5 posts tagged “mtf”

Other than a rough day on Friday, September 2008 was arguably one of the best months of my life.  I didn't realize the impact of worrying about my transition, but now that I'm not feeling as nervous anymore I find that I just feel completely free.  I think that my outlook on life in general has been more or less right where I want it, especially now that almost everyone I know has seen Michelle by now.  I feel like it's a waste to just keep posting "oh hey, I'm really happy!" all the time, so this post is going to be about some observations/antecdotes from the last month.

In September:
(1)  I moved to a new apartment in a new neighborhood, with a roommate I get along with and much reduced rent.
(2)  I transitioned at work and was met with nothing but support from pretty much everyone.
(3)  We hired a new desktop support technician at work, which should greatly lower my work stress.
(4)  With a haircut and expanded wardrobe, I haven't been concerned with passing as female at all.  It feels more like a given at this point.
(5)  My legal name change finally went through!
(6)  I have money again.  Huge sigh of relief, there.
(7)  New seasons on television of House, Survivor, the Office, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and the Amazing Race.
(8)  I have been following politics.  Not so much because I care about changing the country (because I accept that I can't change very much), but because I think it's really fascinating from a sociology point of view.
(9)  Red Sox in the postseason!  They're 2-1 in the seventh as I write this.
(10)  Phish is playing a reunion show in March!  Even though I saw them once back in 1995, it wasn't until 2004 - weeks after they broke up - that I discovered how amazing their live shows are through the power of the internet.  They've been my favorite band for years, so I'm going to put a lot of effort in getting tickets and organzing a trip to VA next year.

Nice month!  In other news...

I'm still really appreciative that I can now shop for clothes without fear of how I'm perceived.  I still really enjoy the process of shopping, and I love seeing how I look when I try on different clothes.  However, shopping is slowly moving from the "luxury" column to the "necessity" one.  I used to look really forward to making the male > female switch when I got home form work and then going shopping and looking for clothes - lately, I've just been really tired after work and in the mood to relax.

Shopping is a lot harder now, too.  What I wear is under a lot more scrutiny as a female, which can be stressful since I have historically been oversensitive to criticism.  I'm also fighting the fact that I'm still discovering exactly what sizes/shapes/colors look best on me - shoes and pants in particular have been a nightmare to fit correctly.  I do feel like I'm slowly figuring it all out and developing a 'look' for myself, so I suppose all I can do is stay positive and be thankful that I've gotten this far.  I want to pierce my ears, but I'm admittedly nervous about it.  If someone wants to volunteer to drag me in and make sure I don't chicken out (as I've done a few times now), they're more than welcome to!

The amount of name/pronoun slip-ups at work has gone way down.  On Friday, I think I noticed something around 15-20 (which, as was probably evident from my last post, affected me a lot more than I wish it would) - I don't think I've heard more than 5 in a day this week.  Honestly, I put a lot of stock in other peoples' opinions of me - admittedly, at times, to a fault - and it's been a huge mental and emotional boost to have people seeing me as female.  Also, this paragraph is dedicated to Christina Servideo, who has been great not only with adjusting how she addresses me, but making sure that others don't slip up either :)

One last thing: a lot of my friends have been going through tough times recently.  In a lot of cases, I do my best to listen as best I can and give advice where I see fit, but it's frustrating not being able to help people.  All I can do is say that I'm always willing to lend an ear or a hand if people want, and that if you're my friend I wish you the best!

I've been on my hormone regiment (that I will be on for the rest of my life) for 10 days now.  For four months I sat around impatient waiting to start it; now that I have, I am sitting around impatiently waiting for notiable effects.  My sex drive is noticably lowered, which I suppose makes sense given that the Spironolactone is there strictly to kill of my testasterone production.  There was a major mood swing at work (happy Tuesday, depressed beyond belief on Wednesday, happy again on Thursday), but I can't really tell how much that was affected by hormones as opposed to my job.

In other news, I came to the realization somewhat recently that perhaps I've been handling the transitioning process wrong.  There was a BATs meeting perhaps a month ago where I explained that I more or less ended an old blog to restart this one from a female perspective.  I was asked why I ended the old one as opposed to just modifying how I write there - was this because I felt the need to end my life as [male] in order to be accepted as Michelle?  I think the problem is that I had never really considered the ramifactions of this.

On one hand, I've been who I am my entire life, and there are facets of my personality that I like that are decidedly masculine.  On the other,  I use the term "presenting female" all the time in this LJ - I do this because there obviously has been some sort of need to differentiate the two.  In the past, I couldn't even go into the woman's section of a clothing store because I had this huge irrational fear of being seen as a male that didn't belong there.  In other words, the idea of being seen as a "guy playing a game of pretend" was a huge fear, and I think I might have let that rule me without considering that it's not a big deal in the first place.  I am fully of the belief that the need to separate my male self and my female self in the past has caused me problems.

One issue is that I had never really considered how slow the hormonal changes would be.  Yes, I knew about them, but I didn't really process how this would affect my transition.  I have always had the plan of "eventually, I will look more female than male, and everything will fit into place".  That, in and of itself, isn't going to work.  My goal, starting yesterday when I finally sat down and thought about this, is to slowly "merge" [male] and Michelle into...well, into me.  I haven't been making nearly the effort in that regard as I should have, and I'm going to do so more.

I have already started trying to apply some makeup/do my hair right even when not going out of the way to "present female".  Changing my voice is tough, but it's an ongoing process to make my female one (a) better and (b) my default voice.  When the weather changes and I no longer wear a coat with 12 pockets I plan to switch over to purses for good.  All in all, I guess the goal isn't to stop presenting female, but rather to make it so that I'm not totally reliant on doing so to be seen in that way.

Other than that, not much to report.  I have been mostly staying at home and keeping myself busy with forms of mindless entertainment, but I blame that on the New England weather more than anything else.  After a failed flirtation with the bass guitar sometime around this time last year, I borrowed a keyboard from Joel and have been enjoying re-teaching myself piano.  There has been a sometimes-losing battle with keeping the apartment clean.  Work is like my own little Big Brother house - ups, downs, and a lot of crazy people.  I haven't really been as social with people as I'd like, so that's something to work on.

And that, in a nutshell, is how a bill becomes a law.

BATs, the support group at MIT that I go to, is pretty cool.  When I first started going there, I was afraid that I wouldn't have enough in common with the people there to warrant me coming back.  As I've started returning more (and contributing more to the general conversation), I'm finally starting to have that elusive place where I feel 100% being myself.  Even though I skipped a few meetings before the last two (for reasons that were mostly rationalizations of my not wanting to take the effort/risk to present female that night), they're slowly becoming something that I legitimately look forward to each other week.  I had a meeting tonight, which gave me a reason to present for the first time since before Thanksgiving, and I've come home feeling rather confident and positive in general.

When I got home from the meeting tonight, I grew hungrier and realized that there was nothing really viable as a dinner option. I decided to order food from Wing It, the not-so-great-but-hey-they-deliver option in my area.  On the phone, they asked for my name, and I gave them "Michelle".  I stayed dressed, and answered the door when the guy arrived.  Lo and behold - this guy has certainly delivered to me before, probably remembers me because I order the same thing each time and tip a ton, and almost certainly was expecting [male] to answer.  He seemed visibly surprised when I answered the door, but any reservations that he had vanished when I gave him $15 on a $10 order.

Not a huge deal on paper, but it's the first time that I let a stranger that would likely know me as male see me as female.  I live next door to a number of businesses whose owners likely recognize me, and I think it will take all of them (with the exception of the laundromat guy, who I assume must have an inkling) by surprise.  I mentioned at BATs the long-standing analogy I've used of transitioning being like a role-playing game - it's a process of doing something small, using it to level up (gain confidence), and then using that confidence to do more challenging things.  Tonight's "dungeon" was "surprise-coming-out-to-strangers", and despite a feeling of nervous tension between the call and his arrival, everything went fine.

That's all for now!  I swear I will actually make a second attempt to add people to my facebook sometime soon.

Today was really reassuring.  Presenting as Michelle, I met up with my friend Lisa in the afternoon, and we did some 'girly' things (specifically - shopping, makeup advice, cooking) followed by meeting up with other friends Jeremy and Jade for some DDR at MIT.  It was fun!  In addition, some trans- milestones:

- it has been the longest amount of time I've ever spent dressed.  Usually, I'll present female either for a purpose (therapy meeting, BATs meeting, take a walk) or to relax, and then change back when I need to go out.  Today, I have been Michelle from waking up until...well, now.

- it was the most I've interacted with strangers while dressed.  I bought a coffee from Dunkin' Donuts, made a purchase at Garment District, made a purchase downstairs at Dollar-a-Pound, talked to a stranger shopping for clothes in the $1/lb heap, talked to a mother who was helping her kid learn DDR, and no one reacted strangely at all.  I've been preparing worst case scenarios in my head for years of people finding out that I'm transgendered and making a huge deal of it, and I'm realizing more and more that there's really nothing to worry about out there.

Seriously, not a single person reacted strangely at all.  At the mall, I had gotten at least two stop-and-stares.  I'm sure the fact that I was around other people helped me be less conspicuous, but still!

- it was the first time I had ever gone out with friends while dressed.  Just like I worry that strangers will read me and make a big deal, I'm terrified of putting my friends through that.  I'm still at the point where I feel like I should let people know ahead of time that I'm going to be presenting female because I don't want to expose them to undue embarrassment.  At the same time, that mentality makes me feel like I'm doing something wrong, and I shouldn't feel that way.

- my mother called while I was at Tello's (where I met up with Lisa).  I was presenting female, so I answered the phone with my best female voice.  My mom didn't even recognize me!  She couldn't believe that it wasn't a (different) female.  While I'm sure I wasn't able to keep my voice to a perfect level at all times, that at least made me feel like it can be done.

- it was the first time I went out female with the intent to socialize.  Granted, 'socialization' was just DDRing at an arcade at a nerd college, but I figure it's a good place to get started :)  It was interesting trying to play DDR (that's Dance Dance Revolution for those not in the know) while wearing false breasts - I found myself trying to move less to avoid 'bouncing' (or worse, 'sliding', since I use medical adhesive to keep them on, and sweat can mess that up).

I think the main difference between me 24 hours ago and me right now is that I don't really feel as embarrassed with my looks.  Granted, I'm nowhere near as unreadably-female as I would like to eventually look, but I feel like progress is certainly being made.  Tomorrow is my first proper laser hair removal appointment, so that is likely what tomorrow's post will be about.

First post!

My name is Michelle, and I am a 27-year-old living on my own near Boston.  I fix computers for a living and enjoy helping others.  I enjoy reality television, the Boston Red Sox, the band Phish, games of all sorts, and spending time with friends and friendly people.  I consider myself an optimist, hate conflict, and have been told that I'm more of an idealist than a realist.  I can be overly critical on myself and oversensitive at times.  I am (gasp!) attracted to people of both genders.  Most people tell me that I'm somewhat unique, and I admit that I am sometimes ruled by quirky behaviors.  Also of note:  I am a pre-operative male-to-female (MtF) transgendered woman, who is at the beginning stages of her transition.

I have been a (decreasingly-) faithful blogger for the last six years, and have found myself recording less and less of my thoughts as the last few months have passed.  Why am I attempting to restart something that I had clearly lost passion for?

1. It wasn't until May of this year, when I started therapy and came out to my family, that I was ever really comfortable admitting and talking about my transexuality to other people.  Frankly, I still find it tough to bring up in conversation with others, so in addition to storing my thoughts, I'm hoping that I can use this journal as a medium with which to open myself to others.  I believe that blogs are convenient because I am forcing no one to read anything: I have always had a fear that people don't want to hear about this stuff - as anyone that exchanges emails with me can attest, I tend to write a lot at once, and so now it is completely up to people if they want to read this or not.

2.  In the last couple of months, I have been slipping into a really dangerous behavior pattern characterized by laziness and procrastination.  I have spent a lot of time sitting around, spending afternoons lazing about/playing games/watching TV and not accomplishing anything.  The fact is, by coming out as transgendered and allowing myself to 'be' Michelle, I am now free to express emotions that I've spent my entire life trying to hide.  Through the act of recording these feelings, I feel that I am creating something that I will look back at years from now and be glad that I did.

3.  It's not easy to truly be thought of as a female when you're still stuck in a male's body.  It is going to be a few months before I can start hormones, and I am still painfully aware that most people that I come into contact with mentally file me in the 'male' section when they think of me.  I am hoping that if I can be completely open with my thoughts and no longer hide how I feel, that people will have an easier time seeing me the way that I would like to be seen.

To the people reading this: if you have any questions that you would like me to field about myself, you're more than welcome to!  If you are going to comment, all I ask is that you keep it semi-mature (since my family, parents, selected co-workers, and therapist will all be reading this), and to please keep references to my male self (including my given name, as I don't want this associated with it, and I don't want it associated with this) off of this journal.  
The one rule that I'm trying to impose on myself is to update this semi-regularly, and to not feel like I need to write too much on any one given entry.  As such, that is the end of the first post in this journal, and I trust there will be plenty more where this came from.