My Transition Journal

It's a boy! The ultrasound revealed it today. After two daughters and a belief that I'm better suited to raise girls, God in all His infinite wisdom has gifted us a little boy. My wife is over the moon; I'm happy while hesitant. Society has taught that boys need fathers. The church has put a great deal of importance on the male role, it being the head of the family and a God ordained position. My son needs me. He needs me to teach Him about Jesus and to guide him through the sharp turns life will inevitably include. He needs me to be there when he's scared or hurt or not sure how to handle a situation. He needs me to fill every role a father fills, but he doesn't need me to be a father in the traditional sense. Because in the traditional sense, I was miserable and mean and a rain cloud. And in the traditional sense, my life was quickly heading for the cliffside. And, quite honestly, in the traditional sense I probably wouldn't have made it far into my thirties. ...

Day 1 of act 2. My prescription is considerably higher and I finally feel like things might start falling into place. I've been building my lady warddrobe mostly with goodwill finds. And today, we found a number of cute clothes that (believe this or not) all fit perfectly without trying any of them on before buying. For the last couple of years, my wife has been my partner in crime--well... clothes buying. I'm slowly getting more comfortable shopping around the women's department but having her help me ease into it has been the definition of learning to ride this type of bike with the most reliable of training wheels. I know how fortunate I am to have a partner that celebrates me in this journey-- many on this journey don't. Sure there still are a lot of unknowns but I've learned to adapt a very biblical principle to this: take it one day at a time.

Hopefully tonight is the end of act 1. Tomorrow I go to the doctor to check my levels and hopefully get my dosage increased. I've taken a daily picture to see all the subtle changes. Apart from slightly longer hair, my changes have all been preparation based. Tonight's entry is the intermission moment from a play. The first act has been fun, in getting to dress daily and stretch my legs more and more as Vaela. Act two will bring more action, more results, more lasting changes. This leading lady is about to steal the show!

Families who experience trauma together don't seem to really stay a typical family. Though we share this deep similarity, it also seems it's the only similarity we have left, and it always keeps us stuck in that past. Once all the dust of trauma settles and you're left with the post-period, it now feels like you did nothing but survive together. You aren't really friends. You aren't really close in any vital way. When you visit each other, you mostly think about the pain you went through and the long loneliness you shared, not together exactly, but only in the same house. My decision to transition has been mostly met with support. I know my siblings are still reeling from trying to wrap their heads around the reality of it, but I also know it isn't the reason for the distance between us. The distance is there now and it's been there a long time. Unfortunately, it seems to be the product of sharing trauma and probably won't improve anytime soon.

I laughed tonight. It was the kind of light hearted, joyful laugh I rarely find myself able to reach. I was playing hide and seek with my girls, hiding very obviously behind my pregnant wife on the couch, a blanket barely draped over my head. And of course my daughters found me almost immediately, my white and black striped dress sticking out from the blanket, a dead giveaway. A short entry tonight but definitely a sign that my happiness is on the up and up.

Time to delve into the past a bit, to dig on ground that I'm tired of digging but probably won't ever truly stop. I think about when dad was sick and how every day I was learning what it meant to be prepared for the worst. When at school, every time the phone would ring in my classroom, I prepared for my name to be called and for a voice on the other end to tell me that dad had died. When with friends, I prepared to be given the news suddenly and to their shock. It didn't happen either way. He died on June 19th of 2004 on our old blue couch, weighing ninety pounds and barely a skeleton anymore. He died and I left to see a movie (still a regret I carry..for. it being Garfield live action doesn't help either). I couldn't be there to see his body be removed, to try and act strong or okay or like I knew how to navigate the dark new residence I had been dropped off at. I dig and dig at times, finding I've only moved more dirt. Rarely do I find new revelations. The on...

Three weeks today and all changes so far have been equivalent to me still packing for the trip. Yes, I'm technically walking this road already but not in any palpable way. And that's okay. It's simply good to know that my improved mental state isn't the hormones but instead my renewed sense of hope. It means that my transition isn't a drug that will wear off. It isn't being used as a quick fix and so isn't an unhealthy decision. There are times I play devil's advocate in my mind, imagining what coworkers and other people would say. And though I don't know for sure, I imagine they'd possibly be open but definitely confused. And as I tend to do, I provide answers for hypothetical scenarios that may never happen. Honestly I hate having to provide answers to people who really don't play important roles in my life. I get along fine with my coworkers but if I died tomorrow, none would attend my funeral. None are friends. None know me as anything ot...

I worry that my past will be a constant theme in my journaling. I'll talk about my dad and his unfixable brokenness, my childhood that now reaches me as almost some kind of weird, mostly empty church, somewhere that seemed warm when in it, but ultimately cold when it mattered, a place that pushed God at me from all sides but never let Him be the God I know Him to be, the God that would still love me in my complications and reach His hand out to guide me into His fullness. I'll talk about dad's cancer diagnosis and the surreal, Twilight Zone years that followed from it, including the endless fog that grief is. What I've found after over 16 years of being stuck in a state of grief is that grief is poison. In a metaphorical sense, it's something comparable to living in Chernobyl after the explosion. This unseen danger in the atmosphere now changes you, breaks down your molecules, changes your makeup and your body's ability to operate and process. You experience sev...

It was a long day today. Too long at work as Nathan and not nearly enough time at home with my wife and daughters as the real me. At least I get to wear a cute flannel black and red dress to bed. And at least we were able to salvage the night with pizza and a couple episodes of scrubs. Living home life as a woman is getting easier and easier. I immediately shed the man clothes and persona as soon as I come home. I'm starting to see what my day to day can be. Being dressed is no longer an event for me. It's becoming my reality.

My wife and I are both badly broken people. And though our brokenness has probably broken each other further in some ways, it's also the thing that makes us never give up on each other. Though I wouldn't necessarily recommend a broken person go search for another broken person, I can say the benefits of it is in being able to trust your partner and know that they will fight for your relationship long past that of most other people. If you think of a person like a jar, some people are in much better condition than others. For those of us who have had life chip away and break off pieces, much of our life is spent on trying to repair, about trying to glue pieces back in place. So when you have two people who are broken, you can't always be who you need them to be or who they need you to be. They may start the process of gluing pieces back on themselves while you're already doing the same. Both preoccupied with self repair, it's easy for the relationship to start to fra...

There is no longer such a thing as "too girly" for me. I have spent so much of my life trying to blend in and fit as a man, that it has left me nothing but rigid, uneventful, uninspired and ultimately locked away. In hindsight, the fact that very little was left of me after cutting away all the girly parts should have been confirmation enough that I'm only a male in biological terms. I will never try to tell somebody I'm all woman... Even when I look the part. More accurately, I'm someone raised in one camp when my true camp was across the way. A camp I could see. A camp I imagined being in often, but was never permitted to stay in. I'd sneak over from time to time, but the threat of being caught was too much. I grew, the camp members across the way growing too. But they seemed to thrive as I internally shriveled. If only I had been born among them, if only I were developing like they were, if only I was free to be "too girly" instead of held to this...

I've already found that the early days of transition seem to exist in two separate worlds. The one you still inhabit as your current gender, still that person to those who have yet to know or who never need to know, those you eventually plan to have exit from your story soon. And then there is that other world, the world you've always wanted to inhabit as your true self and true gender, a world that looks close to the other one but the difference is in the little things. You realize your life has never been truly empty or the void you thought it was, instead you've always been (or at least became) the void. And you only realize that now because you are filling back up again. Slowly the two worlds are merging and Vaela is becoming more real as Nathan has now become an appointment, a suit I wear. It used to be the other way around. And it used to be the reason for my darkest days.

These first two weeks have mostly consisted of trying to girlify an annoyingly masculine frame. I bought a laser removal system for at home with some Christmas money and have been using it within the directed specifications. Much like hrt, laser isn't a next-day-result kind of thing. It requires patience, which isn't always easy for a tenacious person such as myself. Before starting transition and when still trying to salvage the man, I did daily applications of minoxidil to grow my beard from laughably patchy to lumberjacky (terrible rhyme I know). That took two years to see full results. And it took a lot of patience. So, I've been down this road before... Well, not this road exactly. The waiting road. This time is still far different. It's kind of like Pinocchio longing to be real. He's technically alive, but wooden and illegitimate. When people see him, they see a puppet, a living toy, a product of magic and a toy maker's wish. I've been that for most of...

Every day is another step on a journey of acceptance. Accepting that, for whatever reason, this is me. Accepting that everything could work out for me as a man and I still wouldn't be happy. Even if I became an accomplished author, if my previous moniker was who I had to remain as, he would ultimately be revealed as a fraud. Sure, you can see a lot of my struggle with my gender in my works but not in a truly transparent way. Instead metaphor is used and certain characters represent the side I always had to hide, sometimes on a spiritual level and sometimes on an emotional one. There remains with me a lot of questions. And I imagine few will be answered in my lifetime. I hope to someday stand in paradise, taking a tour led by my dad, finally being shown how it all fits. Even though I have come out to quite a few people, the most persistent and gnawing questions are my own. 1. Could this possibly be in God's plan? My current answer: We see many instances in the bible where God us...

I scheduled an appointment a couple days ago to see if I could possibly up my dose of estradiol and spironalactone. It was supposed to be a morning meeting today. Of course, some little technicality about not being able to do telehealth appointments with an out of state patient (another adjustment due to covid, it seems) stopped that in its tracks. So, back to the slow drip. I feel like more seasoned trans women, if reading this, are shaking their heads with a knowing smile that says: "we've all been there, girl. Waiting for the change we can't wait to see and getting discouraged if we don't see it fast enough." You're now beautifully blossomed flowers commenting on this seedling who hopes to one day bloom all the same. Apart from that and these journal entries that have quite little to say lately, my mind has been in a perpetual state of claiming my faith in Christ but not knowing how to live it. I worry that will be my relationship with Him, a state of never...

It's hard to picture what it will be like, especially since my current low dose of estrogen and t blockers haven't had any noticeable effect on me. It's early, yes, but even in an early context, it seems I am experiencing none of the little things many people seem to experience. Nothing shows me anything is working or anything is changing. I worry it's too low and I will end up wasting three months. So... I've scheduled a follow up appointment, in hopes that my dose can be increased. I don't have a lot of in depth insight to offer on this, day 11. Let's be honest. It's hard to write about sitting in a waiting room. Hopefully the next days bring more things of substance.

Normalizing what once was only for my V sessions, today was something that felt both familiar and still new. We worked on cleaning the house, switching the cat box placement with Christmas storage. Before that I put on some makeup this morning, put on my new jean skirt, and then did some dirty jobs. Becoming a woman isn't about just the glitz and glam. Though that's a fun perk, I'm finding little joys in even the most monotonous things. Simply being me, regardless of the situation, is rewarding. Whether I'm strutting my stuff in a cute outfit or cleaning out the shop vac as a moldy filter falls apart in my hands. Both meet me at the same place, because at the end of the day, I am doing everything as my true self. It's not so much about being a normal woman either. I guarantee, even as I change to fit my inside, Vaela will be far from normal. I'm eccentric through and through. A transgender woman who loves my Lord, loves my beautiful family, can be quite passiona...

It's hard to know what's my dysphoria and what's the hrt. My emotions today weren't overwhelming but like a steady, somber song. Something that may someday bring me to tears but currently sits just beneath the surface, a theme song for my current state of mind. Am I sad? I don't really know. I'm more just in thought, more wishing I had a better idea how everything is going to turn out. Not just how I'll look or how I'll feel, but what the day to day of that will be. Will my relationship with Christ take on new depth? As I go through this new change, will I come to find Him easier than before? Or will the controversial nature of my life's direction keep me at a considerable distance? Will there always be some part of me that can't approach Him because I don't know who or how I can be with Him? Yes. Today was a sadder day. Not a day void of hope--the hope is still brighter than it's been in years. It was sad in a normal way, in the way I im...

Men go bald. And if I was actually at peace with being a man, I would embrace it for what it is. I'd grow my beard out in full and turn into the skid. But instead I feel this very real sense of devastation. It's just another thing that points to my dysphoria and displacement within myself. Men usually go bald as they get older, women don't--at least not at 30. Research shows that most likely HRT will help thicken my thinner hair again, so... So... today I still feel hopeful for the future but I'm definitely also struggling to see who Vaela wil be at this present moment. Yes, it's only been eight days and I know that this is all a process. But I also can't help the irrational fear that hrt just won't do anything for me. In my mind, one that can go to the wildest hypotheticals, I imagine my body being this stubborn thing, this boring shell dead set on remaining male despite the real me being so far removed from that. While all of my trans sisters take similar ...

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