Good people

I'm not sure how ended up having such good people in my life, but I'm so glad I do.

Last Sunday I logged in Facebook to find that I had a PM from a cousin of mine. She's someone I'm quite fond of, though it's been a couple years since the last time we saw each other. She wrote:

Cousin I hope you know that we love you and support you. I don't have a clue how you're doing or the specifics of your life but I've got a very rough idea of it by what you've posted on fb. And I just wanted you to know that you're loved and supported no matter what.

I was, first of all, quite touched. It seemed like a good time to come out so I wrote back:

[name], thank-you so much for this. I never doubted that you'd be supportive, but it really means a lot to hear it. :)
Uh, so yeah, I'm transgender. Like, I'm a girl inside. :) It's been that way as long as I can remember but I was in pretty serious denial about it up until about two years ago. Since then I've been trying to figure out who I am and what exactly I should do about it. I'm not on hormones or anything yet but that may be in my future. Oh, and I go by Ashley within the trans community.
Feel free to ask if you have any questions.
And lastly, we need to hang out some time. It's been way too long. :)

In the week since then we've been messaging back and forth, talking about gender and coming out and all sorts of stuff. At one point she wrote:

I'm perfectly comfortable calling you Ashley. If you feel like a girl and want to live as a girl then you're a girl to me. [...] I'm glad you can start being yourself now, I imagine that's quite freeing.

I was smiling pretty big after reading that, you can be sure. Coming out to someone who's so unreservedly supportive is just one of the best things ever. :)

Another thing happened on Monday. My dysphoria was just awful that day and I spent it feeling really terrible. Around 9:00 in the evening hunger got the best of me and I had to leave my room, where I'd been hiding to avoid the people I live with, and venture down to the kitchen. Sure enough, one of my roommates was there. He asked me how my day was.
"Well... not good, actually." I replied.
"Ohh, why's that?"
I evaded this question, which he correctly interpreted as meaning I didn't want to talk about it. Instead he got out some good quality European chocolate he'd been keeping in the fridge, saying: "what's the point of having chocolate in the house if you don't eat it when you're sad?" And the two of us ate chocolate together. A gesture like that can really make something hard like dysphoria a little easier to bear.

And then on Friday it was my birthday: I turned 27. The day before, to mark the occasion, my parents took me out for sushi, which is one of my favourite things ever. And then Friday evening I spent with a group of friends playing a ridiculous drinking game, which was a lot of fun. (The game's called "Loopin' Louie," and if you believe the box it comes in it's for children aged 4-9. The version we played involved shots of Jägermeiſter though, which ups the recommended age considerably).

I think 27 is going to be a good year for me. I'm already planning on starting electrolysis as soon as I land a job, and I'll probably be looking into hormones some time after that. And although those things are scary, I've been reminded now several times this week that I have good people in my life— people I can count on for support, whether it's stated outright or just takes the form of commiserative chocolate (or, uh... getting hammered on my birthday). And that makes me feel optimistic about what's ahead. :)

What I should have said

(Sorry, this post is going to be a bit of rant.)

Earlier this month one of my roommates moved out and a new guy moved in. This means I am once again no longer out to everyone I live with, which is mildly uncomfortable for me, but whatever. (This new roommate is from Ireland, which, in addition to my German roommate, means my house is filling up with Europeans!)

Anyways, a bunch of us were sitting in the living room chatting the other day. The CBC news was on the TV in the background, and Chantal Hébert came on to talk about some political thing.

Ms. Hébert is a fairly well-known commentator and pundit here in Canada, and she has a very distinctive look. By which I mean, she wears basically no makeup, no jewelry, has bushy eyebrows and keeps her unstyled hair tucked behind her ears. I'm not that interested in punditry, but I think she is awesome: here's a woman who obviously gives no shits about our culture's silly beauty standards, and yet has a successful career as a talking head on television. It's clear to anyone that she's there to discuss politics, not to be a pretty face.

"Wow," said the new roommate, glancing at the TV, "I'm sorry, but that woman looks like a transsexual."

Oh my goodness. What a thing to say. And do you know what I said in response to this? Nothing, I just shrugged it off. And now I'm annoyed at myself for that, so I'm going to write down my thoughts to get it off my mind.

Okay, first of all, there's a no such thing as looking like a transsexual: the range of what they\we look like is identical to the range of what anyone looks like. A pre-transition, closeted trans woman might be indistinguishable from a cis man, and a trans woman who's been on hormones for a while might be indistinguishable from a cis woman. And of course, the inverse applies to trans men.

Secondly, his comment clearly implies that looking like a transsexual is a bad thing, which is obviously so very offensive for, like, all the reasons.

And lastly, his comment seems to overlie an assumption that women ought to wear makeup and look pretty, simply because they are women. Which is, you know, pretty darn patriarchal.

So... there. I guess now if I hear a comment like that again, at least I'll know how to respond! In any case, I shouldn't be angry with him because it's clear he simply hadn't thought through the implications of that statement and was unaware of how stupid a thing it was to say. But that's precisely why I should be educating people when stuff like this comes up.

I came out to my housemates!

After months of thinking and worrying and hoping, I've finally come out to my roommates! And their response, as I suspected it would be, was very positive. Yay!

I moved into this house last May after responding to a roommate wanted ad, so I didn't know any of the people I was living with at first. They were all cis hetero guys in their early twenties. At the time I had no idea how significant crossdressing would become for me: the only girly things I owned when I moved in were a tube of mascara and a pair of women's jeans. But as I began to realize just how trans I was, I started to wonder if I should tell my roommates. Around this time I also came out to my friend AT, the first person I ever told.

Of my four roommates at the time, I thought three of them would be more or less okay with it. But the fourth guy I knew would not be. Well, that fourth guy turned out to be a thief and got himself kicked out of the house. AT just happened to be looking for a place at the time, and moved in to fill the empty room. It was totally serendipitous: the one housemate who I was sure wouldn't accept me was replaced by, at the time, the one person in the world whom I was already out to. After that minor miracle I pretty much made up mind that I would tell them.

That was back in July. Either because coming out is so hard or because I'm a coward, it took me till now to finally get around to it.

Yesterday evening I went down to the basement where they were playing billiards on our pool table. "Hey, can I talk to you guys about something?"
And it was so simple and so easy. I told them I was transgender and felt more comfortable dressing as a girl. I clarified that I'm attracted to girls and that crossdressing isn't a fetish for me. And they said, "Yeah man, that's totally okay. You gotta be yourself."
"So like, if you saw me in, say, a skirt or something, that wouldn't freak you out?" I wanted to be sure we were on the same page.
"That would be fine," they affirmed, adding that they appreciated my talking to them about it nonetheless.
"You guys have probably already noticed some stuff anyways," I suggested.
"Yeah... we had pretty clear idea already."
And that was it. I thanked them for being so accepting, and the conversation turned to something else.

I still can't believe I spent so much time worrying about something so small. And I'm free now! I can dress how I want around the house! Yaaaay!! (I should add that one roommate still doesn't know: he returned to his native Deutschland for the holidays and won't be back till January. But I'm sure he'll be just as accepting as the others.)

Eff you, closet!

I am now out to five people in total, four guys and one girl. I suppose mom and dad should be next on the list, but that conversation's going to be a lot scarier...

I (finally) left the house as a girl! Yay yay yay!!

Yesterday evening I went for a walk around my neighbourhood as a girl, and it was lovely! The snow was falling softly, and made for a very peaceful winter's night. Even if I passed I must have looked kind of silly clomping through the snow in my heels, stopping now and then to take selfies. But that's okay, I enjoyed myself, and that's what matters. (Only a crossdresser wears heels to go for a stroll, right?)

One of my roommates was home when I left. I'm sort of in a glass closet to my roommates: I haven't "officially" come out to them, but I make very little effort to hide who I am and I suspect they kind of know already. Nonetheless, I've decided I don't want them to see me as a girl until I've had a chance to explain why I crossdress and make sure they're comfortable with it. Thus, in order to get from my room to the outdoors I had to do a bit of sneaking. Just to be on the safe side, I left the house in my boy shoes, climbed into my car, put on my girl shoes in there, then got out and went for the walk. Kind of a silly extra step, but whatever.

I only really got nervous once. There was someone behind me and I wanted to stop to think about which way to go, but was afraid of them catching up to me. Instead I just kept walking. Overall the experience was very liberating: being out as my female self, doing something in the real world. The closet, even a glass one, gets pretty stuffy after a while.

A liberated woman! ♥

Not unusually for a winter in Alberta, it was a chilly -11° C out. The cold compelled me homeward sooner than I might have liked.

Two things have resulted from this little excursion. One is that I feel more confident and comfortable with myself. Before I always felt a twinge of embarrassment talking about my crossdressing with either of the males I'm out to. Today I brought it up casually in a conversation with one of them like it was no big deal. The other is that I've decided I need to buy some winter-appropriate feminine footwear: walking through snow in heels is kind of stupid and a little dangerous...

Anyways, let's hope this is the first of many such outings!

Facial hair and the power of kind words

Sometimes I let my facial hair grow out for a few days. I know it's really psychologically unhealthy to do so, but I'm lazy, and shaving sucks, and it can be a bit of a trigger too. (I recently made the impulse purchase of an epilator, hoping I'd be able to use use it on my face. The prospect of no shaving, no beard shadow, and three weeks of no re-growth seemed fantastic. I gave it a try, but it's just too damn painful. There's a lot of torture I'm willing to endure in order to look pretty, but even this t-girl's gotta draw the line somewhere!) It's always kind of surreal when I go to shave after a few days of not shaving. I'm inevitably struck by how good I look, as a guy, with a bit of stubble. As gross as it feels to say this, I make a very handsome boy, and I definitely look better stubbly than I do clean-shaven. What a pity I'm so uncomfortable looking like a guy...

Epilator? More like holyfuckilator...

Yesterday I was the recipient of some kind words (and possibly speculations?) about my femininity, from a cis girl. NL is a friend of one of my roommates, and she's started to become a friend of mine, too. She was over at our house for a visit when she caught sight of my hands and asked, "Did you do your nails?"
"Yep!" I responded, holding them out for her to look, "Aren't they pretty?"
"Wow, did you do them yourself?"
"Yep!"
"Really? Right and left hand?"
"Yep!"
She seemed pretty impressed. She made a comment about me being like a nail salon, and added, "You should do mine some time!"
I giggled at this suggestion. Then she asked, "Did you do your eyebrows, too?"
I grinned. "Yeah, I might have."
"Awww," she said, "You've just been, like, experimenting?"
I didn't really know what to say to this, and answered, slightly awkwardly, "Yeah, I guess so."
Then, before I knew it, the conversation had turned to something else.

It's such a small thing, she probably has no idea what a difference it made. But because of that little excahnge I felt a lot better about myself and my gender than I had in a while. Who would have known I had such a knack for nails? (Maybe she was just being nice?)

I haven't yet come out to three of my four roommates, (and yes, I live in a house of five people. And we share one bathroom. And I'm a crossdresser. It's pretty insane, actually). This conversation, ironically, took place in front of precisely those three. If they didn't suspect something before I'm sure they do now! In retrospect it was probably the perfect opportunity to tell them (and her), and I'm a little annoyed that I missed it. But, the fact that they all seemed unfazed by it gives me hope for acceptance when I do let them know. Which, all things considered, should probably happen sooner than later.