Thoughts....lots of thoughts

I have so much on my mind tonight I feel I could write and entire book. I am noticing that as I work out that I am seeing some results rather fast. Now I have always been athletically talented by nature. Sports have always been fun to me, and easy for me. I have enjoyed working out and all things physical. I would prefer a job doing manual labor versus a desk job any day of the week. I was kicking a soccer ball at a young age and always excelled and whatever sport I picked up or physical activity I tried. However as anyone over the age of 25 is aware, your body really starts to not be what it was before you hit 25. It takes more work to keep it in shape, and at least as was my experience the days of eating whatever I wanted whenever I wanted were gone. I literally didn't gain probably more than 5 lbs between high school and the age of 25. In the last three years, well that is a different story lol. So here I am working out more, in part because of the upcoming surgery, in part because I am finally feeling more myself than I ever have before and mostly because I just need to get back into shape. The last two years life has been insane and hectic and working out has slipped my priority list. So now I am working out again rather consistently. To solve the gym problem I gave up the memberships for now and got some basic home equipment. I have a rowing machine which I am just loving. I rowed for a year in college and so I love the workout you can get from one. I will often turn on an episode of (brace yourselves) Desperate Housewives (my new addiction ;) and go to town. I got it on Craigslist for an amazing price, and it is a great quality machine that an older couple bought and never used. Literally not sure it was ever used. Also some free weights, and a pull up bar. At Christmas I bought myself p90x and have not started it but that is mostly cause I thought I needed to get back into the groove of some kind of working out so as to not entirely beat myself into the ground and discourage myself. Now with three weeks until my surgery I think it might just wait until after but I am not sure. Everyone I have talked to loves it and I am confident I will as well once I start. Anyway so the working out is really helping my confidence in presenting as male to the world. I don't know if it is making any difference or not but in my mind it is. I feel better about myself and I feel stronger already and thus more male.

I am discovering that with my surgery 3 weeks from tuesday that I am suddenly feeling this deep longing in my life. At this point in my life I can only think of two people who I am friends with who have known me prior to the last two or three years of my life. Then with those two we lost touch for many years between high school and recently. So although I treasure their presence in my life I am still longing for something else. I am missing those friends who I was close to those formative years between 17 and 24 when I left the cult I was a part of. It is interesting because I have never been closer to anyone in my life than I was to those women. Yet there is much they didn't know about me, in part because I didn't know it about myself. So the process of me leaving the religion that I thought I called home and the church that went with it to find the truth in my life has been extremely painful and one gripped with loss.  I lost all those friends, and I with it I lost what I feel like is my life and my history prior to the age of 25. Since I have limited memories prior to the age of 13 and then the one between 13 and 17 are not pleasant I really feel like I have lost that. I didn't realize it, or wouldn't have termed it that way before now though. Tonight I had the realization that this whole time I have felt abandoned by them because they didn't accept what at the time was my lesbianism I am realizing that maybe they felt abandoned by me because of what happened. It was literally as if one day I was devoted, hard core Christian fundamentalist and the next I was agnostic and a lesbian. Maybe not that fast but really in a matter of weeks or short months. So maybe they felt abandoned by me? What a concept. So I have wanted to get in touch with a couple of them that I was closest to, although I know that they will probably not accept my transition and if they do  happen to it is going to be very challenging. I did end up reaching out to them, although what is going to happen is still unsure. I don't know if I made the right decision or not I think time will tell. I worry I might be setting myself up for more heartache.

So the whole point in me bringing that topic up is that on one hand I know it is not my job to educate the world on what it means to be transgender and or all the topics/issues that go with it. However, on the other hand at least with the gay issue studies have shown people who know someone who is gay or lesbian tend to be more accepting and or understanding of the issues versus those who don't know anyone who is. So maybe the same can be said for someone who is transgender? I just don't know, and I just don't know how open I am at this point. I have always said I am an open book but how much is too much? The entire situation seems very uncertain and overwhelming.

The other day someone called me by a female pronoun at the Apple store, and the guy who was helping me looked her weird. I could tell he was like "what?" because he continued to interact with me and talk to me like a dude. I had a similar situation happen someplace else as well. That makes me feel good, that I am presenting enough that if someone uses a female pronoun that they are the ones who look wrong, not me. And even if someone uses a female pronoun it is often in a very garbled, mumbling way. It has been a couple weeks since someone confidently called me anything female. This is great, and it is allowing me to just let go of the times people get it wrong. I have decided generally in those situations when a scene isn't being made, such as at the store when the clerk says "ma'am" under his breath cause he doesn't know that I am just going to keep walking. There are bigger fish to fry in my life rather than correcting people all the time.

Finally, I am facing a dilemma about whether to come out to my orthodontist or not. I have what should be my last appointment tomorrow, I might have one more after this but hopefully not. Anyway thankfully the appointment is first thing in the morning, however I dress masculine, I bind, I act and am different than the last time I saw them even 4 months ago. The difference would be awful hard to miss unless maybe they were blind. Clearly there has been a big change. So I can walk in there, dressed and acting like I would any other day at any other place and feel uncomfortable while they ask how being a mom is and calling me by my female name. I could not bind, throw on sweats and a sweatshirt and then go and come home without going anyplace else and just deal with it since I most likely won't see them again. Or third choice, come out to them....but I likely won't ever see them again and they have spent the last 4 years knowing me as someone else so will there be any good to come from it or any point?  I just don't know how I am going to handle it honestly. I am getting extremely tired of coming out to people.