Ash Leland
09-29-2014, 05:32 PM
I wasn't sure if I should post this in the transsexual forum. I read a few of the sticky threads and I wasn't altogether sure if that was the place to bring uncertainty such as this, plus I'm also out of the young members forum (from inactivity I think) so I thought this would be the best place to post this.
Before I get started, I know what I'm about to discuss is not smart and why exactly I did it may bear further reflection on my part. Basically, last spring, I started checking out a bunch of forum websites dealing with natural breast enhancement. I guess reason one for doing that was that at the moment I'm too poor for surgery and I wasn't too confidant with how things were going with my therapist, and if I did get surgery it would have to be out of state (no such resource in my hometown, or possibly anywhere in state except maybe Anchorage). I also have a number of trans friends locally who have gone about this in every way imaginable. I know a girl who passes, is full time and is completely non-op and no-ho. I know someone else who surgically transitioned without hormone therapy and two others who are pursuing hormone therapy without any plans for surgery. Basically, I've met a handful of people who have transitioned to their satisfaction in different ways. So at the time, while I knew that the proper channels are the safest, I wasn't exactly convinced the typical roadmap is absolutely necessary and if your insurance coverage is wonky then you're hands are kind of tied anyway.
At this point, I'd been "out" to my mom for a few years, although her behavior sort of made it clear that she wasn't quite convinced it wasn't a phase. Nonetheless she knew transition is on my radar. I'd sort of come out to dad. He knows I'm a crossdresser and that I'm bisexual. Anyway, my thinking was that this is my body, and if this regiment of vitamins and over the counter hormones (you can find what they are on your own if you really want to) causes any problems I could stop. I wasn't altogether concerned about genital \ reproductive consequences since I hardly use my genitals during sex anyway and I've never wanted children. Beyond that, I simply did not care about adverse health consequences. If they worked, woo hoo. Eventually they started working. I'd also suspended judgement about work or social consequences. I couldn't really imagine any insurmountable problem or confusion in my social circle and if anyone asked what was going on, I'd tell them.
This continued through July when I quit my job (sketchy coworkers, unsafe environment) and took another one involving delivering newspapers at night. I think completely reversing my sleep schedule messed with my brain chemistry since I had the worst onset of self-destructive feelings and behavior in years, so predictably that only lasted a week. After that was the first job interview I went to as a woman, and it went smoothly. The position they found for me wasn't exactly amazing: part time telemarketing. No possibility of saving and I could no longer afford my meds (for ADHD) but it got me by from day to day. At that time my dad had sort of vanished from my life. His dog died in the spring and he started walking dogs with the neighbor lady and soon they were in a relationship, which means that he more or less slept over at her place every night and I'd go weeks without speaking to him and when I did there was no possibility of a long, sustained conversation. Eventually he started going to a Catholic church. I won't read too much into that. Around the time the telemarketing gig happened, I was house sitting for him, for about two weeks.
Two things became clear. One, and possibly most importantly, was that I was beginning transition without my father. The other had to do with my work place. Mostly staffed with younger men, mostly misogynist. At no point were they verbally abusive to me, but I still couldn't help noticing how frequently /scary/ jokes came up. As in, "I just say the creepiest thing I can to a girl and if it doesn't freak her out, then we're doing it." Then there was this guy who kept saying, over and over again, that he divorced his wife of twenty years because she was fat and married a twenty-nine year old. The fact that I was doing this without my dad plus my growing awareness of how much women are marginalized made me feel kind of up a river with no paddle. And it's not like I didn't know anything about misogyny before then. I think a lot of it is that most of my friends are LGBT and this was the first time I was in an exclusive group of straight, young men in a long time, combined with the fact that I hadn't had any meds in about a month. For me, being medicated for ADHD has to do with how well I solve problems and manage my life. If you can't do that, you feel like you can't control anything and it's easy to get morbidly depressed and get stuck in destructive, circular thought patterns.
So basically I came to the conclusion that I was rushing in too fast and stopped. After the telemarketing job ran out (it was seasonal) I was hired as a substitute teacher, as a male. I've been working for or less full time this month, but something has still been eating at me. Ever since I was hired as a sub, I've been drinking hard on a regular basis. I can drink quite a lot, much more than I am now, and still manage a full daily routine. Family patterns combined with being temporary in jail during a blackout at the age of 21 has taught me that I'm probably a congenital alcoholic. At the same time, since I don't have a significant other who prompts me to drink all the time, I can now see the problem for what it is. That's probably at least one reason why I feel like my brain is all over the map. I also want to go back on the vitamin supplements and hormones. I have a small shelf in my chest, and without my shirt you can tell I have breasts, but they're still not that big. I also might be hired at a liquor store by people who know I'm trans. That would be later this month. And that's another problem. I know for a fact that I could get a permanent full time para-professional job with a special needs kid in the school district (in a local school that I haven't worked in yet), but I feel like in order to do that I'd have to come out to the human resources department. So I could roll the dice with a high paying job with health care, or I could wait for a lower paying, more menial job where gender identity doesn't matter. And oh yeah, the talk with dad would have to happen.
I guess my essential problem here is that I feel compelled to do this and I don't know why. Maybe there is no why. I also can't help but suspect that failure in other areas of my life might give this problem an extra level of seriousness. I've only recently got back to creative writing. From childhood through age 23 or so, it was a constant, so losing that was kind of a sign that something was wrong. I'll not get into any of that right now but I wonder about it. And then there's the label thing. I seriously can't imagine a reason why I should not want to change my body, other than social ostracism and no one wanting to be in a relationship with me, and both of those are kind of in the same realm. And obviously social problems include day in day out misogyny and everyone thinking you're an extremist, nihilistic crazy person. In terms of personal preference, what I want for myself though, there's no question.
Before I get started, I know what I'm about to discuss is not smart and why exactly I did it may bear further reflection on my part. Basically, last spring, I started checking out a bunch of forum websites dealing with natural breast enhancement. I guess reason one for doing that was that at the moment I'm too poor for surgery and I wasn't too confidant with how things were going with my therapist, and if I did get surgery it would have to be out of state (no such resource in my hometown, or possibly anywhere in state except maybe Anchorage). I also have a number of trans friends locally who have gone about this in every way imaginable. I know a girl who passes, is full time and is completely non-op and no-ho. I know someone else who surgically transitioned without hormone therapy and two others who are pursuing hormone therapy without any plans for surgery. Basically, I've met a handful of people who have transitioned to their satisfaction in different ways. So at the time, while I knew that the proper channels are the safest, I wasn't exactly convinced the typical roadmap is absolutely necessary and if your insurance coverage is wonky then you're hands are kind of tied anyway.
At this point, I'd been "out" to my mom for a few years, although her behavior sort of made it clear that she wasn't quite convinced it wasn't a phase. Nonetheless she knew transition is on my radar. I'd sort of come out to dad. He knows I'm a crossdresser and that I'm bisexual. Anyway, my thinking was that this is my body, and if this regiment of vitamins and over the counter hormones (you can find what they are on your own if you really want to) causes any problems I could stop. I wasn't altogether concerned about genital \ reproductive consequences since I hardly use my genitals during sex anyway and I've never wanted children. Beyond that, I simply did not care about adverse health consequences. If they worked, woo hoo. Eventually they started working. I'd also suspended judgement about work or social consequences. I couldn't really imagine any insurmountable problem or confusion in my social circle and if anyone asked what was going on, I'd tell them.
This continued through July when I quit my job (sketchy coworkers, unsafe environment) and took another one involving delivering newspapers at night. I think completely reversing my sleep schedule messed with my brain chemistry since I had the worst onset of self-destructive feelings and behavior in years, so predictably that only lasted a week. After that was the first job interview I went to as a woman, and it went smoothly. The position they found for me wasn't exactly amazing: part time telemarketing. No possibility of saving and I could no longer afford my meds (for ADHD) but it got me by from day to day. At that time my dad had sort of vanished from my life. His dog died in the spring and he started walking dogs with the neighbor lady and soon they were in a relationship, which means that he more or less slept over at her place every night and I'd go weeks without speaking to him and when I did there was no possibility of a long, sustained conversation. Eventually he started going to a Catholic church. I won't read too much into that. Around the time the telemarketing gig happened, I was house sitting for him, for about two weeks.
Two things became clear. One, and possibly most importantly, was that I was beginning transition without my father. The other had to do with my work place. Mostly staffed with younger men, mostly misogynist. At no point were they verbally abusive to me, but I still couldn't help noticing how frequently /scary/ jokes came up. As in, "I just say the creepiest thing I can to a girl and if it doesn't freak her out, then we're doing it." Then there was this guy who kept saying, over and over again, that he divorced his wife of twenty years because she was fat and married a twenty-nine year old. The fact that I was doing this without my dad plus my growing awareness of how much women are marginalized made me feel kind of up a river with no paddle. And it's not like I didn't know anything about misogyny before then. I think a lot of it is that most of my friends are LGBT and this was the first time I was in an exclusive group of straight, young men in a long time, combined with the fact that I hadn't had any meds in about a month. For me, being medicated for ADHD has to do with how well I solve problems and manage my life. If you can't do that, you feel like you can't control anything and it's easy to get morbidly depressed and get stuck in destructive, circular thought patterns.
So basically I came to the conclusion that I was rushing in too fast and stopped. After the telemarketing job ran out (it was seasonal) I was hired as a substitute teacher, as a male. I've been working for or less full time this month, but something has still been eating at me. Ever since I was hired as a sub, I've been drinking hard on a regular basis. I can drink quite a lot, much more than I am now, and still manage a full daily routine. Family patterns combined with being temporary in jail during a blackout at the age of 21 has taught me that I'm probably a congenital alcoholic. At the same time, since I don't have a significant other who prompts me to drink all the time, I can now see the problem for what it is. That's probably at least one reason why I feel like my brain is all over the map. I also want to go back on the vitamin supplements and hormones. I have a small shelf in my chest, and without my shirt you can tell I have breasts, but they're still not that big. I also might be hired at a liquor store by people who know I'm trans. That would be later this month. And that's another problem. I know for a fact that I could get a permanent full time para-professional job with a special needs kid in the school district (in a local school that I haven't worked in yet), but I feel like in order to do that I'd have to come out to the human resources department. So I could roll the dice with a high paying job with health care, or I could wait for a lower paying, more menial job where gender identity doesn't matter. And oh yeah, the talk with dad would have to happen.
I guess my essential problem here is that I feel compelled to do this and I don't know why. Maybe there is no why. I also can't help but suspect that failure in other areas of my life might give this problem an extra level of seriousness. I've only recently got back to creative writing. From childhood through age 23 or so, it was a constant, so losing that was kind of a sign that something was wrong. I'll not get into any of that right now but I wonder about it. And then there's the label thing. I seriously can't imagine a reason why I should not want to change my body, other than social ostracism and no one wanting to be in a relationship with me, and both of those are kind of in the same realm. And obviously social problems include day in day out misogyny and everyone thinking you're an extremist, nihilistic crazy person. In terms of personal preference, what I want for myself though, there's no question.