An unexpected outing...

Let me ask you this: how many times has someone told you a secret and followed it up with, “you mustn’t tell anyone else” or “please don’t tell anyone” or “I’m telling you this but only between these four walls”?  I’m guessing lots of times.  As a community, we have a higher capability than most to keep secrets.  As well as my own, lots of people have shared things with me that they wouldn’t tell anyone else.

My experience tells me that asking someone not to pass on your secret often has the opposite effect.  Especially when its about our particular situations.  I mean, come on, how juicy is our secret?  In my case that I’m an ordinary, straight laced guy who works hard, is seemingly very normal and relatively successful.  But lurking underneath is a tortured transgendered bi-sexual who struggles with their gender and sexuality every day, and has been known to go out in public wearing a skirt etc.  I’m not being funny, but seriously, that is far better than many of the very mundane secrets that get shared with me.

My point is that it's the kind of secret that some people are going to find hard to keep.  And that telling someone they can know my secret but that they can’t tell anyone is a recipe for disaster.  I’m sure you know the feeling when you have trusted someone with a secret and that they have let you down.  You feel utterly betrayed.  Hurt.  Offended.  Upset. Numb.  All those words and probably more.  Don’t get me wrong in all of this, I think I should be able to share a confidence and it not go any further, but I’m also realistic about human nature.

So as a result, I have a policy.  Its not written down or formalised or anything, but its a policy all the same.  When I let people in on my big secret, I don’t ask them to keep it secret.  That perhaps sounds bizarre, but it isn’t really.  At this stage in my journey, I choose to tell people who I know care about me and who have my best interests at heart.  When I out myself to them I say something like, “Clearly, I’m telling you this because I trust you and I want you to know that if there is anyone that you feel you really need to tell, then I understand that and I don’t mind.”

Most people’s responses to that are looks of horror.  They say that they wouldn’t want to and that it isn’t their news to tell etc and I know that some won’t pass it on.  Often, particularly with my male friends, they say that they want to tell their partner and I don’t have a problem with that at all.  In all the time I’ve been doing this I think I have only twice named specific people I would rather weren’t told.  To be honest, even those were a while ago and I’m not sure I’d be bothered about them knowing any more.

What’s really interesting is the way 'the policy' makes me feel.  I care about the person I’m telling and the effect that the news will have on them.  We all know people who have been badly affected by finding out the news that we are transgendered.  But its me I have to live with, not them.  By not restricting people and showing that I trust them, I have found that on the few occasions that someone has told other people and passed my secret on, I’ve been really pleased and thought, “actually, I would have told that person too, I’m really happy they did that.”  But it also leaves me not worrying whether someone is going to betray me and that if they do tell someone, they are not going behind my back.  99% of the time they tell me who they've told because they know I'm unlikely to be upset about it.

Long preamble, but assuming you are still with me, the game changed this week.  Someone who has my secret passed it on to someone I wouldn’t have told myself.  Its really the first time that has happened and I have to say that initially I wasn’t completely sure about it.

Its interesting but recently, a few people at the edges of my friendship circles have been asking the people who are close to me whether I’m gay.  I’m not sure why, I act and behave the same as ever, nothing is really changed day-to-day but it has happened a few times.  So in fairness to my friend who gave away the secret, she was directly asked the question, “Is he gay?”.  The person who asked is someone she trusts, so it works in terms of my policy, and I don't think he'll spread my secret.  I know him too a little, but not well.

But in writing all of this, I realise what the problem really is - it's the first time (that I am aware of) where I have lost control of the message.  I could write you a list of people who know my secret and how they found out and how I gave permission for them to know.  The person who now knows my secret is the first one on a very different list.   This list is of the people who have found out without me being able to protect myself, where I couldn’t give them my story, my way, with my controlled version.

It’s left me feeling like I’ve entered a new phase that I really don’t know how to navigate yet.

Weird, or wonderful?

Up until 2 years ago today my relationship with my camera was shaky to say the least.  There were a couple of classic photos that featured on most of my profiles.  One was a shot of me in my favourite skirt – a close up that revealed, well, a skirt.  The other photo I regularly used was a full-ish length shot with me in my denim miniskirt, pink gypsy top and a big black photoshopped box over my face.  I even cropped it carefully as it was taken at home and might have given away more than I wanted.

I was paranoid about revealing anything else, to say the least.  I was obsessed with the idea that I was going to be recognised and outed.  I was in the closet with the door locked from the inside with a pile of furniture holding the door closed and a grand piano blocking that furniture.  It was the last thing that I wanted anyone to find out about me. I’m not saying I don’t care about that at all, even now, but I also am sure that it is not the end of the world.  At some point I’m going to have to deal with people hearing about my secret whether I like it or not anyway.  Too many people know about me now. At some point it will break as gossip amongst the people who know me.  It may already be out there.

But that’s not the point.  The point is that two years ago today, the trepidation of being photographed vanished.  For the first time ever, I visited a dressing service and had some photos taken by a pro.  The first time I arrived, to be frank, I was scared witless.  I was about to completely lay it on the line and show everything about me to someone for the first time.   Could I trust them?  Would they laugh at me?  Would there be a collective gasp, followed by a ‘god, you are ugly’ comment?  I really didn’t know what to expect.

I don’t know what the view of this community is of dressing services; but that first time I went, I found a caring acceptance I had never known before.  I met people who had seen it all before and who helped me to embrace myself in a way I had never done before.  On my own, in the closet, there was a certain amount of sexualisation and fear of my girl side.  Through the eye of their camera lens they introduced me to someone I’d never met.  I met Rhiannon for the first time and despite her flawed appearance they allowed me to see a curvaceous sassy girl who didn’t want to be sexual fantasy, but instead who just wanted to be a normal woman.  One who didn’t revolve around a secretive ‘existence’, but instead wanted to find her place in the real world.

The first time I came back and posted a photo taken on my visit, face included, I held my breath.  But the feedback was so kind and uplifting that in an instant I profoundly changed.  My paranoia disappeared.  Since, I have shown my photos to countless people who know me.  They never twig that it’s me until I point it out or wait for them to guess.  They normally, very kindly, say that they would never believe that I could look so pretty. The photos capture my inner happiness of being who I really am and that is transformative of itself.

I’ve been back to the service since and they have taught me the art of make up. They helped me to see what looks good and what looks disastrous.  In the absence of girlfriends I see regularly, they provided a place of reflection where I could make decisions about what kind of person Rhiannon was to be. I’m not sure I could have found a better starting point.

Next month I go for my next appointment and I’ve been excitedly planning my outfits, working out what I need to buy, considering how I can lose a bit of weight to hopefully fit into the next size down before I go.  Honestly, I can’t wait.

But above all, and this is an unsolicited advertisement, the owners of Trans-Femme in Swindon, where I went and still go, are singularly lovely people and if you are up for that type of thing, I heartily recommend them to you.

I miss the sea

Odd place to start.  It  might seem vacuous, but it’s a theme of my life so far.  It’s always good to start with a metaphor I suppose.

The truth is I love the sea.  Sitting by it.  Staring at it.  Walking beside it.  Letting it lap against me.  Riding on it.  Smelling it.  Touching it.   Playing in it.  Swimming in it.  Feeling alive in it.

For the last 18 years, I have lived in a place where I couldn’t reach the sea easily.  In getting married and settling down, I sacrificed the thing in the world that I thought I could never live without.  Part of me went missing.  I replaced it with a happy family life and always felt I was happy, but there was always something missing.  My thoughts turned always to the sea.

Sacrificing what I really want in favour of what others want is one of the things I do best.  Its sad and I suspect I'm not alone, but its the story of my life.  Sometimes I kick myself and say that I should take control, that I should get my own way, that I should stand up for myself.  But at the end of the day, I want the people around me to be happy - even if its at the expense of my own happiness.  I'm no saint.  But whether its my wife, my kids, my friends, my boss, the people in my network, I genuinely want them to be happy.  So I try to fix it for them.  This includes sadly sometimes fixing me for them too.

This blog has already given me an insight I've never noticed about myself.  I am not the girl I want to be because I sacrifice my desire so that other people stay happy.

The question I want to explore here: can I still be Rhiannon or is it time to smile wryly and give up on another part of me.  Let it die a slow death.  To keep everyone happy with me, except me.