Well, it is after midnight and I can’t sleep so I figured I would do some much over due blogging. My body is exhausted from being out in the sun today (which happened to be the first day since last year that it broke 70 degrees!). It was a beautiful day, perfect in every way but for some reason my brain is wide awake while my body is very tired. Of course it is my night with the little one and even if she doesn’t wake up she will likely be up at the crack of dawn. I suppose that is why someone invented coffee though.
Well, I don’t remember if in my last post (prior to the one about my sweet pup who is in doggy heaven now) if I mentioned coming out to my older neighbor Phyllis. She is a very sweet older woman; in fact she just turned 81 years old. She is a feisty old woman, if I were meant to grow old as a woman I would probably want to be like her. You would be hard pressed to guess she was 81. Anyway though so the other day I was doing some yard work and saw her in her yard and thought I needed to go over and just let her know that I had transitioned because well it was obvious and it was like an elephant in the room. I told her, and then she asked about if I changed my name cause she heard I had. Then she said she would love me regardless of my gender and we proceeded to spend 20 minutes talking about plants and gardening etc. Now to tell the guy across the street who still yells out hi using my old name all the time, but that will come soon. Thankfully my old name was gender neutral.
It has been over 14 weeks since my surgery and I am very happy with how the scars are doing. I started using a new scar cream and it really seems to be making a huge difference. Next summer I will be able to go out in the sun without a shirt on if I like, but I have to wait a full 12 months. Tonight though I took a shower and it was so warm out that I went and stood in the back yard in just my boxers. No one could see me and there was no direct sunlight on me but it was amazing. The breeze on my body, I don’t think I have felt that since I was like 4 years old and I sure don’t remember it. Anyway it felt great and I stood there just basking in the experience for a few minutes. My new thing as it is getting warmer is sleeping just in my boxers, no shirt or anything else. It is still a weird feeling, and due to my days in the military I feel like I should be wearing more just in case I need it. When I was in the military and traveling there would be fire alarms at all hours of the night, we might have to walk half a mile in the sand to go to the bathroom etc. There were generally good reasons to either sleep with more clothing on that I might at home or have some near by. Needless to say that habit became engrained in me and so sleeping in just boxers feels profoundly wrong but deeply good at the same time.
I got another shot of “T” today; it has been over 5 months now. Time is flying by, and I still have my partner give them to me in the butt. Why not continue to take advantage of her generosity. Needless to say though today’s shot hurt so badly, worse than any yet. I think it may have hit a nerve or something, I am not sure exactly but I bet I will be bruised tomorrow.
I am still having a very steep learning curve when it comes to men’s habits and social behaviors. I was recently at the aquarium with my daughter for the day and I am sure that I was reading as a gay dad…which I am totally fine with but I find that how I interact with her is very different than most men do, at least in public. I find it sad and unfortunate so I keep doing it and if they think I am gay so be it. Well, I had to take her into the bathroom with me for obvious reasons and it was not the easiest thing to do practically speaking. Well I forgot that in men’s bathrooms you DO NOT TALK. It is like the cardinal rule of the bathroom. So I was talking with her like I always do and I came out of the stall and this dude looked at me in a way I can’t describe but was very disapproving. I have also found that being with her by myself as dad I get little to no help with things that as a mom I would totally get help with such as holding a door for me or picking up something she dropped like the bottle. People just don’t help dads as much.
So now that I am not so busy trying to hide the body I hated and be someone I wasn’t I am actually able to observe the female half of the human species. Yes I know that sounds very scientific but that is how I feel about it really. I never really felt like a woman but would fight so hard to act the way I saw others acting, even though I knew I didn’t think the way they did. I would listen to them talk and pretend to be like them, while deep down knowing it was not me. When I say I don’t understand how women think, I really don’t and never have but in the past just played along with it. I might physically understand some things such as menstrual cycles and how they suck but generally there is not a lot I really truly can relate to. So to me it is like a science I am learning, what to say or not to say for instance. Well needless to say today I was out and about and I was horrified by what I saw. The sexualization of women is disgusting. We were at this state park that has a beach and there were girls there that were far too young to be in bikinis. Just the culture of needing to be stick skinny and tan was appalling to me. I told my partner that my daughter is not going out of the house with a bikini ever (okay well if I had my way lol) but at least until she is older than 12…age still to be determined. The only men without shirts on had perfect beach bodies and the only girls in bikinis were perfect size 2’s or whatever. Why can’t we celebrate beauty in all shapes and sizes? My partner is not a size 2 and I am glad she isn’t because I don’t find it attractive at all. She is healthy and sexy the way she is, and if she were a size 2 I might be worried. Yet I fear for her, and so many women that men have made it not okay to be anything more than what I just described. I was sickened at that realization and it was yet another way that I feel almost privileged to be trans because I was not programmed to think that way from birth or whenever so I am able to make more conscious choices. I get to choose how to be different in a very intentional way that many men I don’t think are, simply because they don’t know any different or don’t realize they can make those choices. I know I am making a generalization so I can’t really speak for all men but I do think it is somewhat correct. All I know is I plan to teach my daughter she is beautiful regardless and that just because some man thinks that a size 2 is hot doesn’t mean that it has to be the only way to define beauty.
Okay now that I am done with that little rant I will say that I have fallen behind on running. Not for lack of wanting to but more because my child, as dear as she is to me, continues to give me every cold in the world. I have literally been sick most of the last 6 months. It finally let up in the last few days so I need to get back to it, because next year I would like to not have my “man belly” as my partner calls it. I don’t care as much if I have a 6 pack or not, although sure that would be nice. I will settle for toned though and be happy enough. I need a workout buddy or trainer or something that can help whip me into better shape, although I will admit I am surprised by how good of shape I am in. So my goal for this coming week is to run at least three days. I am active enough doing other things this time of year that I feel good about that goal.
I am getting much more comfortable with myself, and some days almost never even think about being trans or anything related to that. It is nice to feel that comfortable for once in my life.
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