The Middle

Taking the journey to accept yourself as transgender is a difficult one.  It can be hard on your emotions and your mental state.  But this journey can also be hard on the ones around you, especially if you are married.  My wife, as I've stated before, knew who I was before we got married.  She has always been accepting and supportive of me.  Also knowing how introverted I am, I believe she didn't ever think I would be ready to move on and take the next steps.  I didn't ever believe I would have progressed this far in my acceptance of myself.  I never thought I would come out to anyone, write about myself, or even talk openly about me being transgender.  I wouldn't have thought I would dress up and let one of my friends do my makeup.  But as I talk more about it and open out, I've moved forward in my journey.  This can add more stress onto a marriage.  It didn't help that I kept this blog from my wife for so long.  I was afraid to have her see what I've been going through and afraid I would loose her.  But I am not loosing her.  She is still very supportive of me. 

There are many challenges that come with being married and being transgender.  My wife and I are a perfect fit.  Not just emotionally, but physically also.  So when we discussed about my transitioning, I can understand her hesitance of me having gender reassignment surgery and loosing my penis.  But that day is very far in the future and may never come at all.  There are many challenges that not just impact me, but her as well.  How will our families take the news, what about my work?  In Connecticut, transgender is protected against discrimination.  It would be illegal for my company to fire me if I came out as transgender, but that still wouldn't prevent it being awkward or difficult.  Where we stand financially, we could not afford for me to loose my job if they found a way to let me go without it looking like discrimination.  For the time being we have reached a compromise that I am very comfortable with.  We have agreed to first go to therapy, which I need to do anyway before I can get hormone replacement therapy.  Then if my therapist clears me for hormone replacement, we agreed I can proceed with it.  But for now, that will be as far as I go.  I may not present as female all the time, but about 80% of the time.  I will still present myself as male at work and with family, but I will present as female when we are with my friends or go out somewhere.  I am fully fine with this.  With my introverted personality, I need these baby steps.  I know going through HRT will start making me more feminine, but if I mix that with exercise and diet, the changes won't be as noticeable as fast so I can still present as male when I need to, and present as female when I want to. 

Taking these baby steps, will also make it easier for us in the near future (1 or 2 years), to try to conceive a child.  When my wife and I first started dating, we both agreed that we didn't want children.  But soon after I had changed my mind.  I did want at least one child, but my wife still didn't want children.  As my friends started having kids, the desire to have a child grew.  Men don't have a biological clock, but I did and boy was it ticking.  After one of our friends just had a baby and my wife got to be around her, my wife had changed her mind.  If I was willing to put off having GRS or not have it at all, my wife was willing to have kids.  But it's not just putting off GRS that changed her mind, it was seeing how my friends kids acted with being brought up in a loving home and seeing how the fathers acted, her knowing how I would act, that changed her mind.  She could see how great of a family we would make and now she wants that too.  I know having a child with one parent who is transgender will be difficult.  It will be hard to explain to them why their daddy is different.  But we are ready for that.  As one of my best friends put it "You guys are gonna be the best moms ever".  :)

Knowing

As I was running errands for work, I started thinking.  What if I had accepted earlier in my life what I have accepted now about wanting to be a woman.  How would that have changed my life.  Say I had accepted wanting to be female at say 10 years old.  Would I of had the courage to tell my parents?  Would they have accepted me?  Would they have allowed me to go through the change?  How would my life have changed?  I wish I would have.  I could be the woman I want to be by now.  Taking hormones before puberty would have made things so much easier.  I'm afraid that if I start taking them now, I won't progress as I envisioned.  Would I still have the same friends?  Would I still be working where I am now?  Would I of had some of the same experiences?  So many questions.  I try to stay away from "What If's", but sometimes it's hard.  If anyone reading this is young and contemplating going through the transition, don't hesitate.  Be strong. 

Dreams Last Night

So it was a rarity that I had a dream last night that I remember.  Usually no nicotine patch, no dreams.  But I had one last night.  It was very weird but again all my dreams are weird.  I was searching for something again.  Not sure what it was.  I was in a high school.  I was with my wife, but she wasn't my wife.  In my dream I was married to my friend Erin.  But we were both girls.  Not surprising.  I remember running up and down the halls searching every locker and class room, not finding whatever it was I was looking for.  Then the dream shifted to us being at a BMX arena.  As we entered there, I woke up because I was sleeping in bed with my wife and she woke me because I was snoring.

I moved to our spare room and went back to sleep.  I actually started dreaming again.  This time it was like a what if dream.  I dreamt that my life took a different course and I dated & married my friend Erin.  She never joined the army.  I never went to work in North Carolina.  It seemed we gave into her families pressure for us to get together and get married.  We had two kids, both girls.  She was very supportive of my desires to be a woman and convinced me to actually go through the change.  My dream skipped a few years and we were very happy together.  I had completed my transformation and was amazingly passable as a woman.  It didn't bother Erin at all.  In fact we were about the same size so it worked for us sharing clothes.  Then my alarm went off and I woke up.  Very interesting.

Inspiring

I found this video awhile ago on youtube and was inspired that such a manly looking man could go through with HRT and look so good as a woman.

GRS Tech Questions

I have been thinking lately, technology has advanced leaps and bounds in the last 50+ years.  Especially in medicine and surgical procedures.  We have cloned sheep, grafted ears on arms, and stem cell research will help advance us more.  We can transplant hearts, livers, kidney's and recently faces.  Why can't we transplant sex organs??? 

Say there is a man who wants to be a woman and a woman that wants to be a man.  Their blood types are a match.  Why can't we transplant their sexual organs into each other??  Wouldn't their bodies with the new organs start producing the hormones need to sustain the organs?  And with the recent development of being able to switch off SOX9 in female mice to change their gender to male and the soon to be developed opposite for male mice to change their gender to female, wouldn't that assist too??? 

Wouldn't it be wonderful if this were all possible??  No longer would we just look like the gender we want, but be able to fully function as that gender.  Maybe it will happen.  Hopefully in my lifetime before I am too old.