My Gender Transition - Am I Doing This Right?
The week before my first session, my fiancee had planted that orange and white dress in the collage in my dresser for me as a hint of her support, I was overjoyed by this and at the same time, I was terrified. It's much easier to wear a dress to a party when it's a joke and you're a guy, than it is to wear a dress to go out to eat, or take pictures in, while you're early in transition and feel like an extremely ugly girl, or like a fraud, a fake. This was so bad and pulled at my conscious so much that I would cut my head off of my first few pictures, so that they maybe wouldn't realize I'm trans. Stupid idea, but coping is coping, and being able to do that much alone made me feel more pretty and confident with myself.
I was so excited though, I was finally going to be able to start my transition and move towards being happier with myself and feel comfortable progressing in life, as opposed to wallowing is despair and angst. Historically, you must see a therapist to get a recommendation to an endocrinologist so you can start hormone replacement therapy if you wish to do so. (not every trans person transitions medically, and that's perfectly okay and they need to still be respected)The first therapy session I thought went really well, she asked me things about my history and what I'd like to do, and I had very confident and direct answers that she seemed receptive to. We got along well and I thought I would have my referral in a matter of a few sessions and be on my way!
Unfortunately, things rarely go off without a hitch or two in my story, during my second session, we were getting along just as well as before and I was ready to ask for my referral, or at least find out an estimated time frame. I was hit by a giant brick wall, that lots of trans people like to refer to as "Gatekeeping", this happens when your therapist puts additional requirements to your referral, there's one that's very common and damaging to our community. "We generally require 6 months to a year of Real Life Experience." Real Life Experience? What the fuck do you consider the past 6-7 years of my life that I've been contemplating this and exploring myself? Play time? This is problematic in many ways, it enforces gender stereotypes heavily, these therapists see women as heels, dresses, makeup, purses, and high-pitched voices. This is also problematic because, I'm coming to this person to receive medication to help me feel more comfortable in my own skin, and you're trying to force me to live uncomfortably for an extended amount of time until you're satisfied, instead of getting me started on hormones and giving me agency and control over my own bodily decisions. I blew up on her a little and explained these things, that I felt I knew much more about this process than her at this point, she wasn't trans, and probably has dealt with more older trans women that adhere to and uphold this misogynistic standard. She would not be of any help to me in the future.
I started to look up other methods for me to obtain the medication I wanted, that I and many many others deem necessary to be happy with ourselves. it's not like these are dangerous medications either, testosterone blockers do exactly what they sound like they would, they suppress testosterone and lower your sperm count, letting estrogen start to shape and mold your body to a more favorable appearance including softer skin, breast growth, fat distribution changes, etc. I flirted with ordering them illegally from overseas, but it seemed like a hassle to set up and we didn't want it shipped to my fiancee's home. I found a process called Informed Consent, where you go to a clinic or other location and meet with an endocrinologist, talk about the potential risks in taking the medications for a few sessions, and then give your consent and get your prescriptions. This was absolutely ideal, I knew what I wanted, I knew the risks going in, and I just needed someone to sign off on them.
I found a clinic that was reported to very LGBT friendly and that offered informed consent, about an hour and a half away, I was extremely nervous that I would just get turned away again, but after two sessions with my doctor, he had my prescriptions in my hands and ready to get picked up by the time I got home. I actually did it, I was going to be able to notice my body take to the changes I had been dreaming about for years at this point, I was making progress, and I was ecstatic.
Over the next few months, I didn't notice any physical changes, these can take up to a year before you start actually noticing things but mentally? Things were..strange. I was looking at the world differently, not bad mind you, but differently. I was less aggressive, my sex drive lowered a bit, and I was becoming somewhat content with where I was headed. All of these things were positives in my mind in the grand scheme of things, I was confident that once I was more comfortable with my body my sex drive would come back in full force. There was a negative trade-off of course, that this effected my relationship with my fiancee in bad ways, we went from sex almost every day, to her pressuring me into having sex with her a few times a week and me feeling very uncomfortable about it all, I asked, begged her for patience, but it wasn't available and she had misconceptions about what I was feeling and couldn't empathize with me on many levels. I wanted to be loving and affectionate still, I wanted to marry this woman and have a family together, I just didn't have the comfort in myself and the sex drive to have penis in vagina sex with her at the moment, without feeling forced into it or guilty afterwards.
I always loved the idea of makeup, it's supposed to be fun and make you feel good, I'm all about fun things that make me feel good, and I had little to no experience going into this with it, and figured it would make me more confident about going out in public if I had some skill in it. So about 6-8 months into taking my hormone replacement therapy medications, I started watching lots of YouTube tutorials from girls I thought would appeal to my goals and aspirations, and I started taking notes, on what formulas you should use for each skin type, tone matching, blending, etc. There's a lot that goes into a full face of makeup, let me tell you! She was happy to see me have a new interest, and supported it, she would take me to Sephora and let me shop and pick things out, and we enjoyed the rest of the day at the mall together, it was a win-win. It took me a few weeks of owning these products before I could muster up the courage to actually try and apply what I've learned. I'm used to being good at things in a short amount of time and being able to research them and crush them. So while she was asleep one night, I took all my products into the bathroom and admired my new brushes, and I got to work. I wasn't particularly happy with the outcome, but I didn't find it appalling either. Sadly I was the only one in that camp, she had gotten up to use the restroom once I was finished and inspecting it in the mirror, and when she walked in she screamed in what sounded like terror. I lost it and bawled my eyes out until I fell asleep in the other bedroom.
It made me wonder "Am I Doing This Right?" It filled me with resentment, anger, guilt, shame and embarrassment. When in reality, is no right way to transition, you do what you want with your body to make yourself not want to stab yourself in the face with a pitchfork until you look like ground chuck. I needed the confidence and reassurance on my progress from my friends and other acquaintances on the internet, because I was too nervous in public situations still, and needed to ease into it. I decided that showing myself to the internet was safer and a better way to do that than throwing myself into any of the events she liked to take me to like Opera concerts, and large social gatherings. These things terrified me to think about in my current state, so we went out less and did less activities together, and if we had made plans and I hadn't shaved properly or wasn't feeling comfortable, it caused a lot of misguided feelings in her about what I was going though. I think she figured I was falling out of love with her and that I wanted to find another partner.
This caused a lot of tension around our home, she saw me showing off for other people and taking pictures like the one in the middle and bottom left, and couldn't understand why I needed to do this and couldn't have sex with her. That I needed to gain confidence, and couldn't, because she was making me feel guilty for doing this at all in the first place, when she was supportive of it from our second phone call. Our sleep cycles became further and further apart, and we started to see one another less and less. She would wake up around 8-9AM and sleep around 10:30-11PM and I would go to sleep around 7AM and wake up around 2-3PM. When I was asleep, she was working, when I woke up, she was still working for a few hours, then would like to go out and enjoy her life, I don't blame her for that at all, but I wish we could have found a way to more easily facilitate both of our needs. I pushed hard for couple's therapy, so she could hear objectively that what I'm doing is not trying to harm her, but merely trying to cope with the changes I'm going through and feel comfortable in my own body for a damn change. Eventually she said we could go together, she wasn't unreasonable, she knew I loved her still and wanted this to work, and she was probably just as confused about it all as I was.
photo credit to WeTV
So together we searched for an appropriate therapist. We landed on one that specialized in trans clients and in couples, so we picked her. We wanted someone that could empathize with what I was struggling with, that wasn't going to be like my last therapist, and that would be able to look at things objectively, it seemed like a win-win pick for us both. We scheduled our first session, and things got hot and heavy very quickly.
As it turns out, our therapist was also a trans woman, I was delighted to hear this, as she would have a much better understanding of what I'd been through and how to work on it with us as she had to do with her own wife. We disclosed a lot of our issues, kept ourselves from getting too heated with one another, and scheduled another meeting over the next two weeks. The things we talked about in therapy didn't stick with her, at all, I was getting increasingly frustrated and scared in that connection, our fights became shouting and screaming, and at one point we had to step back from putting hands on one another and I had been pushed against a wall by the collar of my shirt at one point. I couldn't handle it anymore, I needed the freedom to grow, and I needed to be able to gain independence while having her support, I was getting none of these things, and she wasn't getting the affection that she needed, and wasn't comfortable finding it from someone else in the polyamorous arrangement that we had agreed on, so that I could seek empathy and love from other trans woman and feel better about the ways I was feeling, to hopefully feel less resentment towards her. This didn't work either.
Since I had been so active on the internet talking to and meeting other trans women and falling in love with them, I frequently posted my lewd pictures in a Trans Body Positivity group, this was my favorite outlet because it let me show my body to those that would not judge it, and would encourage my growth. I ran across a beautiful redhead that I'll call Ginger, she looked sad and dejected, but she was gorgeous and vibrant. We ended up liking and commenting on a bunch of eachothers things, and eventually began talking a week or two later in private. I found out that she had recently gone through a divorce with an extremely abusive and unempathetic partner, and had just gotten a new place to live after being homeless a month and half, and was finishing up finals for her second semester of college. We bonded just as fast if not faster than I seem to do with all of my other partners, like wild-fire. We started having Skype calls for 5+ hours a day, where I would sit and smoke weed and tell her stories of my situation, and hearing many parallels to her ex wife. This scared the hell out of me. Less than a week into talking, we were in love, she was my rock and the only person I could turn to for full-on support and care, and I could facilitate her needs as well, our sexual chemistry was through the roof, and we pined for one another all day long.
I told my fiancee about Ginger the same week we started talking, and she was happy that I had made such a strong connection, so we planned for Ginger to come visit us for a week to meet me and play and go on dates with one another, the plan was that I would drive back here to St. Louis with her and stay for another week, and then fly back to my fiancee. We had one more therapy session scheduled before then, and it was a bad one. Ginger and myself were under the firm belief that I was a victim of Gaslighting, "Gaslighting is a form of manipulation that seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or members of a group, hoping to make targets question their own memory, perception, and sanity." So I brought this up with my therapist, and gave multiple examples as to why I thought this was happening, my fiancee immediately slapped away these thoughts, and wouldn't let me finish speaking, so I exploded. I cried my eyes out and poured all the painful feelings that I had around the relationship to her, and I told her that Ginger and I had even been coming up with an escape plan for me if things had gotten to this point, and that I had made the decision to break up with her and move out, I was infuriated that my fiancee couldn't work with a therapist even, I had to beg her to make the meetings scheduled even. I walked out on the session and cried in the hallway on my way outside, I didn't know where I was going to do, or what I was going to do, but it wasn't going to be pretty at all. Thankfully, my therapist ran out of her office and followed after me, telling me "I know you're upset and hurting right now, and I know exactly why, but I cannot let you leave this building while you're still on the clock with me, come back in, and we'll finish the session and make sure you leave safely." So I did, I told her calmly that I couldn't live with her anymore, regardless of how amazing and incredible she is in so many other regards, that my health couldn't take it.
I got home and asked Ginger "Hey..can we make your visit, me moving? I'm really losing my shit and need to go, I told her at therapy that we'd been planning a safe route for me and that I needed it to happen at this point, things blew up and the therapist told me she understood why I'd want to move, that's all the okay I need." So on June 21st, 2016, Ginger showed up on my doorstep, and I was elated. She was real, she was the girl I'd fallen in love with and talked to for hours and hours every day, and she was my savior from self-destruction. She drove 16 hours over the next two days, in a truck with no A/C in the middle of the Summer, with us sweating our asses off and cracking jokes to keep my head-space in good spirits, and that was the end of it. I was beginning a new life again with someone I thought fit the comfortable me perfectly.
Things were rough to get started the first six months, we'd almost been evicted from our apartment, almost broken up because our BDSM dynamic didn't end up working out as well in the flesh as it did over the internet and it was such a big part of our kindling process and so important to me. The stress of living independently weighed heavily on me, I was used to not lifting a finger, and now the weight of the world was on my shoulders, I started to dabble in sex work to make ends meet and ended up enjoying it, hence my continued career in pornography. We did it though, we fought hard through these times and now we're semi-comfortable in a new apartment in the same complex, are currently moving our old roommate out for a replacement that I moved in from TX, another girl I fell in love with, Marla, over trans girl Twitter and porn production this time. Ginger and Marla are closing in on getting consistent jobs of their own, and my time spent on Steemit, Crypto Trading, and mining crypto, has kept food on the table for us the past 3 weeks in absence of sex work and porn shoots. I'm start to stress less about money, and feel less and less like I'm the only one holding up my own side of things here, and that's a beautiful feeling, that a cohesive family is being built and nurtured, that my hard work, sweat, blood and tears, are actually worth something finally.
Ginger and I have our one year anniversary on the 21st of this month, out plans? Re-create our first meal together, which was a $5 Little Caesars Hot-N-Ready cheese pizza, and a 2 liter bottle of Sunkist that we drank half of our trip back here. it's not elegant, it's not expensive, but god dammit if I don't find it romantic and extremely meaningful, more than any expensive gift or reward could give me. I look forward to raising a family at some point with Ginger, I think we'll both make awesome mothers, and I want Marla to be here to co-habitate with us still while this happens. Will this confuse our child? Maybe a little bit, but that is were proper explanation comes in and not hiding things from your children can be a blessing. They're smarter and more mature than you think. They can understand. I look forward to the day that we're comfortable and ready to adopt, when we can buy a home together, when I can put a ring on her finger, because I know she deserves it, and I do too, I deserve this woman's love and affection for the rest of my life and she deserves my understanding, love and support just as well.
My ex fiancee? We still talk, she has seen our therapist since I left a few times, and has found a lot of helpful thought processes to understand where I was coming form and where I am today, she used to be very anti-sex work when I would suggest it being a way to contribute to our household, and now she's excited when I tell her about the new shoots I've done, I'll probably visit her in August, and rekindle our connection. I won't be going back to stay forever, and I'm cautious to do so just for a weekend, but that woman did help me and mold me in incredible ways that increased my maturity and understanding of lots of different types of people, she supported me for almost four years and I know we still love one another just as strongly as the day we first met, that I can remember her scent and the passion we share. That's still there and I want her in my life, just..at a bit of a distance, for the sake of my own mental health and keeping my household strong and supported.
I love my life, it might be hard it might be strenuous, I might want to bash my head off a wall every once in a while, but I am infinitely happier here than I was 5 years ago living at home with my mother, 2 and a half years ago before i started my transition, and nearly 12 months ago before I met Ginger and my world was falling apart. I'm growing into my own person, and I wouldn't change my path for the world. This has been my transition story, and I hope you enjoyed the ride and look forward to more to come in the future.
Your local crypto slut - <3
I've heard the term "gatekeeping" from several good acquaintances who have medically transitioned, and understood what it meant (and how disgusting it is)...but your explanation really got me to thinking about the concept, and how prevalent it seems to be in psychiatry these days. I'm glad you found a doctor who really wanted to help you resolve your dysphoria instead of making you jump through hoops and/or judge you.
It really is a giant problem for us, and I would even stand to say that it's a source of anguish and suicidal tendencies.
I can definitely see the connection between suicide and gate keeping. I'm not trans, but I do receive regular mental health care because I'm a combat veteran and deal with some trauma related to that and non-combat experiences alike. There's a real problem with "gatekeeping" at the VA when it comes to a lot of mental health diagnoses. Honestly, it should be considered a human right's issue. It sounds like they lump gender dysphoria in with the other stuff that they've decided we can live with. Except suicide rates say otherwise. I can only imagine how much more painful being denied treatment must be when your very identity (or how society identifies you, regardless of your feelings about it) is what causes you psychological harm.
<3
I deeply connect with your experience in the medical world, its still a mine ridden area but I am glad your efforts where not a waste. I am really enjoying your wrighting and reading about your experiences it has inspired me to start a series on my transition as well. Thank you so much for this series of articles, i feel really lucky that you found me on steem and have been so kind to me. I hope your day is absolutely lovely!
I did not know the concept of gatekeeping, and this is a complete nonsense. I am glad you were able to start the treatment soon and legally.
I almost cried by reading the part in which you broke up with you fiance, I cannot imagine the hurt this caused to you. I hope your visit to her will be nice.
I am sure Ginger and you will give a great education and love to your children in case you decide to adopt.
I am willing to see what will be your next articles about.
Thank you so much for sharing. I am not trans but I am different being disabled my whole life and I just recently found the strength to be me. Thank you for being you. For discovering your true self and taking us on the journey. You have a new follower.
Oh, your writing is great too. :)
Thank you so very much, I don't know what that's like myself, but can empathize with the stigma surrounding those with disabilities, the social work I did was primarily helping those with disabilities find employment, so I can empathize and I love to support those communities when I can. Thank you for the follow and warm compliments <3
So nice to have your sharing. I read it on my subway ride and then standing at the platform just to finish reading your story.
Thank you so much for your sharing. We have not much apportunity to get know to the life experience of someone so special like you.
Wish you all the best in your life. And you know what, your sharing is so motivated for me to pursue my life with more passion. :)
Hi Jamie. I have only skimmed for now but my friend said I should check out your post. I intend to return and read properly. *solidarity* in the meantime. Best wishes x
Why do you ask for permission... you should tell your story.
I'm not asking permission, there's a section in my story where I'm doubting what I'm doing with my life and such, hence the name.
My therapist said to me: what is the most important thing in life is: happiness. I'm glad that I pass pretty well as a woman, when a guy smiles at me, I know I'm in the right gender. Life was so shitty before I accepted myself. Now it is better!
I really liked your post!
Nikky xx
Great informative and courageous article...upovted and followed. I also RESTEEMed this to our Steemit Blogger Central pages on FB and Twitter for you to help you spread your message to others.
As an invite to maybe help you out more. I created a Facebook and Twitter called Steemit Blogger Central. We post peoples articles over there to help them grow and gain upvotes and followers. We also just opened up a SLACK chat for this a few days ago and people are coming in, they share their profiles, articles and I RESTEEM their posts also from there to our social pages. Great way to grow, meet more Steemit users and learn if your interested. Here is the links to our stuff if your interested. Kind of a community within the community that is growing fast:
https://sbcautoinvite.herokuapp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/steemitbc
https://twitter.com/steemitbc
hey. thanks for writing this. my ex is still a massive part of my life. we went through a tough break up but have gradually rebuilt a friendship. x