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I was on Facebook tonight where I mentioned taking my new laptop to California with me. I have about 146 friends where about 8 know what's going on. Well my brother's old girlfriend from back from a few years after graduating from High School back in Pennsylvania saw my post and said "we should hook up". So I wrote her a private message explaining what was going on, she still wants to meet Those were interesting times back then, she was dating my brother and I was dating her best friend. We spent many nights together with close smoking buddies at her house were her parents were fine with that. I would classify her as a hippy at heart and still that way from what I can tell, married with children living in San Francisco which as fate has it is where I will be for surgery. My 92 year old mother and her still exchange Christmas cards every year.

Very Interesting."Another misconception is that the defining part of being transgender is having surgery, as if a trans person isn’t really trans until they’ve gone under the knife and come out the other side fully “transgendered.”" http://time.com/3630965/transgender-transgendered/

What a great article. Thank you for posting it! Emma

To different photo I found while was looking for wallpaper for my cell phone. So I merge them together.

For many years, I experimented with tucking my privates with many failures and success. Once I found a great gaff the company decided to change it and did not work for me anymore so I used the few I had until they fell apart and just as the last one was done for I found a replacement that I stumbled upon and have been using for the past 15 years. My requirements were simple using the following situation. Be able to go use the toilet, stand up and tuck in less than a minute and remained firmly in place so not be reveal privates even with leggings. The method was rather simple, purchase a normal gaff and boy shorts from Spanx. Tuck, pull up the gaff into position then pull up the boy shorts, done. Now the reason for writing about this is because I was looking for my car title which I need to update within 30 days of my name change and have not seen it since 2009 when I paid the car off. So while looking for the title I found a forgotten supply of old gaffs (God only knows why I kept them) in a footlocker on the bottom and low and behold the title was on the top woohoo. So I now have a trash can filled with gaffs ready to be toss soon as I am finished here. Any ways I am happy that in just under 6 weeks NO MORE tucking.

Received my second letter for surgery requirements and a letter to assist with changing my gender on my driver licence. The letter for my driver licence is critical in tangent with my legal name change documents so I can book flights to and from California so I can purchase tickets shortly that match my name change and soon to be new gender. After this I visited with a close friend who gave me an early Christmas present of 5 tube and two large bottles of KY Jelly for dilation after surgery. With these and the ones I already have I should be good for at least two months.

There were a few things that stood out to me this week. First, on Tuesday around 5:30pm I descended into a anxious panic attack. It was after finding out that I would not be able to go to my support group. It made me question why I was alive. It was fleeting for just a few minutes, but impactful. I told my therapist and she was concerned. She thought that I may need medication, however I told her that I need to "feel" this. In the past, I've always tried to minimize my feelings about being transgendered or being in the wrong body. This has helped me avoid the problem and allowed me to create barriers to expressing myself. I did end up going to a 2nd Friday support group. It went well. I felt like I got more out of therapy and the support group the second time that I went. It was less about being the first time to working on stuff. I did go out between my therapy appointment and my support group. I was able to grab something to eat dressed. These days, I feel like I should be female more and more. And it is starting to feel like it is a matter of time for me. That in a few months I will start to transition in stealth and transition full-time in one to two years. Time will tell. However, I constantly feel weird not presenting female more and more. -Lisa

"So I caught myself talking to myself in the bathroom again the other day, and forced myself to stop. So now I'm gonna be all self-conscious about this and everything... curse you, Warren!! " --Sara :lol:

Congrats, Warren, on giving up the cutting. I'm sorry to hear about your boyfriend, though. Based on your previous writings, I know that's probably not where you wanted things to end up. I've never watched Rocky, but yeah, that's a pretty good quote.

So I caught myself talking to myself in the bathroom again the other day, and forced myself to stop. So now I'm gonna be all self-conscious about this and everything... curse you, Warren!! :lol:

It’s become clear to me recently that being transgender has been like living in a carefully constructed and maintained house of cards. Designed to protect me from discovery of my secret, my house has many rooms and no windows. Rooms are labeled with names like “How I’m supposed to be with people at work,” and “How I’m supposed to be with my wife,” and “How I’m supposed to be with friends.” Like any house of cards it’s prone to sudden collapse and needs continuous monitoring to detect any slippage before it crashes down. I’ve even had a house of cards with my therapists even as I knew that I needed to be fully transparent to help them help me out of depression, anxiety, and dysphoria. With my shame I was unable to do so and thought that my feelings could be treated separately without their (and my) full understanding of my psyche. I now know I was wrong, which led me to spending a lot of time and money, relationship problems, and stifled career progression for the past 40 years. Important safety tip: don’t follow in my footsteps if you can avoid it. It might help to provide a summary of the effects of living in my house of cards: Marriage - I was often hyper-sensitive to anything I interpreted as criticism, leading to my needing reassurance that I am okay. - Reduced sex drive due to my not being more true to my self as well as over-thinking innocent requests like, “Touch me here, this way.” - Anger and frustration when she came up with what I interpreted as more rules for me to live by, like being advised to not wave my hands when talking (looks effeminate, go figure), be sure to keep the washing machine’s lid raised when not in use to prevent odor, shake out washed clothes before putting them in the dryer. Oh great, more cards to add to my already-teetering house. - “I’m so tired” as my common phrase at most hours of the day. Who could blame me? Keeping my house from falling while doing my job or anything else with others is exhausting. Children - Always good at shaking the house, challenging the status quo, not listening or following through… and me, paranoid about being found out. I was so uptight, trying to control and direct instead of providing them with the warm comfort they expected. (My wife assures me I wasn’t that bad and was actually a good father. She's biased of course.) - Thank goodness I had two sons. I can’t imagine how tough it would have been for me (and them) if I’d had daughters. Career - Often unhappy and unfulfilled, threatened by senior management due to doubts I was really one of the boys. Trying to act the part, mostly succeeding, but at a huge cost to me. - Despite my competence, I communicated - more often than I should have - insecurity, fear, need of reassurance: not a promotion path. - Always the one who first thought of customer’s feelings over pragmatic business realities, leading to a fair amount of raised eyebrows. - Changed jobs a lot trying to find the “right one.” Do I still live in my house of cards? To some extent, yes, although many of the cards have been removed recently by my coming out to my wife and therapist. What a huge relief! But it still has to be maintained while I consider where/when/if I come out to others. At least, though, I finally have awareness that my house isn’t as unstable as I’d thought and for that matter I care a bit less about it these days. I still have an in-law apartment above the garage which I maintain to keep track of what I have not yet confided to my wife. I’m having trouble, for example, telling her that I am and will be buying more clothes and accessories, that I need to store and care for them, and that I’ll be getting some coaching on all this from TG community resources. Emma

“You are just uncomfortable with your body.” She said as if her words could solve all my problems. As if my dysfunctions could be solved by her petty words of wisdom. “You’re going be in that body for the rest of your life, lady. You have to learn to love it girl.” She says. As if my imagined self-loathing could be cured by a campy nineties feel good seminar created by femi-nazis to create militaristic men hating clones. Like a lobbyist levying her private greed as my public need she says, “Who would want to be a boy anyway?” Her tone is condescending and cold, she’s a killer queen. She knows all without doubt. Men are miscreants. Boys are bothersome. Transgendered people got too confused playing dress up. “But, I am not a girl.” I interject. My voice is small, meek, more of a grumble in gravelly whisper than an actual voice. “Well, you certainly aren’t a boy.” Like she knows me better than I know myself. Like she’s the world’s foremost expert on Gender. As if she knows all future advances in medical science. As if she knows everything. Her words echo across my mind and against every grain in my body like sand paper on glass. “How do you know?” I say louder. I’m confident now and angry. “Oh I know.” With a haughty confidence. She is stubborn arrogance that knows no bounds. She is society, and I am just a confused silly little man.