An added extra?

I find this topic challenging to say the least - and I know it is one that many of us grapple with.  Its also one that gets everyone riled up and that seriously is not my intention.  I just wanted the that chance to think it through and to start my thinking process.   As its my blog, it seemed to me that it was as good a place as any.  Also, sorry that this is a long blog, it just didn’t seem appropriate to split it.

The question I want to try to consider is: where do I sit on the transgender spectrum?  Am I transsexual or am I not?  It's a really critical question for me to answer at this juncture, because I know that fear of the answer is what is holding me back from moving forward.  I know there are lots of people who would say that if I have any confusion over it, then I can't possibly be transsexual.  You have to hate your male body so much that you can't bear even one moment more in it and that's how you know.  But there are other schools of thought too it seems.

So what do I know already?  Probably the best place to start is to summarise my current thinking and issues.

1. I know that my life as a man makes me despair.  I almost constantly wish I was a woman.  At least every 20-30 minutes my thoughts turn to the fact I am not the gender I want to be and a part of me sinks as I remember it and I'm overcome by a wave of sadness.  Even as I write now I could burst into tears of sadness.  When I get to spend time as Rhiannon conversely I feel relaxed, happy and content.  When someone mistakes me as a man, even when I am dressed as a man, it makes me feel even more sad inside.  I feel like screaming that I’m not a man and that they need to understand.  I physically feel an internal shudder within me when it happens.  Why can’t they just understand that I’m not what I seem to be on the surface.  Being a man all the time, hiding who I feel I really am tires me out.  The thought that I would live a female life and be accepted in that gender, even now, puts excited butterflies in my tummy.

2. I know that I have always felt like this. 34 years is a long time to try to work it out. Since I was 6, I knew that I wasn't a "normal" boy.  I remember the relaxation, happiness and joy I felt when we were able to use the dressing up box at school to put on dresses.  I longed to be in school on dressing up day and to be wearing shorts so that I looked properly dressed when I put a dress on.  I hated having my boy trousers sticking out of the bottom of a dress.  But even at that stage I was hugely aware that this wasn't what I was supposed to do.  Throughout my growing up, I did the same as many other trans people, I borrowed and took my mum's clothes before I started buying my own.  Any chance I had to dress and to feel like a girl, I took it.

3. I know that transitioning would never be an easy prospect for me.  On the outside, when I’m in man mode, I’m never mistaken as a girl.  I get the feeling when I’m in girl mode at the moment that I’m not fooling anyone.  I’m 5 11 and very fat.  People notice me and don’t seem to have any confusion about what I am.  Surgery, weight-loss, hormones etc would make a big difference I’m sure, but I need to recognise that I’m not one of the girls who will have a head start based on their body.  That said, I have virtually no Adam’s apple and am very rounded and have been told that I have a certain prettiness.   I know that inside me, the story is very different.  I relate to the world in a non-male way and whilst people don't see me as female on the outside, when they get to know me, they very quickly behave towards me as they would to a lady.  That doesn't make me a woman, but it makes me feel very caught in the middle.  I rarely get people reacting to me in a ‘blokey’ way, I think my internal ‘femininity’ shows through - even if its in a fat suit.

4. I’m not sure whether or not I hate my genitals.  I certainly dislike them a lot and would be much happier if I could have a vagina, but its not reached desperation levels quite yet.  Over the years, I have learned to switch off my brain and to not feel anything towards my male parts.  I’ve talked about my numbness before on this blog: I have developed a self-preserving survival mechanism.  I don’t know whether it is the ability to numb my feelings that has reduced the hatred.  I also am incredibly pragmatic and if I can’t easily resolve something, I move onto something I can do.

5. This is the one I’ve never really addressed on this blog.  Is all of this just a sexual kick for me?  A fetish, if you like.  As you probably could predict, the answer is no.  I am bisexual - I like both men and women sexually.  When I am dressed as Rhiannon, the act of dressing does not do anything for me sexually.  It just brings me a huge sense of wellbeing.  However, the thought that a man finds me attractive and wants to be with me as Rhiannon is the thing I most crave.  It is the thought or on a few occasions the actuality of that which does it for me.  I can literally feel my heart racing when I think a man is enjoying seeing me as an attractive woman.

So there you go, that is my summary statement.  The five things I know or have learnt over my 40-year long life about my gender.  There is probably more - and certainly a lot more detail, but over the last few days as I have reflected on my situation, these are the things that have come to mind.

There was one other: the fact that I enjoy the things traditionally associated with a ‘female role’ in terms of UK societal stereotypes.  I am much more driven by emotional relationships and connections and I have a strong nurturing and peacemaking side to my character as well as the things we laugh about like the fact that pink is my favourite colour, that I love cooking, shopping for shoes, reading chick lit, watching soppy films and I cry at everything.  I even cried recently at an Enid Blyton book.  I’m nosy, curious and ask lots of questions.  Conversely I hate a lot of the opposite things often associated with male traits including and up to football, fighting and being laddish.  I left it out as something I know about my gender, because how many of these things truly make you a woman?  None I suspect.  A stereotype is never a good yardstick.  Many of them could just being conditioning: I feel like a woman, so I want to do things that mark me as being more associated with that gender.

Given that this is a really difficult topic, I asked a friend, Becca of the Muttering blog, who has herself successfully transitioned to read and comment on my blog before I pressed the button.  She offered some really powerful insights which she gave me permission to replicate here:

“You really don't have to hate your body to be TS. You don't have to be trapped in the wrong body.  Even if you do get a sexual kick out of dressing - forget that as well.  Also, forget about the passing bit - whether you think it's an easy prospect or not. I tell you in time you will blend. You, (if you do this) could easily pass as female.  Yes it will take time, it might need help but you can do this.  I have seen pre pictures of so many woman and met many afterwards and they look amazing.  Sure some still look a bit male but many don't and they are treated as and seen as female 100%. The reality is there is always going to be a time until you have practised enough when you might stand out - but so what? You were born male and have lived as male for quite a time - it's going to take time to unlearn and relearn. After a time you will forget you are playing any role - because you aren't. You are female.  

The absolutely critical thing, what we are really talking about is the incessant desire to be female - Gender Dysphoria.  What I can tell you is that presenting as a woman ~ (which for me turned into being a woman) - however much you need, will cure Gender Dysphoria. Period. The cure works.  The question you need to ask yourself  is whether the Gender Dysphoria is great enough to actually do something about it. Not whether you can pass, not how old you are, not how tall you are and not how healthy or big you are now.  Is being happier in your life worth the potential cost?”

I need to now think, but am interested in what strikes you from all of that based on your knowledge of the subject or just your general views.  Please be kind - I know that it is tempting to berate me - or to comment that I don’t seem woman enough to transition or whatever, but I am genuinely trying to think about this.  Should I do this in such a public forum?  Perhaps not, but my regular readers on here give me such sage advice and support, you are very wise people - and I’m interested in your views.

Being kind to yourself & lowering the bar of happiness

You will, I’m sure have spotted that I’ve not been happy of late.  Despite my best intentions, I seem to have developed a tranche of searingly honest and raw posts that would depress even Eeyore...from a mile away...with one look...in the dark.

A possibly throw away comment on my last but one blog, threw me.  Becca, who is a friend in real life as well as in Blogland, is renowned for cutting through the fog and saying what needs to be said.  It is an instinctive strength that she possesses and is one that I value.  But her latest comment was one that prompted the title of this blog and kind of stopped me in my tracks.

People have said it to me before, “be kind to yourself”, but tonight (the night before Christmas - I delayed the post), instead of sleeping, my mind decided to tackle this particular conundrum.  Because honestly, really honestly, I am not kind to myself.  Becca knows me well enough to know that.  It is really true.  I act, most of the time, like I hate myself.  Like many of us I guess, I have low self-esteem.  It takes a lot for positive comments to reach my core.  So I go through my life feeling like I’m pretty worthless.

So I started to think about what I need to do to be kind to myself.  What does that look like?  Inevitably, what came to mind when I asked myself that question was the answer to a different question: what effect has being unkind to myself had?  The sad thoughts tumbled out.  I’ve disbanded Rhiannon for 12+months to try to make my family happy when its actually causing me excruciating anguish.  I’ve convinced myself that I’ll never pass and that this a good reason to never bother trying to be Rhiannon outside of my closet again.  I’ve prioritised work and specifically clients over my health exacerbating a hernia problem that I don’t have time to fix and that makes me look pregnant in any girl clothes.  I’ve allowed my weight to go out of control to the point where I am unhealthy and hate my body again.  I’ve allowed a problem with my car to fester so that its nagging on my brain all the time.  I’ve got behind on my work again because I’m unhappy about being unhappy and find it hard to concentrate and I’m scared I’ll get things wrong because I see myself as pretty useless.  I put things that everyone else wants to the front of mind and what I want to the back of my mind - even when what they want is unreasonable.  I’ve stopped having any kind of meaningful relaxation because despite a massively high work ethic, its never enough and if the volume of work done was ever was enough, it would never be of a high enough quality.  I beat myself up for the 6 things I haven’t done, instead of feeling good about the 60 I have completed.  I’m using my spare time to do things that I don’t care about because someone else thought it would be a good thing to do.  I obsess that I’ve offended people because I talk about Rhiannon regularly with them and I sound like a broken record.  I’ve stopped facing up to my problems.  I could go on, but you get the idea.  I am really unkind to myself.

The question is, given 40 years of being unkind to myself, how do you change that pattern?  I don’t really do selfish very well and to be honest, that’s why I am where I am.  So how can I be kind to myself without being selfish to others?  Where else do you go to find out?  Google of course!  Search: “be kind to yourself.”  Hey, its the middle of the night and I don’t have a therapist to hand.  There was one that I settled on which was quite interesting.  The positivity blog.  Of course.  There are some really interesting steps in there which I am going to try - my three favourites were, ‘set a low bar for happiness’, ’if you stumble, be your own best friend’ and ‘remember, the future is still in your hands - and it is never too late to change.’  I want to take baby steps towards being more positive and thinking more highly of myself - and I will.  Just listing out the list above to be honest was cathartic.  Realising I’m unhappy on so many fronts and that I need radical change has been a huge insight.  I’m going to go back to seek counselling in the new year.  But for now, I’m going to tackle some of the above and see what I can do, one-day at a time, starting with today, to be really kind to myself.

Merry Christmas! :o)

Merry Christmas! :o)

I've been up for several hours writing a deep and meaningful, cathartic type blog which I was going to post, but I realised that it was Christmas Day.  No-one wants to read that sort of stuff today of all days.  [When you read it, the fact that I did that, will be amusing!]

I have scheduled it though for some time tomorrow.  In the mean time - pictures of me feeling happy whilst Rhiannoning.  Whilst I won't get to look like this today, I hope to very soon...

Have a fab day! x

2014 refections start here...

Just a short one today to reassure you that I’m ok - just been monstrously busy for about 4 months now.  Another month or two of pushing and hopefully I can relax a little.  She says.  She is also filled with doubt about that.  I think I just keep telling myself that to try to keep going!

I was prompted to write really by an email that I sent to a friend this morning.  Feeling in a very reflective mood today, I was thinking about my relationship with my wife and why I’ve stayed and even more, why I left and came back.  It is fundamentally that I care about our kids and her - and that however confusedly I feel about our relationship, that I highly prize our friendship.

But anyway, in the email, I wrote, “Knowing that the one person I care about the most hates the real me and only wants to love me when I pretend to be someone else is actually heartbreaking.”

I know I’ve covered this before here, but it was a timely reminder that bought tears to my eyes.

At the end of the year you do reflect and my conclusion is that professionally 2014 has been a great year.  For Rhiannon, its one that I would rather forget to be honest.  I’ve gone a long way backwards: in health terms, in confidence, in time actually spent being me, in having fun shopping for shoes :o), in times out with friends.  I thought that I’d done all that for the right reasons until that sentence flowed from my mind earlier and I realised instead that I’m still trying to maintain a relationship by pretence.  I want to be loved for 100% of who I am, not for just the “acceptable” bits.

Another friend recently has reminded me how short our time is - and having reached 40 this year, I’m at least a third of the way through my life now :o).

2015 needs to be a different year altogether.

Make Up Analysis

Sometimes, I’m just confused by my other half.  She’ll divorce me if she found out that I’m continuing with any vestige of my female life.  But then she asks me a question that relies on my knowledge of the female arts to help me answer.

We were watching the news and there was a lady who was being interviewed on an ad hoc basis about some serious expert scientific content and, into the mix, who’s make up could have been better.  I was listening to what she was saying and she was really interesting.  But before I considered what I was doing, I impulsively commented that, “Her make up doesn’t really seem to work very well for her.”   I’m not presenting myself as an expert, nor was I trying to be mean at all, but there were a few problems with it.  Mrs A, instead of sneering as I expected, or providing an ominous silence, asked me what I thought the problem was.

Not that I have been a close observer of make up for very long time (ok, maybe I have) or that I am opinionated (ok, maybe a little) but immediately, I gave a thorough analysis.  Her foundation needed to be slightly heavier and applied more thoroughly, some extra concealer was needed as she had dark rings under her eyes and some spots that needed covering.  She also had a colour of lipstick usually reserved for a party nights together with the shiniest lip gloss I’ve seen for a while.  It was just incongruent with what she was talking about. She had a nice face and a couple of changes could have made a big difference.

Anyway, that aside, Mrs A responded with, “Oh” and then said no more.  I have to own up to being slightly gutted.  I'm not sure why, but I thought, “why did you bother asking.”  Unwittingly - again - I have shown a level knowledge she thinks I shouldn’t have, on a subject about which a ‘man’ should just be ignorant.   I felt guilty for knowing these things.  Again.  Can I go back an hour and press the 'undo' button please?

A night of Rhiannon...

Last night, I decided that a Rhiannon night was in order.  It was only in a hotel, only on my own, but it felt great.  I know I shouldn't have, but I did and whilst these are definitely not my finest selfies, I enjoyed and I think you can tell I was happy and content (oh, and yes, new hair!)...

Courage and relationships

Its been a month and I’m sorry for the delay.  Last time I blogged, I was in a very sad place.  There was a lot going on that made me feel helplessly distraught.  You might have noticed if you read it.  I'm also sorry for not responding to the comments - you can't begin to imagine how much they are appreciated.   Particularly when I was feeling as low as I was at the time.

I'm finding that the longer I go without Rhiannon in my life as an integral part, the harder things get.  Firstly, the dysphoric feeling grows and I feel increasingly out of place and wrong in my own skin.  Secondly that my confidence about my presentation ebbs from me.  There is something about the dynamic of frequent presentation as Rhiannon that helps me grow more into it, to push it further and that makes me happier and more assured.  Having dressed only twice in the last 10 months (I have no idea how I managed that), I am scared of stepping outside my door again.  I am back into the frame of mind that says, when I go out, that I look like a man in a dress.  I can go out, but I don’t think I fool anyway.

Another very lovely local lady who lives within 10 minutes of me and I had planned a trip out for lunch.  Other things came up for me that meant that I had to do something else.  But also part of me wonders whether I would have had the strength to do it anyway?  In a weird co-incidence, I went, with my kids, to get haircuts done yesterday morning.  Weirdly, the chef at the place we had planned to go to was in having a haircut.  I’ve always been careful about mixing up Rhiannon life and guy life, but that was a bit close for comfort.  Do I think for a moment I’d have seen him if I’d have gone to the restaurant?  Given that I look very different when I’m Rhiannon, would he have spotted me and put it all together?  Never.  But when you have the wrong frame of mind, you can’t help but wonder can you?

Previously, I did various things to get back on the horse and maybe I need to do them again.  Having been ‘discovered’ by my wife on my first occasion of dressing this year so quickly, the guilt of doing what I was trying not to do was overwhelming.  Maybe getting back to the basics would help?

On a separate note, one of the things that struck me in the comments on my last blog was the comments about my wife and how this impacts on her.  I wanted to address that because I think that unless you read back into my previous (nearly 100) blogs, you probably aren’t aware of the situation.  I have some new readers I think.

My wife and I have been married for nearly 20 years.  I told her about Rhiannon before we married.  Her belief (and mine at the time) - I was 21 - was that this would go away.  We felt that we were safe to get married because once we got settled into our relationship, it would be a thing of the past.  Naive, I know now, but I didn’t know back then.  At varying times through our relationship the subject has come back up and she is incredibly unhappy that I have chosen to see this as part of my life and to allow it to continue.  You might dislike her for that view, but it is consistent with her strong Christian belief structure.  She has in fairness to her, never wavered from it.  I think that if she was dealing with another trans person, she would have all the compassion in the world, but not with her ‘man’.  In fact over the years she has become more anti-Rhiannon.  To the point where she and I have separated twice.  The last occasion was for about 8 months.  She is less bothered about the dressing in reality and more unhappy that I think of myself as a women and that I give myself another name.  She feels that I am saying that God made a mistake by making me a man.  She’s right, that’s exactly how I feel.  We tenuously got back together, on my part because I couldn’t bear to not see my kids whenever I wanted, every day if possible.  I missed seeing them wake up happy because their ‘nuclear undivorced family’ world was intact.

The recommendation in various comments have implied that I should stop withholding the fact that I feel like this again from her.  Those of you who know me personally know that I feel an incredible amount of guilt for lying in this way.  But also know that if I decide to go back to Rhiannon more regularly and to make it part of my life, that divorce will inevitably, definitely and completely ensue.  Conversation has been had over 20 years and I’m left in no doubt whatsoever of my position.  There is little point talking with her other than to say how wonderful my life is without Rhiannon.  There is certainly no compromise or possibility for understanding.  My options are stop or hide it and stay married with my kids.  Or to continue and break up forever with no possibility of getting back together.  Therein lies the root of my sadness.  I can have a relationship that I’ve held onto for 20 years or Rhiannon.  But not both.

To be honest, I’ve never really worked out where to go from there.  I want Rhiannon desperately, but I don’t want to break up my kid's home to get what I want.  Other friends counsel me to wait until the kids leave home and then leave my wife.  I feel cruel doing that - at least if I broke it up now my wife would have some years to find someone else - and I might too.  If I wait 10 years, it will probably be harder to do.  I know that many reading this have made this sacrifice to be the women they were born to be.  I'm probably just weak, but I'm still holding on for dear life.