Yeah, I've borrowed a line from Grouch Marx, "I've been sleeping my insomnia off".....................mine is often caused by too much red wine ! & so it's self inflicted and I don't look for any sympathy whatsoever. With regard to "vast empty wasteland", I think that you're wrong, your big moment in life has arrived,, you've had the courage to do something about it, leapt over the first few hurdles, and now your wondering if it's any better than the previous you, have you wasted your time doing this, time was wasted anyway, well I had serious doubts too about my own transition. If you stop to think about it, you've spent most of your life as society has demanded of you as a male, if I have understood anything about you from your blog entries, you weren't ever happy with that state of affairs?. Well you won't be able to instantly delete those thoughts, because you've been mentally conditioned to them by society at large (fitting in with the rest of the flock? so think of most of society as sheep!). You just can't instantly be a new you, but just as teenagers grow up, one day your great as the new you and the next day not so great as the old you............. I have entered in my earlier blogs and comments to others that I also had serious doubts at times about my transition, I said that it was like the ebbing and flooding of the tide, and yes, when I had insomnia (not always caused by red wine!) that was when those thoughts used to haunt me, a lot of the time as "what the bloody hell do you think you're doing, you're a bloke for f**ks sake, why do you think it'll be any better as a woman?". Those thoughts were intense and very haunting, but as time passed by, they got less and less like the tide only happened every two or three weeks or so. Yes, when changing identity your mind is full of what you're doing and so it doesn't wander (or should I say wonder?) to the old thoughts. My advice is, to accept that you're doing the correct thing, see a therapist or cousellor, or whatever you do in the US, if that helps you to think it through, but anyway, the negative thoughts will eventually pass. I guess it's when your mind gets used to your new identity, and at that same time, you will find that you're just doing things unthinkingly as yourself. How can I illustrate that further? perhaps like this, I don't worry about passing, I don't think how would a woman do it, I don't think of myself as as female or male or gender neutral, I just think of myself as me - Eve. It has taken time to get this happy state of affairs. I've heard many trans folk talk lightly of going through adolescence, they shouild have been much more serious about the subject, it's a very real issue. I hope that these comments help you, during your adolescent period. Eve xoxo