Transition Diary Entry 0 -- May 24, 2016

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Transition Diary Entry 0 -- May 24, 2016

By Asche

This is the first of what may (or may not) turn out to be a series of blog posts chronicling my transition.

A warning: most of what is going on around my transition is internal: emotions, how I feel about myself, who I feel I am and am becoming. I don't expect to say much about the practical side. Also: it's a very confusing time, so expect stuff that doesn't make a lot of sense or fit together very well.

To get the vital statistics out of the way: I'm 62, divorced, AMAB, with two twenty-something sons. I live in the New York City area and work for a large multi-national corporation with a 100% LGBT-friendly rating from the HRC. So I don't expect to have to deal with overt discrimination. I've been on HRT for over 6 months and hope to start living full-time as a woman by the end of this year. I've come out at my church and to many friends and neighbors, and they've all seen me in dresses and skirts for years. So far, so good, but there's no path so smooth that I can't convince myself a disaster lies just around the corner.

I am by nature a private person so -- no, that's actually not true. I am by nature a really open person, but I learned the hard way at an early age that anything I revealed of my feelings or of things important to me would be used against me, to criticize me, punish me, invalidate me, silence me. It took many years, during which suicide was alway on my mind, to learn to stomp down my feelings and block any spontaneous impulse, at least until my conscious mind had had a few weeks to examine it to make sure it would not expose some vulnerable part of me. So while it might not be much to anyone else, this is a big step for me. Most of my stories here are really about issues and conflicts that I face, but they have been translated into a made-up story about characters who aren't so very much like me to the point that I can at least pretend that no one can tell which parts are real and which are fiction. Also, with my stories, no matter how long they are, I don't post until I've finished and edited and read and reread and revised and reworked and buffed and and and. This stuff is definitely going to be a work in progress. Rather like me, like the messy mixed-up me I don't show the world. Rather like

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The little voice in the back of my mind is telling me, "you know you're going to post something, you might as well post what you've got so far and just get it over with." That little voice is kind of annoying because it knows me -- the larger me of which the conscious "me" is only a small part and definitely not the wisest part -- far better than I know me, and it always sounds like the good parent (the one I wish I'd had) who tells the upset little toddler, "go to bed, you'll feel less upset in the morning."

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P.S.: Any suggestions as to what sort of "organizer" I should use for this, if any? Title page, like a multi-chapter story?

Comments

A great introduction

Michelle Trudeau's picture

Thanks for sharing a little about yourself, Asche. I'll be looking forward to future blog posts. I've meant to start leaving more comments, so I guess I'll start with your blog post :)

-- Michelle