You know it's hard for me to think of myself as male when I've had my fucking period for a month now.  When will this end!!!!!!!!  I should really buy stock in always, at least I'd get some benefit from this.

The way I feel today

I'm feeling really masculine today.  The more I settle into these feelings and explore them, the more masculine and less effeminate I feel.  I did a test on brain sex differences on, I think it was the BBC website and I have the brain of an average UK male.  I took it before and did really badly on a section that I score in the top 2% of the GATB, but this time I realized that I read the instructions wrong.

I've decided to start to push ups in addition to my yoga to increase me upper body strength.  I'm also somewhat actively trying to lose weight.  That would reduce my breast size and give me more options in sports bras and maybe make me able to bind.

I'm trying to get past the "feminine" things that I do, like knitting and sewing and stuff.  I wonder what a world would be like if gender were just part of who you are and had nothing to do with what you do.  I can also be more exuberant than the average male.  I can't help thinking of all the mannerisms and things like that that I've developed to pass in the female world or are just part of me that would have been beaten or berated out of me had I been born male.  I also wonder how many I've developed and how many are just part of my make up?  My son used to stick his pinky out when he picked things up, I do that, but now he doesn't any more.  I could never change who I am to pass, but what parts of me are actually me and how much is made up?  Too many questions are giving me a headache.

Bra

I bought a couple new sports bras the other day and today is my first day to try one.  It`s the same company as the last one I had but they have a different design.  Binds better but still doesn`t do the job, kind of tight and uncomfortable although I imagine that will pass with time, also you can see the straps in a T-shirt because they are close to my neck.  I really need to lose weight so there are more products open to me.  The discomfort of this one makes me think that could not bind on a regular basis.

A new day

I feel a little better today.  More comfortable in my own skin.  I also feel more masculine today.  I didn't notice people looking at me but I wasn't in any kind of place where one would linger like yesterday.  I guess today I was more in the 'now' and less in some future when I have no idea what my future will be like.  I posted on Laura's Playground looking for a therapist but no luck yet.  Good thoughts though, they are good people there.  Even if I had the name of someone I could go to, I can't see me going any time soon.  That fear is just too strong right now.  I got a couple more sports bras today.  I really can't see me wearing a binder.  If I lost weight, my breasts would get smaller.  Why can't I take the initiative to do the things that would make me feel better and be better?

Packer day 2

I put my packer on just before I made my last post.  The combination of feelings I've felt since then is almost overwhelming and I'm getting a headache.  Some of them I never thought that a person could possibly feel at the same time.  Shame and joy, contentment and self loathing and longing: fear, fear, fear.  I wish I could be any other way but the way I am.  I was watching Princess and I want so, so, so badly to want to want to be a woman.  So much of my makeup seems to be awash in shame.  Key events, the core of who I am, the things I want.  I wish I could be in control of what I feel, but now I realize that I can't, but at the same time I don't want to let go of the control that I did have for all those years, even though that control made me almost oblivious to the world around me.  I want to look at people and actually see them and I'd give almost anything to have people actually see me, but at the same time the fear sometimes feels almost overwhelming. 

What happens when my son is older and will be judged only on his own merit instead of who his mother is?  What will happen then?  What would he think of me as an adult if I did transition?  If I do and I'm happy, what kind of example would I be, a person who denied one of the core features of human nature?  Am I just trying to talk myself into being okay with this right now?  I couldn't stay here.  My son would not be able to go to the same school or have the same friends.  I can't do that to him and I'm not even 100% sure it's even what I want although at this point I can't see any indicators that I am wrong in this.  If I allow myself to feel more male, will I get closer to being able to pass?  Is that a good thing?  That fucking doctor, I feel like I can't trust anything I think about myself because of him and I'm afraid to find another doctor who might be able to help me sort this out because of him.

packer, life and the world at large

I'm not sure if I blogged about this first story before, if so bear with me.

The way that I very first realized I wanted to be a boy, at around 16, I was kicking around the house one day by myself.  I don't know what possessed me to do this, I'm sure I must have had at least some kind of inkling of feeling that I wanted to be a boy and was tossing the idea around in my head.  Anyway, my brother had moved out but had left some of his old clothes down the basement.  I went down and looked for the most definitively male outfit I could find, which turned out to be an ugly beige corduroy suit.  I put it on and looked in my mother's full length mirror.  It is hard to describe the feeling I had, it was like seeing myself for the very first time.  Like every time I had ever looked in the mirror before I had been seeing someone else.

This weekend I got a packer.  As soon as I got home I put it down my pants and I felt like myself for the first time.  I only had it on for an hour or so before I had to take it off to go out and when I did I missed it so much, like it had always been a part of me and after such a short time it was gone.  I got a hard packer too and I'm pretty sure that I can make myself cum with it, but I haven't tried yet.

Today though, I was reminded that the world would have no time for me and I would fuck my son's life up soo much if I tried to transition.  My son was at a sleepover at his best friend's stepmom's house for the weekend.  When she was still with the boy's father we used to hang out and she called me this morning to ask me to come over for coffee when I went to pick my son, so I did.  We talked about the kids and all this stuff.  I found out she's become a Mormon.  Anyway I brought up gays and lesbians in the United Church and I could tell by her reaction that wasn't a place she was willing to go.  The boy's father won't let his son play with another boy because he thinks he's gay.  This is my son's best friend in the world and it would break his heart if he couldn't visit him or have him come over because his mom's a freak.  That's on top of my worry about work and my safety and just life in the world and passing.  I wish I were a stronger person.  I've got the evening and weekend be who you really are plan in my pay as you go life.

Things I used to think

God, I wish I had the internet when I was 16.  I see young people getting so much support when I go to different online trans forums and pages.  I would know that the things that I used to think about being trans are not true and there isn't only one way to be trans.  Walking home from the shrink who rejected me I wracked my brain trying to figure out what I did/said wrong.  That was the '80s then and maybe the experts thought wrong, I guess.  I've heard of people running into the same stereotypes in mental health professionals even today.

Here are some things that I used to think about FTM transgendered/transsexual people including myself:

• An FTM cannot have an orgasm without transition
• An FTM cannot be attracted to men
• An FTM is disgusted by his female parts and cannot enjoy them
• An FTM would never be happy to be pregnant.
• An FTM would never go and get a gynecological exam

There are probably more and I'm not saying that my experience is everyone's experience, but the fact that I am attracted to men, enjoy sex, was very happy to carry my son and I do (although reluctantly) take care of my reproductive health does not mean that I am not transgendered.

I really should try to find a therapist, but I am so afraid of that.  I've looked a bit and I haven't been able to find a psychologist who openly specializes in gender therapy.  Plus my insurance would only cover a few appointments.  I can't ever see me telling my doctor and I asked for the to send me to the mental health and she didn't.  She seems to think that drugs are the answer to everything.

Toys

I think that I might have to order them on-line but I'm hoping to get a packer soon.  At least I'll be able to be more myself at home.  I don't think that I could wear a binder, my sports bra is uncomfortable after a fairly short time.  I might try though, I don't know. 

I still wonder what kind of man I would be.  I've been letting my mind go there, watching men in life and on TV/movies and comparing what I think of myself and compare myself to them.  It is still so hard to allow my mind to go there, to let my mind free of the restraints I've put on it for so long.

Funny, when I was in Toronto and long after I thought that I had left this behind I had this little thing I would do at work.  I had a mailing list and I would ask a question every day.  I thought that I had a good question book, but the one I found was not good at all and I ended up having to make one up every single day.  So one of the questions I asked was what actor would you like to be and in what movie.  I can't remember the movie but I remember that I wanted to be Bruce Willis.

Grief, confusion and heartache

My mother died just over a year ago.  When I was 17 and more or less living as a boy, completely ready to go away and start SRS, I came out to my mother.  I found out much later that her impulse that day was to put us both in the car and drive us off a cliff.  For the first time in a long time I remember the tension of that time living with her knowing that she hated who I was so much, that much.  I think that is when most of my suicide attempts were.  I also found out at that same time that she was starting a law suit that drove my shrink out of the country which in turn caused the next shrink I saw who was the gate to SRS to tell me that I just wanted to be someone else.  The man I wanted to be died that day and my parents were sooooo happy, especially my mom.  My friends that I had come out to thought I was some kind of attention seeking lesbian freak even though I fucked more guys than they did.

That man got buried so deep for her that I couldn't even start to glimpse that part of myself until she was diagnosed with terminal cancer.  So, if I experiment with these feelings and find that I am happier being male, then my  mom fucked up my life royally.  I could have been happy at 18 or so instead of waiting until I'm in my mid-forties,  but how can I be mad at her, she's dead?  The guilt at being mad at her and the possibility of freedom because she is  no longer in my life can be overwhelming.

People II

I've been giving it some thought and I think that it bothers me that people have feelings because their feelings could be hurt and that could hurt me.  When my son was littler he wanted me to help another child, he begged me to.  Luckily for me the child's caregiver showed up before too much came from it.  I recognized myself in my son at that moment and I also recognized how much I had suppressed those feelings just to be able to live in the world.  Now I wonder if we are both plugged into our glowing boxes trying hard not to feel.  Luckily neither of us have problems sleeping so we can unplug and go right to sleep.  I feel bad for my son though because there was a time for me where I could just be me with myself, alone with no distractions.  I don't know if he's ever been like that.

People

I don't know why but sometimes it really bothers me that other people have feelings.  Not the people that I care about.  Sometimes I'll see a picture, video or even a movie and it will flash in my mind 'that person has feelings' and I get a little angry about it.  It goes away pretty quickly although there are times that it will come back again and again.   I don't get it.  I don't remember it happening in real life with real people, but maybe it has.  Always with strangers though.  I can go pretty deeply into it even though it only lasts moments.  That person feels love, pain, joy, sadness, all the things that I feel and I can't stand them for it.  I guess I should think about that.  I wonder if I get angry because that person has feelings so I might hurt them.  But then why would it happen for movies?  They aren't real people.  This feeling can't possibly be unique to me, there must be others who feel this way.  Thinking about it, I think that I have gone through bouts of feeling this way before.  It comes and goes.