I'm still here (and I'm on spiro now!)

It's been a while since I updated this blog, but I'm still here and not dead. And also I'm taking androgen-blockers.

In the last week of August I finally got around to seeing a doctor about the fact that I'm trans. Ironically what actually compelled me to go to the clinic was a bad skin rash, but I figured since I'd be there anyways I should bring up my trans-ness. (This is in keeping with my uncanny ability to put off doing important things, like seeing a doctor, until I absolutely have to do them).

I went to a walk-in clinic because I don't have a regular practitioner. After checking my ID and healthcare card, the receptionist asked what the issue is.
"Uh, well, actually it's two things," I said. "The first is a skin rash..."
She made a note of that.
"And the second is that, uh, I'm transsexual and—"
She stopped me right there. "I'll just put down 'personal' for that, okay?"
"Uh... okay."

 Wow lady, way to make me feel weird.

Thankfully the doctor himself was a lot more professional about it. He asked me a few questions, but they were all ones that made sense— how long have you felt this way? have you been experiencing depression?— that sort of thing. He gave me a prescription for the androgen-blocker spironolactone, which I've been on since then, and a referral to a psychiatrist I'm supposed to see before I start HRT.

Spironolactone

He said the waiting list for the psych would likely be close to year (ugh) and that the current psychiatrist was retiring soon and someone else would be taking over his work, so I should be proactive about contacting their office. I figured I'd probably call them in the next couple of days.

And then the depression hit. Apparently one of the side-effects of spiro is that it can exacerbate depressive symptoms. Beginning a couple days after I took the first pill and lasting for a couple weeks I had possibly the worst depression I've ever experienced. Needless to say I did not call the psych's office during that time. That's also largely why I stopped blogging.

But I guess after a couple weeks my body just got used to the drug or something, because I gradually returned to my normal baseline emotional state, which is a much more mild and intermittent sort of depression that I can usually manage.

Now I just need to phone the psych's office and see if I can still get put on the waiting list even though my referral is for a guy who doesn't work there anymore. I'm not really sure how all that works.

Other than that there hasn't been much noteworthy stuff in my life in the last couple months, but things are, for the most part, going well. I got moved to the afternoon shift at work, and while it sucks not having my evenings free I've found I enjoy the actual work a lot more: the shop's almost empty so I don't have a bunch of bosses looking over my shoulder telling me what to do, I mostly get to just do my own thing. Last Sunday I had a really nice Thanksgiving dinner with my parents and brother and sister-in-law: my contribution was the apple pie, which actually turned out quite well (and only my second time making a pie from scratch too). Today I cleaned and tidied my house and bought some cut flowers for the vase on the table and now it feels all nice and homey for a change. And at some point in the near future I probably have a date with this girl I met online (we said we'd go out for coffee or something, but haven't set a place or time yet) so that's kind of exciting.

Altogether I feel like I kind of have a handle on this whole "life" thing. I suppose I should enjoy that while it lasts. :)

Nouvelles lunettes

As of Saturday I can finally see shit regardless of what gender I look like! That is to say, I got a new pair of glasses that don't make me look totally like a man, lol.

If you only know me through the internet you probably didn't even know I wear glasses. The fact is I actually wear them basically all the time, but with my old pair I always took them off for photos 'cause I really hated how they made my face look. I'd often take them off when I was presenting female, but carry them with me in case there was something I wanted to look at. It was annoying having to choose between not feeling ugly and being able to see properly.

Well, I shouldn't have that problem anymore, check it out:

I gotta be honest with you lot, I think I look pretty darn hot in those photos. :P

For comparison's sake, here's how I looked with the old pair:

Yeah... it's a big improvement. I'd had that last pair for three years: needless to say I was still trying to be a man when I bought them. (And they did look good on my face in a masculine way when that's how I was presenting myself).

Incidentally, I posted those first two photos on Facebook. It's funny 'cause I'm still not technically 100% out on FB, but I've obviously stopped giving a shit— I mean like my bra strap is showing for goodness sake. It'd be pretty hard to misread all those gender cues.

If I'm going to be that out on FB it brings up the question of why I haven't changed my name on there yet: my account is still under my birth name. I guess the main reason is that I still haven't told my parents that I go by Ashley, and I don't really want them to learn it from Facebook. It's kinda weird that I've been out to mom and dad for well over a year now and, as far as I know, they're still not aware I even have a girl name, let alone what it is. I definitely need to have that conversation with them and probably should have done it already. It just feels weird, like I'm rejecting something they gave me, and so I keep putting it off.

Anyways, that was Saturday. On Sunday afternoon I went to a friend's birthday get-together at a park. There were a few people there I was friends with, one person I'd only met a couple times, and then a whole bunch of people I'd never met before. I went as myself and it was the first time where I was meeting lots of new people and introducing myself as Ashley.

I wore a vaguely hippie-ish skirt and stuck a bow in my hair, which was fun. :)

This event confirmed something for me that I suspected would be the case: that while I am more comfortable around people as a girl than I was as a boy, I am definitely still pretty socially awkward. Sure enough, changing gender does not change me into a confident extrovert who loves meeting new people. I just went from awkward boy to slightly less awkward girl.

But I think that's actually a good thing. The point of transitioning isn't to become someone else, it's just to become yourself. If who I am is awkward and shy around new people, then maybe that's who I should be.

Coming out more (and female Tylers?)

Good news! I came out to a bunch of folks on Facebook recently, and it went very well. (Well actually, this happened like three weeks ago, I'm just really slow at blogging stuff apparently). I'm now out to most of the people I'd be likely to see on a typical day, except for at work. I'm also out to most of the friends I really care about. I wrote the following status update, changing the privacy settings so that only the ones I wanted to come out to could see it:

Hi friends! Okay, first of all, only a few people can see this post. Some of you I've specifically talked to about this, while others of you I'm not sure how much you may know or have guessed. But regardless, I wanted to put this out there so that we're all on the same page, and more importantly because I want you all to know me as the person I actually am. :)

So yeah, I'm transsexual. The very short description of what that means is that I'm actually a girl on the inside. I'm guessing that's probably not a huge surprise for most of you, but if it is, well, there you go. :P Anyways, I've started the process of changing my body to better match who I am. So far that just means getting electrolysis for my facial hair, but I do hope to be on female hormones some time in the not-too-distant future, and eventually living full time as a woman.

In the meantime I do intend to start presenting myself as female more often than I have been, simply because I find it profoundly distressing pretending to be a boy all the time. In light of that I do have a request to make from all of you. Within the transgender community I've been going by the name Ashley for the past couple years now, and it seems to have stuck. So, when I'm in girl mode, if you could try to call me by that name instead of my boy name, it would be seriously deeply appreciated. Likewise if you could use feminine pronouns (ie, "she" and "her") to refer to me instead of masculine ones, that'd really be super. (When I'm in boy mode you can use my old name and pronouns if you prefer, I don't really care that much).

Now, I know it's pretty weird to just change which name and pronouns you use for someone, so please take whatever time you need to get comfortable with it, and don't worry if you screw it up. If you're ever not sure what to say, just ask, I promise I won't be offended or anything.

And please, if you have any questions about trans stuff in general or about my own experience with it, feel free to ask. I know sometimes people have trouble understanding this stuff (even I did, and I've had to live with it my whole life), so I'm definitely willing to explain things in more detail if it'll help.

Making a transition of this sort is kind of a big deal in some ways, so I hope I can count on you all for support. :)
Peace

And the response has been very positive. One guy sent me a message saying he was checking to see if I could have kept my old name when he found this. It's the Urban Dictionary entry for Female Tyler, as in, a girl named Tyler. "Female Tylers are very rare and if you come across one you are a very lucky person," it reads. That and apparently they're also "extremely skilled in the sheets and so wild they'll make your head spin." Ha! That gave me a pretty good laugh. And to be honest, It actually made me feel a little better about my birth name. I've never liked the name Tyler, even before I knew I was trans. But just knowing that someone out there thinks it's a "cool" name for a girl, somehow that kinda helps. (I'm definitely still sticking with Ashley, though. My old name represents too much for me to not change it.)

Of course I also got all the more usual responses of "I'm so happy for you" and "I'm so proud of you" and "you're so brave," all of which were certainly appreciated. I do feel a liiiitle weird being called brave because I don't really think bravery is what drives someone to transition— often it's more like suicide prevention— but I think I knew what she was trying to get at so I accepted the compliment.

One friend commented on the post asking if she could call me Ash and I just about died with elation. A nickname based on my girl name? That's like the best thing ever!!! ^-^ It took a great deal of effort to respond with a calm "Yeah for sure! :)" instead of "Oh my gosh yes please call me that!! :D"

The best parts of all this are that I'm now getting to hear my real name outside of the internet, and that even when I'm presenting as a male there are a bunch of people who know that's not who I really am. Together that makes all the gender issues so much easier to deal with. I feel like, overall, I've been doing pretty good lately, but that doesn't mean the dysphoria isn't still an issue. Last Thursday I felt totally kicked in the gut by it and ended up spending basically the entire evening just lying in bed watching transition slideshow videos on Youtube. That was instead of going out to an event with friends, one of whom I haven't seen in a long time. So that was pretty shitty.

But that just means I need to keep moving forward. So let's see... I've been getting electrolysis for almost four months now, I'm currently in the process of socially transitioning... what's next? It's time to start thinking about hormones. It's time to talk to a doctor and get this girl some estradiol.

Teaching and sisterhood

This story starts off on kind of a sour note, but it has a good ending so figured I wanted to share it with you guys. Remember about a month ago when the whole internet was abuzz with Caitlyn Jenner and that magazine cover photo of her?

Oh God, there's Jenner everywhere!!

Yeah I'm glad that's over too. But anyways, right around the peak of that, a cousin of mine wrote a very unpleasant anti-trans rant about the whole thing on Facebook, stating among other things that "Bruce" would never be a "real lady." This particular cousin happens to be someone I generally like so I resisted the urge to simply comment "Fuck you, [name]" and unfriend her. Even so I figured I should still address it somehow.

By the time I got around to commenting, several others had called her out on it and she had already apologized for the tone of her post, if not exactly it's content. I responded the only way I really know how to respond to these sorts of things: by making a joke. "Well that's a shame," I wrote, "I'm sure when Jenner began this transition her fondest hope was that some random ass person on the internet would think she was a reel wummin."

After that I made a few brief comments addressing some specific things that had come up in the massive thread which had by then been spawned. I didn't explicitly say I was trans but I did use the word we to refer to trans community so it couldn't have been too hard to figure out. And then I left the thread, because it's not my job to educate people and I had more important things to do with my time than write an essay on why trans identities are legitimate.

But then something interesting happened: my brother started commenting on the post. Now you need to understand, Carson almost never does anything on Facebook. The most recent item on his wall is from... *checks* ... January of 2014. So it was pretty unusual.

His first comments seemed to be more along the lines of "Being a decent person and respecting someone's pronouns is more important than whether someone's really a man or woman." (Which is nice but like, I dunno, maybe a little patronizing??) Carson's always been totally supportive of me and has always accepted the fact that trans-ness is a thing, but I feel like up until this happened he'd never really made a huge effort to actually understand it. But now he was trying to explain it to someone, and he needed to know what he was talking about, so he started texting me questions. And I did my best to answer them.

He and I ended up having a long texting conversation over the course of a couple days, going over a lot of the details of what being trans is and why it makes sense to consider trans people as the genders they say they are rather then what they were assigned at birth. I think he gained a much better understanding of the whole thing, and this understanding was reflected in his continuing comments on the ever-growing Facebook thread. He ended up quoting one of my texts (saying it was from "an actual transwoman" he knew), as well as linking to this academic paper which I'd sent him.

And he got through to her.

The next day there was a PM in my Facebook inbox from the cousin who'd started the whole thing in first place. I won't quote all of it, but to condense it somewhat, she wrote:

I feel I owe you an incredibley earnest apology. I spoke from my emotions when I posted that status and didn't give it nearly enough thought with respect to how it would come across and how it would disrespect you and many others. [...] When I realized just how much my comments had the potential to hurt, I felt, and still feel, so wretched. You are so gracious to even respond, honestly. [...] I would love to hear your thoughts on this stuff. To hear it from someone who lives it is really, I think, would give a clearer picture to someone like myself.

That's nice, eh? I thanked her and accepted the apology, (while being careful not to downplay how hurtful the original post had been). She specifically mentioned in her apology that Carson's replies had helped her understand things better. I think it's really cool how I had the opportunity to teach my bro and he in turn was able to teach our cousin, not to mention anyone else who may have been following the thread. It was also nice for me to not be the one on the front lines, so to speak.

But the perhaps the best part of the whole thing, as far as I'm concerned, is that during the course of Carson asking me questions, this happened:

(And yes, I took this photo with my camera 'cause I couldn't figure out how to just take a screenshot with my phone. Don't judge me.)

I've been thinking for some time now that at some point I would have to address with him the issue of whether I was his brother or his sister. I was kind of hoping it would just come up naturally, and it did! Definitely glad about that. :)

Pride!!

Guess who attended the Pride parade with her friends last Saturday? Me!

And I mean the actual me, not the boy I pretend to be sometimes. That's kind of a big deal: this was the first time I've gone out and done something fun with my friends while presenting myself as a woman.

I had been quite certain for some time before that I was going to this thing and that I was going as myself. Of all places, being at Pride in the wrong gender would be absolutely heartbreaking. I just wasn't sure if I'd be able to find anyone to go with, but as it approached some friends of mine sounded interested and we made plans to meet there.

The night before I painted my nails in the colours of the transgender pride flag. I actually had to look up on the internet what order the colours go in, lol.

Represent!

Then Saturday morning I woke up and set about choosing an outfit. Part of me wanted to wear something a little slutty, since, you know, the whole "I never got the chance to be a teenager" thing that trans women always say, and Pride's the kind of place where that wouldn't be inappropriate. But since this was going to be the first time some of my friends would be seeing me as a girl, and since I wanted that to seem reasonably normal to them, I opted for a more ordinary outfit: a long brown skirt, a stripey purple top layered over a brown camisole, and my cute black flats. Once I got there part of me wished I had dressed a little more queerly, but I'm sure there will be other opportunities for that.

The parade route was only two blocks from my house. I walked there and, with a bit of texting back and forth, managed to find my friends. I was meeting four people there: only one of them had I had a proper coming out talk with (and that was back when I still identified as a crossdresser), another one I was confident knew I dressed as a girl sometimes but we'd never specifically discussed it, the other two I didn't know how much they knew or guessed. But when I got there, no one even batted an eye at my presentation, like it was so normal it wasn't even worth mentioning. Which was the best possible response, as far as I'm concerned.

I may not be "officially" out to very many people, but I make basically no effort to keep my identity a secret, so I guess it wasn't much of a surprise. Plus, my friends are all pretty open-minded to begin with. I am so grateful to live in a time and place where I can just be myself without necessarily having to worry about all the logistics of coming out beforehand. As great as that is though, I still hope to come out to these folks pretty soon: they've seen me dressed as a girl, they may as well know I identify as one too. I'm sure they won't be surprised then, either.

The parade itself was pretty cool, although I didn't manage to get any good photos. The Society of Edmonton Atheists had a giant Flying Spaghetti Monster and signs that read "Smile, there is no hell!" It got pretty quiet when they went by so, being the non-believer that I am, I made sure to cheer extra loud. (Of course atheism has nothing specifically to do with Pride, but neither do any of the many churches and other religious groups that were also represented, so I think it was okay).

After the parade the whole festival moved to a nearby park where they had like entertainers and food vendors and all that stuff. We walked there and got some lunch. Wearing layers and a long heavy skirt turned out to be a bad idea: it got up to 27°C (81°F) and I was sweating like crazy. But it was still a lot of fun hanging out there.

The un-cropped version of that photo is the five of us sitting at a picnic table— (I don't want to tell everyone about this blog just yet, so I had no way to ask if I could put their faces on it). The next day I kept going back and looking at it almost in amazement, like Wow, that's actually me, just hanging out with people like it's no big deal.

Afterwards three of us walked back to my house (well okay, one of those guys is my roommate, so his house too) and watched the soccer match between Canada and China, which was actually taking place right here in Edmonton, which seems crazy to me, but whatever. By that point the clothes I'd worn had become pretty uncomfortable, what with the heat and the fact that my push-up bra was digging into my sternum— (it works fine when I wear actual breast forms, but because those would've shown over my neckline I'd settled for balled-up socks this time)— so I changed into a lighter skirt and t-shirt and a more comfortable bra. Had a couple beers, grilled some veggie hotdogs, enjoyed the beautiful weather...

Later in the evening we met back up with the other two people we'd been at the parade with, plus two friends of theirs I hadn't met before, and we ended up all going out to a bar and dancing. Here's the thing though: by then it was late, I hadn't shaved since the morning, and that fact was becoming pretty obvious. I really didn't want to go as a beardy girl, so I had to make a quick decision between switching to boy mode and going with them or spending however much time it would take to shave and redo my makeup and then meeting everyone else there. I wasn't even sure where we were going, so I chose the first option.

And like, dancing's still fun, even in the wrong gender, but I felt weird about it. You see, there was this girl I met there, and I danced with her for a good chunk of the evening. After a few songs she and I were dancing together in a manner that was, like, fairly sexualized. And on the one hand, it's a positive thing that I'm finally starting to feel comfortable expressing my sexuality: between my gender stuff and the conservative Christianity I practiced for so long, I've had a shit ton of issues to deal with to get to the point where I can do something like that; (granted, I've still never actually had sex with anyone, but I'll get there eventually). But afterwards I realized: she obviously thought I was a boy 'cause that's how I was presenting, she's most likely straight, and she probably would not have been into that at all if she'd known I was actually a girl. Ick. It made me feel really gross, like I'd deceived her.

I don't want to do that again. What I do want now is to go out dancing as a girl, and preferably at a queer venue where I can meet queer girls. That's like, on my list of things to do now.

Still, in spite of that little hiccup at the end there, overall it was a fantastic day. Definitely can't wait until I get to just be me all the time. :D

Ears

Oh dear, I've sort of been neglecting this blog lately, but I've got a bunch of different things I want to write about so hopefully I'll be getting back into it.

Let's start with my ears— specifically that I got them pierced last weekend! That's something I've been meaning to do for ages and only just now finally got around to, and I'm very happy with how they look. :)

Ta-da!

The actual piercing didn't really hurt much, but at the end of day, once I'd kind of forgotten about the new bits of metal in my head, I carelessly took my shirt off and was like OHGODWHY...

I guess pierced ears aren't really a gender thing per se: lots of boys have them and lots of girls don't, and even before I began questioning my gender I'd considered getting it done. But they do give me the option of sticking feminine jewelry in there, which is just one more cue I can use to help people read my gender correctly, so that's nice.

On an unrelated note, I just finished reading Nevada by Imogen Binnie and I absolutely loved it. Like seriously, if you want to read a novel with realistic, complicated trans characters, you should check this book out.

A new old friend

Tara was a friend of mine back when I was in high school; (not her real name, by the way). She and I were never especially close to each other back then, though we were probably as close as we could have been. I kept a certain amount of emotional distance between myself and everyone else in those days: this was partly intentional and partly it just sort of happened. I think it may have been similar for her. We were part of the same friend group so we hung out a lot at school, but I can count on one hand the number of times we spent time together outside of school. By the end of grade 12 we'd mostly drifted apart. Facebook didn't exist back then so we lost touch after graduating, and I moved away from my hometown a year later.

In the time since then I would think about her on occasion, about how interesting and different she'd been, and how I'd never really gotten to know her. Back in February, sort of on a whim, I found her on Facebook and sent a friend request. We literally hadn't seen or heard from each other since our class' graduation ceremony in 2005, but she accepted it and we started catching up. We've been communicating fairly regularly since then and we've become good friends: definitely better friends than we ever were back then. We stayed up till 4 in the morning (only 3 am in her timezone) recently talking about a girl she has a crush on, among other things. So yeah, she's a new old friend.

Perhaps part of what's made it so easy to connect this time around is the discovery of what we have in common, (and I don't mean our mutual interest in Japanese culture). The thing is, when I knew her in high school, Tara was living as a boy. She only started transitioning last year. Imagine that: we were once two closeted teenage trans girls, eating lunch together nearly every day, struggling with the same unspeakable thing, completely unable to reach out and help each other. That's denial for you.

This was me in grade 10. Holy Jesus.

This is now the second time that someone I know from a non-LGBTQ context has started transitioning. (The first time I wrote about here). It makes me think that when people say they don't know any trans people, they probably just aren't paying attention. Which, I suppose, is just fine.