Been a while since I’ve posted anything. Not that I haven’t been meaning to. Lots of things to write about really, but just haven’t had much time.

So, lets start with some recaps from last year:

Surgery

The main thing about last year is that the final hoop for my gender affirming surgery was jumped through. And recently I got my scheduled date. May 14th. The same day that a dear friend is also getting her surgery. The chances of that were pretty astronomical, and I’m very very happy that I got this date. It makes the waiting very worth it.

Relationship

The other main thing is my relationship with Melissa is still going strong. I visited her in October for a long weekend, and while short, it was a very good and memorable visit. She is an amazing woman, and I am so happy to have found her.

Work / Validation

The other other main thing is work. School finished at the end of June, and I started work in the middle of July. As a complete surprise to me, work has become an actual place of validation. Going in to a heavily male dominated field, I expected to get misgendered a LOT. Turns out, the opposite is true.

The amount of daily validation I get at work is mind boggling to me. I understand that I am a very lucky woman to have this. I have coworkers that constantly gender me correctly when dealing with clients (the amount of misgendering has pretty much disappeared). I have clients that gender me correctly, use validating speech (eg. “Oh look, the angel has come to fix my network.”), and other women (or femme identified people) treat me as any other woman.

Work has actually become a safe space for me. I can be less guarded, and less stressed because of that. There’s still a few clients I have not interacted with yet, but even if there are a few bad apples, the rest more than makes up for that. And my boss has even said if I’m not comfortable with a certain client he can send someone else.

Work has also been validating in the sense that I am in the right field. There’s been a huge learning curve (and I’m still in that curve) but I’m getting to do things that most people right of school dream about. I’m working on live production servers, datacenter networks/routers/firewalls, internal network design and implementation, script writing and more. Plus, I still wind up doing help desk stuff (because we’re a small company). So, I’m doing almost every aspect of IT.

I’m a happy girl at work.

Living

2017 has seen a change in where I live as well. I’m further away from the big city. Which is good and bad. It’s a long commute when I go in to work (over an hour one-way) and a lot of friends are further away. Yet, the area I’m living in is nice, lots of places are easily within walking distance. I’ve been working on getting my bedroom finished – just have the closet to do. And I still don’t have my cat. *pout*

Car Accident

December 29, 2017 I was in my first ever car accident. I was driving Teresa’s car because mine had a flat tire. Conditions were bad that night, and I was in the right lane of 3. The middle lane had stopped ahead, and I slowed down expecting people to lane jump. I did not expect people to actually hit each other, and get pushed in front of me (no one was in front of me for miles). I hit the breaks, and the anti-lock kicked in (I hate anti-lock breaks) and while they slowed me down, they did not stop me in time for the left front of the car to hit the rear passenger quarter panel on the car that was all of a sudden in front of me.

Teresa’s car has been written off, and she bought a newer car that she loves.

Changes

Gaming

Another surprising source of womanly validation has come from my D&D gaming group. I’m playing with 4 cis males. 3 of which I went to school with last year, and the 4th, the DM, I’ve never met. In the last 4 months of playing, not once have I been misgendered. Which is amazing to me given we use voice chat. One of the guys is playing a female character, and when she gets misgendered, I take perverse pleasure in seeing a cis male deal with it.

Friendship

It seemed to be triggered with some kind of emotional cycle I have now. I’ve had a cycle before, in my teens, it was a couple manic days every 28 days. This does not seem to have a mania. And the period (scientific term, not menstrual) is different this time – 21 days.

Every 21 days I seem to crash emotionally. At least since I started tracking, and it’s pretty exact. One was 22 days. but 4 in a row now. Usually it’s just being really emotional (for me this is saying something), and a bit depressed. It lasts a couple days, and I get better.

That didn’t happen this time.

On day 21, I woke up feeling crappy because I didn’t sleep well. That is normal enough for this cycle. I showered, and got dressed. Felt a bit better. I think we went and looked at an apartment open house, and went for coffee. That evening Teresa had wanted to get dressed up nice and go for dinner down by the ocean. I thought this would be a great way to get me to cheer up, I always like getting dolled up.

So, we headed home, got changed, and I put my hair up, put a flower hair clip in, did my makeup and that’s when things went south. I took a couple selfies because I thought I looked good, but none of the pics were looking flattering. I went to the kitchen for different lighting, and tried again. I sent one to Melissa who said I looked great. Teresa said I looked great. The more I looked at the photos, and then back to the mirror, the less great I thought I looked.

I began to hate how I looked. I eventually took the flower out, and let my hair down, which helped enough to get me out the door. The damage was done, a spiral had started. I was quiet on the drive, but was trying really hard to snap out of it. After all, I know I look somewhat attractive. People keep telling me this. I had been telling me this for the last 7 months or so. All that disappeared in a cloud of self doubt and even some self hate.

At one point I went to the bathroom in the restaurant and cried. After dinner we went and sat by the pier for close to an hour. Hundreds of people much have walked by, with no looks of disdain, or scorn, or hate. Just a few smiles, and mostly just people glancing over me, not singling me out for anything (even with purple hair).

It didn’t help how I felt at all. When we got home, I took my makeup off, and that actually eased the dysphoria a lot. I don’t know why. I had done it the way I usually do when I put a lot of effort in. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but it felt like it just accentuated all my masculine facial features.

The next day wasn’t much better. I put less makeup on, and that helped, but I was still only seeing ‘boy’. Talking with Melissa later, I figured it might have been from me being dehydrated a bit combined with non-uniform swelling from electrolysis. Subtle changes in skin can really affect how you look.

It took 5 more days until I finally saw me in the mirror again.

The makeup thing is still there though, I think. I feel way better about how my face looks with just mascara and lipstick and a touch of blush. If I start going overboard with eyeliner, or foundation, my brain is rejecting it. This is fine, but I’d like to know why or what changed.

On the flip side of this, is an amazing ability to go days without shaving, and not having dysphoria about that. My face, essentially, does not need shaving anymore. I don’t think I would be doing as well with it, if the stubble was on my face. But it isn’t on my face, it’s on my neck. And 99.5% white hair.

I’m a little worried about it in bright sunlight (white hairs tend to be fairly reflective), but so far, my feelings about it are pretty good. I’m ok with the stubble because it means less shaving (the act itself is dysphoria inducing) and it means the hairs are much easier to deal with at electrolysis.

So, just a wordy update that I wanted to get out there. Thanks, as always, for reading.

Hugs.

PS – I was able to hold off from any self harm even though the desire was super high.

Sorry it’s been a while. I’ll do an update post soon, but this is going to be a pretty specific post.

I went to see my therapist last week, as mostly a catch up session; it’d been almost a year since we’d last spoken, and I’d gone through a relationship breakup, losing friends, blood clots, surgery approval, a new relationship, changes in self image, etc…

At the end of the session, I made another appointment, and told her a few things I wanted to discuss. One was about mourning the life I never had – much in the same way I’ve mourned the child I’ll never have. This is turning into a more complicated issue.

In a discussion with my girlfriend, or actually one of her alters, I found some startling similarities with how my mind worked in that regard as well. While I don’t believe I have Dissociative Identity Disorder (I lack a few diagnostic criteria), the mechanism that my brain used is quite relatable.

I essentially created James. He (as I’ve mentioned previously, James was as close to male as I could make him) wasn’t created over night. He evolved from a need, or desire, to conform to my world. In an act of protectionism, I created this persona to present to the outside world.

That persona allowed me to:

avoid being bullied
avoid being alienated
feel less abnormal
hide and/or fit in
disguise myself
have a life

Of course it wasn’t perfect. In situations like this it never is. I was drawing on those around me to base this persona on, because as I’ve found out, it certainly was not me.

So anyway, I was chatting with her alter, and recalled that my therapist had me try and manifest James and myself in a session, to see what they might say to each other. It was more meta than actually thinking I had 2 distinct personalities (and the reason I don’t think I have D.I.D. is that they are not separate identities).

When that happened, I had a rather profound moment of James apologizing to me. I’ve written about this in the past. But we didn’t really explore more beyond that. I got really emotional, and that kind of ended the moment. Now I’m exploring that a bit deeper.

The apology was, essentially, for keeping me locked up deep down, underneath all the shit that he couldn’t deal with (which included me – he didn’t really know how to deal with me). He tried letting me out in controlled environments. But I was still caged, and I don’t just mean by location. He would not give up control, he’d just enlarge the prison a bit. This is what my ‘crossdressing’ was, and why I always had trouble moving or expressing naturally until I got rid of the James part.

In my talk with Melissa the next day, I was saying that i didn’t really forgive James for what he had done to me, even though I know he was trying to protect me (that was why I built him). She then asked if things would have been better if I had been out 10, 15, 20 years ago. No. I would have been in a lot more pain, a lot more depression, WAY more acute dysphoria, and very likely suicidal.

So, James actually did save me. I can admit that. So, I can, and do, forgive him. The real issue is that I don’t forgive myself yet. I didn’t even try to unbury myself. I never tried to wrest control from him. The one time cracks did form in his protective bubble, I tried to kill myself. I needed him for sure – he kept me alive. But where was I? The real me? I can’t blame James for me not trying to exist.

In fact, it likely was me helping keep the self denial in full effect. I whispered that I was fine with existing in private situations. Why was I okay with this for so long? Why, when I did sense freedom, did I just want to end everything? (yes, there were other circumstances in play, but still).

Early in transition, I just attributed this to being so deep under everything, that I wasn’t able to exert in any way. I don’t think that’s true. I think it was fear. I was afraid of all the things I built James to protect me from. I never faced ANY of those fears though. They MAY have been true, real fears, but not once (to my recollection anyway) had I ever been threatened with any of that.

I had been able to live without any real gendered oppression early in life. I played with wigs and skirts and stuffed animals and cars and action figures. When I saw dozens more children, eventually, in kindergarten (or maybe it even started before that, and just accelerated in K) I decided to emulate those I looked like. I know I got asked often if I was a boy or a girl. Maybe someone said something about my long hair? I don’t know.

I’m rambling. The issue is why didn’t I at least try and face my fears. Why was I so content to go the route I went. I was a fairly extroverted kid until about age 5. I distinctly remember switching from outgoing to shy. That was the point James took over. What was I hiding from so early? It’s infuriating that I don’t have a ton of memories from this stage in my life. I have vivid memories from before this. Then things are muddy for a few years. Around age 8 I start remembering things again.

So, what do I need to do to forgive myself? I can’t change the past. It’d be nice if I could remember more of my mental state back then. By the time I start remembering again I’m in full self denial. There must have been a transition stage for that. Maybe I’m putting too much responsibility on a very young mind.

Hmm, maybe that’s the problem. Ok, this kind of makes sense. Because I, buried under everything, was not always super present, maybe it took me a while to grow up. Everything was coming in under a heavily processed filter. This could explain a few other things too (such as my inner child). I shouldn’t expect that I was as hyper self aware as I am now. Of course I wasn’t. I was just a kid. We don’t know why some children self assimilate, they just do. It could even be instinctual.

I know I’m not weak. I consider myself to be very strong. I feel I’ve been thinking about this all wrong. I’ve always been driven by frustration. Every major change or decision in my life is driven by frustration. For good or bad. Maybe this was true of myself even back then. Something about how life was going at that time was frustrating me. Something I didn’t know how to even process – maybe it was, in all likelihood, dysphoria. Seems like a good enough scapegoat.

Maybe THAT was what scared me, or frustrated me at least, to bring about ‘James’. If it was something that was rational like that, I can’t even blame myself. I survived as best I could. And I DID survive. Ultimately, that’s the most important part. I am finally out from my prison. James has been integrated and no longer exists as a semi-separate entity. I’ll go into that in another post.

I’m going to process this some more, but I think I’m on a good track. It’s something that makes sense. It may not be accurate, but I don’t think I’ll ever know exactly.

*******

A brief exposition on my personalities. I have a few. Most of us do. The extent of their separation varies from person to person. People who put on their ‘game face’, or inner child, or the salesman, the teacher, the domme etc…

My personalities have a bit more separation and distinction between them.

James – The protector. The outward male persona that developed over 30+ years of hiding myself. Also the athlete and the gamer. The one that did not like eating mushrooms, raw fish, squash, food on the bone. An introvert by necessity. The filter. James doesn’t really exist as a separate persona anymore. He’s been integrated. He’s part of why I ultimately identify as non-binary. I’ve tossed aside his ridiculous parts – the filter, the strange eating rituals, the introvert. But I’ve kept the protector, the athlete, the gamer, and a bit of the masculinity (which used to worry me, but I’m cool with it now).

Jessica – me. The totality of me. Including ALL my personalities. I grew up without really having a name except maybe Jamie when I was young, but then James co-opted that. It wasn’t until I was in my 30s that I got a new name. Part of me was allowed to express in total secrecy (Starting at age 8), and then my prison got larger as friends were allowed to see some of me. They were never getting all of me though, because James (as the filter) was still there. I am VERY strong. Extroverted. Talkative. Loving. Emotional as hell.

Lyrren – my inner child. I have claimed this name for this part of me. I express my inner child at times for many different reasons. I never want to lose my ability to play, and be silly. But also this part of me is ULTRA vulnerable. Lyrren isn’t seen directly by many, except a close knit group of friends. She’s the one that does Lego, does jig-saw puzzles even after saying I don’t like puzzles, and demands I get certain stuffies. Lyrren also serves as a way for me to recapture something that was lost to me. MY childhood. I grew up fairly fast, and from age 5 up, it was more James’ childhood than mine.

There are other nameless personalities too, more like what everyone else has.

I’ve even made progress with how I feel about my breasts. They’ve been growing ever so slowly, and yesterday I was able to go without a bra for the first time since June. Maybe I let my guard down because things were going so well.

Today started off well enough, but then after my shower I had to shave. And that’s when things went sideways. For some reason the hair on my upper lip and my chin were very problematic today. I wound up bleeding and splotchy right in the most prominent area of my face.

Then I was seeing masculine features again in my face. At this point I’m not sure if that was psychological or real. It doesn’t matter, my brain saw it. I broke down. Then after about 10 minutes of waterworks, I pulled myself together and covered the scabs and redness with foundation.

The rest of the afternoon/evening I was feeling normal again, until I got home from school. Then it hit me again. So, I cried a bunch more, and decided to write this post.

My coping mechanisms are working and I did not resort to self harm. Crying is still my best defence. I also played some video games to release more stress. And my support network also came through (I only needed a couple people to talk to and it helped). I’m hoping tomorrow will be a better day, and that today was just a one-off because of school stress, and a buildup of emotional fatigue. It feels like that is what it was.

It still takes effort to go out, no matter how confident I am. That effort builds up over time, and eventually I need to reset. I’m going to leave my homework for tomorrow and try and sleep this off.

Thanks for reading,
Jessica

In the last 6 to 8 weeks, I have developed really good self esteem.

Never in my entire life did I think I would ever have this feeling. I was sure that every time I looked in a mirror, I would see all the things that are ‘wrong’ with my face and ‘wrong’ with my body, because that was how I always saw my reflection. I had even, cursorily, considered surgery to possibly correct a few things.

Granted, things had gotten better with my body feminization from hormones. I was really loving my body more than I ever had before. I think developing that definitely helped with this overall feeling. Of course, there’s still one thing I need to correct with that, but I know that will happen.

The main part of this high self esteem is coming from my face. I am simply not seeing my past at all in the mirror. None of my features look particularly masculine to me anymore. Yes, hormones have affected my face some, but I don’t think to the degree that I am seeing. I think this is just as much mental as it is physical.

When I have low self esteem, all the little things stand out as ‘wrong’ or ‘manly’ or ‘ugly’ etc… That’s not happening anymore. Instead, I’m seeing all the little things that stand out as ‘right’ or ‘womanly’ or ‘pretty’ and they are overriding the negative view.

I keep mentioning to the people that I’ve talked about this with, that it is such a bizarre feeling. I’ve cried several times just walking in to the bathroom because the image in the mirror, to me, looks 100% acceptable and beautiful to me.

The opposite of dysphoria is euphoria. I do feel kind of euphoric. The only thing that has caused me any dysphoria lately has been shaving, and winding up with razor burn on my neck. It’s just weird I tell you. There’s no reason for me to have developed this feeling, other than from any actual changes that have occurred from hormones.

I’ve always had a confidence about myself since self-acceptance. This makes that confidence take a bit less effort to maintain. I’m glad for it, and to those that I keep mentioning this to, I’m sorry. I just need time to adapt I guess.

I went for a kidney ultrasound last week. A week before, when thinking about the appointment, I mulled over informing them I was trans before the test. Then I had 2 thoughts. First, it’s my kidneys, nothing much up there that is different for an XY vs an XX human. Second, they’ll obviously know I’m trans.

At my ultrasound, the tech informed me he was doing a bladder check too. So, I slipped my skirt a bit lower, lifted my shirt up, and he started. Pretty quickly he developed a confused look on his face. Then it seemed he was trying to find something – pressing harder, changing the area of search, etc… I really had to pee, and this was not helping as he was pressing all over my bladder.

He looks down at me and asks, “have you had any surgeries in this area?”

So, again, thinking he knows I’m trans, is asking if I’d had the vaginoplasty. I guess because things shift a bit during that surgery. So, I say, “no, no surgeries.”

He continues to examine me, looking more worried now than confused. Then it seems he finds something, and stops, and goes to my chart. Looks back at me, and looks at the chart, and says, “ermm… your chart says female….”

It wasn’t phrased as a question, but I could tell it was a question. I realized he had found my testicle in the inguinal canal. “Oh! I’m transgender,” I say, as a bit of relief comes over his face.

He was worried I was a ciswoman with no womb, ovaries, etc… and didn’t know how to deal with that, because he can’t disclose anything diagnostic. Then when he found a testicle, things started to become clearer.

It’s very difficult for transwomen to deal with the medical community. We ARE women, but we often have physically XY bodies. We don’t want to always be bringing it up because a lot of the time it’s unnecessary, yet in some instances it is helpful for the person we’re dealing with to know.

What I learned from this, is that I actually pass. Well enough to confuse a medical professional, anyway. I even had talked with him a bit before starting, and he still didn’t clue in.

At first, I was quite happy about this. It leads to being privileged. Something I gave up with transition. To regain some of that felt good. For a little bit. Then, as I thought more and more about it, I started to really hate that it had made me feel good.

We shouldn’t HAVE to pass ourselves off as ciswomen. We should just get to be ourselves and seen and interacted with accordingly. Why do ciswomen have to be the standard for what a ‘woman’ is supposed to look like, act, talk, etc…? (I’m not blaming ciswomen, definitely not)

I see each and every transwoman as a woman. No matter where they are in transition, or even if they are transitioning or not. None of that matters to how I see them. This of course goes the same for nonbinary identified people as well, and transmen. Granted, in order to see people as they want to be seen, communication is sometimes necessary. And is that such a bad thing? It’s not that hard to talk to someone without gendering them.

I’ve decided to stop trying to adhere to a cis-normative look. I’m going to go out as me. A woman. A woman who happens to be transgender, and has a receded hairline, and thinner hair on top. If I wear a hat, headscarf, or wig it will be because I want to! I already do this with every other aspect of myself.

I may cause myself dysphoria. I may get negative feedback. This may be damaging to my emotional state. On the other hand, this may be a great thing. I’ve never wanted to hide who I am since transition. I’m proudly transgender. This will be interesting. My life is always interesting.

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Quite a few posts ago, I touched on my sexuality ever so slightly, and mostly just to say Teresa was not comfortable with me posting about it. That has changed, and I have carte blanche to go ahead and write about how I experience sex. I will not talk about what we as a couple do or did. That, hopefully, will come later. This will just be about me, and from my perspective.

I think that a lot of women going through transition would like to know how others have their sexuality change or not change, and maybe what they can expect. I do not think I’m a stereotypical case, but some of what I’ve gone through may be relevant to someone else. Or it may just be fun to read about what I’m like sexually.

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Nipples. These are very prominent in my life now. My nipples have always been fairly sensitive. Even a few years ago, I got really close to orgasming solely from nipple play. Oh, so close. When I started taking estrogen, their sensitivity went through the roof. I can be stopped mid sentence, unable to continue talking, with the merest brush of a finger tip. It’s infuriatingly pleasurable.

With this new found sensitivity, I decided I wanted to finally achieve that mysterious, mythical body orgasm, with zero genital stimulation. After trying for a couple months I was finally able to achieve a completely non-genital orgasm. And it, quite literally, shook me to my core. It took about an hour to get there, with many periods of shuddering, convulsing, whimpering, and moaning along the way. I call these periods mini-o’s. They are extremely enjoyable, and even if I don’t reach full orgasm, I don’t feel I’ve missed out on anything.

But this time, after about 15 of these mini-o’s I got to that edge, and went over it. Every nerve in my body was firing and it felt like electricity was pulsing from my core outward every few milliseconds. Like someone was dragging an electrified net all over my skin, wave after wave it was washing over me. This lasted for a few minutes, but it felt like hours. Time really had no meaning.

After the waves stopped, and the nerves settled down, I was in a different place in my head. I tried to open my eyes but I couldn’t. I couldn’t speak either. Every now and then, a shudder or convulsion would run through me. And it was divine. I felt like I was floating. I felt like the universe had disappeared and there was only me, but it was only an internal me, there was no external anything.

When I finally came out of that, I opened my eyes and tried to assess my body and what happened. I didn’t ejaculate, I know I didn’t, but there was clear liquid that had come from me. That wasn’t entirely new, as this had been happening during arousal for a while. Essentially I was ‘getting wet’ with the anatomy I have. But there seemed to be more of it this time. I tried to recollect everything that had led to that explosion of sensation. It was almost all just pure nipple play. Fingernails, lips, tongue. The odd bit of hands roaming the body, but that seemed so secondary.

Since then, I have had 7 of these orgasms. So, almost averaging 1 a month. Considering I don’t have a lot of sex (sex drive is non-existent) that’s not bad.

Sex Drive. Pretty much at zero. Sometimes I can get into things if they’re happening, but it’s not something I’m going to initiate right now. It’s just not on my radar. I don’t even get sad about it, because I’m not missing the desire. It’s a very weird feeling, or maybe more accurately a non-feeling. My testosterone level at last check was 0.4 nmol/L which is practically zero. I can still get erections, but I don’t get spontaneous ones, or morning ones. Yay!!!!! Those are fairly dysphoric, because they’re a very male reaction. If I make myself erect, I can view that differently, as it’s in MY control. A lot of the time I don’t even get erect when I have an orgasm.

Masturbation. At first I could still do this just fine, but it was causing me dysphoria issues. Later, when my sex drive dropped off, figured it might be a good idea to just keep doing it occasionally to keep sensitivity up so things will work right after surgery. Sounds like a good plan, and my dysphoria from it had dissipated. So, a few months ago, I tried, and the ‘orgasm’ at the end was so anti-climactic it was depressing. It was like my genitals said, “Meh.” And nothing came out. I don’t seem to produce much of anything at the moment. a tiny bit of clear liquid at times, and usually before orgasm. Mind you, I’ve never had a lot of ejaculate because there was never any sperm in it.

So, I gave it a while before trying again. The next time I didn’t even get a ‘meh’. I got absolutely nothing. You know how people talking about climax describe it as building towards a cliff, or some kind of edge (hence the term edging), and then going over that edge and falling? There was no falling. The cliff was the same height as the ground on the other side. Nothing. Just the loss of sensation of the build. And every time since then has been like that. So, I try maybe once a month right now, but it’s annoying more than anything. Maybe once my estrogen gets a bit higher something will happen again.

Erogenous Zones. These are weird little creatures. I have a few permanent ones. Nipples. Prostate area. Clitoris (tip of penis). But I also have ones that move and change. This could be due to changing hormone levels. My back almost always has some. Fingernails run up my spine sometimes. Other times it’s the sides of my back. Or across my shoulder blades. My neck often hides one somewhere. Behind the ears, or at the base of the neck. The underside of my wrist every now and then gives me shivers. Certain spots on my legs, especially the inner thighs. It’s kind of fun because they do change. Sometimes I’ll find one myself, and just absent mindedly stroke it. lol.

Likes and dislikes. Still figuring these out to a large extent. I’m definitely happy enough just having my nipples played with. Sucked on, stroked, pinched, bit, vibrated, hot wax dripped on. Not into a ton of pain, but the wax thing is a huge turn on. And pretty much any kind of touch will stop me in my tracks. Yes, you all know my kryptonite now. Use this information wisely.

I don’t mind genital stuff anymore. It used to be a big problem for me. Especially after using it as a penis. I came to the realization that it is MY genitalia, no matter how it looks, so it’s not a man’s penis. That being said, I stay away from using it that way as well. But doing things with the tip can accentuate what I’m feeling from other sources. Mostly vibration is what I like in this case.

Not a fan of anal play. Tried it, and with all the fuss involved, and needing to have so many stars aligned for things to even be pleasurable, I’ve kind of let it fall to the wayside. I’d rather wait for after surgery to have things inside me.

I’m still mostly submissive in bed. Always have been, but I think I’m finding a stronger, dominant side expressing itself at times, more so than I’ve ever had before anyway.

On the fence about being tied up. Sometimes I like being restrained, and giving up all control. Other times not so much. So, it’s probably a night by night kind of thing.

I like my hair being grabbed and pulled a bit (my real hair is finally long enough for that), and I also just like fingers being run through my hair. That’s a great way to end a night, along with cuddling.

I absolutely LOVE cuddling. With my partner, and even platonically with friends. It is such a comforting feeling. Full of love and warmth.

Things that vibrate, as I’ve mentioned, are awesome. And can be used in so many ways.

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I’m still figuring myself out, anything that I thought was a like or dislike before transition had to be thrown out the window. That wasn’t the real me. That was someone that was afraid to really give in to her own desires. Someone that never would have written a blog post like this. She didn’t even know she was a she. So, of course her likes and dislikes would be different now.

Increasing hormones are going to continue to play a role in how I progress as well. My body will continue to change, and hopefully keep offering up pleasure in surprising ways.

Thanks for reading, and as things change I will keep you all updated.

– Jess (and I’m not even blushing)

PS – if anything I’ve written here brings up questions for you, please feel absolutely free to ask. No judgement from me on it.

Today, for the first time at work, I was audibly gendered correctly. This is big for me. It took just over 2 months to happen. I know without any doubt I do not look as female at work as I do outside of work. But I DO think I look female. ish. mostly.

Without hair framing my face, all the masculine features leap out. Granted, there aren’t a TON of them, but they are there. And even most of them are subtle, but add them all up, and people make assumptions. This really isn’t about passing, but it kind of is. If I passed, this would be a non-issue.

It’s about presentation and reaction. If I present properly as female, I should get reacted to that way. A lot of my problem in my work environment is my fault. How I view myself affects greatly how I present myself, and vice versa. It’s a vicious cycle. I know I don’t look the way I know I can look, so that gets projected. Muscle memory is a great thing a lot of the time, but not so much for a transwoman in my job. When I’m at work, I have to do a lot of things that rely on muscle memory. A lot of things I don’t need to rely on muscle memory for, come along for the ride, unfortunately.

So, this is what happened:

Having lunch in the truck, an Indian fellow (about 55 years old) walks up to the truck (I believe he is a shop owner in the strata mall we’re pruning at). He says hi, and then asks how he can make his plants grow, with all this sunshine, his aren’t growing.

I get a few words out to find out what kind of plants, as he spots my uncle on the other side of the truck. “Oh, I will talk to the boss,” he says, and walks around to the other side of the truck. My immediate reaction is great, I don’t have to deal with this. Then my second reaction is, wait a sec, I’m the crew chief.

My uncle proceeds to find out it’s vegetable plants this guy wants help with. Neither of us are that familiar with growing veggies. I kind of zone out of the conversation at this point. Until I hear, “How much does she work for?”

Wait. What? She? Holy fuck. He said it completely matter of factly, not questioningly as I envisioned the first time being. He KNEW I was a she.

“I could hire her to look after my tomatoes,” or something like that. “$25 an hour for her to do that,” again he says. Then he said something about she should work for nothing, but I didn’t catch why.

It was over and over again, “she” and “her”. I was flabbergasted. I, in my opinion at least, did not look my best today. I’ve had other days where I could have sworn I was very cute and rocking my head scarf and still got called sir/he/him. I had minimal makeup on today – foundation (to hide electrolysis redness), eyebrows, blue eyeliner. That is it. Not even mascara today.

As he went back to the store, he offered us drinks (because of the heat) which we declined – we had lots of water anyway.

For the next while I was over the moon happy about this. Then I started thinking more about it. Was that a little bit sexist? Was I just a victim (albeit a minor one) of sexism? First thought; yay! Second though; that’s a completely inappropriate response.

I am completely of two minds over this. Sexism of any kind is horrible, and here I am happy it happened to me. wtf? I guess I kind of have to live with the fact that I’m happy about this one time. If it wasn’t the first time ever getting correctly gendered at work, I would NOT be happy about it. And it was relatively minor, could even just be ageism. I can’t discolour my first time with negativity. So, I’ll try and forget the ‘isms’ of it, and just recount the happy.

So yeah, ultimately – Happy.

Hugs,
Jess

Something changed, I’m not sure exactly when, or even what changed. It wasn’t wholly the being alone thing, it was some dysphoria stuff as well. Somehow, I’ve changed.

I had a very bad Friday night – trying to activate my new VISA. My voice, that I thought was halfways decent on the phone, this night, turned out to not be the case. My initial attempt ended when the CSR asked if I was phoning FOR Jessica, and then asked to speak to Jessica. I hung up at this point. Since Teresa and Rain were over, I thought maybe my voice was being compromised a bit by them being in hearing distance, so I went out to a park to be completely alone (bad idea really).

I tried the phone call again, and got passed the ‘I AM Jessica’, only to get my birthday wrong. For some reason they had my wrong day. So, then, all the other questions started about Teresa. All of which I got right, until they asked the last payment on the account. I’m in a very dark park at this time. I have no clue what Teresa paid on it last. It ends with me just asking if this would be better if I went in to the bank, to which he said yes, and I said very quickly, ok, thank you, goodbye. *click*

I started to sob uncontrollably at this point. On a bench, at 11:30pm in a dark park. I wasn’t making any effort to be quiet, and a guy walking his dog asked (twice) if I was okay. I managed to blurt out a lie of ‘yep’.

Eventually making it home, I said goodnight, and cried more in bed. I also said and did some things that night that I’m not proud of, and I’ve apologized for, and they don’t need to be shared here.

This was the worst dysphoria I have ever felt. I was basically told that I was invalid. But I think, the bad way I reacted made me realize I had to change some things. Going on like this was not going to be good for my marriage and my friendships, and I’d truly wind up alone.

It may simply have been that thought that triggered this change. It may not be that at all. I really don’t know, but I do know something intrinsic changed. A whole part of my mindset is different now. My level of dysphoria has been reduced to a quiet controlled background hum. Almost comforting, instead of the discordant crash of noise it was before. I have a new feeling of being ‘right’, of things being the way they should be.

I’ve gotten some of my patience back – my physical changes are quite slow at the moment and that was causing me additional stress, which is now gone.

I had lost a lot of my confidence Friday night with the severe misgendering. It has returned, strongly, along with a companion feeling of just knowing things are right. It’s almost a feeling of ‘screw what everyone else thinks’ but it’s not. I still care what people think, I just know that if they misgender me, they’re wrong and I’m right.

Things with Teresa have gotten better too. All because of this mindset change. I’ve been able to be alone at work, alone at home, alone while out, and no self negativity at all.

I can’t explain it. I wish I could. I am very happy it happened, and I seem to be very happy overall again. It seems more natural too. When I first started transition, I was very happy – but it was just a happiness to be transitioning. It was overlying other negative feelings, which eventually broke through. Not that I wasn’t happier with being me, but I have other issues as well, not just being transgender. But now, I feel truly happy. For the first time in a long while. And for the first time ever (in memory), I’m happy AND happy being me at the same time.

Yay for inexplicable changes in how I think!

I ordered some pizza from a food court outlet, and when I was handed the pizza I got a, “here ya go, sir.”

It even took me a moment to register that it happened. I didn’t bother saying anything because the chances of me ever seeing this person again are very slim.

At first, I thought it was no big deal. Didn’t really seem to bother me. I told a couple people close to me about it, and got some reassurances.

But as the afternoon went on, I noticed I was getting extremely frustrated with things. If something was in my way, it got kicked, or thrown out of the way. The level went from nothing to sky high in seconds. It has to be from this incident. Nothing else happened today other than my spork broke in half and is now a really short spoon and a really short fork.

To help alleviate things I reached out to a friend that suggested listening to music, or humming. I finally settled on a short walk away from ‘things’ while humming some My Little Ponies song. It helped. Until I started the next task at the job site. Removing a, roughly, 20 year old pampas grass. By shovel. It was going well enough cutting the top off with hedge trimmers, but when I got to the part of actually trying to get the roots out – *poof* back to frustrated.

I started violently digging at the roots, actually hoping that my bad elbow (which has been mending finally) would give out and I’d have to go to the hospital. Hoping that something would tear or let go, or pop out of place. I stopped that pretty quickly when I realized what I was doing. Took an early coffee break at that point.

Things seemed a bit better after that break. Got it done without breaking anything or anyone.

Today’s afternoon has led me to start thinking that maybe all my build ups of frustration throughout my life, have actually been my way of interpreting my dysphoria. It puts a bit of a new spin on the whole idea. I always thought I merely felt resigned to be male, and that it was a background kind of thing. Muted. Distant. But if all my bouts of frustration, where I’d wind up punching things, or being self destructive, if they were from my dysphoria then that would make a lot of sense.

So, now that I possibly know (it feels kinda right) where it’s coming from… the next step is to work on releasing the pressure before it builds to me trying to rip my elbow apart again. And that was from one misgender. One. And I KNEW it was going to happen. I also now know I was not as prepared as I told myself I was.

Hugs,
Jess