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I'm getting better in many different ways

My liver is almost back to normal as of a week ago. My Endo returned from his summer vacation just in time to agree to prescribe me hormone therapy contingent on a new blood test, to be conducted next Wednesday, on my 35th birthday.

I'm settling into full-time life as a woman quite comfortably. People clock me as trans everywhere I go, but I'm getting used to that, and I'm also comfortable that it will pass, once the hormones kick in and I get my voice under control.

In the mean time, I'm just loving being a woman. I feel like I've had a fishbowl over my head for years, and it has finally been removed, and the world feels startlingly close and responsive. It's like watching TV in colour. It's like being in the front row. I feel alive.

We've all got our body issues; mine happen to centre on some incongruous genitalia that emit testosterone. But I'm getting social acceptance as a woman, and my loved ones have managed to reach a level of acceptance that allows them to be supportive.

So I feel supported, and alive, and my various challenges, taken one at a time, feel surmountable. I guess the slide is over.

Knock wood.

My name change forms are in the mail!

I mailed my name change paperwork off today. For some ridiculous reason, they still take six to eight weeks to process these things, so the leaves will be turning by the time my name change is done.

In Ontario, I can get my gender changed on my driver's license with a letter from my doctor, so I'll do that when I give the license people my name change certificate, and I'll have all the right letters in the right places inside my wallet.

It's bizarre how much less friction there is in my life now. Everyone else has stopped trying to frustrate my transition, and, more importantly, I've almost completely stopped obstructing myself.

What! Why the fuck are you obstructing yourself, you might ask.

Well, the key reason I hid my transness was my desire to be normal--to fit in, to not be broken, or creepy, or weird. So, the mechanism I used to suppress myself was fashioned from transphobia. I convinced myself that being trans was completely unacceptable (for me only; I didn't externalize my transphobia, thankfully!).

When I broke through the suppression, the back of my mind was like a haunted house filled with gruesome characters I had built to scare myself into secrecy. When I think of being a woman, one of these thing looms over me and castigates me for my failure to control myself. For my failure to DO IT RIGHT, and remain a man. What am I, a fucking failure, the stupid creature created by my sub-conscious wants to know. But it really doesn't care about the answer anyway. It's just the fears of a little child grown into a gibbering voice in the back of my mind because those fears weren't dealt with the first time around.

Since I finally became convinced that my ex, my family, and my son were all going to accept my transition, my own remaining ambivalence has come to the fore. It's nothing that two hours of yoga every day for a couple of months won't take the edge off of, thankfully.

J. seems quite comfortable now, if anyone's out there reading and wondering. I'm letting him set his own pace on changing my pronouns, and I'm going to try to find a comfortable way for him to call me something other than "Daddy" when he's shouting at me across the playground.

Repeatedly, as I've pursued step after terrifying step on this journey, I've found myself thinking "this is the best day of my life." The first time was after I spent an afternoon cleaning my basement wearing a skirt. That would have been about 2.5 years ago.

I'm pretty sure I haven't thought that since June 19, when I got the shitty liver results. But today, when I put the envelope in the mail, up it popped. "Best day of my life" floating around inside my brain, a comment from myself. It kind of makes me think I'm on the right track!

Last night, as he was going to sleep, my son J. asked me “how do you know you want to become a girl?”

I replied “I know that I need to be girl. I’ve always wanted to be girl. Even at your age, I knew that I wanted to be girl. Some people—but not many—are born like that. Some girls are born needing to be boys, and some boys are born needing to be girls.” I paused, and then asked the obvious question: “How are you feeling about my becoming a girl, J.?”

“Not really great,” he said, rolling his head to face away from me as he spoke.

Sadness blossomed inside me. I had no idea how to respond. Don’t try to argue with is feelings, I told myself. I was lying on my side, next to him on the bed. “I’m sorry that you feel that way, honey. Do you think you can tell me why you feel that way?”

“It just feels different, that’s all,” sniffling.

“I think that might be because I’ve been sick.”

“No—it’s different. Like, when I look at Richard (his friend’s dad, asleep upstairs), or at Sean, A.’s dad, it makes me feel sad.”

“Because your Dad’s not going to be a man anymore. What about S.? He has two moms. Do you want to talk about this with him?” (S’ mom is lesbian.)

“It works different for him. He has a dad and two moms, and Jeannine is his step-mom.”

“And you don’t have a Dad anymore at all.” This is one of those moments when I’m in awe of him, for having identified the exact sort of loss he’s incurring in such stark detail.

“Right! And I’m also mad and you guys for taking so long to tell me!” By now, we’re both crying.

“J.! This is serious adult stuff! We told you as soon as we could. Your mother and I have done the best we can with this!” I could not believe I was saying this to my five year old son. This sort of frankness is reserved for older children.

“Why are you crying?” he asked, sobbing himself.

“Because I made you sad, bear!”

“Oh. Don’t worry Daddy!”

He feels guilty for making me cry. This is amazing. “J. this has been hard for everyone. For all of us. It’s ok for you to be sad about it. And’s it’s ok for me to be sad about it. But it’s going to work out. I promise you. You still want me, and your mom, as your parents, right?” He nodded, tears beading on his cheekbones.

“I promise it will work out,” I repeated, wishing I could be more sure I could deliver on that promise.

Later, after I’d stood in the bathroom sobbing for a while, I was able to put it into better perspective. In the couple of weeks since I came out to him, he has zeroed in precisely on the issues this presents, specifically for him:

- If my daddy becomes a girl, how will other people understand that?
- My father’s queerness queers my family. From now on, I’ll have no manly archetype of Daddy to guard my legitimacy.

It amazes me to see him pick out the loss of privilege so quickly. He lost the ability to refer to “Daddy” and expect others to understand the sort of person he was referring to. That’s a tangible loss that he has reason to feel sad about. On the whole, he wouldn’t have me not be me, or stop wanting to be my son, or loving me, but he’s incurring losses, and he knows it. Ouch.

Being five, he seemed to take the whole thing in stride. I woke up shattered; he was completely fine, and delighted to hang out with me. Cuddly, in fact. Within an hour or two he had forgotten that too, and was buzzing off with his friends and their Dad to go fishing.

After showering, I walked down to the dock and ended up taking a couple of casts. I wasn’t trying to be reassuring; the rod just ended up in my hand, and I found myself flinging the lure out into the air. After a couple of casts plopping into the water fifteen feet from me (a specialty of mine in the five or so times I’ve fished), I got the hang of it to some degree, and sent it out there pretty far a couple of times. J. exclaimed. I smiled to myself, and reeled the lure in and put it away before the my real fishing skills reasserted themselves. “We’re not going to catch any fish here at mid-day,” I pronounced.

Going full time, with my liver tied behind my back

Everything was coming together. The two-plus years since I started coming out have been cataclysmic. I’ve been one of those messy, crazy, crisis trannies in a lot of ways, though I worked as hard as I could to stay in control. It just unfolded as a crisis.

So, after more than two years—losing my marriage but holding onto my relationship with my ex-wife, hanging onto my parents and friends, losing faith in my own sanity and stability, and shredding my career and my psyche in a crazed battle between two pieces of myself—there I stood. Separated amicably, living “as a woman” except in front of my son and, less importantly, in front of my father (strange symmetry, huh?). My ex was still using my male name and male pronouns. My social transition was moving along nicely.

My beard was history. I had been on T-blockers for about four months. My looks had just passed some passability threshold, and I was moving through the world with comparative ease. I was set to begin voice therapy in July. I had an appointment to see my Endocrinologist on July 23, and I was on a waiting list to see him sooner. My physical transition had been frustratingly slow, but it was moving.

On June 17, his office called. Someone else had cancelled. On June 18, he agreed to prescribe female hormones for me once he had good blood work and a brief note from my psychotherapist.

I walked out of the hospital feeling my life changing profoundly. I suppose people with transfigured lives must stagger out of that door into the brightness all day long: new parents, newly bereft, freshly diagnosed, cured. All day, walking into the light, stepping around the clump of bikes locked to the bike rack, and walking stunned, heedless of traffic, across the street towards the single bench on the sidewalk, in front of the parking lot.

I sat down, and packed my fake cigarette with weed from my dugout. A woman dressed in the loose pastel cotton pants and shift of a hospital employee sat down next to me and, in an English accent, asked if my cigarette was fake.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Oh—is it for quitting?”

“No. It’s for smoking my marijuana. I use it medicinally.” I’ve felt more comfortable saying this since Dr. M. offered me my medical marijuana card. (He’s just trying to protect me from bad weed, I think). Now at least, I could be a legal medicinal marijuana user, providing the proper paperwork was completed and fees paid. I’m not sure I’ll ever bother getting the card, but I’m still going to refer to all weed smoked during business hours as “medicine.”

“Oh,” she replied. “I was hoping you had some new way of quitting smoking.”

“Sorry,” I said. Embarassed by my mid-day drug use, I pushed myself to my feet and walked over to unlock my bike from the signpost it was shackled to. I fitted my helmet over my hair clip, climbed astride my steed, and wobbled my way slowly down the pedestrian walkway leading to McCaul Street.

I wanted to stop and tell everyone I was passing. I could see myself clutching the lapels of a middle-aged Chinese man in a blazer: “Can you believe it’s actually finally going to happen?”

I decided to go visit S., since she would be more understanding than the random people in the pedestrian walkway. She hugged me, and I told her “I need to be careful not to get too crazy over this.”

On June 19, my endo was on the phone at 8 am. My liver was inflamed. Had I filled my prescription yet? I shouldn’t. In fact, I needed to stop taking my T-blockers now. I could have a new blood test next week. This sort of thing didn’t normally happen to him.

My psych (still June 19) was worried too. The liver is a non-redundant completely vital part of a person, so they get antsy when it complains. He withdrew my mood stabilizer (good riddance), and continued tapering my anti-depressants. “This is drug-induced. One to two months,” he said. I was still hoping that my next test would show a different picture.

The next blood test was worse. “No hormone treatment until your liver function is normal. Sorry” said the neat printing of my endo’s assistant on the post-it note stuck to my results, which were taped to the door in a sealed envelope.

Two days later, Pride began, and the day after that, I left for nine days in Italy.

Once D. and A.’s wedding was over, eight days after that fate-sealing second blood test, sitting in a villa in Tuscany, it caught up with me. I realized that my physical transition was regressing, that I was back on my natural testosterone, and that I had lost my traction. I freaked out silently for a few hours, did yoga, and then freaked out some more (unheard of, post-yoga freaking).

I paced erratically around the Villa, holding my head, worrying—being upset. Finally, I picked my way down to the poolside, where some of my oldest friends sat, and awkwardly admitted that I was breaking down, and that my life was, once again, falling apart. I held the sides of my chair and gnashed my teeth as I explained. Holy fuck can I be a drama queen.

When I returned from Italy, I tried to make the best of it. If I have to lose my physical transition for now, then I’ll have to really work on the social part, I told myself.

The depression continued to settle in. I found myself spending hours on the couch or bed. At my worst, I proved unable to shower for four hours. I spent the first two hours lying on the sofa clutching a pillow, listening to myself breathe, wondering when I would feel strong enough to go to the shower, then I stood, removed the muumuu I was wearing (don’t ask) and then fell onto the bed, and lay there naked, immobilized for two more hours.

I held on as best I could. I began work on my legal name change. I met my mother for lunch, and explained that I had to meet with my father “as a woman,” since once my son returned from the trip he was on, I was going to come out to him, and then there would be no “man” presentation (such as it was by this point) left. The little island of man-ness that I had let my father linger on was disappearing.

I had procrastinated transitioning myself fully around my Dad because he’s a bit of a loose cannon. I knew it would work out in the end, but also that he might fire off a couple of shots during the process. Now, I needed to find the strength to invite him, and meet with him, while depressed, with my physical transition’s regression weighing on me and my confidence.

We met for tapas, and it went quite well. As expected, he was awkward, but he did it! The worst part was the look on his face when he first talked to the waitress. He, corporate titan, was afraid of being judged for sitting across from his transsexual daughter. She probably clocked me as trans, but was oblivious to his shame and vulnerability.

That was what I came there for, truthfully. I wanted him to see it not be a big deal. Although it felt like the unimaginable to him, it wasn’t going to turn me into a social outcast. He needed to see that. It worked, I guess.

The liver results kept getting worse. My Mom started begging me to come to their cottage to convalesce for a couple of weeks.

I agreed, and I ended up coming out to J, my son, there.

A week later, I was still there, and my extended family was converging on the place. My Mom’s the oldest of eight. Family get-togethers regularly top 20 people. Every summer, they hold a tournament featuring horrendous golf, grilled sausages, and campfire sing-alongs. This is no joke. I actually have this family.

Last weekend, we had 28 for dinner on Friday, and 30 on Saturday. The 25 or so additional people who came this year were around for most of the weekend, and holy shit were they working hard to assimilate my transition! All but the lesbian couple (who have already got it down) were stumbling over my name change, and my pronouns, and correcting themselves, and correcting each other, and taking me aside to express their support. It was really touching. Even the teenagers were great with it. Everyone just took the whole thing in stride. It was awesome to behold.

I’m beholding the awesomeness in hindsight, because my mind was awash in white noise and exhaustion the entire time. 30 people I love, including my parents, one of my brothers, my ex-wife, and my son, all partying around me for days. They might as well have clapped a suction cup on my head and sucked the energy out of my brain like villains in a Dr. Who episode. That might have been less exhausting.

On Tuesday—it was a long weekend here—they were all gone except my parents, and I woke after nine hours of sleep, hopelessly depressed. There were massive bags under my eyes. I ate breakfast and showered in silence, rage bubbling just beneath my surface, for no reason.

I crawled back into bed around noon, and slept for four hours. Since then, my body and brain have slowly been returning to equilibrium.

Yesterday, the enormity of the milestones I’ve been stumbling across while caught in this bout of depression began to dawn on me. I’ve come out to my Dad. I’ve come out to my son. I’ve transitioned socially so completely that my ex, my son, my parents, and my extended family, are calling me by my new name, and are expecting nothing other than me-as-a-woman, for the rest of my life.

Rather than gracefully sail into womanhood, I’ve limped my tortured ass across the line, but I’m fucking there!

There is NO ONE who matters to me in this world who hasn’t accepted my transition. I don’t think I’ll ever be expected to appear as a man again. I suppose that will take years to sink in completely, but it’s blowing my mind right about now. Holy shit!

Symptoms of testosterone's detestable resurgence

Let’s talk about testosterone’s loathsome presence (to me!) in my bloodstream again (thanks to my inflamed liver), and all the changes in my body that I can feel most keenly in reverse.

My body hair is back. Once again, when in the shower holding the razor, I need to remember whether it’s lower-back-to-feet day or tummy-to-hands day.

The face gets a shave daily. Before I had laser a couple of weeks ago, I was shaving the my upper lip twice each day, and each shave was close enough to remove a layer of skin, so that afterwards I could feel no hint of stubble with my finger-tip. The greyness of the beard hair beneath the skin was still visible, but that can’t be helped with a razor. Said greyness and any cuts or redness, I covered with concealer. I did try tweezing a bit—I have far fewer hairs than I started with—but it was too painful.

I looked in the mirror today, and my face had a slab-like character that I recall, but hadn’t noticed in a while. It’s not unattractive—just masculine. Today, of course, it sent me into a dysphoric tailspin.

My skin is greasier, and I have a smattering of zits on my forehead. I had thought the zits on my cheekbones were ingrown hairs from laser, but now I’m wondering if they’re part of this horrid regressive male puberty that I’m trapped into.

My testicles have become engorged eggs again, and the skin of my scrotum is shiny and thin—no longer shriveled and defeated looking.

The other day, I grappled with a morning erection. I could hear myself in my memory, proudly claiming, months ago, that I had had my last spontaneous erection. Should I be touching wood or something here? I asked myself then.

Today, it seemed like the pretty curves that I where I build a gradient of shade to soften my eye lids were slouching. I shaded them back into curviness.

Holy fuck and I sick of the arts of disguise! When will I be able to roll out of bed and simply be me, and a woman, and not have to employ any subterfuge to shore up my idenitity? I don’t mind shoring up my looks with subterfuge, but it would be a fuck of a lot more comfortable if my body weren’t stubbornly sticking in the wrong gender. Who wants to battle depression with eye shadow? I want stronger measures!

I'm switching from being a boy to being a girl

On Saturday, I finally told my son J. about my transition.

He's five. I had just supervised his life-jacketed form flying off the dock at my family's summer place—lucky us, I know—and now he was warming up in the sun on top of the boathouse. I had refused to swim since the thought of me in a bathing suit for either gender makes me want to puke.

Anxiety mounting inside me, I watched him. He prattled on about bugs and jumping off the dock and kids at school and whatever else, as usual; just happy to be with me after so many weeks of sporadic togetherness.

After a couple of fruitless lip-puckerings, I spat it out: "J. I have something I need to talk to you about."

He stopped chattering and looked at me expectantly.

"Umm..I'm switching from being a boy to being a girl."

"You're switching from being a boy to a girl!" He was smiling, almost laughing out loud, at the outlandishness of the news. Even at five, one's Dad coming out as transsexual is cause for raised eyebrows. “How do you do that!?”

I laughed. “Doctors will help me. I’ve already changed a lot. I’ve lost weight. I’ve grown my hair. I will change my voice.”

“How do you change your voice?”

“It takes time and practice.”

“You’re really switching from being a boy to being a girl?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Shit. It’s not like I didn’t expect him to ask, but it was still hard to know how to explain how unusual this is, but not to make it sound negative. “I had a hard time being happy as a boy. Actually, it was impossible for me to be happy being a boy. That’s very unusual; most people are happy being the sex they’re born as. So, I’ve been experimenting with being a girl—trying it out—and I think I’ll be happier as a girl. Well, actually, I know I’m happier as a girl.”

Highly amused, he smiled widely. “You’ve been experimenting? You’ve been trying it out?”

“Yes. Do you think I’m different now?”

“Ahh….yes!” he said, incredulous at my stupidity like only a five year old can be.

“Do you care?”

“No!” and he smiled again.

“Because I’ll still be your Daddy, and I’ll always be your Daddy.”

“How can you still be my Daddy if you’re going to be a girl?”

Smarty pants. “Well, I’ll always be your parent. And you can call me whatever you want to. You can still call me ‘Daddy’ if you want.”

I’m fervently hoping that he won’t want to call me Daddy forever, but I would like him to decide how and when (and if, I guess) he wants to change it.

“J., I’m going to be me-as-a-girl—not anyone else. I will look different, but this won’t change the way things are between us.”

“Are you going to get the vagina?”

I nearly choked on my juice box. “Why do you ask that?”

He grinned. Another stupid adult question. “Because girls have vaginas!”

I rolled my eyes. “Maybe,” I responded, “but we don’t need to talk about that now.” And being the lovely child that he is, he honoured that small request and backed down.

We went back to chattering about our surroundings and whatever else came to mind.

He has asked about the vagina a couple of times since, though. He has also wanted to know when I would be fully a girl, how the doctors were going to help me, whether I would still be good at building things (!), how to spell Dee (my new name), and probably several other things I’m forgetting.

We’ve spent a few hours with me in woman mode, which amounts to me wearing boobs and a skirt, but otherwise looking the same. He felt that I looked different (the boobs make ALL the difference, I suspect), but he was so natural, it was seamless.

Actually, it was like folding myself into the embrace of a cozy blanket on a clear winter’s night. He has been so cute about it. It’s so overjoying for me to get to be myself around him in an unfettered way. To finally not have to hide from him. To get a chance to feel my chest-swelling love for him with less of the taint of my maleness fouling my mood

A., his mom, has been wonderful too. She is awe-inspiring. Even though I’m resigned to losing her, she still breaks my heart.