Direction- Day 7 (January 7th, 2021)
Day 7
Nothing new to report. I'm making the most out of my days, excited at the possibility of changes happening any day now, but not getting discouraged if or when they don't.
It's funny, now that I'm in the process of transitioning, my mind is quieter and less active. I don't imagine the highs of maybe dressing tonight when my girls are asleep, instead I know as soon as I get home I will change into more comfortable, more me clothing. It's no longer a source of sometimes incredible joy and excitement. Instead it's more like a calm water in place of what were tumultuous waves. I'm not at war with myself like I was. I'm calm and relaxed, ready to lay back into the process and become the person I've always been, the person I've never been free to be.
I think I'll look back at these entries months or years from now and see just how important these uneventful days are. I've heard, but have yet to experience, that estrogen can throw a body into an unpredictable and jarring place. What else can be expected when a grown man suddenly experiences the strange, emotional world of girl puberty? Finally feeling my feelings and possibly being overwhelmed by them, knowing what it means to not fit and hoping that through this process I'll fit better than before. I don't want to be left in the perpetual state of androgyny--honestly, that's how I've felt a good deal of my life: I look like a man, sure, but I've been treated as if I was something in between for years. With girls, I was more a friend type. Even when my heart was laid out there, naked and fully exposed, I was the friend, the good conversation. With the guys, I fit in the way a kid fits around adults. Maybe I could do the same things but none of them came to me naturally and without effort.
Then I found my one and only, my beautiful, gift from Abba-God, once in a lifetime wife. Suddenly I found someone who saw me as attractive, as a man that she would love to the ends of the earth. But now the void in me had grown. For reasons I couldn't understand, that bright, cheerful, hopeful young man that approached her and asked for her number, that thoughtful and romantic person she fell in love with while we dated--he quickly became someone I could no longer access. Not in full. Not in the way she deserved.
I tried to blame her pain and past on it. It couldn't be me. It couldn't! I was already giving everything I had. How was everything not enough?!
Since deciding to transition and starting the process, I've come to realize that my definition of 'everything' then equals out to a small piece of a piece of a person.
I try to talk to God as candidly as I can. I tell Him that Vaela is glue that keeps me together. Even if He made me to be Nathan, Nathan hasn't been capable of handling this life. At least not in anyway that's functional. To remain Nathan would put me in my early grave.
Seven days into this process and I have a direction. My career is no longer a long ellipsis but a plan taking forming more and more daily. Almost thirty years as Nathan and I was going nowhere, most likely on the way to divorce because of how I was and how I reacted. As Vaela, I can be so much more, finally a fuller, more complete person. A better partner, a better parent, a better person.
Transition is not what many will understand. But it truly is bringing me back to life.
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