Obla-di, obla-dah...

Hello friends.

Long time no see. Life continues to chug on, and so does this crazy train I'm riding.

This morning I had a brief consultation with an electrologist to get her assessment of my prospects for facial hair removal; I’d mentioned to her ahead of time that I was considering starting with laser, then cleaning up the stragglers with electrolysis, and she was super helpful in walking me through how to structure that (in a nutshell: 3 or at the most 4 sessions of laser, 8 weeks apart, then zap the rest until we’re done). I thanked her for her time, and went to work.

So tonight, when we were all home, I shared some of my morning experience with DW, keeping it as matter-of-fact as possible, answering her questions, but otherwise trying not to come across as too excited about it (she’s almost always uncomfortable talking much about anything transition-related, and I try to be sensitive to that). At first I felt like she was okay with what I was telling her; I mean, I’ve always hated shaving, and for years (even before I was out to her) I’ve brought up laser as something I’d be interested in doing, and she knows I’ve been slowly saving money up for this exact thing.

I think I was probably just kidding myself.

After talking for a few minutes, she said something remarkably similar to something I just read in Jenny Boylan’s memoir, She's Not There (which, by the way, is excellent, and which I've thoroughly enjoyed), which her spouse said to her when they were standing more or less where DW and I are now. As best as I can remember it, she told me:

“You’re going to do what you’re going to do, but I can’t help but feel like it’s another part of the person I fell in love with slipping away.”

It made me so, terribly sad. The real tragedy of relationships like ours is that we love each other’s hearts & souls, but everything she loves about my body are the things I most hate, and making my body more comfortable for me makes it less so for her.

When we got married, I was convinced that her love could save me. Fix me. That our perfect unity could make this yearning I've always felt, this profound sense of disconnection with my assigned gender, just melt away forever. (I spent the first 40 years of my life hoping and praying that God would take it from me, too, but He never saw fit. Or He couldn't. Or something. I don't know. But that's a subject for a separate post).

We've shared countless joys and sorrows. Built a happy life together. We're the proud-but-often-frustrated parents of two amazing teenagers.

But the gender thing is still hanging here between us, and I'm afraid it always will be. Our friendship is as strong as ever, but our romance is no more. There's no blame or hard feelings about this (at least I don't think there are), but it's hard not to feel pretty melancholy sometimes.

I have no idea what the future holds. For now, we're keeping the family together, in no small part to give our kids the best possible home life. But I think we're both wondering how long that can last.

Happy Rebirthday!

It's no secret that this blog has been a bit of a ghost town for the past year. Most of what I would have put here, I either shared with friends on Tumblr, or wrote in my diary, or maybe expressed one on one with a friend over instant messaging. Regardless, I felt like I should try to post a few things here about what's going on in our lives.

So... this is the first of what I think may be several posts marking my first year on hormone replacement therapy, and how it relates to what came before. Because it marks the anniversary of the day when my rebirth began, I'm going to call it "Rebirthday."

This time, I’m going to be talking about my boobs, so if any of you feel like that’s TMI or triggering in any way (and if it is, I’m sorry :(), maybe don’t click through the “Read More.”

Second Puberty

Last night I think I started to realize what HRT is going to mean for me and my family. Like I mentioned last time, I was due to consult with my doctor on hormone treatment options, and that happened Tuesday. I've been on Spiro and Estradiol since then, and overall it's been a huge improvement to my state of mind, but after work yesterday I met DW & our kids to do a school thing for DD, and all of a sudden, I got completely sideswiped by an intense anxiety attack. Too many people, all looking perfectly well adjusted and cis-normative and able to blend in to society completely naturally (I don't know if they all were or not, but that's what my brain was telling me), and this powerful fear of rejection washed over me. Like no matter what I do mentally or physically, I'll never be able to be an anonymous part of that kind of crowd.

(This is all going on in my head, mind you. I'm not out to our son yet, and DW who tries to support and understand what I'm going through, had enough on her plate without having to coddle me, so I just leaned against a wall and closed my eyes until I could regain some measure of control)

Mind you, DD's in high school, maybe midway through her own puberty. DS has gotten really irrational and emotional in the past month, so we suspect he's on the verge of his as well. Now this. When we got home, I tried to explain what I'd experienced to DW, and her comically exasperated comment? "Aaargh, I don't know if I can handle THREE people all going through puberty at the same time!"

She's right. This is going to be a second puberty for me. Hopefully this one will go better than my first, and I'm still confident that I'm doing what I need to address my dysphoria, but I have no doubt it's going to be a roller coaster of a year.

Trans Awareness Month, Day 14 - Passing tips?

(This is part 14 of my observance of Transgender Awareness Month, my answers to the 30 Day Trans-Challenge.)

14) What are some of your passing tips or things you do to pass?

Um, well, first of all, "passing" is a loaded term. Passing as what, exactly? There are an almost infinite number of variations in womens' hair, skin, body type, voice, and on and on and on, so meeting some arbitrary set of criteria that everyone will read as "female" is somewhat laughable. I'm not saying there aren't ranges on every one of those categories that roughly equate to "female" and "male", because there probably are. What I'm saying is that ultimately, as a non-binary identifying person, it doesn't matter to me.

... much.

Actually, it does matter to me, I guess. But it's complicated.

I don't really alter my presentation all that much for different social situations, other than the obvious one of getting more dressed up for church and work than, say, a quick trip to the corner store. That being the case, I have a couple of important criteria in mind when I get dressed:

1. I want to embrace my femininity in minor ways that nevertheless remind me of my identity. My hair is a big one. A little jewelry sometimes is another. The cut & color of the clothes I wear. Basically the stuff I talked about in my "coping" post a few days ago.
2. I want to look like "Dad" to my kids, in a way that doesn't make them (or their friends) uncomfortable. Having a daughter in her early teens, this one matters quite a bit to me.
3. I want to be attractive to my sweetheart. I don't care much if anyone else thinks I'm good looking, but I want her to.

If I pass those three tests, nothing else really matters to me. :)

Trans Awareness Month, Day 11 - How do you manage dysphoria?

(This is part 11 of my observance of Transgender Awareness Month, my answers to the 30 Day Trans-Challenge.)

Yes, I realize I'm very behind schedule. Maybe it'll be Christmas before I finish; I dunno. Anyway, here's question 11:

11) How do you manage dysphoria?

Woooooo. This one is a little tricky, because I know it's so different for so many of us. So I'll preface this by saying these are just my strategies. They may not work for everyone, and a year from now they may not work very well for me either, because I evolve them as my needs change.

Presentation

As I've said previously, my agreement with DW is that I no longer present femme, even in the privacy of our home. That doesn't mean I'm stuck wearing frumpy, baggy lumberjack clothes, though. Over the last 18 months, I've built up a decent little collection of attractive, androgynously-cut clothes I absolutely love to wear: a couple of pairs of jeans, some dressy slacks, a few chinos, some button-up shirts and nice tees to layer with them. I don't really push the gender boundary too hard, though... I work in a pretty male-dominated field, and I'm not entirely sure if that wouldn't end up being a career-limiting move. But it's a blessing that my field also has a fairly relaxed dress code, so I don't have to go all "Mad Men" with a suit & tie (honestly, that would drive me bonkers really quickly).

I've also been acquiring a small collection of gender-neutral jewelry: bracelets and necklaces, mostly beads, shells, or natural fibers. It's a little touch, but sometimes it's just enough to remind me of my identity and help me to feel a little more confident about myself when I'm surrounded by testosterone.

I pay more attention to personal care than I used to. I try to keep my fingernails neatly trimmed, and occasionally treat myself to a pedicure (once on an anniversary date with DW, which was unexpected & fun). I try to shave my face every other day; I really ought to do it daily (or even twice daily, really), but I also have very sensitive skin, and over-shaving it makes it irritated. I've been using moisturizer morning & night, and that seems to be helping a bit. I've also been growing my hair out; it's long enough now to pull back in a little ponytail, which is a new experience for me. I'd like to go a little longer, but that's a conversation DW and I haven't had yet.

Chemical

In addition to all of the above, I've been on herbal supplements since this spring: Saw Palmetto as an anti-androgen, and Black Cohosh for its phytoestrogenic properties. They're both much milder than HRT, but they serve to take the edge off my dysphoria just a little bit. But really, I need to find an endocrinologist and get set up with something a little more official and professional, if for no other reason than to make sure I'm not messing up my liver. The herbals have been a nice stopgap while we were in transition from the East Coast, but now that we're more or less settled and back in good health, I think it's time to start doctor shopping.

I've also made a habit of eating more healthfully. I've almost completely eliminated soft drinks from my diet (the occasional Mountain Dew at a restaurant still happens from time to time), which has made a pretty big difference. I eat a lot of salad (I'm talking rabbit levels of salad consumption); it fills you up just as much as carbohydrate-heavy stuff, without the negative effects carb-loading can have. I otherwise haven't really cut anything out of my diet, I'm just smarter about portion control, and try to reach for fruits and veggies first if I need a snack.

Another chemical change that has been very helpful is regular exercise. At least a couple of days a week, I try to run (well, more like power-walking most of the time) during my lunch hour. It wakes me up when I might otherwise get a little sleepy after lunch, and it revs up my metabolism so that it's more efficient about burning calories (which feeds back into my diet). Since I started my exercise program in earnest, I've lost about 35 pounds! I'm not quite where I want to be yet (still have a bit of a "spare tire" to lose), but looking in the mirror isn't quite so distressing as it once was.

Social

I've talked before about how helpful it's been to have friends that know what I'm going through. I participate on a couple of email discussion groups for LDS transgender people, and it's been very rewarding. Sometimes I'm able to say an encouraging word or two when a friend is feeling down. Other times, someone will do the same for me. Often the discussions we get into will expand my understanding of some facet of the Gospel, or of what it means to be trans and stay a faithful member. Sometimes my friends and I get into off-list conversations over Google Chat or Facebook or whatever, and those conversations have also been really rewarding and enriching.

Just as importantly, I'm out to my wife, and lately we've had some really great conversations about faith and faithfulness. We have kids that don't yet know the fulness of my issues, and I don't have anyone else I can really talk to in person, but having DW to talk to has been a tremendous comfort, and I've very grateful for her and her attempts to understand me and support me in my challenges, even as I try to do the same for her.

Spiritual

Finally, last but not least, is the spiritual component to my coping. I have about a 45-minute commute to work most days, and although sometimes I spend it listening to NPR or music, I've been making an effort to plug in my audio scriptures and listen to at least a chapter or two every day from the Book of Mormon. It's been really interesting to me to study this way, because the lessons I'm gleaning from the long sweep of Nephite/Lamanite history are new to me, and I'm learning a lot about human nature, righteousness, wickedness, humility, pride, and what it means to have faith, even when I don't know the meaning of all things.

Disclaimer

Again, these are my coping strategies as of November 2013. I reserve the right to change them as my needs change, and I make no claim that they'll be a silver bullet that eliminates all traces of gender dysphoria. Doing these things haven't eliminated mine, either, but taken as a whole, they've certainly made it more manageable. And for right now, that's enough.

Trans Awareness Month, Day 10 - What are your fears about being trans?

(This is part 10 of my observance of Transgender Awareness Month, my answers to the 30 Day Trans-Challenge.)

10) What are some of your fears in regards to being trans?

I think I covered this one pretty well a few months back:

Last night I had a dream... out of the blue, my sweetheart told me she was leaving me, because of dream logic reasons that made sense at the time.

Then I woke up.

For a few minutes, while the dream fog was still surrounding my mind, I felt emotionally numb. I laid there in bed, staring up into the darkness for quite a while. I may have a life outside of my family, with work, cycling, and other extra-curricular hobbies, but without my sweetie and kids, it would seem so empty! I know a lot of transfolk end up losing their families and friends, and that's terrifying to me. Yet to go back to ignoring and cramming this part of myself down into a deep dark hole in the bottom of my soul — well, that's pretty awful too!

...

I'd be lying if I said last night didn't spook me a little.

By far my greatest fear about being transgender is losing the people closest to me: my dear wife, my amazing kids, my parents & sister. I hate that my motivation to action and inaction alike is fear, and I wish that wasn't the case, but it is.

But, like I said in my "bad dream" post up there, cramming all of my genderfluid feelings back down in a hole in my psyche and pretending that they're not there, that they don't exist and never have — that's not a viable long-term strategy either. I tried it for 20 years and all it got me was a lot of internalized shame and self-hate, and painful social dysfunction caused by not being able to really be myself. So another fear is that I never get a chance to really be open about my transness with the people I love, that they'll never really understand the real me, just the shell I've created. (although I suppose to some extent that's a phenomenon that's not limited to trans folks).

One more fear that I have is that the LDS church as a culture never comes around to accepting people like me. (and here I want to make it very clear I'm speaking about the culture of the Church, i.e. its membership at large, and not about the institution of the Church itself). Heck, if you read Josh Weed's recent manifesto post, you'll get some idea of where gays in the Church stand right now, and it's kind of the same, scary place: on the one hand, you have Church leaders both local and general who profess love and compassion, and on the other, you hear messages over the pulpit decrying the moral decay of the world, using people just like you as Exhibit A. I have good friends I've made through my online presence that have fallen away from the Church because it's just too painful to go and feel judged, unworthy, unloved and unwanted.

I strongly feel like the Church community needs trans people that come out of the closet in a very open and public way, who yet remain humble and willing to sustain the Brethren of the Church rather than try to bully them into acceptance (a recent incident in the news comes to mind, but I'd rather not open that particular can of worms, thankyouverymuch). Josh Weed quoted a member of the Church, Emily Stephens, who recently accidentally outed herself by posting to a public Mormons Building Bridges thread on Facebook. Her comment is so touching, I wanted to share it here:

Jann...your post's last statement is so penetrating... "...why would the church put up a website about mormons and gays and it have loving language, but the GA's talk about it with such vileness???"

I am active LDS, served a mission, attend the temple. I love to serve in YWs! I love to pay a full tithe! And, I pray every night that Heavenly Father will be merciful and let me die. I've survived being LDS and gay for 13 years, sometimes barely. I figured it out when I was 22. The messages this weekend conveyed to me exactly what you wrote. I must acknowledge that. I'd like to ignore those talks and only think about Uchtdorf's talk, but I heard their words. My heart has felt their words. They aren't going away. They aren't even new words. It is what has been said for years. I have a testimony of the gospel. So, I don't understand why my church hates me so much. Why do they insist repeatedly that I am vile? Why am I targeted at all? Because I "love" wrong?

I am terrified of people in my stake finding out I am gay. Though I am more than sure they suspect. In the past, I had a loving and compassionate bishop tell me that if people found out, my calling with the youth would be in jeopardy. Just if they found out I am "gay." I have never been kissed in my entire life. Never held hands. I've loved secretly and deeply in my heart, but was taught to do so with the greatest of shame.

It is often suggested that same-sex marriage is the root cause of the degradation of the family--how is that possible? If we are to be discussing vile at Conference, why aren't we talking about pornography, infidelity, deadbeat parents, addictions, abuse, the objectification of women, pregnancy outside of wedlock. And when we discuss those things which truly threaten the family, why aren't we doing so with compassion, asking "how can we help?" instead of the fearful, "how can I isolate my family from the world?"

Jann, I want to praise members like you who are brave enough to ask these questions. I want to thank members who are courageous enough to see the disparity and deeply feel the pain it causes and are willing to succor people like me nonetheless. It is brothers and sisters like you that successfully place my backside in that pew every Sunday to partake of the sacrament. It is you who gives me hope, especially in a place where being willing to see us with compassion is an insurmountable task. God bless you.

I don't want to obscure the fact that trans issues are not gay issues, but there's certainly a similar dynamic at work in our struggle for understanding within the LDS church. The church culture and practices are very tightly coupled to the gender binary and a very specific cultural definition of "traditional marriage" (1950's-style nuclear family), so anything that seems to deviate even slightly from this ideal is met with a certain amount of aloofness, resistance, perhaps even hostility, and this sometimes carries over into our rhetoric and messages shared from the pulpit. In that context, some weeks it's a real struggle, as Emily says, to put my "backside in the pew." (or, honestly, in my Priesthood meeting)

And here's the thing: identifying as genderqueer, I'm not even that extreme, really, on the spectrum of trans-ness! If I feel uncomfortable, I can only imagine how painful it is for some of my friends.

So... my fears about being trans? That things never get better, that I lose the people I care about, and that we as a Church keep losing people who need the love and support of the Body of Christ.

I hope it gets better. I hope my fears prove to be unfounded. And I pray that someday we transfolk will be known even as God knows us... by our hearts.

Trans Awareness Month, Day 8 - How to deal with being read?

(This is part 8 of my observance of Transgender Awareness Month, my answers to the 30 Day Trans-Challenge.)

8) How do you deal with being read mis-gendered in the beginning of transitioning by people?

Well, since I'm not out and not transitioning, I deal just okay, although I'm not really a fan of being "Sir"ed.

I will say that with my long hair and wardrobe choices, I occasionally get double-takes from passersby.

... which is actually kinda awesome. :)

Trans Awareness Month, Day 4 - Coming Out

(This is part 4 of my observance of Transgender Awareness Month, my answers to the 30 Day Trans-Challenge.)

4) How did your family take it when you came out/ if you are not out why aren't you?

Well, like I said in the last post, I'm not out to anyone but my Sweetheart, and that was kind of a rough thing. She felt lied to, betrayed, and afraid for our future together — a fear that I shared. Part of our mutual understanding in the fallout from that initial coming out was I can push my presentation as "metrosexual" (i.e. androgynous) as I want, provided I stay on the "male" side of the line. So far so good, since I've since come to identify more as genderqueer anyway. But she also really, really doesn't want me sharing my gender issues with anyone else, so out of respect for her feelings, that's where things remain.

Trans Awareness Month, Day 3 - Have you ever been outed?

(This is part 3 of my observance of Transgender Awareness Month, my answers to the 30 Day Trans-Challenge.)

Aaaarrrgh, so here it is, November 10th, and I'm only on "Day 3" of my little project.

I blame Tumblr. But whatever, here we go:

3) Have you ever been outed?

I suppose it depends on the definition of "outed," really. If you mean, has someone who knows I'm trans told someone else that didn't know? If that's the question, then no... but only because my sweetheart is literally the only person in the world who knows, and she would never tell a soul. But since my coming out to her was triggered by an external event (the whole story is here), I guess you might consider that being "outed," since it was not on my timetable and was out of my control.

It got better.

Being Genderqueer

Genderqueer pride flag, from Wikimedia Commons

Hi everyone! Sorry I haven't posted much lately; we've recently moved cross-country, and are still unpacking boxes (and probably will be for the next 6 months -- at least it feels that way sometimes!)

Recently a new online friend posted to a thread on the NorthStar Transgender Support mailing list, talking about her experiences growing up trans*, and explicitly mentioned me as someone who might have a slightly different experience, since I identify more genderqueer than transsexual (Wikipedia's page, which I linked to, has a better explanation than I can give succinctly, if you're curious about what that means).

Anyway, I ended up writing back quite a bit (probably more than everyone else on the thread cared to see, actually. Sorry!), and when I was done, I realized that I haven't really blogged too much over here about my realization that my transgender experience is probably a little different than most. So, I'm going to publish an edited version of those comments here. For those of you reading this that are also on the NS mailing list, please forgive the redundancy.

It's funny, but while my experience is in many ways different from a lot of us in the group, in other ways it's very much the same. I have a lot of attitudes and mannerisms that aren't male-typical, and had even more as a teen before they were kind of shamed out of me by people who told me that I shouldn't act this way or that. For instance, I used to be a kind of a "chatty Cathy," which sometimes got me attention from people around us when we were out in public settings, and my Mom was always trying to get me to quiet down. Looking back now, I think that maybe it was just as much about my intonation and speech patterns as it was my volume. (I'll note that since accepting myself for who I am, I'm getting kinda chatty again -- at least in certain circles)

As a kid, I had a lot of female friends, and very few close guy friends. That was fine in elementary school, but by middle school, when my classmates were starting to pair off as couples and get shy around the opposite sex, suddenly it wasn't cool anymore for me to "fraternize with the enemy," so to speak, and I lost some good friends because of it, without ever really comprehending why. My lack of understanding about how to navigate normal male group dynamics made me an outsider in my ward, neighborhood, school -- just about everywhere, as I didn't really "get" any of the other boys, they certainly didn't know what to make of me, and since I was a boy, the girls weren't really interested in letting me hang around.

Nowadays, the things that get to me the most are when D.W. expects me to act as the stereotypical Mormon "head of household", leading in family scripture study, always being the one to call on people to pray at dinner, that sort of thing. It just DOES NOT come naturally to me, and if I balk when she asks me to do something like that, I think she thinks it's just a lack of self-confidence (or worse, a lack of interest), and not the deep-seated incongruity I feel all the time in those situations -- like, why do I always have to be the one in charge? Why do I always have to be the strong, confident one, just because of the configuration of my privates? Sometimes I wish I had someone to put their arms around me, hold me close, and make me feel safe and protected. Being "the patriarch" is emotionally exhausting to me.

This discomfort affects me at work, too -- I have a hard time being assertive, often preferring to be the one forging compromises and trying to make everyone happy. Sometimes I get nervous about that, and hope that it's not a career-limiting trait (more on that in another post)

Looking at that rambling narrative, I notice it's mostly about gender roles, not strictly about my gender identification. But that's a whole different, tangled-up topic that'll take me a while to properly articulate. For now, let me just say this: it's complicated.

Anyway, maybe this will help someone else out there in the vastness of the Internet. I sure wish the same breadth of information were available to me when I was a kid -- I would have figured things out a lot sooner.

A Bad Dream

Let me preface this by saying I don't often remember my dreams. I'm sure I have them, because, generally speaking, I wake up fully rested. They just usually fade away in the early morning light.

Last night was different.

Most of my readers know that I'm trans*, I've accepted it and shared it with my wife, and am trying to acknowledge that part of myself while staying true to her and our kids. While I'm not going to pass judgement on anyone who decides differently, for us as a couple, that means no transition. Which is fine, because as I said last time, I feel more comfortable trying to find a hybrid middle path anyway.

One coping strategy we've talked about, but which I have yet to act on, is finding a good endocrinologist to see if my hormonal balance can be tweaked to offer me some peace of mind. (I also have a few little physical annoyances like skin brittleness that I think this might help, too, but that's the topic of another post). Of course, messing with my hormonal balance is tricky, because, remember, I'm non-transitioning.

Anyway. Last night I had a dream that I'd consulted with an endo, and was on a regular program that seemed to be really helping. Then, out of the blue, my sweetheart told me she was leaving me, because of dream logic reasons that made sense at the time.

Then I woke up.

For a few minutes, while the dream fog was still surrounding my mind, I felt emotionally numb. I laid there in bed, staring up into the darkness for quite a while. I may have a life outside of my family, with work, cycling, and other extra-curricular hobbies, but without my sweetie and kids, it would seem so empty! I know a lot of transfolk end up losing their families and friends, and that's terrifying to me. Yet to go back to ignoring and cramming this part of myself down into a deep dark hole in the bottom of my soul — well, that's pretty awful too!

Eventually I was able to get back to sleep, and when I woke up this morning, the deep dread of the night had evaporated. I still think finding an endo that can help me is a good idea. But I'd be lying if I said last night didn't spook me a little.

Alias

I felt like the blog needed a new name to reflect where my head is at.

The last name, "Me, my Wife, and Arcee," implies a couple of things that don't feel right to me at this point: one, that Arcee is somehow separate and distinct from my male-self, and two, that we somehow had to make space for "her" to fit into our marriage.

Yeah, not so much.

Since coming out to D.W., I feel like that's not really been the focus of our conversations, nor of my own thoughts and impressions relating to my transgenderism. I also don't feel like "Arcee" is a separate persona anymore, rather, just another facet of the prism that is me.

Soooo... new blog name: "A.K.A. Arcee."

Surprised

The other day when we got a few minutes to talk without the kids overhearing me, my sweetheart asked me a question that has apparently been bothering her:

"Why hasn't anyone commented on the second part of your post about me?"

I didn't have a very good answer.

I get the sense from the overall slowdown in my feed reader queue that at least some of you, my dear readers and friends, are largely preoccupied with your own lives right now. I certainly understand that (and have a whole post coming up on the subject).

I think maybe some people might be afraid to comment because they know D.W.'s now reading my blog, and they might not want to say something to offend her...? Maybe...? (At least I can imagine feeling that way about one of y'all if the situation was reversed!)

Anyway, this isn't a plea to go and comment over there, really it's not, because that would be kind of pathetic. But I have to admit I'm surprised.

I guess the takeaway I want to leave with anyone reading my blog is that they should feel free to express their opinions in comments here, and not hold back for fear of hurting our feelings or anything (but note that doesn't mean I'm giving you license to be trollish). I'd really like my blog to be a place where people can feel free and welcome to express themselves truly, and I will try to be a gracious host.

Telling my Sweetheart (part 2)

So last Friday night, D.W. surprised me by picking me up at work for a really sweet date night out! It was fun and spontaneous and romantic and very thoughtful. She knew exactly what we needed as a couple, and it was wonderful.

As our date was in the "big city," we had a lot of time in the car to talk, and at one point she asked me when I was going to finish telling the story of my coming out to her. "Even though I know how it ends," she said, "I still want to read it!"

The fact that she asked me that, and the fact that we were even able to talk about it on a date, should tell you something about how things are going. ;)

Anyway, like I said last time, I wasn't really surprised by her initial reaction to my emailed "hey, I'm trans" letter (ouch, it still bothers me that it happened that way), but it hurt all the same.

She felt lied to. She felt like I'd been dishonest with her all these years, which in a way I guess I have, at least concerning this one thing that I've been keeping from her. (Although in fairness, that's because I was denying my own transgender nature as well, basically putting my fingers in my ears and going "LALALALALALALA," like that could actually drown it out)

She told me she wasn't entirely surprised. As I mentioned last time, she'd caught me dressing a few times early on in our marriage, and of course she knew I shave my legs, so she'd always kind of wondered if things weren't really over.

She was angry. She was worried about what was going to happen to our marriage, to our kids. All her future plans for growing old together seemed in jeopardy.

All of these are fears I shared, of course.

After her initial email reply, we went back and forth a couple of times through email, but I suggested that we really needed to talk about it face to face, and she agreed. Meanwhile, I encouraged her to go visit my blog and my friends' blogs (thanks, you three!), and cautioned her against looking at too many other things on the Internet, because there were so many different ways of looking at our situation, and most of them wouldn't be very helpful to her.

I don't really remember the rest of that work day. I just remember being worried about what was going to happen to us and our family.

That evening was pretty tricky too, because we had to act like nothing was going on until the kids were asleep. Finally, we got time to sit down on the bed together and talk face to face.

That afternoon, in spite of my warning, D.W. had done some Internet research, and as I feared, a lot of what she read freaked her out. Rightly so: trans folk tend to have a much higher suicide rate, divorce rate, and a raft of other challenges no one in their right minds would willingly take up. Fortunately, she'd also read Laurie's, Christi's, and giantC's blogs, so she saw that the two of us weren't alone in the darkness, and she saw three people with very different life circumstances but surprisingly similar approaches to our common challenge. So to my friends with the courage and willingness to blog difficult things: thank you!

(well, honestly, at first she wondered why I'd tell my troubles to perfect strangers and not to her. But when I explained that I needed a safe haven where I could work through my feelings and figure things out first, thus saving her undue stress, she understood)

Now, a quick aside... right about the time I started this blog, when I first began to recognize that it was possible to reconcile my transgenderism with my faith and family, I started trying to "Metro" up my appearance a little. I put more effort into skin care and shaving, got some new (guy) clothes in brighter colors / softer fabrics, and - this was a big one - I started growing my hair out. I've worn my hair super short for years — military short, pretty much — and I felt like it was important to the overall image I wanted to convey that I have more nicely-styled hair, perhaps a tetch on the long-for-a-guy side (think Josh Groban or Orlando Bloom). When I told her that this was what I was aiming for, she didn't yet know about Arcee, but she went along with it, because I think by that point she knew I was having a midlife crisis or something.

I tell you that to tell you that once she knew what was going on in my head, this apparently sudden shift in my attitude made more sense to her. And for the most part, she was understanding, except for one little detail: dressing en femme.

To be blunt, the idea of me dressing skeeves her out. As we talked through all the ins and outs of what the reality of my transness means to us as a couple, this was the one thing on which she wouldn't budge: no more dressing like a girl. Go as Metrosexual as I want, sure... but dress like a man! (whatever that means these days... I mean, you can't really say Russell Brand and Sean Connery have anything even remotely in common, yet they're both "dressing as men") Anyway, that was her concern: could I give that up?

Well... yeah. I love her and the kids more than I love myself (which I guess means I'm not a "true" Metrosexual, since one of their defining characteristics is narcissism). But would it be easy to give that up? Don't count on it! That said, I've found some strategies that are working okay so far, which I'll be blogging about soon. This is very much a case of us feeling our way through the dark together, and it's going to take time.

The important thing is, now D.W. knows, and we're working through all the implications of my transgenderism, however it solidifies, together. Over the past few months since our initial conversation, we've had several others like it, and she's beginning to understand what I told her that first night: I'm still the same person she married, now I'm just a little more free to express my whole self.

Occasionally when we're alone, she'll get really serious and ask me, "how are you?" — most of the time I can say I'm doing okay. I've had a few dysphoric episodes (my friend giantC calls them "gender freakouts", which fits), but overall, I think things are beginning to level out a bit into a new sense or normalcy. I'll talk more soon about exactly what that means and where I think it may lead, but for now, I've probably said enough.

I'm so grateful for my dear wife's love, patience, and efforts to understand something she never asked for, and probably never in a million years would have imagined would fall in her lap. I pray I never let her down.

Telling my Sweetheart (part 1)

I've been wrestling with how best to approach this post. Ever since I started blogging here, my online friends have been urging me to share my transgenderism with my dear wife (let's call her "D.W." for the purposes of this post). I knew that I wanted to share all of this with her, and that she deserved to know, but I could never seem to find exactly the right time, due to a whole pile of other stresses in our lives. Well, a little while ago something happened that forced my hand, ready or not. It's kind of involved, and is taking me a painful amount of time to articulate well, so I'm going to split it up into parts. Here's Part 1.

I was getting ready to go on a work-related trip for a few days, and had been pulling a couple of late nights trying to get ready to go. One night, as sometimes happens, I felt the strong need to dress en femme (I hate the term "cross-dress" — it just carries too many negative connotations for me, and doesn't feel like a good match for why I do what I do). I can't put my finger on any specific triggers for these feelings — they just come on strongly sometimes, while at other times it's a barely-noticeable undercurrent in my stream of consciousness. Not that dressing really "solves" anything for me, anyway — it just seems to make the dysphoria more bearable, taking the edge off things, so to speak.

Sorry, tangent. I'm like a dog in a park full of squirrels sometimes.

Anyway, I threw on an old pair of D.W.'s jeans that she'd tossed out, a comfy silk shirt from my small stash of girl clothes, and on a whim, I grabbed a pair of my sweetheart's strappy heels from our closet. Usually I wouldn't bother with shoes... after all, I'm not actually going anywhere. But, I'd recently shaved my legs, and I wanted to see how they looked on my feet (answer: meh). Once changed, I bent my mind toward my evening's tasks.

At some point while working, I kicked off the shoes, because my feet are a little too big for them anyway and, like I said, I wasn't actually going anywhere, and barefoot was more comfy. A little after that, I went into the downstairs bathroom to answer a call of nature... and fell asleep! Usually not a big deal — it happens from time to time when I'm pulling a lot of late nights in a row. Usually when it does, my alarm clock will ring upstairs in our bedroom, D.W. will realize I'm not there, and come downstairs to wake me up. I'll look a little sheepish, she'll roll her eyes at me and go back to bed, and the day proceeds as if it hadn't happened.

This time was a little different.

When the alarm went off, I heard it, realized I was still en femme, and quickly changed into my pajamas before D.W. came downstairs to wake me. I assured her that I was up, and she went back to bed. I stashed my girl clothes, returned the heels to their place, got ready for work, and left, feeling guilty that I still hadn't told her about what was going on with Arcee.

Only... remember when I said I'd kicked off her heels before going to the bathroom?

On her way to wake me up, she saw them.

... Oops.

A few hours into my workday, I get an email from D.W., asking if it was just her imagination, or if she had indeed seen her shoes downstairs, and if that meant I was getting into her things again...? You see, early in our marriage, before I'd really come to terms with my gender dysphoria, she'd caught me dressing once or twice. I'd feel guilty about it, we'd both cry a lot, then I would promise not to do it anymore, because of course we both "knew" that this was just some weird, sinful thing that I shouldn't be doing (spoiler alert: after a lot of fasting and prayer, I don't feel that way anymore... but it still skeeves D.W. out just as much as ever). So here I was, caught in the act, and being asked about it over email, no less (which is, I have to say, a terrible communication medium for this sort of conversation if ever there was such a thing)! What to do?

As it happened, I had been working on a letter to D.W. for a little while, based in small part on a similar letter my blog-friend Laurie had shared with her wife. I excused myself from work for an early (and longer-than-usual) lunch break, then shlepped my laptop over to the nearest McDonald's to partake of a salad and their free wi-fi. There, I finished the letter and emailed it in reply, all scared and nervous about what her reaction would be, then I went back to work. What else could I do?

Two hours later, she sent me back a reply. Even though I'd anticipated her reaction, it still hit me like a punch in the stomach.

To be continued in part 2...

Back!

Peek a boo...?

Just a quick note to say I'm still here and still have a lot I want to get around to blogging about. Shortly after my last post, two things happened that have affected my ability to blog here:

1. I got busy with work and my side business.
2. I wrecked my bike, earning me a stiff neck & shoulder, long and uncomfortable nights of restless sleep, and a nasty face scar that sends my dysphoria into overdrive if I stare at it in the mirror for too long, because of how it makes me feel about myself (there's probably a blog post in there somewhere).

So, yeah. You'll probably see me pop up in the comment threads for my friends' blogs, and I occasionally jump in to a conversation on the two LDS email groups I joined (TGI Mormons and NorthStar), but I have three or four posts in draft that I'll be posting soon, the biggest of which is the story of how I came out to my wife, and the effects that it's having on our relationship.

That one's heavy stuff, and I don't want to be misconstrued, so it doesn't exactly write itself. I'm hoping I can carve out some time to finish it later this week.

Interesting Conversation with my Wife

So this morning I shared that BYU "It gets better" video with my wife (who, remember, doesn't yet know I'm trans).

It kinda blew her mind. And it started a conversation that I think will lead to me being able to share all of this with her.

My dear wife (from now on let's call her DW) has a good friend and former BYU roommate that she just found recently on Facebook. This friend, judging by her profile and posts there, appears to have come out as a lesbian, and is living with the consequences of that decision. Another of DW's friends, a boyfriend from high school that investigated the Church for a while in his teens, has also come out as gay, and is somewhere out in the third world serving others selflessly (just, I might add, as Christ might be doing if He were here). As someone who, like myself, grew up in the Church with President Kimball's views on gender and sexuality (such as in the Miracle of Forgiveness) very much the norm, these kinds of things tend to... well, challenge her worldview somewhat.

DW shared with me that she'd just read a press release from the Church decrying all forms of persecution (including against LGBTQs), which was apparently released in response to a teenager in northern Utah recently committing suicide over anti-gay bullying in his school. Attitudes in the Church, it seems, are changing. Perhaps too slowly for some, but they are definitely changing.

I want to make it clear that I think we need to continue to stand for truth and righteousness in a lone and often dreary world. That said, we also need to recognize the difference between real sins and those attitudes, thoughts, and actions that are sometimes wrongly perceived in our faith community as such. Until we receive further light and knowledge from the Lord through the prophet, the onus is on us as individuals and families to study it out in our minds and hearts, and love all our brethren and sisters--both LDS and otherwise--with Christ's unconditional love.

Truly, we live in interesting times.