Got A Little Beautified…

Not much here, but I went out for a bit of a day, treated by a couple of friends, and had my brows waxed and got my hair done.  Here’s the results.

 

 

I still want to give my brows a bit more of a distinct arch (it was done by a student, and she was a little hesitant to do more than this on my first waxing, but they’re way better than they were so I was cool with that), but other than that, pretty damn happy!

Huh, Would You Look At That

Cause it’s free and I see that it’s me who’s lost and never found…

Went out to dinner with an old friend I hadn’t seen in a few years.  Good dinner, too.  Nothing fancy, went to a neighborhood style chain place that rhymes with Stooby Ruesday.  I got this nice little hickory bourbon chicken dish that was delicous, but surprisingly spicy.  Like, nose runny spicy.  I like spicy, mind you, but I really wasn’t expecting that.

Anyway, she brought me a little gift bag of stuff.  A nice perfume, some lip balm, and this sort of grab bag of bonus makeup stuff she had gotten.  She’s not much on makeup, so she gladly regifted (and I gladly accepted).  So, after dinner, I got home, and did a bit of rudimentary applications…

It seems you *can* put lipstick on a pig!

To say I’m happy with the results is a bit of an understatement.  While I was in the bathroom, staring in to the mirror, I was really meh about it.  But then I let my hair back down (had it yanked back for clearance) and fluffed it out a bit, and said to myself…well, might as well snap a few pictures.  And when I took this one I nearly died.  Talk about a confidence boost!

Not to mention I’m finally starting to really see myself in photos and in the mirror.  That’s exciting stuff.

Squee!

What Does It Mean To Be A Woman?

Running down a dream that never would come to me, working on a mystery – going wherever it leads…

So, a recurring theme that has come up in my few therapy sessions is “what does it mean to be a woman?” Which, really breaks down to “what does it mean for me to be a woman?” because that answer is almost unanswerable unless it’s on a personal level. But I totally understand why you see a lot of trans women jumping in to the deep end of the femme pool, it’s how they answered that question. Not quite so easy for me (not trying to diminish their experience, mind you, only saying that if I was in to that stuff it’d be easy to just dive right in), because my journey is going to be much more finding my own style, a style that’s not really femme at all. I joke that I’ll probably look like a 40 year old goth that refused to grow up, but at the same time, that’s not far from the truth anyway.

Actually, I guess I could make it work…(not actually me!)

But its such a hard question. I feel almost resentful that I have to even answer it. I *know* I’m a woman, that should be enough. However, society is still stuck on the binary, and probably will be for awhile. And as much as it pains me to admit it: I do care what others think about me. Though that’s on a sliding scale (the better I know you, the more I care). I guess I’m just shooting for the occasional “ma’am” instead of sir in public. Maybe my personal idea of style will help there, as I might end up looking like a mannish woman. I could live with that, the woman part comes primary there. For instance, I was told a person I never met saw the picture I posted the other day, and thought I was a woman transitioning to a man. That’s a win to me.

I’m still faced with such a daunting task, at least to me.  I might be a woman, but my personality and wants and interests (in our current societal structure) skew male.  How the hell do I reconcile those two?  My current plan, which as soon as I can afford to test I plan to test, is to not really dress any differently at all (though I am flirting with adding skirts to my rotation eventually), wear light make up, and start wearing a bra to simulate the chesticle area (at least until I don’t have to simulate anymore, if that’s in the cards).  This is in addition to the little stuff I’ve started doing, of course…more feminine necklace, the earrings, longer hair, nails, etc.

The idea there is to see if my “mannish woman” theory has any weight, if you didn’t pick up on that.  It’s either that or “what the hell?” or “freak” which I pretty much assume is how people view me on a daily basis anyway.

But that’s just the exterior…there’s also personality.  And again, what’s really the answer?  I would hope nobody expects me to be all “bubbly” girly because ew, come on.  No offense, bubbly ones, you’ve every right to be that way, but if I started acting like that my closest friends would have me committed.  I’m simply not a shiny happy person (holding hands or not).  But how will that skew how people perceive me?  This one is a lot harder to gauge, its not something I can answer without actually finding out for myself.

And don’t get me started on my voice…

One Day, I Will Say “This is Before…”

Hello, I’ve waited here for you, everlong.

Yeah, I’ve been gone awhile there, sorry.  Had all kinds of stuff to work out in life, but its down to somewhat normal.

Therapy is going good, and my toe in the water approach to social transitioning is gotten to the point where I’ve got a good portion of my leg in now.  Anyways, I took this photo of myself today, and made it my Facebook profile picture.  It’s my first “official” photograph of me as a woman.

Ready to break hearts…?

So yeah, that’s me, folks.

Therapy started awhile back, for those paying attention.  I really like my therapist.  And she’s pointed me towards the primary care physician she works with all the time, so who knows.  I might actually start hormones faster than I ever thought, though I remain cautiously optimistic (“hope for the best, prepare for the worst” has always been my philosophy).  Now I just have to worry about insurance stuff, or potential liver anomalies (though I have read that there’s a patch application that gets around that pesky problem, which would be awesome. Ive shown odd output from my liver before).  But in the very immediate, my therapist is really nice, has experience, and easily rolls with my quirks about therapy (though part of that is I’m much more willing to talk now).

Oh, and I had a birthday this past Halloween, so happy belated to me.

Do The Evolution

Cause it’s gonna be the future soon, and I won’t always be this way, when the things that make me weak and strange get engineered away…

I haven’t been around much.  I’ve been having major life issues and its really hard to sit down and hammer out a blog post when my brain can only focus on one thing.  But I thought about maybe talking about a shower thought I had the other day.

Usually my shower thoughts are much stupider.  Like “damn, my feet are so big and widen at the top, they might as well be flippers.”  But this one was a little deeper than that.

I was theorizing whether or not gender variance is part of human evolution.

Sorta accurate really.

Obviously as we evolve as a race there are physical changes.  We’ve grown taller on average, for example.  But what about mentally evolving?  We almost have to be either getting smarter, or slowly unlocking more and more brain capacity just based on innovation.  So, I have to ask, the more and more our brains move beyond simple instinctual body operation, how much do we mentally evolve?  Does this include the understanding that gender is beyond the bits and pieces?

I think it’s something to consider.

Taking the Bad With The Good

Who are you…

I know I should write even when I’m feeling terrible.  Probably especially when I’m feeling terrible. But I’m only now coming up with proper motivation, and only barely at that.  I’ve just had a simply awful past few days up in the brain pan.

It started with the general feeling that I’ve become my own kids babysitter.  Every passing week I feel less and less like I’m actually raising her.  It’s like we just hang out for a few hours every weekend, and then she goes back to her “real life.”  That’s just sublimely depressing.  See, I spent the better part of the last year trying my best to keep my head above water so I could get my family back together (we were separated by circumstance at that point, not actually separated), and now the dynamic has changed so that I will, pretty much, always be on the outside looking in.

And that was made even worse on Sunday.  Which was my daughter’s 7th birthday.

I didn’t see her blow out any candles. I didn’t even see the cake.

I didn’t see her open a single present.  I couldn’t even afford to give her one.  One of my roomies was nice enough to give me a few bucks for a dinner (she wanted lo mein, so she got lo mein), but that was it.

I had to hear second hand about not only what she got, but how she reacted.  I was deeply affected by not being involved in the slightest, because I realized: that’s how things are going to be now.  And that’s not even factoring in a possible transition!  Who the hell knows what the dynamic is going to be after that.

Part of me wants to run.  When I’m done my current certification course program, start applying for jobs well out of town.  I’ve kind of wanted to get away from here for awhile, I was just sort of hoping to do so with my family.  Now, I can run and feel like the distance that will grow between me and her will be justified.  Of course I know that’s just bullshit, but at the same time, its grounded in a pebble of reality that I can’t simply ignore.

I can’t ignore it, but I sure wish I could.  Because it’s depressing the ever loving shit out of me.  The really bad kind of depressed, the stuff you see in the commercials.  Not wanting to get out of bed, or engage in just about anything.

Luckily for me, I have a very “well, fuck you very much!” attitude.  Even when it’s myself.  So I drag myself up and force myself out of comfort zones that much more.  Which is why I decided today I’m gonna start wearing eye shadow on at least a somewhat regular basis.  It’s subtle (just from a basic nude kit), but it’s there, and I know its there.  And I’m sure someone who looks close enough will also notice it, and they’ll be forced to deal with it being there as well.  I’m not just looking for validation, I’m almost inviting confrontation.

Probably not the greatest idea in the world, but it’s better than laying in bed, curled up in to a ball and weeping.  Which I have done recently as well.

At this point, I really can’t wait for my therapy appointment coming up on Monday (the first one went well, but was mostly intake, and my therapist wasn’t in the office this week).  I need that shit.

Did Ya Ever Notice…?

My buddy, my buddy, where ever I go, he’s gonna go…

Now for a new feature (well, not really but maybe who knows?) called “Did Ya Ever Notice…?”

Remember this guy?

My Buddy.  And if you want to get right down to the brass tacks, My Buddy was a doll specifically marketed for little boys.  And it wasn’t unpopular, either.  Oh, well, until…

Did You Ever Notice that not long after that, Hollywood gave us this?

That’s right, a horror movie about a doll, which might be called something different but is clearly meant to resemble the My Buddy dolls (the outfit is nearly identical, just with different colored overalls), coming to life and killing the shit out of people.

You didn’t see much of My Buddy after that.

Now, I’m not saying this was on purpose, but at the same time, I have to wonder.  Doesn’t seem like purely coincidental, either.  By now, movie makers know what effect movies can have on the public (there are plenty of examples, but Jaws screwing with beach communities comes to mind). But here’s a doll marketed for boys (oh, and they scrambled to make a girl version quickly after, too, Kid Sister), which barely got legs under it before it was swiftly undercut by turning it in to a god damn horror icon.   Oh, well. I noticed.  And I was wondering if you have had, too.

Is That A Hairband In Your Hair Or Are You Just Happy To See Me?

Hey vanity, this vile’s empty; so are you…

Not too much to say really.  However, I’ve discovered an unexpected love.  The hairband.

No, seriously you guys, I’m in love.  My hair is at just the right (read: annoying) length that this is like a gift from the gods.  I’m constantly pushing my hair out of my face, and this has solved that for me.  I only got them because I’m starting to experiment with makeup (first trials: not too bad.  My background in theatre has given me enough rudimentary experience to not have it be completely laughable, but work still needs to be done.  Not to mention I just don’t have enough just yet to do a complete job.  Concealer is going to be a must with my dark circles, for instance).  Funny thing was, I was only going to grab some simple cloth ones, but it was the dollar store, so I grabbed more traditional “hard arch” ones as well on a whim.  Guess which one I’m wearing now?

I totally plan on wearing it around the house.  I’ll swap it out for a cloth one when I leave if I feel the need (or simply carry the cloth ones with me, it’d be useful in class).  But this is just so darn convenient.

And it makes me feel way more like a woman than the makeup, for whatever reason.  That’s kinda weird, but whatever.

Man, I Feel Like a Woman (Or: The Oddities of Validation Via Crossdreaming)

I wake up in the night, all alone, and it’s alright.  The chemicals are wearing off since you’ve gone…

I’m really not proud of that title.  Just wanted to put that right out there.  But I also didn’t want to go with a very clinical sounding title aaaaaaaaaagain.  I’m trying to have some fun here, after all.

So, in a previous posting as I waxed philosophic about how crossdreaming has a very negative stigma associated with it (mainly due to toxic language that the very term “crossdream” is attempting to mend the damage from), I mentioned validation.  Which, as far as I can see from my perspective, is a wee bit important in the trans community as a  whole.  Which is a bit of a “duh” statement, validation is important to everyone, everywhere.  It’s probably more of a keyword issue here because it’s a lot harder to get validation.  I also kvetched here a bit about validation through extreme presentation, and how I’m struggling reconciling my feelings there.  Validation is pretty big.  But I’m going to focus on my thoughts about validation in regards to crossdreaming.  Which the damn title says I’m gonna do, right?

So, Captain Obvious flies in at this point to heroically point out that “well, yes, of course your crossdreaming is validation, Sandi!  Look at your fantasies, an over-exaggerated

I went with Deadpool because Deadpool rules.

caricature of a woman who would NEVER be mistaken for a man, and who men and women alike lust after, that’s a Master Class in validation!”  And I just nod, and try not to murder Captain Obvious.  But, the (good?) Cap’n is right, that’s a rather apparent to anybody with the least little bit of psychology knowledge.  But that’s not really what I want to to focus on.

No, I’m going to make a fairly bold statement that becomes less bold when I caveat it with “this is only pertaining to me, though it could pertain to others.”  Mainly, my crossdreaming, in and of itself, is validation.  Validation of my gender identity.  Now, I purposefully said gender identity as this leaves it open for others to co-opt if they wish, because crossdreamers are all over the gender spectrum.  But specifically, for myself, my crossdreaming serves as validation that I am woman.

The way I see it, the very fact that when I fantasize sexually I’m female is proof positive I’m female.  It’s one thing to refer to yourself in headspace as your female name, in feminine terms, etc.  But when I get turned on, my “sexual aura,” if you will, automatically radiates woman, well…that’s extremely validating to me.  In fact, it’s the line of thinking that led me to my realization in the first place.

This is another reason why, in my opinion, we need to create a social environment where crossdreamers can express themselves freely about it. Proper self-reflection is, unfortunately, not really a “self” action.  It requires an amount of exploration that, quite frankly, one shouldn’t have to do alone.  Jack Molay and his contemporaries are doing their best, but it can’t simply stop with them.  I’d try, but I’m only good at these rapid fire type thought processes.  I have neither the time or the patience to research this stuff out like they can.

Seriously, do we have to have a 50 Shades style pop culture phenomenon to spread awareness?

Miss Tobi

So, I got a lovely email this morning sharing this video and story, and asking me to spread it along to my audience.  Which I am more than happy to do.  The video is wonderful, but it’s a short trailer and therefore limited, but the blog post, I feel, has a lot of great stuff in it, so make sure to check that all out.

Click me click me click me to learn all about How It Is To Be (Miss Tobi).