GenderBendy

Welcome!

Hello!  My name is Lisa, but for now you can call me Dee.  In November 2008 I wrote to my own surprise in my journal:  "I just want to be a girl."   Now I find myself moving circumspectly but deliberately along the path toward becoming a woman.  The purpose of this blog is to document my ongoing metamorphosis.  Thank you for reading!  :-)

Fashion experiments at work and home

Thursday at work I wore the soft blue androgynous top and matching stocking cap and the mini-aubergine earrings...moderate dangle, no sparkle.  Catching my reflection in windows and such, I still looked like same the old Dave everyone's used to.

Yesterday I left the cap at home and let my hair fall loose and fluffy over my ears.  I also wore my favorite antiquey-chandelier earrings - significant dangle, moderate sparkle - and a short soft-and-fuzzy wool scarf in gender-neutral light tones, and when I caught my reflection, I was snapping more femme.  It's the hair, mostly...that's such a powerful gender-signifier...although it would look much more femme if I had neatly styled it rather than just roughly patting my bed-head into shape.  Here's a pic I took as I was leaving for work: 

Nobody said anything, except my dear friend Deb just before I left...she confirmed my impression that I was closer to the center line.  It doesn't take much, it turns out, to waltz right up to it.  A touch of lipstick would bump me across.

I wish my hair were thicker... :-(

Anyway, this morning when I woke up I lay in bed pondering the question I ponder every morning:  what to wear?  ...and with some trepidation I decided to go with the same hairdo and earrings, plus the super-fuzzy lamb's wool sweater with the big gold-and-white buttons which my children have already seen me in. 

Why trepidation?  Because my son is still uncomfortable with my femininity, so I have been keeping it under wraps at home, at least with regard to appearance.  I've never held back on how I hold my body and move, and I'm letting my voice wander as it wants across the gender divide, with sometimes curious results.  But out of respect for his ambiguous feelings, when he is around I have maintained consistent drab (man-clothes).

At the same time I'm agonizing all the time about how to talk to him.  We have a close and loving relationship, but we don't converse very well.

So, my dressing choice this morning was actually a parenting choice.  I have elected to wear what I want to wear - what I wore in public yesterday - and to let him deal with it as he sees fit.  He's up...I can see him at his computer from where I sit at my computer...and we've had some light chat, about coffee and so on.  His eyes were elusive...but then they often are.  I feel self-conscious, bashful, and vulnerable, but I'm going to play it out. 

Maybe he hasn't even really noticed.  And even if he has, maybe he doesn't care.  And even if he does, maybe small steps like this will impel conversation, and that would be good.  Anything's better than a Talk.

[Note added 5 minutes after original posting:  my son just noticed my earrings.  "Nice earrings," he remarked.  "Why thenk you," I replied, striking a pose.  "They're my favorites."  Then he started joking around about something else.  Yay!  :-)  Once again I re-learn what I have already learned so many times before, that the subtle setting of tone is at the very center of parenting...and that this can not be faked or forced.  Their moods resonate to mine like unstopped guitar-strings...]

P.O.I.G.

Now that I have come out at work, I find that I enjoy a new freedom to begin to publicly explore the space between the genders. 

Up until now I've been carefully maintaining my old male style, despite its beginning to feel wrong...men's jeans or khaki pants, brown leather men's shoes, and a selection of subdued shirts, usually a T under a long-sleeve button shirt, and when it's cold, a mannish brown wool sweater and brown canvas coat as outer layers.  Also, I've kept my hair pulled back behind my ears, and I have habitually been wearing a thickly-knitted dark green wool cap.  I do wear earrings every day, but so far it has either been the silver studs with the little green-glass gems, or the tiny silver rosebuds...very little flash or dangle.

Today, dressing, I made just three minor different choices.  I'm wearing a soft dark blue pullover top with a zipper neck which is more androgynous than my usual shirts; I've swapped the green cap for a dark blue one which is softer and thinner, and I've pulled it well back on my head so that my hair curls out from under it in back in a mildly feminine way; and I'm wearing my new favorite earrings, silver, with a small round mandala-shape at the ear itself, and then a little silver-embossed dark purple bead hanging down...they jiggle when I shake my head, and it makes me smile.  :-)

With just these three changes supplementing my plucked eyebrows, my smoother post-laser face, and my continued efforts to relax into more feminine ways of holding my body and moving, I can get a solid femme flash in the mirror, at least looking straight on.  In a side view the masculine structure of the bones of my face still tips the balance to the male side.  But still...I'm edging closer to the line.

So, I've made up a new acronym.  At least for today, while it still strikes me as whimsical, I'm a POIG:  A Person Of Indeterminate Gender.

Things which have to go soon:  the man-shoes and the briefcase.  Next week I think I will shop for women's sneakers, and then try them with my women's cut jeans for a day, see if anyone notices.  And my dear friend Sue gave me a big funky clunky brown leather handbag which I'll try as a replacement for the briefcase. 

Being a POIG can be fun, I tell myself...and I do really need to try to just play for a while, if I can.  I am grateful, these days, for any insight which helps me feel like I can slow down.  The drive toward womanhood has felt so unrelentingly powerful since the First Event Conference a few weeks back...I'm aching constantly.  It's not a comfortable time.

The end of a whirlwind week

I've had a couple of kind inquiries about how I'm doing since coming out at work on Wednesday, and I'm doing fine, thanks.  A lot has happened in a short time, all of it good.

Thursday:  I had many more e-mails waiting for me when I got to work, expressing congrats and support.  No stink bombs.  Several people said they thought what I had done took real balls, which is funny when you think about it.  There was one e-mail from a volunteer friend who read my blog from top to bottom with real attention and said some really nice things about it.  I am totally susceptible to compliments of my writing (take note if you ever want to try to get something out of me), and enjoyed a warm buzz for the rest of the day.  Otherwise, a more or less ordinary busy day at work. 

Friday:  e-mails trickling off...some people saving saying something nice for a face-to-face encounter.  Still no stink bombs.  Sharing news this personal invites return confidences...I've had more than one conversation which was mostly listening on my part.  And, otherwise, another regular busy day.  Then home to prepare for a trip to western MA for the second laser treatment on my beard.

The Weekend:  The second treatment was not nearly as traumatic as the first.  (See Zap! for an account of that.)  I knew what to expect this time, and also I'm extremely pleased with how well the first one worked.  Afterward Ardis and I started talking clothes (she's an old family friend...we played together as toddlers) and next thing I know, we're at her house and she's hauling outfits out of multiple closets for me to try, and it turns out we wear the same size shoe, and an hour and a half later I'm driving on to Sue's house (Sue is Ardis's mother and a kind of surrogate mom to me too) with two big bags in the back ...some really nice stuff.  Thanks Ardis!  Total pink fog orgy!  :-)

Sue had invited me to a night of comedy improv at a local VFW hall, and I had asked if she minded if I went in femme mode, and she said she was expecting it, so I got dressed, wolfed some stew, and out we went, stopping back at Ardis's house to pick her up too.  This was pretty much my first time out as a woman in a completely ordinary everyday social setting...non-shopping (where they have to be polite), non-LGBT friendly.  Nobody looked at me twice.  Sue and Ardis were great...just treating me like their old girlfriend in town for the weekend.  I got to experience what life will be like when I'm transitioned... and it was a bit of a letdown.  I was tired and feeling a little shook up, and the fact that I was dressed the way I wanted didn't make that go away.  I know this is a lesson I need to learn, that even if my transition goes perfectly I'm still going to have plenty of sucky times, and that was perhaps the beginning of learning it.  I still savored every moment, though.

Before I left Sue's house this morning I had added a third big bag of clothes to the back of my car...thanks Sue...clothes-swapping like this may happen all the time in girl world, but not in boy world, so it feels special, and it's a thrill to have so many more wardrobe options...  :-)

One last event of note:  I stopped for the weekly grocery shop on my way home, and an employee of the store who pointedly declined to serve me several months back was once again behind the seafood counter. (Original account here.)  He saw me coming and moved into a little alcove with his face hidden, pretending to be busy.  I felt the adrenaline begin to bubble up, and without giving myself a chance to really think about it I stepped up to the counter and waited a moment to see if he would acknowledge my presence.  He did not, so I said clearly and loudly, "Could I buy some fish please?" 

Reluctantly, with hostile eyes, he served me.  When he handed me the bag of salmon fillet, I met his eye for just a second and said warmly "Thank you kindly," and then stayed a moment more to cross things off my list before rolling out of sight.  It was a sweet ending to a fine weekend.

I've made an enormous amount of progress in a very short time.  My children are due to arrive any time now for their week with me, and I think I need to slow down now, breathe, rest...show myself I can still take a step back, bide my time...work, write, parent.

Can't unclick that!

I did it.  At around 2pm this afternoon I transfered my oh-so-carefully worded coming-out memo from its text file to an e-mail and clicked "send," and out it flew to a mailing list of, oh, I don't know exactly, 300 people?  Everyone, in any case, I work with in my people-intensive job.  I don't think I've experienced a moment that heightened since my last child was born.

By 4:30 or so when I left I had answered a couple of dozen kind, warm, generous e-mails from volunteer-friends.  They said some truly blush-inducing things.  I'm expecting dozens more e-mails in my inbox when I get to work tomorrow.  The attention is nice, of course it is...and I'll be glad when it all dies down again. 

No negative responses so far...maybe a puzzled or uncomfortable look or two.  But I know, the down side could come at any point in the future.  I'll be living with that potential from now on.

Every big step so far has felt like a test...do I really mean it?  Any remorse?  Do I wish I could take it back?  The answers this time are:  yes, no, no.  I do mean it.  No remorse...I feel incredible, free.  And it wouldn't matter if I did want to take it back, because I can't.

No going back in through THAT door!  I'm out, baby, out for ever more!

On the way home I rewarded myself for my chutzpah by stopping for a quick shopping spree in a chi-chi boutique in Kennebunk.  Very different from my usual Goodwill jaunts!  I picked up a truly gorgeous hand-knitted grey sweater top, light and feminizing with pretty flared sleeves, and two pairs of lovely dangly earrings...I have a serious weakness for dangly earrings, especially silver ones with a funky antique look.  :-)  All on sale, all on credit...and right back to spending as little as possible...

I'm still high.  What a rush.  What a life-affirming moment.  Hey world!  THIS IS ME!! 

It's miraculous.  I get to be.

The Memo

I'm planning to come out at work.  Work is WMPG, Portland, Maine's community radio station...we have a paid staff of 5 and about 250 volunteers.  I'm the program director there.  I have written (and rewritten and rewritten) an e-mail with the working subject line "Who the heck is Dee?" in which I explain that I am trans, note that I am planning to transition, and asking everyone to call me "Dee" as a transitional  nickname from now on, because "Dave" just doesn't feel right any more.

How this started:  a week ago Monday we had a meeting of the paid staff in which I saw and took an opportunity to tell them that I was planning to transition.  I had previously come out to all of them as trans, but had not yet spoken of a firm intention to become a woman.  I tried to keep it as light as I could, and my dear friends stared at me with unreadable faces.  I asked them to start calling me "Dee," and my friend Dale Robin asked, "Are you going to change your e-mail?"

I had thought of starting small by asking paid staff and a few friends among the volunteers to use the new name, in hopes that it would spread over time, but now that she mentioned it, the idea struck me as a good one.  So, I switched.  "Dave" became "Dee" in the name and signature fields of all my station e-mails.  I started answering my phone with the new name too.  (I had already begun to use it on air, but DJ aliases are commonplace at 'MPG, so that by itself had not been provocative.)  

My old tightly controlled self hardly ever acted on impulse like this.  It's scary, but it feels right.

Naturally people noticed.  A few asked (I gave evasive answers), a few said "cool" without seeming to need an explanation, several folks just took the new name up, one person guessed why (or I should say, guessed and asked if she was right) and there were various small awkwardnesses.  I sensed a definite hum of curiosity about the place...and so I started drafting the memo.

I have other justifications too:  for example, I hadn't counted on this being as difficult a request as it turns out to be.  I have been friends with some of these good people for many years, and all that time they have known me as Dave.  They are struggling with the switch.  Maybe witnessing me ask everyone will help.  Also, I quickly saw how confusing it would be to have some people calling me one thing and some another; and I hate it that so far I have been having to ask the friends I have come out to to keep my transness secret from those to whom I have not.

These are all valid reasons, but none of them are the deepest reason.  The deepest reason is, I just want it.  I want to be out.  I am no longer the person I have been,  I want the world to know who I am now.

The other morning, dozing between snooze-button pushes, I experienced a sudden and intense dream-image.  Everyone I knew, everyone in the world, was crowded into a hotel banquet room, squeezed around tables, laughing and talking and eating and drinking and flirting and just being alive together.  I stood in a dusty shadowy stairwell, listening to their din and watching them through double glass doors.  I glanced up the stairs...it was even darker up there...the way back up to a lonely cell.  Up there was death.  I looked down.  My hand rested on the crashbar.  All I had to do was summon up the courage to push the door open and walk through.

And so I've prepped my boss and a couple other key people higher up in the University administration...I've tweaked the memo a few more times (and will a few times more)...and I've carefully considered my timing.  I've got a big project with a deadline to finish, so I probably need to get that done first.  Maybe Thursday afternoon...but on the other hand, project or not, I may not be able to hold off until then.  :-)

I do believe I am ready to take another big step forward into the light.

First Event wrap

I'm home from my second day of First Event, the big trans-conference north of Boston, and I'm still flying.  For two days in a row I got to be myself, and toward the end of the second day, yesterday, I really began to let go into that.  Just a few times so far as I feel my way forward into femininity - and yesterday afternoon was one of them - I have suddenly noticed that I'm talking high and light and fast and expressively, that my voice is more full of breath than it ever is in man-mode, that my hands and in fact my whole body are uninhibitedly involved in my expressing myself, and that a big girl-smile is stretching my mouth wide, because I feel like smiling, I just can't help it.  In those moments I feel the quick warm feminine joy at the center of my being just beaming out of me, and I feel free.  That is such a lovely feeling.  :-)

There were way more people at the conference yesterday, Saturday, than there had been on Friday, including a goodly number of people in their teens and twenties, and many more trans men than before.  The look of the crowd at mixed trans events still makes me smile: tall big-boned women with fabulous hair, and short soft-featured crew-cutted boys in jeans and t-shirts.  We look so different, but in conversation and friendship I find that the sharing of the journey usually seems to eclipse the relatively minor matter of which direction you're going.

By conference end I had had three private consultations with three different plastic surgeons about FFS - Facial Feminization Surgery:

Dr. O is the patriarch of this select fraternity.  He favors thorough reconstruction of the bones of the face, and his results are startling, sometimes to the point of making you look like a completely different person...but, always, an entirely feminine person, and sometimes strikingly attractive.  I can't deny the seductive pull of his work, but I'm concerned about a few things...he dictates rather than collaborates, and he also told me my ideal weight at 6' is 30 pounds less than my current 180.  Who says I have to be skeletally thin to be an attractive woman?  Hm...I don't think I'm the first person to ask that question... :-p

Dr. B. is young, relatively unknown, and hungry.  He offered to cover my airfare and lodging for trips to California to be operated on by him.  He favors a less invasive approach - more soft-tissue, less bone - and he seems less completely bound to an underlying unquestioned assumption about what constitutes beauty.

Dr. M., who also does genital surgery, radiates competence.  He was pleasant to talk with, and seemed to strike a good balance between offering professional guidance and listening to my concerns.

I didn't talk to Dr. Z, because going to him seems to constitute joining a cult.  I don't want to be a Z-girl.  And I missed the chance to talk to Dr. S, but I will definitely talk to him, too, because he's based in Boston, in easy driving distance.  All the rest of them are in Arizona and California...lots of air fare...

And price?  Ah, yes...I'm still waiting from quotes from the other two, but Dr. O's estimate:  $45K, plus another $13K if I need a face lift after, which I probably would. Whee.

Best moment of the day:  a compliment from a stranger..."You take up space in a womanly way."  Typed out like that I guess it looks rather odd, but in context I took it to mean that to the speaker my over-all presentation was coming across as strongly femme...a validation of my ongoing effort to become a woman from the inside out.  Of course I gushed my thanks... :-)

Worst moment (not bad, just mildly yucky):  being one of only four members of the audience for a presentation about dealing with the media by a hard-faced trans man who edits a GLBT newspaper somewhere out west, and observing that he was making good public-speaking eye-contact with the other three people in the room...by appearance, a boy and two girls all in their twenties...and carefully passing over me each time.  It reminded me of the way I have sometimes felt pointedly ignored by activist Lesbians when I am in man-mode.  Whatever.  I left.

I dressed in man comfy-clothes when I got up this morning, just because I'm used to them.  Ordinary life beckons once again...and that's almost a relief.  When you have learned patience, all times are soon.

First Event day one

So I dressed and did my makeup and headed south, in a tizzy again.  I may have been working hard on this for a year, but I'm still a noob.  I forgot my lunch and my planner book, but decided not to go back for them.  Trans conference here I come.

I wore my red skirt with the spangles and the new embroidered white top which my sister gave my daughter for Christmas, and which she didn't like...quelle domage! :-).  Plus, low heels, makeup including this new outrageous purple-with-sparkles eyeshadow I picked up on a whim the other day, and jewelry including my favorite cheapo but elegant-looking dangly earrings.  And I had blowdried my hair with the curling brush the way Sue at Clip and Snip showed me...I'm getting the hang of that.

Today for sure I'll ask someone to take my picture and post it.  I was feeling too diffident yesterday.  [note added 15 hours later...new profile pic at right taken today :-)]

I spent a lot of time in sessions which were essentially pitches by plastic surgeons, complete with before-and-after slides of genital and facial surgeries.  Yes, I am comparison shopping.  There is some amazing work being done.  There was one guy who was really aggressive and loud, and I thought, I like his work, but he would intimidate me in consults...I couldn't work with him.  Being bold about being shy...

There were a couple of other transitioned women there who really had the voice thing down...I want to seek them out again today and ask them about their voice work.

Some encounters...I had a nice conversation with effervescent 70-something Billie Bliss and her new girlfriend.  Billie talked about the hugger-mugger of crossdressing in the 60's.  And Hope very kindly asked to join my at my solo table at lunch, when I was sitting there feeling lonely and exposed, and I listened to her story of crossdressing within marriage.  She didn't come out to her wife for almost a decade of marriage, but they are still together post-revelation.  The wife is accepting but doesn't want to see her dressed.

There were a few big-hair spangly-dress women there, but they were not the majority which my dazzled memory of last year conjured up.  Most everyone there was a lot like me...trying to fit their long jaws and big shoulders into some kind of femme look.  Most people seemed to be feeling as I felt...tentative and a little stiff, but so happy to be out in the world.  For the first time in my life I have a group which I, the real I, can really join, and I struggle to understand how to do that.  Feeling slightly apart has been the habit of a lifetime.  It's hard to just stop.

My last session of the day was a little gathering of politically active trans folks led by Denise LeClair, a Washington-based activist.  I sat quietly and listened and began to realize that some of the real movers and shakers of trans USA were in that room.  I felt too bashful to participate much, but now there are some important folks who someday, if I ever need to, I can approach with "You won't remember me, but we met at..."  I did chat with Denise after (we have a curious personal connection - her brother is the partner of my former spouse), and did a pronoun-slip with her...I hate it when I do that!  *SQUIRM*!  I corrected and apologized immediately, and she said it was all right, obviously completely not upset.  I continue to learn about letting things like that roll off...

OK, gotta get going for my visit today.  I'm going to try to network more, and I have a free consult with one of the premier surgeons in the late afternoon...dangerous to be doing that, with regard to setting the transition-ache going again, but I have to seize the chance.

Second First Event

I'm up early this morning - it's around 5am - to get ready to go to First Event, a big annual conference for trans folk in Peabody, MA, north of Boston.  It's an hour drive each way for me, so I plan to dress and drive today and tomorrow.  (Gotta come out to my neighbors one of these days so I can stop fussing about how to get from the house to the car in a skirt...)

Last year's First Event was my first time ever dressed in public, less than two months after my initial trans-revelation.  I drove down in man mode in a state of high trepidation, my painted nails hidden inside gloves, and changed in one of the complimentary changing rooms into my Goodwill polyester skirt and a plum-colored silk top, which I unknowingly put on backward.  (Single buttons go in back...)  I didn't have a wig or any shapewear, though I would acquire both before the day was done, in a pink fog in the shopping area.  Until I bought the wig I did the best I could with a hair-tie obscuring my short man-cut, and while I no doubt looked rather patched together none of the gorgeously decked out crossdressers said a thing.  I like that about the trans gatherings I've been to so far...everyone is very accepting.

I feel so much more confident this year, and I'm looking forward to wearing a different nice outfit each of the two days...but, I've made the decision to go once again without wig or shapewear.  I've grown my hair out and gotten it colored, and when I blow-dry and style it right, it looks solidly femme; and with regard to body shape I've been practicing getting by on posture and mannerism.  That's how it will be once I've fully transitioned.  Even with hormones I'm going to be shaped much as I am now, so I figure it's time to go it with only the standard props: my own body, hair and voice, plus clothes, makeup, and attitude.  Chin up, dear.  Loosen those hips...stick that ass up a little higher...

Something I've learned:  a little too much is just enough.  I carry it best when I'm a touch flamboyant, which is a challenge for me.  I'm the shy hide-in-a-corner (for forty years) type.  I can't go back now, though...just gotta keep sashaying forward into the light.

Stay tuned for a report on day one!

Zap!

So a family friend offered me a deal I could actually afford on laser beard-removal, and two weekends ago now I went and got my face zapped.

I had read a lot of conflicting reports about how effective laser really is, and before Ardis's generous offer I was scared off by the prices, so I had steeled myself for the long slow painful (and also expensive, but with the expense more drawn out) process of electrolysis.  I tried a couple of different electrologists and liked the second one, but it was slow and it was painful, and I looked like I had rope burns from a suicide attempt, and the healing was very slow...there's skin on my neck which still gets red six weeks after my last treatment.

Laser is also painful, but it is quick.  So quick, in fact, that I had to keep asking Ardis to slow down because I was hyperventilating.   It's a scary machine, at least the first time.  I had to wear special goggles to protect my eyeballs from getting fried, and no one else was allowed in the room, and when she zapped skin close to my eyes I saw a flash even though I had my eyes closed and the goggles on.  There was also a smell of burning hair, which added to the drama.

I was a mess, saturated with anxiety and anticipation.  Part way through I felt tears welling up and had to ask Ardis to stop so I could sit up and bawl for a minute.  I cried because until the moment came I hadn't known if I would really go through with it, and the fact that I had was another addition to the growing body of evidence about just how serious I am about transition...I really don't consciously know the depth of my desire to be a woman very clearly, and have to consider evidence like a concerned friend.  I was also mourning the passing of one small part of the man I have been.  No takebacks on this.  A lot of my beard is now gone, never to return.  I'm going to be clean-shaven for the rest of my life, whether I become a woman or not.

Considering how much this relatively simple step shook me up, what am I going to be like if I ever get to the big final no-takebacks steps?

On the way home after the treatment, something was wrong with my right eye.  The taillights and streetlights smeared and shifted every time I shifted my gaze.  It was caused, I now suppose, by the edge of the mal-adjusted metal goggle-cup pushing hard on my eye through my closed eyelid--something I was to freaked out to say anything about when it was happening.  The problem cleared up by morning.  At the time though, driving through the dark, still reeling emotionally, I could only assume with a sense of dread and loss that this eye-damage was permanent, that it was the price I would have to pay for getting rid of my beard.  And I thought, it doesn't matter.  It's still worth it.

Two weeks later, there are no dark hairs on my face which are growing.  There are still some dark hairs, which will need to be zapped when they start growing actively again...the laser missed them the first time because they were dormant...and there are grey hairs which the laser doesn't touch which I'll have to go back to electrolysis for...but still, after one treatment, my shadow is noticeably lighter.  I even fancy that my cheeks and chin are a little less heavy, the skin settling down a millimeter or two without all those follicles in there to thicken it.

Lighter beard, no sideburns, hair getting long, eyebrows plucked, new ways I've been practicing of letting my lips rest softer and fuller, smiling more...sometimes now even in plain man mode when I glance in the mirror I get a femme flash back.  I really am moving into the center space between the genders now.

An astonishing gift

Earlier this week my older sister Sus sent me a couple of photos she took of me in 1979, when I was 17.  It was on a winter's day at the Los Alamos, New Mexico ice rink.  When I saw the first picture, the full-body shot here, I burst into tears. 

Oh my, I thought, that's me.  There I am.

To explain why these pictures have affected me so deeply, I need to mention again that I only became consciously aware of my trans identity a year ago.  When these shots were taken I considered myself, as did everyone around me, to be a boy. 

True, I did wear my hair long from about age 8 on.  At the time I couldn't explain why...it came out of a wordless feeling of defiance.  By age 17 I had stoically endured almost a decade of taunts, presumptuous observations, and double-takes in bathrooms.  I had heard hundreds of times "you look like a girl"...but I never consciously agreed with that observation.  If pressed for a reason, I made something up about counter-culture non-conformity.

In retrospect, my unconscious response was a contemptuous, "Duh...I am a girl."  

Why couldn't I see that?  Why couldn't anyone see?  Not once in my first 46 years did I ever look in a mirror or at a photograph and see what seems so obvious here--a truth so plain and yet so strange it remained invisible to me, and to those who loved me.

These pictures are for me a proof I have still felt I needed of my trans identity.  Coming to this knowledge so far along in life, naturally I have doubted, I have second-guessed...has this really been true since the beginning?  It was all so long ago, and I have done and felt so many mannish things.  I have mistrusted my memory and accused myself of wishful thinking, of bending the truth to fit what I have feared is actually just a wild whim or a phase.  But look...look at the natural girl I was, without even trying.  There I am, shining out, as my sister put it, through the boy-flesh. 

And, hey...I'm pretty.  I was taught that it is wrong to care about that (something I want to write more about some day), but I do, and not just for memory's sake.  It gives me hope for the future.  When I transition, I do so want to be a pretty woman...and for the first time I feel I might have a chance at that.  My heart leaps up at the thought. 

If that's shallow, so be it.  I was there, and I am here, and I am real...and I do feel that I deserve now to step out into the light.

With all my heart, Sis Sus, thank you.