4 posts tagged “stress”

11 days without an update?  Geez.

There was actually an update that I wrote some 5 days ago, about how I have been having incredibly swingy ups and downs as of late.  It focused mostly on the low notes, and analyzing what factors have been making me feel bad in the last few weeks.  I wrote up a few pages, couldn't think of how to end it, and then as time went on, eventually just deleted it.  Unfortunately, it's almost a week later and I'm still feeling the same way, so it's time to re-gather those thoughts.

My life has been full of stress lately.  I'm simutaneously trying to balance [a] preparing to transition full-time, [b] moving to a new apartment on the busiest moving day of the year, and [c] not really having any spending money (but spending money anyways).  I'm just sick of living alone, because I do nothing but sit around and harp on all that other stuff.  I'll have days where I'm totally happy with how my body is looking followed by days where I don't want to be seen by anyone because I feel disgusting.

I wrote out a list of stuff that I need to do over the span of the next two weeks.  It was split into four columns: "Name Changes" (bills and documents and stuff);  "Appearance/Shopping Stuff", "Move-Related Stuff", and "Other".  Each list had roughly 10 bullets, with "Appearance/Shopping" clocking in as the only list whose tasks will be fun.  Of course, in typical Michelle fashion, I spent the weekend handling stuff from that particular list (specifically: shopping and exercising, with sporadic cleaning).

I think the thing that has been getting me down the most is waiting.  I went against my therapist's advise and put in a month period between my coming out at work and actually presenting female, mostly because I wanted time to ensure that everyone was comfortable with the change.  I don't know why I thought it would take so long - two or three days after I came out it was obvious that people are as ready for it as they're going to be.  I feel like I sent a mixed message by declaring "I am a woman" and then coming back to work presenting male for a month.  If any transgendered people who are transitioning now are reading this, don't repeat my mistake!

So in a week or two I should have money coming in, an improved living situation, and I will finally be full-time.  When that happens I can stop worrying and start living.  Honestly, it's going to be awesome.  Until then, I'm just trying to motivate myself to tackle the list so that I can actually enjoy a little bit of my week off when September comes.

I'll end the post with one last tangent: I asked a co-worker to describe me in three words.  He came up with "Oversensitive", "Easily-Influenced", "Wuss".  Guilty on all three counts!  I prefer to think of these traits as "Empathetic", "Open-Minded", and "Un-masculine", but to each their own. :)

The meeting on Tuesday with Cathi (HR Director) and Denise (of the IFGE) went reasonably well.  Beyond being happy that my company is willing to go this far with me, it was nice to meet face-to-face and talk with someone who has gone through what I'll be going through in the next couple of (weeks? months?).  Her best advice that I took from the meeting is to frame my coming out in a positive manner (like someone announcing a pregnancy) - ultimately, I'm doing this because it will make the rest of my life happy, and that is the point that I should be getting across.  Because more and more people at my job are starting to find out, Cathi and Denise seem to think that it will be worth getting the ball rolling on my coming out and doing it sooner than later.  Denise told me - and I can certainly see this being true for me - that if I wait for the moment where I'm 100% confident, I'll be waiting an awfully long time because there will always be uncertainties.  I asked them for a week to think about it, and will be meeting with Cathi tomorrow.

It was certainly a tough week - the idea of how I'm going to come out (and subsequently start presenting full-time) has been weighing on me.  I started thinking about what specific things are still making me uncomfortable with going full-time, and managed this list:

- Breast growth: while I certainly have breasts, they are quite small and reasonably invisible unless I wear a tight top (which I hate doing, as there is still weight in my belly that I would like to shed).
- Voice: I have found that, when presenting female, I am reasonably comfortable keeping my voice in a range between 'androgynous' and 'female'.  When not presenting female (male at work, or androgynously), I find it hard to keep my voice in the range that I want.
- Legal documents: I need to get the ball rolling on changing my legal name and gender.  This includes a name change, followed with updating my social security card, birth certificate, driver's license, passport, credit cards, bank account, and probably a million other things.
- Facial hair:  I started going back to hair removal appointments last week, which is good.  However, I've noticed that since getting zapped, the facial hair above my lip simply will not go away, even after I shave it.  I'm not going to hinge my coming out on this alone, but it is a big deal and I definitely want further progress on my face before making the change.
- Comfort being female: to be honest, I have very few friends/family with whom I am comfortable just being female around.  This mostly falls on me, because I get ridiculously nervous and self-conscious around friends, mostly because I start thinking about how I'm failing on all the counts mentioned above.  However, I think it makes sense to fit in amongst my friends and family before doing it professionally.
- Wardrobe: while I have a lot of female clothes, much of my collection has been purchased (a) before I was brave enough to try things before buying them, (b) in a rush while I was still paranoid of being seen shopping for womens' clothes, or (c) from a clearance rack, thrift shop, or dollar-a-pound pile.  I'm still trying to figure out my sense of style.  This is easily the funnest of the issues on this list to attempt to correct :)

Tomorrow is another meeting with Cathi where I explain what I've been thinking about.  I'm not going to try and hold out for some magical moment where I'm no longer nervous about this, but I am going to wait until I've made more progress with my transition.  I have some plans over the summer to spend extended amounts of time as female, including a possible trip to Provincetown, and so I'm going to let that be the next thing to focus on.  I still might come out to the company and just wait a few more months after telling people to go full-time, but I have been warned that this will confuse people.  So I suppose I will just wait a few months before taking any public action - rumors might start to fly about me, but that isn't anything I can't deal with as it happens.

It's been awhile, blog!  I still have a bunch of other stuff I want to write about, as well as a bunch of people that I was hoping to send emails to, but they will have to wait until tomorrow because I'm dead tired.  My goal for this week is to spend at least four nights (a) presenting female and (b) leaving the house and going somewhere.  I need to get more summer clothes to make this goal realistic, though :)

G'nite, all!

I had a brief but nice conversation with my co-worker Christina (if you're reading this, hello!) today about my being transgendered.   She asked me if I had given any thought to how I'm going to come out at work.  The honest truth is that I'm kind of terrified about it.  We both agree that I should be fine in terms of the company stance, since we're all about Diversity.  At my last BATs meeting I met some people from the Massachusetts Transgeneder Political Coalition who have offered to, at some point, call my HR department and ask them direct questions like "what would you do if someone came out trans?" so that I can at least be prepared for what to expect.

The thing that I'm much more afraid of is the people within the company.  I can't imagine that there wouldn't be people who, be it overtly or covertly, would have an issue with my transitioning.  Will the women that have known me as male for ~2 years have an issue seeing me in the ladies room?  Will there be some random former friend that just has a problem with queer behavior?  I already concede that there will probably be a lot of whispering about me behind my back, which I'm just going to have to learn to take. 

My original plan when I decided to transition was to grind out appearing male until I can go full-time female, and then to up and move somewhere to start over.  There is still a lot of allure to this, although I certainly don't feel like I'm ready yet.  I'm beginning to lose faith that I'm going to be able to stay at my company for too much longer for reasons completely unrelated to transitioning - the only problem is that if I were to leave now, I would have no idea what to do with myself.  I don't want to start another job as male and worry about all of this, but I'm scared shitless to interview at a company as female, especially given that I haven't started worrying about changing my legal documents yet.

Sometimes I get overwhelmed with the amount of things I have to do/money I have to pay/stuff that I have to be conscious of, and it completely stresses me out.  Therapy, laser hair removal, endo appointments, BATs meetings, trying to change my voice, trying to change my demeanor, trying to change my name/pronoun from a social standpoint, trying to change my name/pronoun from a legal standpoint...augh.  It came up today in my conversation at work today that I've cried at work three times since starting hormones three months ago - to be honest, on some weird level it makes me feel like the hormones are affecting me, and I like that, even if it is inconvenient. 

In other quick news:  the trip back to CT this weekend was amazing, and if I had to trudge through another Friday morning/afternoon to get there I'd do it again in a heartbeat.  Most of the Barron's crew made it out, along with some out-of-state magic players that I haven't seen in years.  I have heard rumors that we're going to try to make it a semi-regular thing, because we do all really enjoy each other's company.  It's funny that despite the whole group being male, I find myself certain my transitioning it won't be an issue.  I'm kind of hoping that it just circulates around the rumor mill so that no one is surprised, and that if people have questions they'll ask me so that at least no one is weirded out.

Also!  My brother and his wife had their third child - a healthy boy named Carter [last name removed].  I'll be honest - I was hoping it'd be a girl, but either way I'm excited to have a (probably second, since his brother is two years old) nephew that will grow up knowing me as his aunt.  Kevin, Tracy, if you are reading this, congratulations!

Time for bed~

...and still no breasts!

Seriously, though.  The changes from 3 weeks of hormones have been pretty subtle so far.  I don't know if it's smoother skin or shifting body fat or what, but nowadays I look at myself in the mirror and like what I see.  I think I definitely have a somewhat androgynous look to me, which is a fine start.  And while the 'no breasts' thing is the truth, there is definitely swelling in that general area.  From a non-physical standpoint, the only differences I've seen are really slight emotional swings and significantly less thoughts of a sexual nature.

I haven't really been going out presenting female much lately.  If it's something that I feel I should specifically make the effort to do so for (BATs, therapy, shopping, socializing with certain friends), I will, but otherwise I'm just being me and letting the cards fall where they will.  I had been so concerned with how I would get other people to switch my name/pronoun/(how they see me), but I have realized that it will all sort itself out in the end.  According to people at BATs, for roughly six months it should be easy to pose as male, but then it will start to require effort.  At some point I will go full-time, and that's when I'll bother letting the name/pronoun thing stress me out.  I have always kept a philosophy of not worrying about things needlessly, and this should be no exception.

I still wake up some mornings and just have it totally hit me:  I'm actually changing my gender.  It's so damned daunting!  I still probably have some crazy amount of laser hair removal, which, while painful, is probably nowhere near as bad as sexual reassignment surgery.  For the first time in my life, I have a driver's license, birth certificate, and social security card - and I'm going to work on getting the names/genders changed on all of them.  If I try and attempt a relationship, I'm going to have to figure out if I tell the other person that I'm transgendered (or risk them dumping me/beating me up in a homophobic rage).  There's no doubt in my head that I want this, but there are days I just get really stressed about it.

In other news, my life has been pretty dull lately.  I'm trying my best to be good and not spend money, so I'm pretty much just sitting around the apartment/hanging out at friends' houses.  I'm getting over being sick, which has been pretty terrible.  I've started looking around at new jobs - there seems to be a ton of demand for Desktop Support people right now, so I figure there's no harm in applying and trying to get some more money.  My plan is, should I score an interview, to fully disclose that I'm transgendered to any HR people that I interview with so that I can at least be assured of corporate nondiscrimination.  I started playing Dance Dance Revolution again in an attempt to get in better shape.  I've been putting off the Facebook updating for months now, but I swear that's this weekend's project!