in. My background was not the same as that of my classmates, my interests were not the same as theirs, I was bigger than all of them yet completely useless at and therefore uninterested in their sports which really annoyed them, and though I didn't fully understand it at the time my brain didn't come from the same parts bin as theirs. As a result I was bullied and marginalised, and responded by becoming a troubled, aggressive and angry teenager.
    I was fortunate enough to make three really good friends back then though. One of them I'm still in touch with from the other side of the world, one of them slowly drifted away and the other, well he disappeared abruptly in a way that has vexed me ever since.
    J was always the very quiet kid, very clever, never put a foot wrong and never in trouble. The opposite of me then. We found ourselves thrust together in those dreadful activities dreamed up by PE teachers for non sporty kids that are supposed to foster an interest in sport but don't, and discovered in each other a surprising amount in common. We were both car nuts, we both really appreciated the natural world and we both enjoyed exploring our city's byways. Amazingly, a pair for whom school cross-country running became a release rather than a chore!
    Also, surprisingly he was the first bloke I ever met who was a committed feminist. Now since then I've met blokes who've professed feminist views as a means to pull the birds, but in J's case he meant it, and since he was as bookish as I was technical he'd done all the background reading to support it. Like me he came from a family of powerful women so none of this was foreign to me, something that surprised him because back then my politics differed significantly from their current direction.
    I stayed in touch with J through university, we hung out together in our holidays as young blokes do, wasted far too much money on bar-billiards as I recall. At the time I'd have described him as my best friend, he was certainly the friend I'd known the longest.
    Then, about a year after we'd both graduated and were earning our first pittances in the real world,  J's mother was found to have cancer. There followed another year of treatments and hospitals, radiation and chemotherapy, but sadly she passed away. And abruptly J disappeared from my life. He was never in, my answer phone messages were never returned, I never saw him again. I honestly do not know what happened.
    In the fifteen years since then I have gone through various stages of worry and guilt over his termination of our friendship. Did I call enough, should I have kept trying? Was he somehow wondering where I'd got to? Had I done something wrong? Was it something I said? Then a few years ago I realised this: He never called me, not the other way round. So for some reason, probably personal to his grief for his mother, he decided he needed to be alone and cut himself off. I still can't release myself from a tinge of guilt that somehow I must have let him down, but at least now I realise it was a two-way street. I know his father didn't approve of me as a teenager, maybe that had something to do with it. Great, I always wanted to be the Kid Your Parents Warned You Against!
    More recently I've wondered whether J and I had more in common than we realised and whether he too was struggling with gender issues. Nothing to back it up, after all I was as deep in the closet as it's possible to be in my teens and twenties, but I've never since found quite the same connection with a friend and as a teenager I certainly never knew anyone else whose interests diverged in the same way as mine from the usual male teenage obsessions.
    I'd like to think one day we'll bump in to each other unexpectedly and renew our acquaintance. I don't do school alumni get-togethers because most of the people I'd meet would be most likely to give me a burning desire to slap them so I've no idea even what he's doing these days, but the profession he works in means he might be around my city from time to time. It's still pretty unlikely though.
    I guess this post strays away from my usual fare of large-and-loud writings on gender variance, old cars and very large ladies shoes. But something reminded me of J yesterday evening for the first time in a while and I've spent the day musing about it all and still trying to make some sense. So you, dear reader, have become my dumping ground for the resulting page of navel-gazing. Don't worry, the Rusty Old Wreck and the Turbocharged Rollerskate will return in due course.