This topic contains 12 replies, has 5 voices, and was last updated by Anita Watkins 1 year, 2 months ago.
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This is a continuation of the topic “A Month into this Journey”. It’s been almost two months (tomorrow) and my intention is to post periodically throughout this journey, both as a help to me (getting the thoughts down on “paper” of sorts) and anyone else who happens along who is going through the same confusion.
The last 10 days or so have been chaotic. Both my wife and I got sick with an intestinal bug, my daughter came home to visit, and my mother-in-law ended up in the hospital because of a series of tiny strokes. I was able to take care of my wife for a couple of days before I got sick. As Anita, I was more patient and attentive both of which I could pull into the male side of life. With my daughter, I was “Dad” as I’ve always been. With my in laws, I was my wife’s husband. By the middle of last week I was convinced that all I needed to do on this journey was to be who I had always been and just cross dress from time to time. Why do anything more? It would be more disruptive and frankly probably not realistic. I’m not a good candidate for HRT due to a history of blood clots and high blood pressure. Just cross dress from time to time: that’s the ticket.
The next day though, my sense of being a woman was stronger than ever. For the first time I could visualize myself as I am now only as a woman (a little sketchy on the hair since I’m bald). Not only that I could visualize myself twenty years from now as an old woman. I like being Anita: I’m more caring, more sharing, and much more open. But to be Anita, the visual cues used by society to judge outliers as perverse or threatening are all wrong. So is the feeling of a need to be a woman simply a way to change physically to match societal expectations? Somehow it seems more than that.
One thing I feel fairly sure of at this point though, is that this is not me changing, but rather me being more myself. I feel more comfortable as Anita. I feel more normal.
That is why I want to go to a counselor with my wife; to explore those feelings and how they can be integrated into our relationship in a creative and beneficial way. But that is on hold until we see how her mother does. I think my wife’s anxiety level is going to shoot up when I talk to her about counseling, and it is already high with her mother’s health issues.
There is a book by Dara Hoffman-Fox about determining one’s gender. I have a pdf version and will be going through that (and the free workbook) in the meantime.
On a road to who knows where but willing to share the journey supportively with others making the same or similar journey.
Anita
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