Briannah

I see you, with all your strengths and flaws, and I understand, and I am so glad you are my friend.  *Hugs*

HEhe...Bree and her ulterior motives!    Hair be gone! 

Seriously, I hate Sweetest Day.  First of all, ti's in the cold weather again.  If we need big cultural romance holidays, can't we do them in the summer when there are so many romantic choices to do?  Snorkeling, caving, picnicing, lounging in the pool or poolside, camping, grilling out under the stars, whatever.   And when I first moved here I literally thought it was Swedish Day so I made Swedish Meatballs since everyone was asking me what I was going to do for my boyfriend at the time and I really didn't understand why I was expected to participate since Swedish was not part of my cultural or genetic makeup and I know very little about Sweden other than it's pretty in the pictures.  And everyone laughed so hard at me.  Grr.  You're fabulous about making sure I can completely ignore that stupid fake holiday and I"m grateful for it. 

And um...let's be real, I had the ultimate Valentine's day that will be THE memory for that holiday for my entire life, what more can you really do for me?

Thank you so much both of you!  It's so confusing in some ways, and being attention deficit disorder, confusion is a strange thing for me.  I have trouble with it.  IN one sense I'm always slightly confused because I think differently in day to day decisions than people without the disorder and that ignites the stress component, similar I think to something trangender people feel when they realize they are out of step with themselves.  Mine is external, but disorienting to me.  My values aren't touched, but that creates a weird thing with me that big things are easier to handle in general and trying to decide what i want to eat for lunch is nearly a paralyzing issue that I face every day with Nikki as I'm an unfortunately picky eater who failed to overcome that and he just wants me to tell him what I want to eat and I can't.  But conversely, I have spend so much of my life trying to avoid external confusion that it's hard to sort through so much of this and really understand as much as I'd like to and have to let time take it's course.  Now the little paralytic decisions that i usually try to ignore to not make myself nuts have to be looked over and sorted out.

And realizing I can't ask him to figure out and control his depression and learn to understand his disphoria and how ti's going to affect our lives if I'm not dealing with my dismophia and how it's affecting our lives, so I'm trying to work through both identifying his new (to me) needs and who he is and how to meet them, and also what mine really are under the dismorphia and what i need from him and how to balance the two disorders so that everyone is getting healthier. 

I truly believe I make this as much more complicated as i make it easier for him.  LOL

Steph, I think you are giving me WAY more credit than i deserve.    I've been somewhat helpful to him in the arenas I'm good at, hair care, skin care(oh, I can never moan about my stupid skin's ability to flip out on me without warning enough), female hair removal for consideration(I'm SUPER excited, I've had him try a variety of things and last night's attempt he really seemed to like, GO VENUS RAZORS! I got it right!), emotional care, but I'm crap with dressing.  In fact, I sorta turned mine over to NIkki.  *hangs head in shame*  I suck that bad at it.  One of our conversations was prompted by my reading through forums and running into a 'I hate when cis girls waste having what I want so bad' threads, that sent me into a tailspin of omg I'm totally not the right kind of female for Nikki and he resents me and whatever that 'trying' is people say I"m not doing must be a real thing and he had to calm me down from that.    I'm one of those quit shaving years ago no makeup I just wanna be comfy types of girls, I fess up.  Shopping pokes my dismorphia hard, and the minute I open up a store online or walk into one I immediately just want to get the bare minimum I need because my brain tells me nothing I do will make me look appealing and just grab and get out of here RIGHT NOW.  I'm working hard on that, and asking Nikki to take over and shop with me both so that I can 'shadow' for him (I hate that beard term!) and so he can guide me and give objective appearance improvement.  Since I have no self-judgement in this arena, turning to Nikki and actually wearing the 'look at me' clothes he likes instead of trying to be invisible is a huge break through for me.

I do rock a wicked understanding of tights thought apparently.  And I'm pushing past my natural comfort zones, I will NEVER ask Nikki to face his and not do the same for him.  Now this rower better do something about the awkward shape of my thighs as I slowly shrink so I can wear thigh highs like his, he expressed a desire to see that.  I have a really weird body shape that nothing clothing wise works exactly like it's supposed to, and it's garter belts or thigh highs around my ankles and I fall on my face for me.  They stay on him!  He has better legs.

LOL  Nikki told me I act like a turtle for so long I have literally started to think of myself as one and went with it. : )  And of course, it doesn't hurt that there is literally an entire islands worth of turtle collectiables all over the house any time I need votes on things.  *winks*

Depends on what your area does to you for spring.  We get blizzards in April and occasionally May becuase Ohio is a bizarre state. 

That dress looks amazing on you!  I am completely blown away by how pretty.  *Hugs*  I love the black tights going with it too.

Yeah, I'm trying to learn to express my thoughts without losing people while respecting Nikki's need for privacy in this.  I'm SO not good at cloak and dagger, if I got sucked into one of those dumb movies where I had to do spy stuff to save the world for no apparent reason, ya'll would need to make peace with whatever you feelings on the afterlife or end of existence and at least hope I messed it all up fast cuz there won't be a nifty deus ex machina last minute fix my poor skills magic movie moment!    M is closer to me, and L is closer to Nikki, but both are friends to us both.  Just personalities fit better to one or the other. It's actually a part of a bigger group of about 20 people, but Nikki gave me a list of five that he's comfortable knowing, so it's J, M, L, N, and C in my lexicon.  which is going to mess ME up becuase C's nickname I use starts with an N.  LOL

Now we're lounging eating V-day Candy.  Nikki gave me a Twix bar.  I love Twix bars.

Okay, it was worth seeing, Colossus was awesome.  I love Colossus.  Nikki enjoyed it, score!

I am completely l learning about things I suppressed in opening these boxes with Nikki.  I am totally becoming a better Bree because I have grown so much since my past.  Sometimes I have articulation problems. When I say I earned my shames, that is acceptance, and growth from it.  My natural tendency is to hide it all and present a shiny Bree that isn't real.  I worked hard to overcome it.  But I don't wallow in it either.  I don't usually think about these things, but it's all connected orginacally in my head as I"m learning to navigate and love the new.  Nikki's new life experiences (new to me, as in first time they are being shared with me, not new to him, I understand this) touches pieces of my life I never exampled

A while back we were in our living room chilling out on a winters day enjoying being wrapped in furry microblankets and warm.  I think it was a weekend, so total relaxation mode was kicked in.  I was surfing the web, I think Nikki was embroiled in a movie while he tinkered with some 3d art.  I opened my Facebook, and freaked the fuck out entirely.  My ex-husband was trying to friend me.  Which, on it's surface, all the normal emotions of someone who hit you and threatened bodily harm and to steal your child suddenly intruding in your life was there, but something was off.  I couldn't define it, something was wrong with my reaction to it.  Working with Nikki made me understand it.  Just as the relationship with him has altered my relationship  with sex, it has altered my relationships with a lot of thigns, including what I carry actively around in my head.  I had let a lot of it go and never known it.  I stopped thinking about being hit every time I disagreed with him.  I learned relationships can be safe.  I never unlearned they can hurt you badly, but I learned you can be totally safe in them too.  And that is what I was acting on for two decades.  I had subconsciouly packed away the past because I didn't need it to function anymore.  And it wasn't until now when we're talking, and we do a one says something, and the other tells them what they hear that I even realized this.  And that's what was off about him intruding and my feelings.  I was spiraling of course, but the comfort wasn't working because I wasn't working on the right fear.  I stopped being scared of him a long time ago.  I had taken the time to learn how to kill a man with nothing but my fingers through his eyes if I ever needed to.  I understand even as a weaker person I have chances to defend myself.  I'd worked through all that.  but I had a deep seated fear of dragging all that baggage back into my life after I conquered it, and that was what I needed to address.  Nikki and I both were tryign to address what we logically thought was a fear of the person himself.  But i was actually scared of me destroying everything I worked for. 

I am becoming the best Bree there is, the one I used to wish I could be.  I take both your advice seriously to heart, and doing my very best to keep shining. 

Nikki knows the story, and I"ll tell here.  I came here to talk and interact and expand my humanity, I have no need to do my weird protective behaviors anymore.  At the end, when he realized he was losing his grip on me despite the violence and threats to bodily harm people and steal the offspring, I was slipping away, losing my fear, and neither of us was going to change that.  So he tried a new route, and swallowed ALL of my mom's medications.  He timed it so I would be arriving home shortly after.  I was out alone, my mother and my son were also out together.  As expected, I arrived home, and he told me what he did.  With the whole manipulation hoopla of I can't live without you.  But the actual effect on me was not what he was trying to achieve.  For the first time in my life, years of social training, and deliberate nurturing of the empathy skills I"d learned....stopped.  I looked at him on the floor, and thought about what I had looked like bleeding on the floor.  I thought about how I'd looked on the floor after he threatened to hurt people and showed me a gun.  I thought about the fact that the only thing I had touched in that bathroom (it was my mom's that I rarely used, I used my own in the back of the apartment) was the door handle.  I knew for fact I'd never handled any of the medication.  And I backed out of the room, I never even said a word.  And I closed the door, and I went into the living room and I turned on the television.  I knew i had just decided that if he lived or died, it had nothing to do with me.  I was not going to save him.  I would not stop him if he came out to phone to save himself, but I wasn't going to save him.  Until that day I had no idea I would back away from a person like that.  I had interrupted suicides before, and done everything I could to save them.  Teenagehood is hard, I suspect you all know how hard better than me.  Back then I didn't understand why anyone would want to die.  But he took those pills himself, and I wasn't going to do it for him.  The only reason I picked up the phone and made the 911 call is my mom arrived with my son, and I had to save my son.  Even though it mean nearly getting killed later, I made the right choice for the right reason, that wasn't something I wanted to scar my baby, being in the house with his dying father.  And I hated myself for it for a long time until I faced it and worked through it.  I was scared of myself.  It made me question my ability to be a mother if I didn't value all life like I thought I did.

That is the flat unvarnished truth.  There is shame in that that for a moment, I put aside all my hard work.  Not shame because society would tell me that was a horrible thing to do, but because it went against what <b>I</b> believe.  What I'd worked for.  And taught me that if I had a potential to be dangerous, and I took that seriously and worked hard.  SOme lines, even if you do change your mind at the end, are just dangerous to cross. 

But through my life i learned facing these lines, sharing them with people who want to know me, reinforces what I want to be.  Which is better than that.  I can't undo that moment, I don't know what I would do put back in it.  I am not that person anymore.  I can't even really emotionally connect with the memory of why i made what choices anymore.  But I can use that memory to always remind myself that being awesome Bree isn't free, and I have to be careful with the things in my head because if I'm not things could go really wrong.  I could harm someone, probably not physically, I don't have a sadism part to my personality, but by a careless word or thoughtless action that I am prone to.  So I was really careful and took that time to self-sort because I love Nikki so much I don't ever want to be that unshiny with him.   He has never done anything but love me even when he made choices that weren't what I preferred. 

But it also makes me hard to know how shame works in him.  He didn't ask for that creature to do that to him.  So I have to remind myself emotion is not the same.  Shame for me is a completely different place than for him.  Conceptually and practically.  His instinct was to hide it, mine was to tell him and get forgiveness and confirmation that I did improve, get better, and earned my self-value.  It's only real if you earn it.  SO I have to poke at things to figure out when I'm projecting my life understanding trying to follow what he tells me or not, does that make any sense?

Emma, I think being older when I landed physically in harms way helped so much in being able to tell people what asshat husband was doing to me at the time.  I sorta had to learn the hard way, trying to sort between Grandpa's healthy teaches and messages and my parents really unhealthy ones, and I let myself into a really dangerous situation.  But being an adult, albeit a very young one at the ages of 19 to 21, I had some sort of ability to separate what was being done to me from deserving it.  I don't know where that goes for either of them, being children at the time who so often internalize the blame for everything.  How do you stop carrying that inside?  I don't know.  Maybe it's impossible, but I believe Nikki can learn to come out of his pain past it, because he's so amazing. I just think it will be a long slow process.

Listening to them tonight really makes me wonder what I would have turned into if I hadn't had my normal relatives to counteract the really bad ones.  How would that interact with my sociopathic leanings, which never developed into a full blown lack of feeling/empathy because Grandpa worked so hard to connect me to the world and life and the value of others?  Where would I be today?  I don't think I would have done as well as they did.  I gained my strength later, and if I had hit that wall at a younger age i doubt I would have overcome as far as they have.  I was really lucky despite all the bad, and this was a nice reminder to appreciate that.  Remember, we hate leukemia.  It stole the last 20 or so years of my grandpa's life and our shared times. 

He spoke of making a conscious decision not to self-medicate all of it away when he was young, and how glad he is that he was able to build what we have together despite all that inside.  He's so much stronger than me in many ways, and I"m stronger in others, and together we take on the world.  But I completely awe at his strengths and courage.  I hope whatever he chooses to do in the future to heal, he learns what he needs and how to give himself whatever it is he needs to make his life as wonderful as he deserves.  I do all I can to help him achieve that, but me alone will never be enough.  I know that too.  Just like I have to stand up on my own when he holds his hand out to me, my legs still have to make the effort to lift me back up when he pulls when life knocks him down.  But my hand is there for him always.

I really loved that she had a fully balanced perspective, and wasn't shy about asking how the other felt about our feelings.  What are your limits in this Bree?  Do her limits make you feel limited?  sort of talk.  And she knows my strengths and flaws and was able to be really specific asking if I was doing certain behaviors that could make this a problem, and I think was fairly surprised to learn I hadn't been.  I'd been working on being a better turtle for a while before I started this new phase of our life.

And this was a stark reminder of the difference between shame pushed on you by life, and shame from things you actively chose to do.  My worst shame moment was a choice I made that was horrible, and i knew it was horrible, but I was going to do it anyway until I was interrupted.  But there is a realization I had that choice, and made it.  This that they and you carry is so different, none of you had choices.  And that makes my heart bleed for all of you, to have that much pain and you never earned it like me.

Thank you everyone!  We're home safe and sound (My feet are frozen, it snowed and I wore heels).  Actually, I wore a stupid outfit for the weather entirely but it's was saying no to and tackling my dismophic desire to be invisible and in solidarity with Nikki facing his fears I put on an outfit he loves on me and am wearing my black dress with really bright magenta look at me tights.  He was amused that I am as willing to work on getting my things under control as I am supportive of him doing.  Doing it together make the work easier! He was also highly amused that we share the tights.  LOL  I don't ask him to get better and refuse to get better for him.

Nikki is well, and I think opening up and talking about everything with her made him realize, sadly, how MANY people out there share their story.  That they're not alone, and while they know they didn't deserve that, there is something to having a secret shame hidden from self and others that hurts inside.  She pointed out some things that I need to work on to continue improving things as a couple and i think I took them more seriously than Nikki.  LOL  But he deserves my best, so I'm going to try to overcome a lifetime of communication trends and learn new ones.  It can't be any worse than my attempts at trying to type like a human.  She was also quite frank in telling him he has to decide for himself how far he wants to open the box, and that it's possible to reclaim the missing memories if he feels like he can't resolve it without facing it (some people need that) and that it also possible to resolve it without ever visiting it (some people need to never look) and to really focus on his feelings with that while in therapy.  Very sage advice.  He's feeling good about it, maybe he'll blog.  Talking about his emotions has always been hard, but he's doing better and I think liking it.  Or he's humoring a crazy wife. 

Nikki seems like some of the internal pressure valve opened up and he was relaxed on the way home, and I think is going to strait to bed when he gets out of the bathroom since he works stupidly early in the morning tomorrow.  He told me on the way home when we were talking about how lucky we were to find this board that the reason it works here for him as well as for me is the lack of pressure on him to transition, something he decided for himself he's not ready to do feeling this uncertain about himself and just starting exploring the new possibilities.  Hearing him say it wasn't about me and my idiot fears was a big relief.  I don't want to hold him back.  And the diverse voices and life choices here gives us both a wide variety of stories and examples.  And the love and respect and kindness has been tremendous.  This is the most amazing place.  She did tell us that Columbus has more of a vibrant going out type scene than we get here, and will ask around for places for me.  It's not that much further out, and it would be fun to have her join us on hangout vs date nights.    So we're expanding our considerations.  It's further, but it's not like we don't go there to visit people now.  And i like the road trip feel to going there.  It's a nice mindset. 

And I got Boston Market Chicken.  Twice in two weeks, SCORE! 

The detail on those is lovely and intricate!  They are very beautiful!

Good days are things we can hold onto and hug, I hope you collect them in a great big pile the wrap yourself in!

Huge hugs, and there is NOTHING blah about overcoming an issue like that, that takes incredible strength and courage to overcome.  He absolutely should be proud, and I'm proud to be able to cheer both of you onward! 

​I totally confess it's so frustrating to realize the changes in my sexuality and have gone on a massive girl pron spree trying to rekindle the feelings stronger in me so that if Nikki's needs change I can try to meet them.  Then I realize no one can rewire this, and I feel stupid, and then do it again.  It's dumb in my head sometimes.  LOL

Me too.  That was insane.  And we it wasn't like there was much choice or time to shop around for a better price!  "I do this operation or she dies a horrible starvation death if she doesn't burst the intestine and die from septicemia first"  I remember that part, that was scary enough that it cut through the drug haze.

Thank you all for the support and kindness.  I was terrified that being that open about the darker side of what is going on inside me right now would overshadow the lighter side.  Both make me up.  I am struggling and at the same time I am completely committed to making this work as best I can for Nikki and for myself.  I have a lot of fear, and I have a lot of strength.  I think in a lot of ways I have entered a completely new relationship.  Nikki IS different already.  There is no hiding or presentation of behaviors for my benefit, and things have changed for me significantly.  But these changes have not been unwelcome either.  I'm just very aware that there are places I can't follow in this, and that is terrifying to me that I might let Nikki down and break his heart as we go forward.  But It might never happen either, and I'll always be able to live up to everything he wants from me like I am right now.  I don't get a crystal ball here. 

Karen, we did not spend a lot, as Nikki talked about the weight.  And I wanted to be sure that this is going to remain a permanent thing vs. the cyclical things it's been before spending big money.  Just like I wait to make sure each stage of my weight loss isn't a temporary flux before I drop a couple hundred on new clothes or whatever else I need.  We talked it over and once he's been through therapy and sorted out what he needs emotionally and physically, then we'll invest in more permanent things.  For the love of god without the creepy plasticy edges.  FOr the record, the plastic is bothering me just as much on the chicken cutlet thing he's got me wearing (and he's right, I do actually FIT into a single bra now instead of choosing which side of me fits).  He might have caught me trying to steal a silicon real feel marital aid to stuff in my bra today.   

Thank you so much Bluemoon.  I"m trying to be as open and me as I can be in written format so as to not only support him, but also because I really really like the people I have met here and want to forge real and lasting freindships.  Your voices are wonderful, and I enjoy getting to experience them so much. 

I sowwy.  I exploded.

I have been very frank with Nikki about what i can embrace and what I can't.  I think it's a crossroads of people's needs clashing.  It's like no one really wants a gay or lesbian person to be forced into a hetero relationship in anyway, we accept that sexuality isn't a choice.  So if we accept that our sexuality is not an easily made choice, but a complex result of our biological and life experiences for lesbian women and gay men, then we also have to accept that this is true for heterosexual me and women too, as well as the only person truly getting a choice to any degree are the inherently bisexual. 

SO....now you have a probably heterosexual woman in a long term relationship with their partner in your example suddenly in a lesbian relationship, there is no way it's fair to expect her to be able to rewire her sexuality, but absolutely fair to expect her to treat her partner with dignity and respect after giving her a freakout period which Nikki wisely stayed outta my way during, adn I explain why below.  And this is the heart of my resistance to hrt for Nikki.  Even when I was more actively bisexual in my physical responces, Nikki as a woman would not have hit the scales.  I'm having to really concentrate on being sexual with him in dress.  That is disorienting for me.  Sexuality is the time you let go, not the time you put on a complicated mental, emotional, and physical performance.  I'm working with him to teach him how to make it less disorienting for me, for example, since he gets an emotional reaction from me interacting with the breast forms I do this, but to me they are tactily weird.  They don't FEEL right, from the plasticy weirdness on the outside to the way they move.  So I told him he needs to not just stand there and smile vaguely at me, he needs to perform as if he was feeling it so that my psyche can react to that.  Without him putting in that effort, it feels like playacting and kind of horrible.  Not real.  My sexuality is focused on what i can do to my partners, the physical feelings that I can bring them and their reactions to me.  It always has been.  I can't help that about myself more than a gay man can help responding to men that he finds attractive.  So I can give him the emotional behavior he needs like this that he wasn't getting before, and he can still give me the physical connection that I"m not ashamed to admit I need also.  The things come off, and the sex is fantastic.

So it seems like a simple solution for us would be transition, right?  Then it would be real and working? Not so much. I have had sex with women, and relationships.  I almost permanently stayed in a committed three way with a married couple and had sex equally with both, thing Anita Blake with Micah and Nathaniel with one man and two women instead, and it functioned almost like that, but there wasn't enough common ground for me to really be happy even though the warm fuzzies where there. 

But this is where it gets really complicated.  I have rather specific criteria for my ability to be intimate with other women, and Nikki as a woman hits zero of them, emotionally or physically.  I can't help those criteria, they are not random whims or choices.  But Nikki as a man has always pushed all my buttons in both arenas.  And culturally we like to pretend sex isn't important in a marriage.  The messages to wait for marriage, the implication that those who don't deserve whatever illnesses or pregnancies come to them, the downlooking at single mothers, there is a strong cultural sex bias that pretends that sexuality is not a HUGE factor in marriage.  And yet sexual incompatibility is a huge factor in many divorces.  And cis spouses of both genders who married someone without knowing before and were presented with a certain reality, are suddenly in a position where they have to choose between vows and their own sexual and emotional needs. 

No one wants to hurt their partners, and I fully believe everyone must do what they need to to be happy.  However, the reality is that these partners do get hurt.  I'm still working through the conflict between Nikki not allowing me to lie to him or compartmentalize me out of the emotional areas of my life, and finding out that he did that to me for 18 years.  This started before we married, and he did actively lie to me.  That has an effect.  I chose to work through that and continue to do so, but I would be lying if I didn't freely admit this has me spiraling around in my head.  I chose to do my best to work through this with him because we are good together, and I truly love him.  But it was unfair for him to keep a secret this big, especially under the 'we have to be fully honest with each other to make this work' emotional umbrella he put us in.  This is not blame, this is frank what is happening to Bree in this time period talk.  Nikki is not always awesome, he has deep flaws like everyone else.  But this is our reality, so I'm trying to navigate it.

And there is no such thing as one person happy in a marriage.  Transition is absolutely freedom for the person suffering gender disphoria.  I understand that.  However, I also understand what it means to watch the person you love suddenly admit a huge part of it was an act, cover, deception, or misery for them, however it presented.  This forces us to question our sexual worth, whether we want to or not.  "Why aren't I enough to make him happy?  He told me for almost two decades I was!".  There is a lot of pain. 

But just as we would never force a heterosexual woman into a relationship with a lesbian woman, we have to realize that is what transition does to many wives.  Some can adapt fully.  Some like me can go 2/3s of the way.  Some partial like what Emma spoke of with her wife.  But these are women who are having to rewrite their entire emotional and sexual scripts with this. 

And we are given really contradictory information.  We read threads about how the tg person is the same perosn before and after, and yet behavior changes.  There is a sudden euphoria that they can be themselves.  So if they couldn't be themselves, and nothing will change in who they are, why is there a need to change then?  (I'm not arguing that anyone should not transition, I'm explaining my confusion).   But I understand that people DO need to transition, then therefore, perhaps aren't fully aware of how much changes to us.  Maybe my understanding of hrt is flawed, but as I understand it there is a second puberty, with all that entails.  I went through puberty, HUGE emoitional and mental changes as well as physical.  Our very thinking is affected by our bodies as well as our life experiences.  For the transitioning spouse, this is freedom.  For the other spouse, this is your life mate turning into someone you don't know.  Add your sexual orientation to that, and it can get really messy. 

I don't know what will happen if Nikki realizes this isn't enough to make him happy and me happy together.  I can't make promises about that, it's not more fair to make me promise to stay in a marriage that is emotionally and physically totally different for his needs than it is for me to tell him he can't transition for mine. 

I'm doing well, I really am.  I have not told a single lie about my feelings here.  There is just a really painful side to all this too that I"m working through.  How much change and hurt is too much for a marraige to survive?  Each one has to decide seperately.  But it really helps to be here because I have a real sense that you all understand the changes I'm encourntering and can guide me with the practical and physical, but you all can also understand my side of the Bree and Nikki story too.  That it's like everything in life, all about trying to balance two people's needs in the emotional, mental, and phsyical.  I can't even imagine how I would be feeling if I"d never even wanted to, let alone had, sex with another woman.  That gives me a sort of hope that a purely strait life experience put into this wouldn't have I guess. 

I guess ultimately it will only change in cases where the spouse has latent or outright bisexual feelings.  Imagine how trapped it feels to be in a body that doesn't match your inner truth, and then realize it feels the same for us when our life partner suddenly changes and then expects us to magically morph our sexuality to suit them.  Sometimes two people can be happy together, sometimes two people can only be happy apart.  It's a sad reality, but either it's true that our sexuality is hard wired and not a choice, or it's not.

I'm sorry that was a disorganized novel, but I"m trying to be as open as I can to the question asked. 

On the job front, I"m also in that "I hate this place and have a six to twelve month exit strategy in place.  I fully understand your feelings!   What i do is just remind myself when I'm there that I after i get x amount of things done I can go home and resume the things that matter to me in life, that getting through this period of being in the place I hate so strongly is setting Nikki and I up for a time when I never have to go there again.  I find what helps me is keeping my mind firmly on the end prize, but your mileage may vary.  Everyone's mind is different!  Mentally chanting "I'm on the road outta here!" is so satisfying though!

Thank you for the guidance!  That plastic outercasing really threw me, obviously I know very little about breast forms.  With my family history it's probably good I learn about these things in general in addition specifically to Nikki.  Who looks adorable in them, that smile.  He gets away with so much on that smile.  Like tickling me then doing that smile to try to get outta retaliation.  That one doesn't work so much, I am vengeful with tickling.  LOL

Emma, I think I'm actually weirded out worse by the evener he put on me.  It feels really like I put a piece of meat in a biggie on.    

Our doctor was impressed at how much effort I put into reading what the counselor we picked is experienced in, but I know I'm horrifically complicated, and I needed a doctor who understood a wide variety, and Nikki is a lot like me.  I actually was kept on by my therapist who usually worked with just teens into my early twenties when I moved here because she was actually helping me and didn't want to risk setting me back by switching me to a different doctor.  I can't make Nikki well, but I can try to find him the tools he needs to get well himself and help him try to find that health again and support him on the bad days and the good days that will come. 

Just like he does for me.

I hope you have a healthy, safe surgical experience with no complications!  I"m so sorry you can't share with your family, I know what that is like and how sometimes it's really h hard not to wish you had a family that actally cared.  *Hugs*  I made a new family along the way, and I wish you all the joys and love a family by choice can bring to you also!

I wish you the best experiences of life and joy and kindness possible!  And for the less best, remind them that freedom really means that, and we all have the freedom to be whatever makes us happy and feeling like ourselves, not just the freedom to conform to everyone else!  I find that tactic works quite often. 

I went to the zoo Friday with Nikki, and he literally had to cover my eyes and walk me to the baby galapaggos tortoises so I couldnt' see the python on one side or the anaconda on the other.  I have no idea when our zoo got an anaconda, but there might have been a freakout.  *blush*   Thank goodness Nikki takes care of me.  LOL