Saturday, October 30, 2004

So it's been several days since my last entry . . .

. . .and I thought I'd drop in an update! The packing is just about done, and tomorrow or Monday at the latest I'll be heading to Jersey for a while. Still fighting an increasingly ugly divorce with Earl, the one person in the universe I never thought I'd have to do this with. It's amazing how much stuff I can fit into the car, the Sephia is a great little car, with a surprising amount of room.

So yesterday was a real whirl wind of activity and getting things done! My last Friday in MA for a little while, but I'll be back! Got up and finished loading the car to the gills with stuff, then off I went! First stop, long overdue to the library to return some CD's I'd taken out last year (What you thought I was kidding when I said long overdue?) and then on to the rest of my stops. The second, a major milestone in my life, for the first time in the twenty two years I've been old enough to vote I actually did!

I voted for Kerry/Edwards for a host of reasons, not the least of which is the John's are firmly on the side of Women's rights, as well as Men enough to let me do with my body what I think is right! My BODY, My CHOICE! They will work hard with League of Women Voters and other organizations to see that Women and Children are afforded the rights and protections we so deserve!

From there I went to RMV to turn in the plates for the Sportage that my soon to be wusband had reposessed, no sense having plates for a vehicle one doesn't own! I then took the receipt over to Liberty Mutual and had the insurance on it canceled! It's really out of my life now, though there is the upcoming battle with Earl over who's going to pay for it, and everything else!

Next (so I did say I had a busy day!) I stopped into my lawyers offices, got confirmation that since Earl isn't doing his part in this, I should start selling his stuff to survive. Going to be interesting selling the rings that bound us together, a kind of closure really, a last goodbye if you will! While there I upgraded the two Windows 2000 Pro machines to WindowsXP and installed newer versions of the software they were using!

Then at 20:30 I ran over to the storage unit and unloaded the car, got there kinda late so by the time I unloaded the car and was ready to leave the gate wouldn't let me out! Stayed calm, tried a couple of numbers and then 911. The fire department showed up and let me out! Yay!!!

Finally (and you thought the day was over, HA!) ran upto Salem and hung out with Bri, Tessa, Steve, Nic, and Brent! Had a good time though it was really noisy so we didn't have perhaps as much fun as we normally would have! Tessa was cool, even fighting of the migrane that was trying to attack her! The Boys antics in the parking lot were funny, playing with a kiddy shopping cart! That I captured on film! I'll drop in one of the shots later!

So that was my day! Went to bed and sleep the sleep of someone getting closer to enough estrogen, once I have some bloods drawn I'll have a better idea of where I am! The patch is still one of the best things I've ever done for myself, overall just a much better quality of life in so many ways! I'm sleeping better, I have more enrgy, less frequent/less severe headaches, less depressive episodes, and an overall feeling of well being and more positive outlook. Does my life right now suck any less, well NO, but I'm not wallowing in the darkness as much!

Thursday, October 28, 2004

What a night!

The RedSox ROCK!!! That's right folks, I'm cheering on the Sox! Why, well not so much because I'm a big sports fan, heck the little appreciation and knowledge of sports I have is because of Earl. Last night and today however I'm a full on Sox fan, because Earl HATES them, and he must hate me, so an enemy of my enemy and all that! I'm going to get a Boston Red Sox Championship 2004 T-shirt, write "Thanks for helping us break the curse!" and send it to Earl!

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned!!!

So last night was my first night sleeping with the patch, I drifted off to sleep, stayed asleep the whole night and awoke this morning feeling refreshed and invigorated! When I first started herbals, my sleep improved but not like this! Having a nice steady flow of estrogen into my system round the clock is marvelous, simply marvelous!!! I highly reccomend it!

I'm begining to wonder if I shouldn't put together a blog just for HRT? In any case, back to packing! I have to be out of this apartment on Saturday after living here for 6 years all because "Earl" is a selfish, heartless, insensitive, overbearing, controling lout!

My friend Bri gave me a wonderful book last night written by Alison James titled:

I used to miss Him... but my Aim is Improving! Not Your Ordinary Breakup Survival Guide.

I've only just started reading it, but I love it already!

Wednesday, October 27, 2004

Onward and upward!

So today I've started the next stage of my journey, and so far I don't feel any different. The next step, well that would be more formal Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) than what I've been doing to date.

I've been taking herbal supplements so far, and they have been doing a great job, however the cost benefit of the amount I've been taking puts them close to patches, so I thought I'd switch for a while! I'm also just being a touch lazy and adding a testosterone blocker to help cut down on the amount of hypnotherapy I need to do in a day.

I ordered the Climera and Spiro from InHouse Pharmacy online (http://www.inhousedrugstore.com) on the 16th of October, they were shipped on the 17th and got here today! Since there are many girls with questions, I'll be posting more details and some photos a bit later...

Thursday, October 21, 2004

Why my life has been so screwed up in so many ways . . .

I've been fighting this insane battle with the rest of the world for years, and while at first I thought it was me, I've recently come to the realization it actually IS in many ways the rest of the world.

Now before you go saying to yourself "This broad MUST be nuts!" hear me out! First of all, if you've found this blog, you've already been to my website and know that yes, I'm a woman through and through I just happen to have an interesting birth defect. My birth defect? I look, for the moment at least like a dude, which in the right hands could be a great gift. Mine unfortunately are just NOT the right hands!

The right hands? Well some women have the ability to embrace the masculine side of life, and a woman, who looks like a man, could be an avatar for great changes in the world we live in. A woman like that could get involved with womans issues and make for a commanding presence, be respected and treated like an "equal" in the "old boys club" and be a force for positive change.

My hands? Well try as I may, I cannot seem to find enough "masculine" energy to even hide the fact that I'm a woman. So, while I have a "male" exterior I'm told I still read as female in many important ways. Really the hardest part is communications with men. My entire life has been one failure after another when it comes to talking with men. Worse yet, I know enough to know what I'm doing wrong, I'm trying to talk WITH men and they don't do that.

One of the biggest differences between men and women is the way we communicate. Women talk WITH other women, share and exchange thoughts, feelings and ideas in a fluid, very temporal fashion. We spend the time to listen and be heard, and it makes for a much smoother more productive exchange. Men on the other hand TALK AT each other, even the best of friends make it more of a competition, than an exchange and quite honestly in general they are terrible listeners! Yes there are exceptions, but by and large their communications style is totally different than ours.

So, when men and women are speaking, certain changes happen on both sides of the conversation to try and meet halfway or at least in an ideal world that's what happens. We as women are experts in compromise, after all from an early age we are immersed in a male dominated world and have to learn certain suvival skills like this to protect ourselves. Because people assume they know me when they see me, simply put a man, they make certain assumptions and communicate accordingly.

The problem is no matter how hard I've tried, and Goddess knows I've tried, I don't have many of the communications skills for dealing with men, that my sisters do. When I was young you are what your cover says you are and are expected to deal with the world in like fashion. Everyone thought I was a boy, after all, one look and there was no question about it. Today there is a bit more tolerance and flexibility for TransYouth and some even manage to start a positive change toward "wholeness" before puberty! I had to adapt best I could and try to fit into a world that was (and is) as alien to me as it can possibly be.

When I say alien, it is far worse than simply needing to learn a new language, which it is all of that as well. However with the new language comes a whole different style and means of communications, and with no-one to help me make sense of it, I've never really gotten it. Making matters worse, and abusive father, who for the life of him could not get me to do anything right and hard as he tried to MAKE me understand his point he couldn't. That of course gave me less and less reason to try and make the situation work, and for the last ten years we were together there were two armed camps. He couldn't understand why his "son" was such a difficult, mindless idiot, never able to grasp the simplest of things or do what HE wanted the WAY HE wanted it to be done. I on saw a brilliant MAN with NO social skills or even socially redeeming values and could not grasp what he was shouting about all the time. Time and again I tried to talk WITH him and find out what was bothering him, and see where we could each give a bit of ground and meet somewhere in the middle. Never worked!

Making matters still worse was the defensive position I'd taken early on when I realized I was in an alien world. I'd been exposed to Star Trek and largeish doses of science fiction and romance novels growing up. Knowning that I was "expected" to be a man, I took material from sources I knew to fashion a "shell" with which I could then filter the alien world around me. Take the best and brightest of Starfleet, equal doses of Jamie Somers/The Bionic Woman, Diana Prince/Wonder Woman, Julie Barnes/The MOD SQUAD, Judy Collins, Joan Biaez, Crystal Gale and many others, throw them into a blender with extra doses of Spock of Vulcan and out came the creature I was to be for 34 years of my life.

To the outside world I seemed too much like Spock, with large amounts of Kirk, Scotty and McCoy thrown in. Through this shell I protected myself and my tender heart from the ravages of Male savages, chief amoung them my father who was about as far to the right side of the gender line as I am to the left. He was pure alpha male, worse yet a skull banging rocket scientist, and everything was clipped near military style communications with the assumption that his word was law and would be carried out by his second in command (me) without question instantly. When I say rocket scientist, I mean that quite litterally, he designed and built some of the early guidance equipment Nasa used. Military style, well he WAS a retired Army Signal Corp Officer, and treated me as part of the chain of command.

How much did I seem like Spock at this point? "Arguments" with my father almost ALWAYS involved being sent to my room for being such a problem child. I had the pure GAUL, the unbeleivable NERVE to stand motionless with no visible display of emotion whatsoever and argue point by point everything he said in that cool, remote, detached Vulcan calm that I now realized fairly SCREAMED "You are an emotional savage and I'm so much better than you can ever be." Invariably HE would come up with a reason to strike me in punishment, that belt would come out and he'd take to me like the emotional cripple he was responding to his buttons being pushed. I'd only make matters worse with an attitude that in all my silence did even more damage, taking each blow with a silent "Thank you SIR, may I have another!" and not flinching in the slightest. Each blow fanned his rage and pain, because I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of a tear, whimper or emotion of any kind.

Years later a woman to whom I owe SO MUCH, took me aside and said; "Look I cannot be spending my time with a rock. You have NO body language, no expressions, nothing to indicate your alive let alone part of a conversation and I refuse to spend so much time with Spock or Data. You are going to have to figure out how to have some body language or I'm going to have to find a new boyfriend. Hell I cannot even tell you are breathing by looking at you, that just ain't right!!!" Which of course made me start dismantling more of my shell and letting the world near me in maesured doses. The ironic part of this is while I was Dating Pat, I was also hanging out with a very dear friend with whom I could relax and just be me, all the sheilding "The Shell" came down around Pam, but I had a hard time doing it with Pat. I managed something of a compromise and things got better until Pat decided she wanted to be able to see other people too.

Regrettably pulling down the shell was only half a solution, a stop gap measure at best, and lacking "proper" male communications skills my life and career history became a series of missed opportunites and blown chances becasue I lack the ability [to deal with men] most women would have learned at an early age. Making matters worse, MEN, seeing a "MAN" would deal with me as such, leaving me further behind the ball and lacking the requisite communications "skills" made me seem a trouble maker and malcontent. Didn't matter how much I knew, how much I could do, how well I could do it, THEY couldn't talk to me and as such, they didn't want me around. Sound familiar? Sure does, over and over I'd play out the same Macabre dance with one ballon full of hot air and testosterone after another, pretty much with the same results. Didn't matter how good I was at my job, I was "trouble" and let go or abused into quitting. Mind you there were a sizable number of positions I had where I worked with, and communicated WITH women, and never had these kinds of problems.