A candid update...read at your own discretion.

Well it has been a while since I have blogged, although I do have multiple posts that I started and then got distracted and never finished and posted. In the last 2 months a lot has been going on. Mostly a lot of school and family stuff, along with the holidays and all that end of year busy life stuff we all have.  There has also been some fear in blogging though, as I will mention later. This is my warning to you; this is going to be a very candid blog. Continue to read at your own discretion.

As a transgender male I was not born into the body that aligns with my identified gender. So although I have been on hormones for almost a year and it has been 9 months since my surgery there are always going to be things that physically are different from men who were born biologically male. For instance I am a relatively small guy, at about 5 ft 7 and 155 pounds I am not really very big. That is just one example but there are some things, most of which are generally only noticeable to me. However that doesn’t change the fact that I sometimes wish certain physical traits were different than they are, and I have to work through the fact that whatever that specific issue is probably wont’ ever change. Recently I have found myself really struggling with an issue, which is somewhat new to me, at least new in terms of struggling with it in this way. That could be simply that up until now I was primarily concerned with passing and this is to some degree a more personal issue rather than a public issue the way that not “passing” or “presenting” would be public.

It really started when I started my last class, which was at the local military base where I spent my time when I was in the service. It was the only class that was offered by my school that I needed. There was a lot of emotional stuff about that for me. However one of the biggest issues I found that it brought up for me was using a public bathroom, and it has quickly turned into a huge problem everywhere that I go. For a long time I had been pretty comfortable, or comfortable enough I should say using men’s bathrooms.  The fact that I did not use a urinal provided a degree of safety for me because I felt that a stall provided that wall between me and the world and I could stay in there as long as needed if I felt uncomfortable.

Well, in the last 2 months primarily I have run into multiple situations where either all the stalls are busy, there are no stalls or have no doors or whatever the case has been that a stall was not available to me. There have been multiple occasions where I didn’t use the bathroom even though I had to because I was too uncomfortable and didn’t have the means to use a urinal. It has once again made my life challenging as I have found myself creating my schedule and what I do around being able to swing by my house or someplace else I know that is safe to use a bathroom. Not a fun way to live your life I must say.

So the topic has been coming up repeatedly for me about using a urinal, or even standing up in a stall. Because if I could stand and pee, even if there was no door on the stall or whatever the case was I would still be more comfortable than I am now. I do own an STP device, a good one in fact that I feel pretty comfortable with at home. It is one that I would wear all the time, which is my preference if I am going to use one. However my issue comes down in large part to my uncomfortable feelings when I am “packing” or whatever term might best describe it (I honestly don’t have one at this point). So basically in the last 2 months I have gotten a pretty big dysphoria around using the bathroom and what I do or do not have down in my pants. This has been something that has been slowing getting worse over the course of the last few months. As I have become more comfortable with my body and as the “T” has really started to change my body I have become more uncomfortable with not having something down there. Generally though that is only when I am out in public or around other men, not when I am at home or with people I am comfortable with. I would also add this is different than actually wanting bottom surgery, that’s not exactly what this is. I do not at this time desire to have surgery down there, for multiple reasons. However, I do want the appearance of something down there and when I am out I do want that feeling.

So any time that I wear a “packer” or basically something in my pants to give the appearance of something there I find myself feeling profoundly uncomfortable. I fear that it doesn’t look real, that it moved around and that everyone knows it is fake, or that it will draw unwanted attention, that it is too big or too small and on the list goes. So I never wear it very long because I get so scared of what it is or is not doing, what it does or does not look like that I can’t summon up the courage. Also I am just not used to having something there, so any time it moves I am really aware of it down there, well more than I am already aware of it I should say. So I am really struggling to work through this issue, and really up until today have not even wanted to talk about it. I was just texting a good buddy of mine who has also struggled to some degree through this issue. It was in talking to him that I realized my need to vent these bottled up feelings about this subject.

I will add that in recent months I have also become much more aware or concerned I might say about being “found out” or not being “stealth” as some call it. This is not about just wanting to live my life as a human being who is more than just transgender, it is about being afraid of the consequences of being transgender and or being out about it. Heck not even being out about it so much as just being transgender in general. I really don’t know what sparked this, although I do suspect something about my time taking that class at the base was at least partly a trigger because I was not really struggling with the issue much prior to that. Both of these issues have been extremely exaggerated since that time. Where I was not afraid before I have become afraid. Where I was comfortable I am now not comfortable. I suspect that although part of this might have been the trigger of going to the base for the first time since all that went down, I also think that there is more at play. After pretty much a year I know that there is never a time that people who meet me think about me in any way other than as a guy. So now that I am comfortable in that way I suspect I am letting down some of my guards and in doing so I think that I fear I may say or do something to give me away in a situation that might turn out to be unsafe (the base is a perfect example of this) and so that same fear I had around this time last year has come back to haunt me in a way.

With all that said I am still SO much happier than I ever was a year ago, there is no doubt about that. I just need to get the confidence up to really work on becoming more comfortable with these things. In the meantime I continue to discover myself, and redefine me now and it is rather fun. It is like a 2^nd lease on life almost. So many things that I never enjoyed before although I may have been interested in, I am not finding myself diving into them without hesitancy. That just shows me how strong my gender stereotypes were prior to this, that I felt somewhere that I could not do those things I love. Currently I am exploring more in depth woodworking projects, as I love to work with my hands and have a very creative and busy mind. Needless to say I am enjoying this period of self-discovery, it is a lot of fun.