Also, some of you lately might have noticed my new profile icon in my comments on your blogs and such.  I’ve been experimenting with so many pictues as I’ve worked on my blog.  Maybe this one will last.  Or maybe it won’t.  But I decided to sit down and paint a symbol of me. I know, it’s not a picture of me. It’s a painting of how I feel. Set against a backdrop of a blue sky and rainbow, and lush green fields, is a symbol of my transition.  At least I hope it’s obvious enough to pick out.

A symbol of my transition.

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 ever reach that point where you just don’t know what you’re doing?  Where you’re so … blah … that it makes you want to scream, except you just don’t have the energy to?

I dunno.

I’m pretty sure that I’m depressed.

Or something.

It doesn’t help that I’m fighting up the nerve to just even talk to a doctor about beginning my transition.  Or fighting up the nerve to tell my wife that I want to.  To honestly, seriously, start.  I just … I dunno.  So many people I care about, my wife, my sister, my mom, my whole family … even if some of them do accept it, I know I’ll still hurt them.  I think my wife and maybe one cousin will be the only people in my life to even try to accept it from the beginning.  I think a handful more will come around … eventually.  But I really don’t want to hurt people.  And I especially don’t want to lose what I have with my wife.

So which is worse?  Hurting people I love to be me, or hurting me to save the people I love?

And then it gets more complicated because, no doubt, I’m only going to be less and less lovable if I can’t get myself out of my funk.

But is transition really the answer?

I’d like it to be.  But that doesn’t necessarily make it so.  I’m 100% certain that if I make the transition, I’m never ever going to want to go back.  That doesn’t worry me, at all.  But it’s the middle ground, the journey, that scares me.  Because at some point I’d have to “come out”.  To my family.  To my coworkers.  (Which I hope to one day have again.)  Hell, to the DMV and Uncle Sam and Big Brother.  Plus there’s the money, which right now I really don’t have.

That’s another thing that’s got me down.  Right now I’m technically an independent software contractor between contracts.  But I’m not really looking for contracts anymore.  I’m looking to get back into regular employment.  I miss having coworkers.  I miss socializing.  I miss people.

So I’m not just depressed over my qualms about the transition.  I’m also depressed about applying for tons of jobs and being rejected.  (Which I can’t explain, because I’m damn good and been doing it for 13 years.)  And I’m depressed about having no social life whatsoever other than my wife.  Which also brings up another one, that my wife is having health problems.  And that those health problems are really hindering our sex life, which lately seems to be about once a month.

And, of course, I still have that damn monkey on my back as society’s unacceptance of gender bending gives me so much self loathing.  Can’t forget that.  I know that I shouldn’t hate myself for being who I am.  That I should just be able to tell society to go to hell and how to get there because I have every right to be me.  But aparently I can’t.

Which is actually … odd.  I’m not sure how else to express that.  I love me.  I mean I really love me.  Some of the most wonderful things that I love about me come from my femininity.

And yet I hate me for being just another woman trapped in a man’s body.  The world’s tiniest violin, playing just for me.  How sad.

See?

I mean, WTF?!

I really don’t understand.  Why do I hate myself for that?  And how can I hate myself for that, but love myself in everything else?

So I try hard not to escape into video games.  And instead I think I’m escaping into my blog.  Which I don’t know if I should resent or not.  But obviously I’ve got to escape into something because sitting around being depressed constantly doesn’t make for much of an improvement.  I am depressed.  I need to express it, deal with it, and find a way to move on.

But saying and doing are sooooo totally different.

I tried to escape into working on my house today.  It’s a brick house, but some overhangs are wood.  The paint is so incredibly many layers thick, and coming off in chips.  So it all needs to be stripped down to wood and painted anew.  I scraped the hell out of it.  And then I got my paint removing wire brush drill tip going.  And managed to work on that for a couple of hours before the flying paint dust just bugged my eyes too much.  I need goggles.  Or maybe SCUBA gear.  But so I tried to escape into something productive, and I even couldn’t do that right.

I want to say that I’m such a loser.  Only I refuse to say it, because I’m not.  I’m not a loser.  And I’m not going to give in to self-pity like that.  I’m better than that.

But fuck if I don’t want to just curl up into a ball on my bed and just cry my heart out until I collapse to sleep right now.

Why does life have to be so fucking hard some times?  Why can’t something go right for me for a change?  Why does everything have to hit all at once?  One thing, I can take.  Two things, I can take.  Three even I could maybe juggle.  But shit!  Did I mention I also have a house on the market that I just took off the market so that I can say screw it, cut the utilities and winterize it?  I’m pretty much just living on my savings right now, and my wife’s income is paying not just our house, but my old house as well!  I don’t feel as bad as I should about that because contractors intentionally save up for those dry spells between contracts, so I’m still technically paying my half of life.  But I’d feel infinitely better if I just had some real money coming in again instead of chump change from micro-contracts and shit work.

I dunno.  I’m ranting like a loon.  But then, that’s fair, since I am losing it right now.

And you know what’s really got my nerves right now?  Besides all of this shit?  Is that here I have this blog, and there’s like 30 visits a day.  I’m so very thankful for those of you who do visit and leave such nice comments.  You really make my day.

But what bugs me about that, is that days when I go on and on about sex, suddenly I see tons more visits.  I mean why don’t I just turn this blog into tranny porn?  I mean fucking hell!  What kind of sick twisted world is this when sex is so much more important to people than life?

I dunno.

It shouldn’t make me so mad.  That’s just the internet.  Porn, porn, and more porn.  Google search for bunnies, sunshine, and lollipops and you get “See super busty Bunny Girl stick a lollipop up her twat.”  That’s just the internet.

But I so don’t want that to be my blog.  I’m a real person, with a real life.

But damned if I don’t sometimes want that validation.  If I don’t sometimes consider pandering to the public at large by just writing about dicks and clits and nipples and vaginas and labias and vibrators and dildos oh my!

I guess it’s a good thing that I’m an ugly as sin woman.  It at least provides that extra measure of sanity check to keep me from wagging the ol’ willy in front of my camera.

Well, anyway…

Sorry for the basically senseless rant.  Maybe I’ll even delete it.  Or maybe I’ll just keep it for posterity.  I can look back one day when I’m going through changes on my HRT, my wife still loves me, I’ve got a good job, and am down to just one mortgage, and I’ll get to laugh and laugh.

Meanwhile, I think the bed is calling.  Time for that cry.