Happy Halloween everyone!

So with all of the parties going on tonight or some time along the weekend, you’re bound to see it: men in drag.  Some may crossdress for a laugh.  But please be sympathetic, because some may do it because it’s who they really want to be, but lack any safe environment to do so.  All Hallows’ Eve is the one time in their life that they can do something that crazy, and not be under nearly the same ridicule as the rest of their lives.  So please, don’t laugh unless they do so first.  Because though they might laugh with you on the outside, they could be crying on the inside.  Tonight should be a night of fun and fancy free!  Let’s keep it that way. 

Okay, so I understand why people hate transgender and transsexual folks.  For starters people fear what they don’t understand.  Most people can almost understand a crossdresser, especially if it’s funny.  There’s really not much there to “fear”.  But take it any further than that, involve physiological / psychological problems, and any medical steps to correct them, and now you have people kind of freaking out.  Men don’t look like hot women with big knockers.  Women don’t have dicks.  It gets confusing for people.  And then tell them you’ve had your anatomy chopped up and turned into something else and they’re really creeped out.

So I totally get the trans haters.  It’s unfortunately just part of being who we are, that people won’t understand us, and may even say or do nasty things to us.  It’s why we spend so much time hiding in that closet.

But what I don’t get, what really baffles my mind, are the tranny lovers.  The zealous fetish-seeking horn dogs that cream themselves over chicks with dicks.

I don’t get it.

I just don’t.

Is it some latent unexpressed homosexual tendency, repressed for years?  Is it some deep seeded need for the unobtainable unicorn?  Is it just some desire for something really darn kinky?

I just don’t get it.

Anyone care to explain?

My new pink sandals are so much fun!

It’s funny.  I never really thought of myself as a foot fetishist.  I certainly have qualms about wanting a “foot job”.  Maybe from some sweetie with really cute feet, but even then, I can certainly think of better things to do… So I really don’t think my pleasure derived from shoes has anything to do with sex.  I’m just not into feet that way. I think I just like shoes. I mean in so many clothes, women have soooooooooooo ooooo ooooo much more of an option.  So many styles.  So many colors.  So many options, like dresses and skirts, that men don’t even have, period.  If you’re a woman, it’s fun! Given that alone, it’s really no wonder that some men crossdress.  Women do it every day and no one even thinks about it.  Women can wear simple slacks, or shirts, so when they sneak in a man’s shirt, who even notices?  Women can wear anything!  Men, on the other hand, have so very little to choose from. But there’s something special, something that truly makes us happy, when it comes to shoes. Today, my happy shoes are some pink sandals with a low-ish heel that I got on clearance.  I had to order them one size too large because my size was already sold out.  But luckily they’re strappy things that (after adjustment with a leather punch) fit tight enough, and look just peachy.  I love these shoes.  They just make me all sparlky inside. Before these it was my white go go boots.  God those are some fun boots. I mean all sorts of fun things to wear make me happy.  But still, there’s just nothing like a new pair of shoes to brighten my day. I wonder why…

So I had a good long talk with my wife.  She shared what was bugging her.  I shared what was bugging me.  I even told her about considering hormone therapy, about looking for friends on Adult FriendFinder (even though I’m still strictly platonic on AFF, it was bugging me not being honest enough to tell her), and about my “other” blog.  (AKA this one.)

She’s always known that I was having gender issues, but I don’t think she truly honestly gave them as much credit until we’d talked the other night.  And at first it scared her, because she thought I might be looking for a way out of our marriage.  I tried hard not to laugh as I reassured her that if that’s what I’d wanted, her health issues alone, our sexual issues, our money issues, I’d had plenty of previous opportunities to make up an excuse to leave her.  I love her.  I’m doing my best to give our marriage an honest chance.  That reassured her.

And she reassured me.  She actually surprised me by saying she expected me to cheat on her.  That kind of caught me off guard, because I’ve been extremely commited to her.  It took me a moment to realize that she wasn’t criticising me.  She was criticising herself.  She knows fully well that there are parts of the marriage she’s not meeting my needs on.  And basically we came to the conclusion that so long as what I do doesn’t bring anything home to her, and doesn’t change our relationship, that I still snuggle with her, respect and support her, treat her as an equal in our journey through life, and give her madly outrageous orgasms when she is in the mood, then what I do outside of the marriage are just … extracurricular activities.  She doesn’t mind.

Of course I don’t know if I trust that 100%.  Maybe she thinks she means it, but if I did anything, I’d certainly take it slowly until I know she actually is okay with it.  And that’s a big if.  I don’t want sex just for sex.  I want to be with my wife, the woman I love.  I want to make her happy.  I want to be happy with her.  I want us to connect.  I’m not even certain that I can have sex with someone else without it hurting my opinion of myself.

Which, actually, is kind of odd.  Because I believe in polyamory.  I believe that people can love more than one person.  In different ways.  Even in the same ways.  Sometimes a good relationship needs more than two people to fill in all of the gaps and make it solid for everyone.  I honestly believe that.

And I honestly believe that there are plenty of people that can just have sex for the sake of sex.  That it’s just physical pleasure.  It’s fun.  Damn sex is fun!  Having sex with someone doesn’t mean you’re going to leave your spouse for them.  It can be on the emotional level of playing a video game.

But just because I respect other people’s rights to these views, and believe in them, doesn’t mean that I hold myself to the same values.

Basically, my way of coping with having sex again after rape, was to tie my act of having sex tightly into an emotional expression of love.  I understand that in theory there are plenty of other reasons for sex.  I just can’t bring myself to allow myself to explore them.

Psychologically speaking, it’d probably be good for me to reach a point where I could.  If I don’t do greivous damage to myself in getting there.  And maybe if I could find a good therapist, I might get there safely.

But that’s pretty much all theory for me.  Been there.  Tried that.  Couldn’t even find a therapist that impressed me as actually caring or for that matter, just understanding.  There’s an intellectual level at which we can read and know about things, and there’s an emotional level at which we understand things.  Try as we might, we can never replace one for the other.  You either understand, or you don’t.  You’ve either been there yourself, or you haven’t.

In a very weird twisted way, it’s this very reason that brings me to believe that even “evil” acts, can, in fact, be used for good.  And that, in a way, they’re necessary.  You can’t truly understand something until you’ve gone through it.  You can’t truly empathize with someone who lost a loved one until you’ve lost a loved one yourself.  You can’t fully emotionally support someone who was raped unless you yourself were raped.  You can’t really understand how someone felt when they were robbed unless you were robbed.  If you don’t have a wellspring of actual experience to draw from, try as you might to be earnest in helping, you lack a very integral tool to help.  And so, in a sick twisted way, doing bad things to people makes these “victims” uniquely qualified to help other people victimized in a similar way.  It’s an opportunity and insight that no Harvard degree can give you.  It’s a strangely necessary part of the human experience.

And no therapist who hasn’t actually been there themself can honestly reach in an provide that level of understanding necessary to achieve healing.

Anyway, I’m kind of rambling I guess.  The point is, the wife and I both have our issues.  We don’t know how they’re going to affect our lives or our future.  All that we do know is that we love each other and don’t want to lose what we have.  We both want to keep what we have.  And we’re both willing to try to be flexible.

So even though we didn’t really “solve” anything, we at least re-affirmed our commitment to one another.  We got our slates cleared.  We’re willing to be open-minded and give things our best shot.  And we still love one another.  So at least in that, we both feel better. 

Then yesterday, I guess in support of who I am, my wife took me out shopping to a local goodwill store, to shop for women’s clothes for me.

I greatly appreciate her enthusiasm and effort.

I mean I could theoretically find some of her clothes to wear.  In some ways we’re pretty similar in sizing.  (In others not.)  But there’s two problems with that, at least for me.  The first is that I don’t have her same sense of fashion.  We have very different tastes on that front.  But still, I could find some things.  It’s the other thing that matters more: that for some reason it creeps me out to wear her clothes.  It’s some personal stigma.  I guess I feel like if I’m just raiding her closet to play dress up, that I’m not really taking myself seriously.  This is about me, finding myself.  And to do that I guess it’s greatly important that I put my own energy into my own wardrobe, that it be a representation of me.

So, we went shopping.  At a goodwill store.

Unfortunately, the store pretty much was the worst goodwill store I’ve ever seen.  And having grown up and been relatively unwealthy most of my life, I am certainly not unfamiliar with this kind of shopping.  And I’ve seen bad.  But I’ve never seen that bad.

And it wasn’t just the dirty atmosphere, as if no one gave a damn enough to take pride in the place.  It was also the quality of the merchandise, which looked to be about the bottom of the barrel of goodwill, which is a truly unimaginable experience until you see it.  And added to that, the organization of everything was just as unimpressive.  Nothing was organized by size.  It was organized by color.  Yes, all grey tops, in a row, in no particular order of size whatsoever.  On the next rack, all black.  On the next rack, khaki pants.  On the next rack, a completely random assortment of skirts of every size, shape, and color … with no organization to them whatsoever.

And you know how hard it is to find that missus XL / 20 or that plus 1X / 16W when things are organized.  But an entire store where absolutely nothing is organized by size?  In any way?!  Good freaking luck!

So that was, of course, greatly disappointing.  I have no real wardrobe to speak of.  I certainly don’t have the money to just buy one.  It was really the only chance to experiment and add without a serious monitary commitment.  All shot to hell.  Because in spite of our nation’s failing economy, apparently the people around here are just to self-important to care?  That itself is pretty depressing.  I mean it’s one thing to jilt a silly crossdresser.  I can live with it.  Not happily, but I’ll most certainly live.  It’s another thing altogether to jilt pretty much everyone locally who is suffering through this mess that Dubya has created.  That ain’t right.

So such are the days of my life.

It’s funny how these things just creep up on you and suddenly epiphany you out of your chair.  Transitioning isn’t about the inside.  It’s about the outside.

I was born male.  Even though I’m a computer programmer by day, an arguably “male” dominated career (and no, I don’t want to argue it) it doesn’t really make me happy.  I just happened to more or less accidentally become a programmer.  If I could, I’d be a fiction author.  Maybe even a Reiki healer or massage therapist.  Or … who knows.  I love to cook.  I love to be creative.  I love to help people.  I’m sensitive.  I’m caring.  And in general it’s gotten me taken advantage of a lot.  But I wouldn’t change a thing, because people need help, and at least so far I’m still smiling.  (Well, mostly.  All of life is a pendulum.  We have our off days.)  Point is, there is a lot of my personality that is feminine.  And if I could, if the universe aligned, I’d transition in a heartbeat.

My wife always wears pants.  And typically unflattering tops.  And shoes without heels.  She almost never wears stockings, hose, or anything the like.  If it weren’t for her sock collection, I’d think she had no girlie bone in her body.  She’s the manager of her store.  She’s good at being in charge and solving problems.  Before she moved here to be the manager of her store, she used to help a friend work on his race car.  She was especially good at beating panels back into the shape they were before car met wall or other car.  She leaves messes all over the house.  She theoretically can cook, but for some reason only uses the following four spices: salt, pepper, onion powder, and garlic powder.  Sometimes I have to question her pallet.  (It should be open to more.)  She’s far more masculine than feminine.  And yet she wouldn’t transition if her life depended on it.  She has no interest whatsoever in being a man.

Transition isn’t about who we are on the inside.  I know several “mannish” women who are completely happy being women.  Only one of whom is even lesbian.  I know several “effeminate” men who are completely happy being men.  And not all of them are gay either.  Just because their outsides don’t match their insides doesn’t mean they want to change that.  They’re comfortable with being who they are, inside and out.  They make it work.  They have no interest in transition.

Where as I do.

And as much as I can put it on being that my personality is more feminine, that’s really not why.

The reason that I want to transition is because, basically, I hate my body.  Well, okay, I don’t really hate it.  I’m a realist.  If I have to, I work with what I have.  And there are some things that I enjoy about it.  For example, even though I’d prefer not to have chest hair, I do enjoy it when my wife plays with it.  For example, even though there are times I could swear I had a vagina, I really don’t.  But that doesn’t stop me from enjoying having sex with my penis.  I use what I have.  I find joy in it.

But I also know, without a doubt, that I’d find more joy in being a woman.  I’d find myself more attractive.  I’d enjoy being touched more.  I’d enjoy sex more.  I’d be more comfortable with myself.  I’d love exploring a whole new world of wardrobe without the guilt.  All because my image of myself would finally match who I am on the outside.

Transition is about the outside.  GRS, a “sex change”, is about making your outside match who you know you are.  And about the simple comfort of finally living free.  There’s a lot of energy that you put into wearing a costume every day, into being someone that you’re not.  The chance to really, finally, just be yourself … well, it’s liberating.  It’s life changing.

At least so I hope.  And hopefully, one day, I’ll know.

But the point is, it’s not about who you are on the inside.  It’s about being unhappy with who you are on the outside.  We have plenty of men and women in the world who are comfortable in their gender even if their personality is far more on the opposite side of the spectrum.  And society is growing to be pretty accepting of that, without or with this affecting their sexual preference.

Transition is about our bodies, not our hearts.

It makes it no less right or wrong.  People are born in the wrong bodies every day.  Not even just male or female.  How many plastic surgeons do lyposuction to make fat people thinner because their genes are against them and diet and excersize never worked like it should?  How many women are practically addicted to anti-aging this, that, and the other thing because their skin dared to wrinkle early?  How many men are slathering Rogain on their head or sporting a rug because their hair left them before it should have?  How many of us today walk around with glasses and/or contacts because our eyes rebelled?  Transition is about fighting bad or wrong genes.  No more, no less.  It’s a medical solution to a medical problem.  And the only reason that it isn’t treated as such is because there is no medical test for sex-determination chromisomes going awry.  We can test eyes for wrongness.  We can’t test gender for wrongness.

So we pretend it’s not a medical problem, but a psychological problem.  Because the brain is a black box.  We don’t have to understand why something is or isn’t if it deals with the psychological.  It’s a magic bin where we can throw in anything that we don’t understand, or don’t want to understand.

But gender identity disorder is not a psychological problem.  If it were just about coping with our feminine or masculine psychology, we could easily do that in our present gender.  People do it all the time, and are happy being their gender in spite of their mis-matched personality.  It is not a psychological problem.  It’s a genetic problem, without a physical means to test.  It’s all about the body.  Not about the spirit or the mind.

And the sooner we can help people understand this, the more we can help people.

You know, it’s funny, but the more I look at the picture of my new plum cami, the more I like it.

I mean photographically speaking, it’s freaking awful camera work.  The camera was propped up on the arm of an office chair.  The height was obviously bad, since it cut my head off.  The lighting was horrible.  Way too much light from above.  And in general it was just a horrible shot from the perspective of a photograhper.

And yet I think it catches the inner woman in me far better than I ever intentionally could have done.

Sometimes life is like that.  The accidents get better results than the effort.

And then sometimes you have the opposite, where the accidents just create all sorts of challenges to overcome.  Like being a woman trapped in a man’s body.

Life is a funny thing.

Dreams are also funny things.

For the last few days now I’ve even been dreaming of myself as a woman.  Not like daydream.  As in like the whole Matrix “residual self image” thing.

I know that probably doesn’t really make much sense, but I’ll explain.

Every day, I look in the mirror, and I don’t recognize me.  I know logically that it’s me looking back.  But literally, put me in a police lineup, I wouldn’t recognize me.  The best I can explain it is that simply who my brain/spirit thinks I am, is not who I physically am.  Whatever image I have of myself up in my head, it’s not me.  It never has been.  I always see a stranger in the mirror.  Well, okay, not literally a stranger.  I know who it is in the mirror.  It just isn’t me.

My dreams are likewise confusing.  I rarely look like myself in my dreams.  A lot of times I just can’t even see myself clearly in my dreams.  It’s like my own psyche doesn’t even know what to project into the dream.

And that’s been the case all my life.  I may never look the same twice, but I’d always been a man of some sort in my dreams.  Like my brain just tries to shift through possibilities, forever searching for the right one.

Only the last few weeks, in my dreams, I’ve been a woman.  And mostly, it’s been the same woman.  For the first time in my life I’ve been the same person in multiple dreams.

Which says to me that I’m finally opening up.  I’m letting myself be me.  And I guess, getting to know myself.

It’s also been weird.  There are times when I walk past a mirror, and I swear I see that me in it in my peripheral vision.  But then I turn to look and she’s gone.  And there’s just this guy looking back, a bit lost; a bit confused.

In a way it’s almost disconcerting.  I mean I should be happy.  I’m finally finding me.  And I am happy that I’m finding me.  But … I’m not me.  I mean I look down, and there’s this fluffy hairy chest.  There are my hairy legs.  There’s that thing hanging between them.  That’s not me!

Life is funny.  How do you resolve that?  There’s just this disconnect between what my psyche is, and what my physical body is.  And I’m about 99.99% sure (since no one can ever really be 100% sure) that had I been born the exact same me, just as a woman, that I’d have turned out to look like the me my mind and heart expect me to be.  It’s just that going through puberty with the wrong hormones turned me into someone else.  Or something like that.

How do you deal with that?  How do you cope when your subconscious mind isn’t in synch with your conscious mind?

And it’s not just a matter of recognizing me.  For example, my wife commented one night as we were sitting, watching TV, that I was sitting like a girl.  And I was just like huh?  Girls sit differently than guys?  And I realized then that they do, and she was right.  Without even knowing what I was doing, I was being girlie.  Not manly.  And I notice that sometimes I even walk differently.  I think what it is is that some times I just feel so comfortable around my wife that I stop pretending to be a man.  Because I know she’s not going to judge me like the rest of society will.  And so my conscious mind stops walling up my subconscious, and the next thing you know, I’ve done something girlie again.

My wife thinks it’s cute.  And I guess it is.  Especially now that I’ve started to dress the part on occasion.

And the closer I come to just openly accepting it, to unlearning everything that I taught myself on how to fit into society’s expectations, to do the right things, to behave the right ways, the closer I come … to totally losing my mind.

Sure, part of me is happy.  I like being girlie.  I like it a lot more than being manly.

But, at the end of the day, what options do I really have?  It’s not a matter of “right” or “wrong”.  Of “win” or “lose”.  Because no matter which path I decide to take in the end, we all lose.  I lose.  My wife loses.  My family loses.  Either I continue to play dress up, and by that I mean put on men’s clothes and pretend to be a man, and in so doing I keep a vital part of who I am buried where no one will ever get to know me, and live my life distracted never meeting my potential because of all of the energy I invest in being someone I’m not … or I start the path to becoming a woman.  I end my marriage.  (Because my wife isn’t bi.)  I probably lose my best friend, because how many marraiges really end well.  I definitely hurt my mom, who was wounded for years when she found out I was a witch.  Goodness only knows how many other family members I hurt.  I’m sure that my professional career life is going to take a solid beating because society at large doesn’t get it.  And all of that is going to really hurt me.  So either I hurt myself and everyone around me, or I hurt myself and everyone around me.

At least I can say that today without getting depressed.  Oh, sure, it hurts.  But I’m at least standing on a more solid foundation today.

I have a dream.  It’s a simple dream.  Where I am comfortably, simply, a woman.

But I can’t live that dream.  In theory I might be happier.  But in reality I’d make everyone around me unhappy, and that would make me unhappy.  Any victory I’d gain would be lost and then some.  Where as not living the dream at least keeps everyone around me relatively happy.

But the real kicker, the real thorn in my side, is that not only can I not live that dream, but I loath myself for being in this situation at all, and for wanting that dream to come true.

That can’t be healthy.

But, fortunately, there are plenty of times when I can stuff all of those bad thoughts and feelings down and forget them for a while.  And then I can be genuinely happy, when I’m being girlie.  And often times, I don’t even realize that I’m doing it, because I’m just being me.

And I think my legs look sexy in stockings and a miniskirt. 

There are so many times that I worry that even if I tried to become a woman, that I’d never pass.

But you know, at least looking at that one photo … I’d do me.

Hiya folks. So I am actually feeling better now.  Yeah, I just kind of disappeared for a while.  I needed time to myself.  To just escape for a while.  And then my wife had a three day weekend and we both just crashed together. We also reconnected, which was great.  We took a walk.  We swung on the swings in the park.  We went shopping and she got a new purse.  We ordered two of those big pizzas from Papa Johns days ago and we still have freaking left overs.  (I am soooo sick of pizza now.  Words I never thought I’d ever say.) Oh, and, of course, we had sex.  Repeatedly.  It was just a nice escape.  I think she and I are both less depressed now, and a bit closer again. Oh, and some of the stuff that I ordered came in.  I got some new shoes to play with.  And I got a nice plum cami.  It’s not everything that I ordered (darn split-deliveries) but it’s something daily-wear … ish. Of course not all was roses and sunshine.    I was rejected by yet more potential employers with form letters that don’t give any real indication as to what their problem is.  Likewise, I was rejected by my latest attempt at getting the attention of a literary agent. I know I shouldn’t let these things get me down.  But I can’t help but be a bit bummed.  I mean why can’t I find a programming job when I have thirteen years of experience and have worked on some damn fine projects over the years?  And why is it that not a single literary agent will even bother trying to look at my work before rejecting me?  (Well, okay, so I know that the reason why on that one is that I haven’t published anything.  But it’s that stupid catch22.  I can’t get published so that people will publish me because no one will publish anyone who hasn’t been published.) Well, anyway, for the most part I’m feeling okay again.  I’m still just as lost, but at least I’ve had enough of an emotional recharge that I’m no longer a wreck about being lost.  Or something like that…

My new dailywear begins with a nice plum cami. You will have to forgive the bad camera work. I still have not replaced my broken tripod.

My wife’s furniture store was having a special event, where Colleen Scully of Better Homes & Gardens® (Special Interest Publications Contributing Editor and Stylist) gave a presentation on how to combine different furnitures and styles.  And how to decorate.  She combined real flowers that were in season with silk flowers that were out of season to create floral decorations.  She showed how changing pillows around can change the look and feel of furniture.  Things like that.  It was cute.Why was I there?  Because I got to play the Professional Photographer.  I set up my FujiFilm FinePix F30 6.3MP camera on my tripod and snapped off two hundred and twenty five shots.  Which sounds like a lot, because it is.  I figured I might as well use up as much of my 1GB memory card as I could. In the end I only kept fifty one shots.  A good number were repetitive.  And while my camera is a mighty fine one for sticking in your pocket – and has an excellent battery life, good stabilization when I’m not using a tripod, and great low-light and macro capabilities – the optical zoom is only like 3x.  And the digital zoom just doesn’t give professional looking results.  Which isn’t so bad in good circumstances, but I was trying to set up out of the way, so I was a bit of a distance off.  Hence a number of shots were also just too fuzzy for my taste. But anyway, it was a fun experience.  It made me long for a real tripod (my cheap one broke aftewards when trying to re-compact it into portable size) and a real SLR 10+ megapixel digital camera.  For a presentation that wasn’t pandering to any cameras, I think I got some great shots for what I had to work with. It kind of makes me wish I could do that kind of stuff professionally.  I think I have a good eye.  But I’m too engrossed into the computer programming career to just jump ship.  Besides, if I did jump into a new career, it’d probably be something more like running a pagan / new age shop.  That or a crossdresser, clubwear, and sex toy store. Yeah, I know, I’m crazy. And then I’ve always wanted to be a writer…

This is one of my shots of Colleen Scully from Better Homes and Gardens. She is kinda cute.

I should slap myself.  I just spent $130.89 on a cluster of women’s clothes at Target.  Online. I don’t really own much in the way of daily wear women’s clothing, and that’s been bugging me a lot.  So I finally bit the bullet and just went for it.  There were a number of things on clearance at Target and some other fair sales, so at least I got a lot for my money.

Originally I figured that I’d look at Walmart, because I’m being frugal.  (Cheap.)  But their online shopping was so … horrid.  So I decided to try Target.  That wasn’t bad at all.  They have some nice features in their online shopping.  And there was a free delivery thing going on.  So free delivery plus sale and clearance prices … I was really only just looking but it was too hard to ignore.

Sizing is, of course, a concern.  I hope things fit.  It’s hard enough when you can’t try clothing on because you’re shopping online, but then add to that the compication of being a man ordering women’s clothes to wear because you’re crossdressing.  It’s not as much fun as it should be.

For that matter, can I really call myself a crossdresser?  I mean I’m not doing it for fun.  I’m a womam trapped in a man’s body.  I’d transition if I A ) wasn’t married and B ) had the money.  Sometimes I consider starting hormone therapy anyway.  But I don’t live my life as a woman.  I live as a woman hiding in a guy costume.  So does that make me a crossdresser, a transgender, a transsexual, or just fucked?

You know I had this weird thought last night.  The wife and I were talking a little about the surgery because we caught some TV show where transgender was brought up.  She can’t understand why any guy would have a perfectly good penis lopped off.  I guess I can’t blame her for that.  But at the same time, I don’t really get mine.  I mean it’s nice to have the pleasure it brings, even if at times it feels like some weird alien thing and not the flower I’m meant to have.  But in day-to-day life, when I’m not having sex, the damn thing is really just annoying.  It’s constantly shifting into uncomfortable positions.  I have to shave around it to keep the hair from getting pulled when it moves.  It likes to jump up to attention at the damndest of times.  It’s really a pain in the ass.  If I could still have great orgasms during sex without it, I’d be incredibly happy to be rid of the thing!  It makes me really doubt that whole “penis envy” thing.  I mean who would want one?  Maybe if you could store it in a box and put it on when you want to have sex, but not if you’re stuck with the bloody thing 24/7.  That’s just a bother.

I wish I knew more about the side effects of hormone therapy.  Will I get more emotional?  What happens to my facial hair?  What happens to my body hair?  Does my wee willy shrink or stay the same size?  Do I lose my libido?  Does my body shape change any?  Will my male-pattern-baldness reverse itself any?  Is there any risk of getting sick or something?

I mean I figure some of something must happen, or else there’d be no point in doing it.  Sometimes I really think about it just to see if it frees my emotions up a bit.  Not that I’m not already a “sensitive male”, but all my life I’ve felt like my emotions were … dampened.  Like they’re trapped behind a wall.  As a teenager it really started to screw with my head.  I’d keep asking myself, “Shouldn’t I feel ____ right now?”  And then I’d wonder if I was a bad person for not feeling that way.  Eventually I just sort of got used to it.  Stop poking the hornet’s nest and you mostly stop getting stung.  But so is hormone therapy just an emotional thing, or does it change the body significantly?  As much as I’d enjoy any change, my wife would probably get a bit unhappy if my penis shrunk.

And is there a middle-point where I could stay man enough to keep my wife happy on that front, but look a bit more womanly so that I’d actually have a chance at passing for one?  I’m not sure that I’d be completely happy living a double life, but living someone else’s life is even worse.

I guess I’m just rambling now.  Anyway, I’m really looking forward to having some nice ordinary clothes to wear around the house.  That’ll be a treat.  I got a two skirts, a dress, a couple of tops, some shoes, and some leggings.  Some of it is even enough that I think I could cover my body hair well enough to go out without shaving from toe to neck and still look fashionable and girlie.  If I had a wig.  And a lot of makeup.  I’m actually kind of surprised that I didn’t buy any panties this time.  Hmm…  I wonder what that means.

The wife may hurt me for spending that much money.  Heck, I may hurt myself.  But sometimes there’s that balance game between priorities and I think on an emotional level I really needed it, so it became a priority.  And judging by all of the money I saved, maybe the universe is on my side.  It’s funny.  Day by day I’m either striving to be happy, or struggling just to hold myself together.  It’s a roller-coaster and I feel like a wreck waiting to happen.  And for the first time in my life, I’m not sure how to fix myself.  I’m hoping that aknowledging the woman in me by doing this will help.

Okay, so you’re a crossdresser, transgendered, transsexual, or something.  You’re feeling spunky and confident enough to go out dressed in a gender in opposition to that which DNA gave you the hardware for.  You’re having a good time eating out, shopping, dancing with friends or a lover.

Then you have to pee.  Really bad.

Which bathroom do you go into?

Do you feel confident enough to walk into that bathroom of the sex you want to be?  Do your fears that you might not be quite able to pull it off just yet and the emberassment if you can’t get pushed down far enough to dare it?

Or do you go into that other bathroom, even though you’re dressed very wrongly for that occasion.  Do you live down those stares?

Or do you just run home to the safety of your own bathroom where no one judges you?

To me, at least, it’s a frightening thought.  I sure know that I’m never going to pass for a woman any time soon.  But hell if I’m going to go into the men’s room in a dress!  This is just one of the many paranoid reasons why I can’t bring myself to leave my house dressed as a woman.  Even if I had the world’s best wig (which I don’t) and could managed to somehow cover my facial and body hair with enough makeup and clothing, and could somehow manage to feminize my face enough to actually feel comfortable leaving my house dressed as a woman, and managed to meet some friends that could give me a little safety in numbers (and we all know those are some huge ifs) then what do I do if I have to go to the bathroom?  Die holding it in most likely.  It’s a really scary thought!

But there’s an even scarrier thought.

Why do we have seperated bathrooms in the first place?  To keep pervs from looking at you.  Well back when poodle skirts were everyday fashion maybe we could almost forget about bisexuality and homosexuality.  But in today’s society?  Do we really believe that not a single member of the same sex might be interested in looking at us, given half a chance?

I’m sorry, but the number of bisexual and homosexual individuals is waaaaaay beyond ignoring in today’s world.  So does the “safety” of a gender-specific bathroom really make you feel any safer?

Personally, I’m of the opinion that we should just simply stop trying to bury our heads in the sand.  Not just because it greatly improves the crossdresser/transgender/transsexual life.  But because it’s just fucking stupid to pretend people don’t swing that way.  We laugh at the absurdity of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.  And yet we perpetuate it everywhere we go.  You don’t really want to know that the woman in the stall next to you is bisexual.  You don’t really want to know that the guy pissing in the urinal next to yours is gay.  You want to live in blissful ignorance and pretend that the cute little stick figure on the door magically protects you from becoming a pervert’s sex object.

And that’s who it’s really protecting you from, are perverts.  Crossdressers are not perverts by default.  Transgenders are not perverts by default.  Transsexuals are not perverts by default.  Gays, lesbians, bis, are not perverts by default.  They are people, just like you and me.  They have no greater desire to see you taking a piss than any other person on the street.  It’s gross!  Just because their life isn’t doesn’t fit into a simple Box A or Box B doesn’t suddenly make them want to watch you piss!

If you really want safer bathrooms, have one for people into golden showers and scat, and one for people who try not to throw up just reading this sentence.

But for some deranged reason, we, the sheeple, are too stupid to actually think these things through.  So when one person fearmongers, we all run screaming into the night.  And when the status quo says that stick figures on doors protect us, we feel comforted.

What do we do?  Is there a right answer?  I dunno.  But I do know that clinging to wrong answers never solved anything.

Maybe it’s time we stopped putting stick figures on doors and pretending in a world of infinite possiblitities that two whole answers solve everything, and start just using common sense.  Would it really be such a challenge to make an all-people “unisex” room with seperate single toilet rooms and a shared sink/hallway to those rooms?  Or even just individual non-gendered single-unit bathrooms like the new “family” bathroom trend?

It doesn’t have to be complicated.  We just choose to make it so.  And in doing so we’re actually making the situation worse, not better.