Monday morning, first thing, I had an appointment with a GP. Not my GP but one at my practice. She was lovely. She was also not 100% surprised when I told her I was trans and that I wanted her to refer me to a GIC. She said that I was the third person in the past couple of months who had approached her about the same thing.

There's more of us around, these days, it seems... Personally, I think it's just people like me, getting braver or at least less scared to poke their head above the parapet.

The doc then went on to suggest that "Gender Services" in my area (those were her words, not mine) are really poor (I knew that already, of course, having done some research) and that it would take a while to get an appointment with gender identity specialists, but, in the meantime she would do two things. Firstly, she would get me an appointment with a psychologist, asap. I kind of expected that, although I'm not too thrilled about the thought of analysing my life with a stranger, only to have to do it all again when I do get to sit in front of a gender specialist. Secondly, the doc said she would call a meeting with all the other docs in the practice and work on a strategy for trans people who approach them in future, because she knows these docs are not being as useful as they should be right now. She wants to get all the GPs together to agree to a unified approach and get them all up to speed on what's available, what they should be doing, providing, etc. Which can't be a bad thing. So, although I'm still no better off, the fact that I turned up on Monday and she knew she couldn't help immediately means she has been spurred on to do something about it. Hopefully that will happen. I'm gonna make another appointment to see her in a couple of weeks.

Monday night, I attended my first FtM group meeting at the local LGBT centre. There were around eighteen of us, and when the guy who was running it asked, "Who's new tonight?" around half of us stuck our hands up. So I didn't feel out of place on that front. I did feel out of place on the age front - they were all so much younger than me. But I was pretty pleased about that, in a funny way. Because, when I thought about it, that meant they had most of their lives ahead of them to live in the way they were supposed to live - as men. Me? I've lived over half my life already. Faking it as a woman. 

It was a really good evening. Everyone was so nice and friendly. I'm going to make it a regular thing. They also have social evenings where significant others can join. My husband's looking forward to that.

Work was crazily busy this week. Again. For two solid weeks, I've hardly had time to breathe. I've been falling asleep in front of the TV at night. But I feel more relaxed, even with the pressure of the workload. I'm sleeping better than I have in ages.

The "coming out" call at work (the one I did last week) was recorded at the time, and this week the LGBT network sent out the replay details to everyone, so I've had a few more emails, messages and phone calls about it. All very positive and encouraging, which was nice. They're going to run a follow up call in early December and they've invited external speakers from Stonewall and GIRES as well as other helpful bodies who can provide advice. I've been invited to take part again; they want to run a Q&A session. Goodness only knows what kind of questions I'll be asked. Hopefully only polite ones.

Since I started to come out more and more, I've had a couple of awkward questions. Well, frankly, rude questions. One person asked me how I have sex.  I told them it was none of their business. Another asked me how big my d**k is. For a moment, I was tempted to ask, "Which one?" Just to confuse them. In the end, I settled for, "It'll never be as big as yours, because you're just one huge d**k, aren't you?"

I know, I know. I need to get myself in check. I'm sure I'll be asked worse things than that before all this is over.