The Happiness Manifesto

I spent some time reading through my blogs yesterday and realised that over the last 6 months, I have become seriously miserable!  Those with a longer span of blogs will be able to see the trends in their moods even further.  But my trend is from hopeful wonderer to grumpy cow.  This is a trend that I intend to reverse, whatever happens.

Whether I am presenting as a girl or not isn't the issue.  I need to work on me.  The question is what happened to that person who until recently was actually happy and moving forward with their life?  I’m a lucky person - I have two great jobs, a wonderful family and people who care about me.  Surely that’s enough?

In the words of Captain my Captain from The Dead Poet’s Society, “Sucking the marrow out of life doesn't mean choking on the bone.”  *coughs up a big bit of bone*

So today, right now, the rot stops.  The experience of the last 6 months has led me to put on even more weight.  I really am a heifer now and would look terrible in my favourite LBD, even if I was wearing it at the moment.  I’m about as unfit as I have ever been. I’ve been quaffing more wine than I ever have before (ok, some bits aren’t as bad!).

But I want to get more out of my life.  I’d love to be healthier.  I need bit by bit to let more of Rhiannon back into my life.  Missing her makes me cranky.  I just want to enjoy myself again.  I want to laugh and I want joy to be the default setting.  I look at the world with such excitement at its many possibilities.  I have so much, why do I obsess about what I don’t have?  Its all a matter of times and seasons.

Many wise people on here have said that I can’t get rid of the girl and they are, I have found, completely right.  But I’m going to relax about it and just bit by bit work out how some of her can be there and bleed through so that I’m not a miserable wreck and that the people around me will still be around me.

I don’t know what’s brought this on, but I am filled with hope and optimism this morning.  Long may it stay.  Hope you have a great weekend...

Numbness - with the odd reprieve

When I thought about how I was feeling at the moment, several words sprang to mind.  Detached was one of them.  Like I’m looking at myself from the outside, an out of body experience if you will.  Nothing seems really real.

And then like piano falling from the sky came the word numbness and I knew that was what it was.  Numbness is a partial or total lack of sensation in a part of the body.   It’s the summation of where I think I am in my life.  I can see things wandering up to me and touching me, I can see people smiling, laughing or even being sad and unhappy, but its like its not real and I certainly can’t feel it.  Its like watching a movie in slow motion where the words are slurred and you know that its just being played for you and that you are not actually part of it.

I have some work colleagues who sometimes can draw me out of this preoccupation.  This morning was the funniest half an hour of telephone conference call I have had in a very long time.  Mostly the jokes were at my expense of course.  But both the other people on the call know about the girl in my life, are incredibly cool with it.   Some of the best comments from both them (and me) headed in Rhiannon’s direction.  Rhiannon liked that a lot.

And despite everything and being supposed to be stopping, I told another friend about me.  She was, as I expected, lovely.  One day I’ll also have the confidence to tell her that I think that she is the best-dressed woman I’ve ever seen.  She would disagree, but her taste in how to look feminine is perfect.  She really knows how to put outfits together and to play to her considerable strengths.  I’m glad she knows - I’ve wanted to tell her for a while.

So today was a day of reprieve, but I expect the numbness to return and in some ways that protective shield isn’t a bad thing.  It helps me get through the days and gets me to the moments when family and friends can take it away for a while and bring me back to life again.  Some will see that as a bad thing and perhaps they are right, but either way, I focus on the happiness of the people who get to have the boy in their life.

Odd decision

For someone doing their best not to be the girl anymore, I made a very odd decision. I told someone else about Rhiannon - and showed them a photo. Why did I do that?

I'm starting to suspect something that is probably blindingly obvious to everyone who reads this: I'm actually not doing very well at this giving up malarky. Yes, I've stopped wearing her clothes, but I still think like her and she is still there inside me. I still have no spatial awareness and can't tell my left from my right. Actually, I'm not sure that point is significant.

But the point that is important is what happened today. I've been at a conference for a few days. It is a conference that is attended by a lot of women and today they really let loose. There were pretty dresses, gorgeous shoes, great make up and more. I was supposed to feel in control and together. Instead, something shifted in me and my heart was so desperately sad. I knew that in reality I would never be one of them and I definitely wouldn't be thin and dainty, but I could have felt a skirt swishing around my knees, been wearing nice tights and enjoying walking around in heels. I just wanted to cry. And I wanted to be a confident, happy woman.

What on earth I'm going to do, I really don't know. I feel like I'm in a worse position than even where I was at square one. I hope against hope even now, but the experiment is starting to derail. The thought of giving up what I've recaptured again is just painful. But I can't block who I am anymore. It hurts too much to pretend.

I was driving tonight just willing myself not to go on a shopping spree so I could just be her again. If only for one night. But it's also probably not the answer.

Overwhelmed

Sometimes, the whole thing is overwhelming.  Exchanging my Rhiannon time for work time is starting to take its toll.   The question becomes whether it is realistic and sustainable to maintain this kind of pace indefinitely.  The answer is obvious; it’s a total “No”.  But easier said than done.  I enjoy both of the roles I’m doing, I have a favourite, but it’s the one that at the moment is not enough to pay the bills.

On a different note, I was cursing this blog the other day.  When you stop to blog, you stop to think.  Stopping to think turned out to be quite painful.  I’ve never wanted to be Rhiannon more in my life than I did in the hours following my last blog.  I didn’t do it in the end – mainly because I was too busy and as I noted before, I’m at least 100 miles from my wardrobe!    

It was an odd experience bordering on grief with sadness and loneliness mixed in – very strange.  Maybe ditching the girl isn’t going to be quite so easy after all?

I’ll cross that bridge…

So, it’s been a while.  Not deliberately so to be honest.  I’d planned to be more regular here after taking ‘the decision’, but somehow I wasn’t sure how.  I’ve written several blogs in my head over the last two months, but somehow I never put finger to keyboard.

The support and kind words you all gave me made me cry.  Taking a decision to go in a very opposite direction from the one I wanted was so hard.  I thought that the very friendly people I have interacted with on here would be upset and that I’d be accused of letting the side down.  Surely, when you feel like you should have been born as a girl, its impossible to change that or to ignore that side of you.  But instead the words were so warm, wise and sincere, they were like being hugged by a best friend.

So the last two months have been an experiment with very mixed results I have to say.   If you have to give up something like this, the only real advice I can give is to put yourself into a position where you are so busy that you notice nothing else in your whole life, let alone how you are dressed and feeling!  2.4 jobs at the same time have been my curse and my salvation.  I just simply don’t have time to think about it.

I continued to allow myself the indulgence of this blog.  I’ve not stopped voraciously reading and regularly cheering at the continuing experiences of people who I can only say make me feel so proud of how brave they are.  Tales of going out and about, putting up with mean families, attending GIC clinics, nights out, new shoes, new make up etc, have kept me smiling and feeling like there is a bit of me that hasn’t just died.

I think with sadness of my entire wardrobe being packed into two (large) suitcases somewhere in a UK loft that isn’t mine.  And I thank my friend for the kindness of being my storage haven.  I haven’t so much as worn a necklace, a heel or one of my favourite skirts for the whole time.  But what does make me smile in all of this is that the people I am making this sacrifice for are happy.  My family relationships are healing and it’s been a good time for them.

In my heart I’m not sure I’ve moved on, in fact I know I haven’t.  But every day I feel stronger and more at peace with myself over it.  When the jobs start dropping off and I have time on my hands and allow myself to think, I’ll probably be horrified with what I’ve done, but for now I can live with it.  I guess I’ll just have to cross that bridge when I come to it.

But in mean time, please keep blogging.  Selfishly, if it is only because somewhere in your consciousness you know its because this one-time girl is reading and sucking every ounce of hope for you (and me) from it, then do it.  The creative words that pour out from you mean so much more to people that you can ever possibly imagine.

This is really tough

That probably sums it up.  And was written three days ago because I’m struggling to find the right words and am finding it hard to even tell myself without crying.

Further to my previous blog and in a desperate (and I mean desperate) attempt to save my relationship with the people I love, I’m trying to detach myself from my transgenderness.   This is probably the opposite blog from most you have ever read before on that basis.  Instead of making myself more girly, I’m trying to be a boy again.

But OMG is it hard.

I’ve promised myself that I will try.  I will never be able to live with myself if I get to the point where I lose those people without having tried everything that it humanly possible to overcome what I feel inside.

I’m so sad and I feel like I’m letting myself, and all of you, my sisters, down by even trying.  I’ve known I felt like a girl and not a boy for the last 30 years. Through a lack of bravery, a massive amount of stupidity, a dash of false hope and a terrible context, I’ve allowed myself to create a non-girl life that now demands some payback. 

I’ve tried to stop feeling like this before.  Who hasn’t?  I’ve never succeeded.  Why should I now?  I’m not sure that I can.  But I’ve surely got to try.  To be honest, I’ve never had so much at stake before, so much that I could lose.  That really is a motivator.

I’ve read hundreds of blogs and know the price that most transgendered people have paid for their intent to be female. I see every hard decision they’ve agonised over when they are in my shoes.  And perhaps you could say, they’ve been braver than me – or maybe just less stupid.  But I keep coming back to the point that unless I try, unless I do my best for my loved ones, they’ll always wonder and so will I.

So please, bear with me.  I need you, the kind people who read my blog and then comment, encourage and empathise with me, even more now.  My journey forges on and I still want to record it here.  Going back to my original aim, I need a place where I can think – and this continues, rightly or wrongly, to be it for now.   

The big crisis experiment

OK, so here’s the thing.  I’ve reached the crunch point.  For many different reasons, everything has aligned and it’s now or never.  But I’m faltering.  I’m really struck with anxious uncertainty.  The stark choice (and it genuinely is a stark choice) is between Rhiannon and my family.  I am not allowed to have both.

I have spent the last three months pushing down the Rhiannon route over everything else.  This week I had the chance to push the button on cementing her into place.  But I flinched.  I’d found the perfect new flat to move into – it was actually (quite literally) my dream place.  It’s the kind of place that I’d never been allowed to choose for myself because there were other people’s requirements to take into account.  I have spent years longing for the features that were in this flat.  It was within my budget.  All I had to do was make the call and I didn’t.  And in not making the call it quickly went to someone else.  It was that good.

It was like the scene in the film, Four Weddings and a Funeral where Hugh Grant is in a Landrover with his friends driving away from the woman he wants to ask out.  He gets them to stop the car, gets out and they drive off jeering at him.  Introspectively, he says, in the British way that only Hugh Grant can, “Odd choice.”  That’s how I felt.

So where is this leading to?  It’s making me realise that maybe I actually want my family more than Rhiannon.  Everything within me is screaming no and that it’s an impossible choice.  It’s telling me that the girl within me won’t be put in the corner (to use another hackneyed film cliché).  Sorry, I talk in film clichés when I’m nervous.  In fact the thought of never dressing again, never seeing my toe nails painted or of tottering around in heels so high that they make me smile makes me feel sick and like I want to cry.

I’m not even sure that it’s actually possible to give up.

But the thought of my wife, that I love with all my heart, being lonely and upset without me and knowing that I’m not able to wake up to my kids capering around me whenever I want is too heartbreaking.  And I’ve rehearsed the reverse arguments.  She’ll get over it eventually and find someone else and be happy.  Kids are resilient, they’ll get used to it and they can always visit you.  But the point I keep coming back to, heartbreakingly, is why should they have to?  Why should my priority be greater than theirs?

I’m really sorry if that offends the many hundreds of you who have made that and even greater sacrifices to be who you truly are.  I don’t mean to belittle you or what you have achieved.  But I’m not sure I can actually make that sacrifice.

I am wondering whether, as an experiment, I can live a Rhiannon free six months?  And in doing so, whether this aching need to express myself will go away?  It’s probably complete nonsense, but when I get to my deathbed (cheerful I know) and I look back, having not tried to save my family situation, will I regret it so much that I’ll die unhappy?  Is six months too much to give to find out if I can be the person my family want me to be?

I’m locked on the horns of a very wild dilemma, but now is the crunch point.  In the next few days, one way or another, my life changes dramatically.