Posts Tagged ‘family’

Vlog #11 – Three years ago…

Three years ago today I stopped living a lie.
Three years ago today I started becoming who I really am.
Three years ago today I started transitioning from male to female.

It was exciting to finally realize the cause of my misery. For decades I had seen therapists, psychiatrists, doctors; none of them ever even hinted at gender identity disorder. No one saw it, despite the fact it seems so obvious now looking back.

Once the initial excitement wore off it was replaced with fear. “Now what? How the hell am I gonna do this? Just get some female clothes and start going out? It can’t really be that simple, can it?”

“Oh my God how am I going to tell my family? And what will people think? Am I gonna have to live a life of constant public humiliation?” Those were the kind of thoughts that were constantly in my mind.

Despite all these fears it was only two weeks later that I bought female clothes for the first time and told my parents about my plans to transition. And only two weeks after that I went out in public for the first time; to go to my first therapy session.

A week after that everyone knew, both on and offline. And only a week after that, seven weeks after I started transition, I went full time. I was determined to make this happen. There was not a single doubt in my mind that I had to do this in order to survive. To finally be happy with myself.

Then came hell. Months of agony as I was put on the excruciatingly long waiting list at the hospital in order to be able to even start the first part of the entire process: diagnosis. Add in the fact that in the meantime I was also going through a messy divorce and my life was far from the bliss and happiness that I was aiming for.

Fifteen months had passed before I was finally able to start the diagnosis process. For people to tell me what I already knew. That I was born in the wrong body. This entire process took ten months to complete. And it wasn’t for another month until I was able to start hormone replacement therapy. Well over two years from when I first started transition.

I’ve been on hormones for almost ten months now and soon I’ll be put on yet another waiting list which will likely take another year. This time for surgery. Some call it sexual reassignment surgery (SRS), others call it gender confirming surgery (GCS), and there are many other acronyms for the exact same procedure but I just call it surgery. It is the only one I am truly planning on getting.

By the time I’ll be done with the entire process it will have been well over four years. Still I am not one that considers surgery to be the ‘be all end all’ of my transition. In fact, in my opinion I already completed my transition well over a year ago. I have already been living the life of a girl, of my new self, for all this time and surgery will not change how I view myself.

I have a wonderful boyfriend, accepting parents, good friends, life is pretty damn good right now and it only seems to be getting better and better each day. :)

Vlog #10 – Why my mom is awesome.

When I told my mom my plans to transition from male to female she was of course very scared. Scared that this would turn out to be a ‘phase’, for one, but also scared that I would be bullied, beaten up, or worse. While I’m lucky to live in a country that’s pretty tolerant about these things it’s not like it doesn’t happen at all so I could understand her concerns.

I also could not have done this at a worse time for her. She had only recently lost her other son, my older brother, and now she was to lose the last one she still had. That was not an easy thing for her to come to terms with.

Once the initial shock wore off it slowly started getting better, although she still had a lot of trouble with using the proper pronouns and calling me by my new name. Over time that got a lot better. She now calls me Julie and refers to me as her daughter which makes me very, very happy! :)

Then when I started to date a lot she was also scared a bit. Considering I tend to hook up with guys really fast I can understand her fear of me potentially meeting the wrong guy and it go horrible wrong, or even violent. Hell, the last guy I met up with I had only talked to for a few hours the night before. So I can definitely understand it but it’s how I choose to do things.

Doing that had the nice bonus of finding my boyfriend though, along with meeting some nice friends along the way. :) Of course I went non-monogamous with my boyfriend after a while which is something my mom didn’t quite understand at first. If I loved him so much, why would I want to see other people? But that’s just how I prefer to live my life and while it is nothing she could ever do herself, she doesn’t judge or condemn me for it.

When someone criticizes me, she defends me. When I need her help, she stands by me. When I need to talk, she is there for me. She has always stood by me even when things were rough, she didn’t disown me, she never stopped loving me.

Thank you, mom. You’re the best and I love you. :)

It’s been a busy week.

It’s been an eventful couple of days.

Last Friday was my mom’s birthday. She didn’t celebrate it this time, so it was just a coffee & dinner thing along with my dad ‘n stuff. I didn’t have a gift for her and I should feel bad. I simply didn’t have the money for it right now though, August hit me harder than I had initially planned, but I’ll make it up to her soon.

We did go to the casino in the evening, even though I was already kinda tired. I didn’t play with my money though, I had none to begin with, heh, but we all had a few nice ‘big wins’ a few times.

Yesterday my uncle Ben held a high tea in a nearby Restaurant/Event Center celebrating his 65th (well, his 66th but he was too ill last year), which was fun. :) A lot of people showed up from both sides of the family and in the end there were about 50 people in total. As a gift from the family he got a scrap book with photos and notes from several family members recalling events they’ve shared with him.

I ate quite a bit; little cakes, strawberry pie, apple pie, a salmon sandwich (and I absolutely cannot stand fish but I wanted to eat it anyway), assorted chocolates and crepes.

My ex called me last Tuesday night to tell me that Sol got hit by a car. He’s one of the older cats I gave to her a few months ago. He’s a very sweet cat but also a hunter and scavenger. He likes to roam pretty far away from home and he had been spotted before crossing roads near the industrial area.

He was found I assume not too long after the accident and because he is chipped they called my ex right away. From what she was told and then afterward told me it didn’t look very good. He got hit on his hind legs and it was protrayed as pretty much a lost cause told that his back was probably broken but without an x-ray it was impossible to tell just what the damage was.

So over the course of the next few days my ex got photos taken from his back and taken him to see the veterinary surgeon who said it is possible to fix him up with an operation but that is of course not without its cost. The estimation was a couple hundred, much less than initially presumed but still a lot of money.

Sol broke part of his pelvic bone so he cannot stand or walk right now. I believe it was the right side that was broken and had shifted a bit. Apart from that he also has some minor and hairline fractures, but seemed in relatively good shape. His back isn’t broken, his tail is fine, and the main pelvic bone is intact as well so there’s a good chance he’ll recover from this but a much better result if he can get the surgery of course.

I saw him today and while it is very sad to see him locked up inside a cage it is not too small and he seems to be looked after pretty good. He’s not allowed to put weight on his back legs right now. He seems to be eating well from what I could tell and actually looked kinda happy. He loved getting attention from me and still purred a lot and bashed his head against my hands like he always used to.

Family and friends keep asking me if I notice anything yet from taking the hormones. Well, while it’s not always easy to tell I can say that in general I feel much happier. Though truthfully that is probably in large part due to the fact I no longer am in ‘purgatory’. The extremely long wait on getting approved was grueling and it feels good to have finally haven gotten through that process.

What I did notice is that I can be quite bitchy at times, and that I don’t really care that I am either. Also, while getting ready for my shower this morning I noticed that my nipples were painful to the touch.

I have also been working very hard on my eating and sleeping schedule, which you may remember has been hell since the day I was born. Well it is going much better. Again, the fact that I no longer have to stress out about my diagnosis probably helped a lot for my sleeping. While I don’t have exact times set yet I do try to go to bed between midnight and no later than 2am and get up between 6 and 8am.

Eating is actually going better too. I have set up fixed times for this. I have to eat breakfast in the morning at 8am, lunch at 1pm, and dinner at 6pm. I try to add a ‘snack’ between meals as well around 10:30am and 3:30pm. So that makes for 5 times a day. Which for me is like 4 times more than my usual from a few months ago. I take my hormones at breakfast and dinnertime.

I skipped lunch today because I was visiting my ex and checking up on Sol and I was really feeling that when I got home as I was all weak ‘n kinda shaky. I guess my body is starting to get used to eating at regular intervals. That’s good, right?

Christmas 2009

Yesterday was Christmas day, the day we celebrate the holiday. And we do so with a family get together and dinner.

The holidays tend to be hard on me, emotionally. And since my brother passed on and is no longer a part of these family events they only got harder. I have a tendency to be very negative and bitchy in the weeks preceding these holidays. I try to be happy, though. I try to be happy.

Anyway, my mom buys a lot of food for these occasions. We do a thing called ‘gourmetten’ though I guess it is basically just steel plate grilling. Whatever you wanna call it, it is very tasty and I tend to eat quite a bit. Especially for me!

After dinner it is also tradition to play some Trivial Pursuit. My dad is really good at that because he knows a lot of things about a big range of topics. Me on the other hand only know a lot about certain topics and practically nothing about topics such as sport and politics. Amazingly enough though, I won! :D

Visiting my grandmother.

My dad picked me up today to see my grandmother. Of my dad’s side; my only remaining living grandparent. She’s well over 80 years old I think but still quite of sound mind and very talkative. She has been steadily declining though and doesn’t go outside much, or at all, anymore.

A few other family members were there too, all of which I hadn’t seen since I started my transition, including my grandmother. Not much was said about it, but I didn’t expect that anyway. They’re not really that kind of people.

One of my aunts showed me pictures of the kids and their kids. It’s odd. I don’t really see this part of the family much so there are huge lapses in age and lives. Makes me feel kinda old too.