Date: 2010-06-09 16:28 Security: Public Tags: big posts, futureme, self-reflection, transgender issues Subject: I was told to do this.

Someone I know is staring at me;
and when I look into her eyes,
I see the girl that I used to be;
I hardly recognise.
'cuz in the space of a year,
I've watched the old me disappear;
All of the things I once held precious
just don't mean anything, anymore,
'cuz suddenly...

You came, and changed the way I feel;
No one could love you more,
because you came and turned my life around;
No one could take your place.

-- Kim Wilde, "You Came"

I just got an email that I want to share with you. Although I haven't specifically asked the sender for permission (and I can no longer do so), and they never explicitly gave me permission, I think I'm allowed to do this.

You see, it's from myself in the past.

Happy birthday!

You're 28. That means it's been almost a year since you moved out. How are things?

You'll get another letter from me in a few years time. I sent that one to both this address and your GMail address.

I hope things are good for you. They're not particularly great for me, but, eh. C'est la vie. But you've got it much better off than I have. Be thankful.

And read http://sophie.dreamwidth.org/2688.html again. Laugh at how stupid I am, go on. Then make a post about it in your journal.

I look forward to reading it!

Love,

- Sophie. <3
June 24, 2009

I had forgotten I had written this email to myself using FutureMe. I kind of wish I could reply and tell myself all about what I've been through this past year. Of course, I can't, so I'll do the next best thing: doing what my past self asked me to do and reflecting on this past year, and on how things are now.

When I sent that email, I'd still have been with my parents. I knew the date when I would be moving out, but hadn't actually done so yet - that wouldn't be until August 10th. I was pretty terrified about the move, as you can see in the post that my past self linked to. (Which is access-only on DW: for those watching on LJ, the equivalent post is http://soph.livejournal.com/180794.html . If you don't have access to either and would like access let me know; I can't promise anything, but if you feel you should have access, you probably should.)

I started living full-time as female from the first day I moved (August 10th), although when I initially came up to the house, I was presenting male, IIRC. At that point I hadn't yet legally changed my name, making some things awkward. But I fixed that a month and a half later.

I'm not going to laugh at my former self, but I am going to take each of the points mentioned in the post she linked to and see how different things are now.

* I will be read. This is a given, no matter how female I look. (by 'read', I don't mean "read as the male person I am", because I'm not male; I mean "mistaken as male based on various gender markers")

Well, yes, I've been mistaken as male, and yes, it hurts when that happens. But recently I've been doing okay in that department. Take a look and judge for yourself (click to see a larger-sized image):



Okay, so I could probably do a bit better, but this is how I'm presenting most days and nobody has misgendered me for some time now. One thing I've learned, though, is that society as a whole fails when it comes to unconscious sexism. It seems that women are expected to show more flesh than men do. You may have noticed the low-cut neckline on the top I'm wearing, and the fact that only the bottom three buttons of my blouse are done up; it took some courage to get to the point where I was ready to do that, because I felt for sure that it would harm my look due to my Adam's apple, but ironically, it's helped instead. (Whether or not I *should* need to do this - or whether I'm being anti-feminist by doing so - isn't within the scope of this post, but I'd love to hear comments about it!)

* I will have to deal with my parents wanting me back for things like Christmas, whilst at the same time only being able to accept me pretending to be someone I'm not.

My parents - my Dad, at least, though Mum is trying - have been better about this than I expected back when I wrote the email. You may recall that things went better than I thought they would that Christmas, although of course I recently learned that my parents still struggle with some things (locked on DW - LJ post is here).

* It's not going to be a panacea. Far from it; yes, I will be happier with myself as a person, but I will suddenly have to deal with things I've never had to deal with before, ever.

This is true, and all of the points I originally mentioned for this apply to an extent. Financially it hasn't been nearly as much of an issue as I thought it would, because Nall has been doing most of the household finance stuff and keeping track of bills and so forth, which I'm eternally grateful for. Thank you so much for that, Nall. ♥

* The paperwork needed for this, including the tenancy agreement, makes my head spin; information overload, as it were. And I'm going to need to go through a lot of this sort of thing, especially when it comes to seeking the appropriate things for my gender dysphoria, like hormones.

There's been surprisingly little paperwork so far; most of it has been face-to-face meetings. Unfortunately, I also don't actually have hormones yet, and I was kind of hoping I would have at least had my first GIC appointment during this year away - but I haven't even had that. :( Next year, maybe?

* The tenancy agreement lasts for 12 months. This is probably a normal and expected amount of time. But I have no freaking idea where I'm going to be in 12 months. After the tenancy ends, what happens next? I don't like being in a situation where I don't know what's going to happen. Doing this means that I run risks, and I don't like risks, because they put me in a position where I'm not in control of the situation. This makes me feel very insecure, nervous, and anxious to know as soon as possible what will be coming so that I can prepare for it.

I'm glad that I managed to put this behind me, because it's been essential to do so. Though I have been feeling a miniature version of this recently as the August expiry comes up; I still don't have anybody to live with, and I may have to strike out on my own. That's not going to be pretty, although at least I'm better prepared for it now than I would have been a year ago.

* I will need to put a lot more care into my look and personal hygiene than I do currently, not just because of my being trans but also out of consideration for the people I'm living with. I can do this, but I might feel stressed that I'm not doing enough.

I have indeed been putting a lot more care into my look; it's kind of necessary to be able to pass. It's still not an everyday thing, but it's always at least every day that I go outside. I think I have a good routine worked out, but it takes a lot of time to carry out. :/

* My parents, I think, are of the belief that once I've moved out, they might be able to finally ignore the issues I'm struggling with. Of course, this isn't the case; if they're going to want to meet with me again, they're going to have to accept who I am first. [...] I will be living as a female full-time, and I will expect them to honour that and not to request that I pretend to be someone I'm not, and have never been.

To their credit, my parents did not ask this at Christmas. My Mum *did* ask me to do this recently (see the locked post linked above for details), but my Dad did say afterwards that he felt she had been unfair to ask that of me, and that he wouldn't have asked me to do that. Other than those two examples, though, I've had no face-to-face contact with my parents. (I do talk with them on the phone, however.)

I still don't want to live with my parents again, but things are definitely better than I thought they'd be.

* Both of the people I'll be living with are male. This means that I'm not really going to have someone who I can talk girly stuff with, which is a shame because I'd like some way to be able to do that, having had a distinct lack of being able to do so before now.

True... and also, one of them hasn't even been here most of the time. ;p I think Nall was a bit surprised when I recently said that I hadn't really been able to talk with anybody, because he thought he'd made himself available. But there's more to the equation... though I think maybe I'll talk about this some other time.

* Because of all the above, I am likely to be extremely emotional for a while after moving in, and will probably need quite a lot of comforting. This in turn is going to take up the resources of my friends who I'm living with, making it worse for them. Knowing that this is the case is likely to make me feel crappy because I'm taking up these resources.

This one didn't turn out quite the way I thought it would. What actually happened was going into a depression and starting to go on anti-depressants. And then I was mostly suffering on my own, though I had the Internet to use, of course.

And now onto the points for why I wanted to do this:

* Firstly, I don't really have much of a choice. Which is to say, I do; I can move, or I can stay with my parents, grow increasingly unhappy with myself and my parents, and probably end up trying to commit suicide.

I'm so glad I didn't stay with my parents. Being able to do this has been such a good thing for me; yes, it's tough, but I'm getting through it.

I do wonder what life is like for my parents now, though. For 27 years they had me under their roof, and now they've just spent a whole year without having me there. How have things changed? Maybe I should ask them the next time I speak to them on the phone.

* I share many interests with Nall and Corin, who I'll be living with. We're all very much into computers, while Nall and I share a liking of filk, and you can be sure that there will definitely be much filk-making.

I just realised that when I made that post I never explained what filk was for the people who didn't know. Essentially, imagine the sort of music you would get if you rounded up a bunch of self-described geeks, gave them musical instruments, and told them to make music. That's filk.

Filk music varies in a whole lot of ways. It's not just science fiction stuff, though there's a lot of that (one of my filk songbooks has an entire section devoted to Doctor Who songs...) It's not all even necessarily geeky stuff, but as filkers are almost all geeks anyway, much of it is.

Nall and I are both geeks (and so is Corin, actually, though I don't think he's much into filk), and we both love filk. And we did indeed play lots of filk, though that didn't happen so much later on. We did, however, go to two SWiGGLes together, and to a filk convention. (Well, more like the filk convention in the UK, heh.) We both have keyboards in our rooms and have both been known to play randomly and listen to each other playing. So I think this is probably a fair thing to say!

* Needless to say, Nall and Corin both accept me for who I am. This is so obvious given this post, but I need to include it anyway because it's such an important point.

Yep. No need to continue on this point. :D

* I believe they'll also do their best to support me in this, knowing both people in question.

I believe this is true, but by nature both tend to keep themselves to themselves, so the support has been mainly in the form of online support of the same sort that they would do anyway, being friends. But there have been some cases where there's been offline support, too.

* This whole thing is going to make me feel a lot more confident about myself. It's also going to give me the skills I need later in life that I haven't had before now.

Heck yes. Lately I've been gaining a lot of confidence in myself that I didn't have before. At the same time, I do still feel weak a lot. (I seriously cannot wait to start on hormones.)

I have indeed learned some new skills, and I'm better prepared now to live on my own than I would have been last year. That said, I'm still kinda panicky about the idea - about the location and the financial stuff in particular. We'll see how that goes.

* I'm not going to be living alone. In some ways this is bad because I'm a loner by nature, but mostly it's good, I think; part of that 'loner' nature is inevitably going to be because of my prior living conditions, and I do think that I would be lonely after a while of living on my own.

It has been good to have people around. But at the same time I have felt quite lonely a lot of the time. Living on my own, of course, is just going to make that worse. Not looking forward to that.

* ...the above point also means that I'm going to have the support I need to live. I don't expect them to do everything for me or anything, of course; far from it, I want to learn to do what I *can* do. But I'm going to have the living support I need.

Yes, I've had living support; more than I probably realise. (If it was just me, the kitchen would be an absolute tip, I suspect.) And I've been able to supplement that by talking to my CPN, which really helps.

* ...which also means that when I break down in tears - which I *will* - I know I'll always have people who aren't going to be afraid to give me a hug and emotional support.

I have at times asked for hugs and had them, but mostly on this point it's been the online support I mentioned earlier. Not that that's bad, but I'm the sort of person who, when she needs a hug, *really* needs a hug. Which is another downside to the thought of living alone.

I finished off the post I linked in the email by saying:

This move, in short, is going to be extremely stressful for me, and will be the cause of a lot of stress, anxiety and pain... but ultimately it's the right thing to do.

And indeed it was. A lot has changed in a year. In fact, when I realised that the song "You Came" by Kim Wilde fit perfectly into this situation, I just had to go add it to the start of this post. It describes things so well.

Now I've just got to keep rolling, and see where I end up next.

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