GenderBendy

grinny-face heart heart heart!

I haven't posted for a while because I've been busy falling in love.  My new sweetie loves me too and sees me, admires me, and desires me as a woman.  I am someone's girlfriend!  :-)  It's a fucking miracle.

I find it difficult to put into words how much this new love means to me...but then my darling enjoys rendering me speechless, so that hasn't been a problem... :-)

(If I put in as many smiley-faces as I really wanted here, it would gack even me out...I'll try to restrain myself...)

I thought of being coy again, as in a post a month ago, about my sweetie's identity, but on the other hand her name is Deb Gallagher and she's a lovely sly wise poetic great-hearted Dyke.  She self-identifies as existing between the genders, has many deliciously butch facets, and deeply digs me femme, the femmer the better.  She just absolutely blows me away.

Deb's taking up with me has raised many eyebrows among her friends, Lesbian and otherwise, and she has had some difficult conversations, with more, no doubt, to come.  It takes guts to openly love me.  It's an act of social and political provocation.  Add "courageous" to that list of adjectives in the last paragraph... 

There is so much to write about, and I will in future posts.  For now, one other observation seems pressing:  finding romance has changed, but not blunted, my transition-ache.  Until it happened I couldn't imagine that anyone could love me before I was where I wanted to be, and that made me want to hurry...but now that someone does already love me, mid-metamorphosis, as a woman, it feels more natural than ever just to go on peeling away, gracefully but deliberately, the lingering shards of that old man-shell and simply be, be in the world, be in love, be myself.

"Honor the process" has been, and continues to be, one of my main mantras.  Well, I have to say...that has just gotten *way* more fun... :-D <3<3<3

please stay tuned...

Dear loyal readers, I know I haven't posted in a long time...I've been working two jobs and falling in love...more later!  :-)   Love, Lisa

zenfish

monarch of the ocean
i would swim in you
i would be your zenfish
fleeting lambent silver
through your lights and shadows
your storms do not daunt me
your tide - my breath
your surge - my cradle
i would know
how a fish loves the sea

Naked Romance

There's a certain someone for whom, for a while now, I have been feeling tender feelings, and earlier this week an opportunity arose to mention my crush.  Naturally I was nervous about it, but it felt right, so out the words came...and I could plainly see that my words and the feeling behind them very much pleased and moved the object of my affection.  I don't have any idea yet where we might be headed, but we're talking, and in the meantime, two wonderful things have happened in our exchange which, regardless of outcome, already make it a complete and positive experience for me.

The first is that from my c.s.'s clearly unfeigned tender response I received a powerful message of the inherent value to this person of the love I have to offer.  I strongly exhibit the (what I take to be) feminine trait of instantly internalizing other peoples' thoughts/feelings/judgements about me, so one of the most insidious after-effects of my divorce a few years ago was a sense I could not shake of the worthlessness of my love.  No amount of rational self-exhortation has been able to lessen the profound conviction I have felt that no one could ever possibly want me...until my c.s. was so touched by my expression of affection.  Wow. 

The second wonderful thing is that, for the first time in my life, I approach romance honestly.  Always, until now, as soon as there was a possibility of significant emotional exchange, my gender-lie intruded.  As soon as I felt attraction, I had to start thinking what a man would do.  My dates/girlfriends/wife no doubt found me stiff, stilted, subtly false, because I was trying to impersonate a thing I never was.  And there was another pernicious side-effect:  I felt a secret contempt for women who were interested in me, because I could see that I was fooling them, that they bought the lie.

Now I have the chance to love as, and be loved for, myself.  Such a simple notion.  My risk is greater, because that old man-shell not only obscured me, it insulated me too...but the potential reward is also greater...to be seen, to be known, to be loved for who I really am.  Wow, double wow, again and again.  And one of the things which endears me so to my c.s. is that I do feel that this person sees the woman I am, and values and perhaps even cherishes feminine me.  For the first time in my life, when I begin to sense that the person I care for might also care for me, my respect for that person increases.  I am after all a very strange sort of woman...to be receptive to the idea of romance with me takes, it seems to me, rare human insight, generosity, and self-confidence.  What's not to admire?  :-)

I am keenly aware of the novelty of my experience, and so wary...I am in a way 16 years old and navigating my first crush...but I am also 48 and at least somewhat wise and more than a little strong and able to take care of myself.  So let what will happen happen.  I'm ready.

The astute reader will have noted that I have not only avoided mentioning my c.s.'s name, but also that person's gender.  Clever, no?  I'm enjoying being coy...one of many feminine prerogatives... ;-)

Omniphilic Ambisexual

There are two questions which I sense people often want to ask but usually don't:

"Are you really going to have genital surgery?"

~and~

"So now that you think of yourself as a woman, who do you want to have sex with?"

The answer to the first question is, I won't know for sure until I've done it, but yes, that is the plan.  As they are now, things down there don't feel right any more.  Specifically, I'm tired of testosterone, and want to be quit of it.  It clouds my thinking and my natural being.

The answer to the second question is more elusive.  In recent weeks I have enjoyed flirtations with both women and men...but it's complicated because of the answer to question one.  I don't have a woman's body (yet) and that confuses the issue. 

I have at least been able to come up with a cool new phrase to describe my current emotional/sexual state. At least for the next little while, I have decided that I am an "omniphilic ambisexual."

"Omniphilic" means that I am equally open to loving either a man or a woman.  I can't remember now where I picked it up, but I deeply dig this phrase:  "Love is tender and knows no gender."  I feel open to love...meaning, an intense and exclusive emotional connection with a simpatico someone...and that person could be any gender.  What matters is the connection.  It' doen't necessarily have anything to do with sex, and it feels more important than sex.  A lot more.

The "ambi-" of "ambisexual" is meant to conjure up two associations:  The "ambi-" in "ambidextrous" and the "ambi-" in "ambivalent." I can imagine being sexual with anyone, but on any given day I don't care very much about it.  Funny, in our sex-obsessed society, "none of the above" actually seems like a provocative answer. 

I sure could do with some cuddling though...and sex could still be very hot if the love part was happening...hmm... *gets lost in erotic revery* 

(About whom?  not telling...)

Anyway, one thing I can say for sure:  I don't want to fake it.  From now on, whether it is love or the erotic impulse or both, I will only act if it feels real to me.  As a "man" I always felt at least a little detached, artificial...naturally, since my manhood was an act.  Now for the first time at the tender age of 47 (though it feels like 16) my naked heart turns outward, looking for connection.  That's exciting.  It's also scary, which is another reason to go slow.

One more thing I know for sure:  I never felt comfortable being the aggressor, the instigator.  I feel romantically and erotically passive, receptive.  Not that I want to be less loving than loved - I'm totally into that both ways thing - but I'd really like the other person to take the lead most of the time.

To put it another way, I think I might enjoy being courted.  Now there's a novel concept.  Never thought of that when I was passing as male...  :-)

Some emotional heavy lifting

Thursday afternoon at work an antsiness I had been feeling all day intensified into a need to get away from everyone, to be completely alone.  I went for a walk and after a bit found an empty dark classroom auditorium.  (It's vacation this week).  I sat in the back row and tried to meditate, but I was feeling too agitated; then, exhausted, I napped for about an hour, undisturbed; then I woke again and thought, "I'm not done...I need to remember something," so I curled around the awful empty ache in my stomach, hugging my chest to my thighs, and let my mind go back, searching for the source...and remembered a backpacking trip my father took me on when I was about six.

I have thought and written about this trip before, in pre-revelation counseling, and I have always felt that something emotionally shattering happened during it, but I could never figure out what it was.  Now I think I begin to understand.

Perhaps it goes something like this:

First of all, even before bringing gender into it, I was too young.  He took me up into a huge empty dark place in the mountains when all I had ever known was the lights of home, and I was terrified.  But he had singled me out for this trip - my brother, a year younger, had been deemed too little - so I understood that I was expected to be strong and brave, and I did my best to hide my fear.  We ate dinner as the sky went dark, hung up our food because of the bears, and then it was time to sleep.  When I was in my sleeping bag he told me he needed to go away from the tent for a little while and asked if I would be all right, and I said yes, and he went...and I thought I was going to die. 

I waited and waited, and I heard noises, and then (I swear this is how I remember it) I looked out of the tent and saw a ghostly white figure moving in the dark, and I didn't know if it was my father returning or an emissary of death.

Then he was back. 

I needed him to comfort me, to touch me, to hold me, but he did none of these things.  He did not sense my terror..and I think perhaps in that moment I grasped at some fundamental level deeper than words that he could not see me.  He could not see the girl I knew I was.  He saw me as a boy, expected me and wanted me to be a boy.

And of course like any little girl I loved my Daddy with all my heart, and wanted more than anything to please him...so perhaps that was the moment I made up my mind to be a boy and then a man.  For him.  Because I loved him.

Or something like that.  I am wary of pat psychological reconstructions.  Still, there is a lot here which feels close to truth.

In the empty auditorium, as I worked my way through some version of the above, sobs wrenched out of me.  Anger and pain and sorrow and guilt all mixed together were oozing out deep down, a black emotional sludge from long ago.  It hurt hard.

But then later, washing my face in the mirror, I looked in the mirror and thought, "I forgive him.  And I forgive myself."  Easy, just like that.

Who knows how much of this is accurate or lasting...but it does seem telling.  I thought I was going to die that night in the mountains; and I thought I was going die again when my car's transmission failed on the highway, right around the time I reached the age he was when he died; and it was right after that I wrote in my journal, "I just want to be a girl." 

Too tidy?  Maybe.  Maybe not.

Why didn't I die?  I was supposed to die.  Why am I alive?

I don't know.  No reason.  I just am.

So.

So, now I'm going to do what I want.

Momentum

Got an electrolysis appointment next week to begin to finish beard-removal.  Got an endocrinologist appointment too, to talk about hormones.  Had a counseling appointment with my children, and my counselor said at the end she is completely comfortable taking their word that they are fine with my gender plans.

Furthermore, I'm going to be prominently featured in an article in the Phoenix coming out next Wednesday (with a photo of my current gender-ambiguous look), the same day that I'm Deb's guest on Lesbian Radio on WMPG.  I'm going to be very publicly out next week.

What is this:  an attempt to make myself do something I'm not actually sure about, by telling everyone, so I have to go through with it? 

No.

Every time I try to doubt, that implacable answer comes back.  I want to be a woman. 

And, it appears, no one is going to stop me.

It's the endo appointment that scares me.  As early as next week I could be taking my first estrogen pills.  Will I do it?  I want to, but I'm afraid...and also sad about the slow passing away of old male self.  I made a good man for a long time.  I wish I could have gone on being that man.  He wasn't real, but he was worthy...and he is worthy of being mourned, and I am mourning him.

I can always wait a little while before taking that first pill...and I think I do want to try to do that.  (Shh...don't wake her up...)

Yeah, there is this sense of dual self sometimes:  I feel like the wary parent of an exceptionally emotional and willful child.  Parent-self does feel feminine, but does not need to insist on that; child-self is all girl, and ready to throw a tantrum at any moment:   IMAGIRLIMAGIRLIMAGIRLIMAGIRL...  I hope that, as my inner parent continues to learn to better nurture and direct the energy of my inner child, and as my inner child continues to learn both to trust my inner parent and to govern her own passions a little, my one deeper self will begin to emerge...as whole and complete a woman as I can be.

There is an outcome here which I have hardly dared imagine, but which begins to really seem possible:  I am a convincing natural woman in the world, and in love with someone who is in love with me, and I've not hurt anyone, and I'm happy.  And now since my daughter has company over, I'm going to have to go into the bathroom to cry.

Sleepless morning

I woke at 2:30am half-dreaming about just being done, about being as much a woman as I will ever be able to be, and yearning aching for it...but also doubting, once again, this whole enterprise.  My concern:  I have always been a zealot - totally into whatever I'm into - and with each new enthusiasm I have felt utterly convinced that I have found It, the Answer to All My Life's Questions...but many of these fads have failed to last.

Some examples: 

In college I invented Lifegame, a social-group game where players asked in other players who asked in other players, and you had to make up a secret symbol for yourself and then make a life-long commitment to contribute annually to a group mailing.  (This was obviously pre-Internet.)  I became passionately involved in this idea and recruited all my closest friends, and I did keep it up for a couple of years, gathering people's annual narratives and sending them back out again.  Then it began to feel like a chore, and after a few more years Lifegame petered out.

In my early twenties I test-played a custom-made bodiless electric standup bass and fell in love with it.  I didn't feel I could afford it, though, so I promised myself that at some future date I would get one, learn to play it really well, and then find personal fulfillment as a jazzy funky bass player.  I held onto that dream for twenty years.  Two years ago, as a present to myself on the occasion of surviving divorce, I bought the bass - I even splurged on the five-string - and there it stands in the corner, silently rebuking me every day for never playing it.

In my late twenties I fell in love and got married and begat babies, and deep down inside, in my fierce secret girl-heart (wait, can I say that and still make the point I think I'm trying to make here?  Well, keep typing and let's see...) I really felt that I had succeeded at last in my greatest life-project, manhood.  My love was real...I know because when it was no longer wanted and I had to kill it I felt like I was going to die...but I couldn't make manhood last either.

OK, um...so I was going to say, what if this idea that I'm actually a woman is another temporary enthusiasm...but then I had to go and write that last paragraph.   Well, I can still say it, and should, because of the devious cleverness of the zealous mind.  I have thrown myself wholeheartedly into the idea of my femininity, and my zealous mind does pounce on each new bit of evidence which favors the precipitous drive into womanhood, at the same time discrediting any doubts or lingering mannish impulses.  I am biased, headstrong, quite possibly self-blinded.  I must strive to doubt, even as I inevitably spin every new datum and compulsively seek to subvert the process of doubting itself.

On the other hand, it does needs to be noted that I have not always been wrong about my enthusiasms.  I was right about wanting to be a parent.  I am right about being a writer.  Despite how hard they sometimes are I have embraced these passions for life, and they have become much of who I am.

[long pondering silence]

Once again I feel my way back to the insight that the best real-world answer is that I must trust the process.  Be in each moment, and allow myself, if I can, to act on every healthy-seeming impulse, either to move ahead or hold back...while always thinking of those I love.  Unclench.  That has been a crucial mantra since the beginning, and here it is again.  Unclench.  Unclench.

Names

When I was five my besotted mother took me several times to play with a very pretty little girl named Lisa.  I was besotted too...my first crush, I used to think, and that still feels at at least partly true...but obviously it was more complicated than just that, because when I was asked for the first time post-revelation what my femme name was I just knew, and the name I breathed with a sense of blooming joy and release and coming home was hers.

Then I was writing an article about being trans and needed a pen name.  Back in high school I took part in a curious three-way note-based flirtation among my friend Robin, a pretty girl named Cynthia, and myself.  It was their flirtation at first, but he let me add to the notes.  That flirtation gave me an elusive yet powerful thrill, which, it now occurs to me, probably arose not out of the ugly-duckling yearning for her attention I would have named at the time, but out of my secret love for him.  The name I chose for the notes was Pomeroy.

Then lisa.pomeroy was already taken on gmail, so I added the middle initial for the name my mother told me she had picked out for me had I been born a (physical) girl:  H for "Hillary."

Then my sister asked me if I was abandoning my family name, which I emphatically did not and do not wish to do; and at the same time I started experimenting with "Dee" as a transitional all-modes nickname...my male-name initial, and a perfectly fine femme name too...and so now my working draft for a final name post-transition is Lisa Dee Bunker.

Stay tuned for further revisions... (*sigh*)

For the time being, I have started asking some old friends and most new acquaintances to call me Dee.  I'm not consistent about it yet, though, so I'm confusing people.  Metamorphosis allowed to happen at its own pace gets bumpy sometimes. 

And, when I talk to myself (as I habitually do) I find I'm also still using "Dave."  I'll keep gently correcting myself to "Dee" for a little while at least to see if it starts to come more naturally.  (I do still feel totally at ease calling myself "Bunker," which is a fine name to spit out when one is annoyed with one's more idiotic moments... :-) )

The other self-referential wrinkle is, I still call myself "man," and I've puzzled for a while about a good alternative to that and to other half-ironic pep talk names like "Bucko". It took me until today to think of being tender with myself...so now I'm trying out "Sweetie" and "Darling" and "My Love"...and I find that when I call myself by these names, I feel noticeably better than I did the moment before. 

Hey, it turns out I can sweet-talk myself.  :-)  Useful to remember when, as they sometimes do, the clouds get darker...

Uncurling the hand

No new post for more than a week, but that doesn't mean nothing has been happening.  Rather the opposite.  I spent the last week working my way through the new height up the beach of my most recent wave of femme-ache.  Last time I posted I trembled on the edge of telling my children this would be my last year living as a man.  Now I've settled back to a healthier-feeling, more centered place...resolve undiminished, but wary of excessive urgency; practicing mindfulness through meditation again; and, rather than pushing forward, simply trying to hold myself open to the next stage of metamorphosis, whatever it might be, trusting it to happen when it is what must be.

I continue to wrestle with the question of how to balance my needs with those of my children, and this un-driven openness to change seems the best answer.  A deadline by which I will be living full time as a woman frightens me, let alone them.  It provokes anxiety and stress, and anyway, it's stupid...so much can happen, too many variables...how can you set a plan and then follow it blindly in such a complicated situation?  You can't. 

Conversely, I find I am unwilling to resolve to wait, no matter what, until Son14 is out on his own...the want is too strong.  I have discovered, it seems, at long last, a limit to my impulse to self-sacrifice.  That said, in the end I might still end up taking long enough to get where I'm going that he will never have to explain to puzzled vice-principals that his dad is now his other mom. 

No, best is to wait, stay open, stay busy, and concentrate always always on loving them, parenting them.  Whether I am a man or woman or in between, they need me.  And what I have found is that, by setting no deadlines, I avoid having to have Talks...instead, through living with me and through the moments of conversation and awareness which naturally arise, they are witnessing my process, participating in it.  I don't have to Tell them anything.  They are smart, observant, open-hearted children.  They can see for themselves and ask when they need to and, in the end, find their own answers.

And I find, I don't feel required to feel guilty about that, even though it could be hard for them.  I am as I am.  I did not choose this.  I resolve only to attempt to walk the path before me with as much grace as possible, trusting my children to find their own peace in their own time.  And, to always love them, with all my heart...but that doesn't require resolution.  I do love them will all my heart, naturally, helplessly, and I always will.