Transition: The First Three Months and the Last Thirty Nine Years

Alrighty, well...if the so-called "trans-trenders" on youtube are to be believed, it's my duty to post the vaunted "HRT Updates" at certain intervals (sarcasm /off, wink wink j/k). No, seriously tho, I've been openly transitioning since Easter and I'm overwhelmed by how suppportive basically everyone in my life is.  I've officially been "on hormones"(and a testosterone-blocking medication) for three months, but in a way, I've always been on this journey. 

I "came out" publicly with a facebook post, although I'd clued-in my immediate family earlier. "Coming out" is something that I never though I'd do. I mean, not something that I didn't think I'd work out the courage to do, I mean that flat-out I never even thought of myself as any sort of "queer," even though I'd always end up going on to anyone who would listen about how I "always felt different" and "never fit in." When I was very young, I liked to dress up in "women's" clothes with my cousins and to play pretend as female characters...that is, until I was shamed for it. Forbidden from dressing up in those clothes even. This was a pretty universal societal pressure, although my dad was certainly the primary driver behind it in my life. It's a complex thing, mostly rooted in him wanting to protect me, wanting me to fit in neatly with the standard roles in life. It can be hard to parse through those distant memories - what were my real desires and preferences, which were the ones I learned because they pleased others? But not really that hard, looking back. 

I remember, I always loved those strong, badass women in science fiction, fantasy, and action movies. I identified with Alice finding her way through Wonderland, with Dorothy in Oz, and with Sarah as she sought the center of the Labyrinth. After my sister died and we moved to Arizona, my parents gave me a bit more autonomy in some regards. They let me watch "grown up movies," especially the TV-edits, and I got really into Terminator, Aliens, Predator, Robocop - all of these featuring badass ladies. I remember my dad and I plugged in an unmarked VHS tape from one of the boxes he'd picked up from a self-storage auction: it was "Aliens," which I hadn't seen before, qued up exactly to that classic moment - Ripley strides forward in the power-loader to deliver that all-time badass quote: "Get away from her, you bitch!"  "WOW!" I exclaimed, as the film cut from that overwhelming moment to the equally electrifying alien queen hissing in reply. I protested as my dad stopped the tape, but he was just rewinding it, "you're gonna love this," he said - and he was right. Not only was there the main heroine, Ripley, but other badass women as well -  Vasquez, unloading on the xenomorphs with her massive incinterator smart-gun ("LET'S ROCK!"), the snarky pilot Ferro, hell, even the *little girl* Newt was a total badass, surviving the alien infestation with a cool cunning beyond that of any of the adults and overconfident colonial marines. 

Later that same summer, Predator 2 hit home video, also featuring a tough woman on Danny Glover's hardboiled police squad - Leona was one of the only characters to encounter the Predator and survive, spared because she was pregnant, yes, but she fought valiantly in the gang battle that opens the movie, she's shown to be a shrewd and competent detective, and she deftly manages the evacuation of a subway train attacked by the titular monster, saving countless civilians. 

It was around this time I saw a sneak preview of Terminator 2: Judgement Day on the evening news. You know the scene - Sarah Connor, her son John, and the iconic cyborg reprogrammed to save rather than destroy, are all trapped in the Cyberdyne lab, when Ahrnold blasts a hole in the wall so they can make their escape. The next shot is burned into my memory, as I saw a heightened fantasy version of my family trying to flee the turmoil of my sister's death - the hardened tough-guy father figure, the kid caught up in it all, and the badass mom. That badass mom, Sarah Conner, stuck with me most of all. The thirty-second preview scene ended, and I was left to wait months for the finished film to be released in theaters. But I replayed that scene in my head, over and over. I acted it out, imagined myself in it, extrapolated the plot in both directions, pretending I was in it whenever I played outside. And when I ran around our yard, or down trails in the deserts of Tucson, every time, I saw myself as Sarah Connor. I didn't even know who she was, or the name of her character - she was just that badass mom from Terminator 2, the movie I couldn't wait to see. The lady in the black military-style trousers, combat boots, a tank-top with a military utility harness (my mind translated this to a "bullet-proof vest," like the kind worn by Robocop's partner, Anne Lewis). I was always on the look out for a puffy vest or life jacket that I could wear to help me achieve that badass-lady in a bullet-proof vest look, like Sarah Conner sported in the sneak preview, or Officer Lewis wore backing up Robocop, a similar look to Vasquez in Aliens when equipped with the full smart-gun harness.

Terminator 2 finally came, and I was not disappointed - Sarah Connor kicked so much ass! Traumatized from the events of the original "Terminator" movie (which was, to me, a great disappointment, I hated seeing her weak, as someone to be saved by Kyle Reese - himself played by Micheal Biehn, my favorite dude from that particular era of actions movies. I would pretend to be him too I guess, sometimes, acting out scenes from the less-classic "Navy Seals"), she fought hard to protect her son and remained wary of Schwarzenegger's cyborg.

Sometimes I had nightmares about alien creatures and killer robots. I saw Alien 3 in the theater and like many, was deeply hurt that the beloved characters Hicks, Newt, and Bishop were unceremoniously killed off, during *the opening titles* no less. However, there was something that touched me deeply in that film as well ( and I remember its sneak preview, too, on a late-night talk show appearance by Sigourney Weaver), which to me will always be the "scariest" of those films but also the most inspiring. It's stripped down, homogenized, all browns and grays. It's all dark, foreboding shadows, the space-convicts that make unlikely heroes are also, often, very likely villains. Ripley has lost her surrogate family, lost her hair even - she's reduced to this bare, essentialist view of female - on one level, all that differentiates her from the equally-bald convicts is that she is a vessel for a host life to grow inside of - the ultimate expression of the "Alien" films' metaphor. But on another, deeper level, Ripley's experiences and conviction to do what's right are what differentiate her.

My freedom with R-rated movies found its limit shortly thereafter. At a sleepover with a friend, who wanted to rent the most gruesome and badass thing we could find, we brought home "Hellraiser 3: Hell on Earth." Neither of us had seen the previous 2 Hellraiser films, we just thought it looked scary and brutal. We were right. I was especially disturbed by a gratuitous and graphic sex scene, as well as the many seemingly pointless deaths perpetuated by the villain Pinhead and his demonic minions. However, something kept me invested in the plot enough to follow it to the end - actress Terry Farrell, whose character Joey Summerskill finally defeats Pinhead. Farrell would go on to play Jadzia Dax in "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," which I watched almost religiously when it first debuted. Dax was my favorite character, although I was very embarrassed to admit it (perhaps owing to the previously mentioned shaming earlier in my youth). She also didn't have that "badass" quality like the action-movie characters of Ripley or Sarah Connor. Instead, she was just tremendously smart, pretty, and charming. Dax had this way of walking contemplatively, holding her hands behind her back, that I emulated for YEARS. How did my parents miss that one!? LOL!

Farrell's Joey Summerskill in "Hellraiser 3" was likewise not a "badass" in the manner of the other sci-fi women that inspired me. She didn't defeat Pinhead with hardened grit and gunpowder, but with her convictions, her dedication. It is Joey's investigative instinct, her tenacious courage, and her love for her father that enable her to defeat the film's terrifying villains. In a way, this was a kind of counterpoint to the evolution of Ripley in Alien 3: she's no longer a gun-toting, mech-piloting, badass babe who defeats the Alien menance - she is carrying the alien menace inside of herself and must choose self-sacrifice over "the fucking company's" dubious claims of helping her. Joey Summerskill's empathy towards her dead soldier father, and likewise towards the war-scarred man who Pinhead used to be, are what help her to defeat the demons; Ripley's empathy with the rapists and murderers emprisoned with her in Alien 3 helped her to enlist their aid in defeating the xenomorph.

I know my dad tried to help me. I know he loved me, that he tried to empathize with me. But his attempts to protect me and guide me could also hurt me. He got upset that I found so much relief in escaping from the rigors of teenage life by playing video games, roleplaying games, and tabletop games. He liked to tell me to grow up, to put aside the childish things. He smashed all of my wargaming miniatures during an argument one day - I still have them, but most are still in pieces. When I was going to a friend's house every day to play the seminal game "Final Fantasy VII" on their PlayStation (at that time, he still forbid me from owning a gaming console of my own), he suspected that only drugs or a homosexual relationship could be consuming my time. Both of his envisioned fears seemed equally dangerous to him - he had struggled with alcoholism, and before that was groomed and molested by his Scoutmaster. My friends and I also spent a lot of time wandering around the desert, playing a very loose form of the "Vampire: The Masquerade" pen-and-paper role-playing game. I usually played a female character, "Allison Valentine," named after my dead sister. 

When I was 17, shortly before we moved from Tucson to Salt Lake City, a friend gave me a hit of acid, my first psychedelic experience. Late that night, after the most vivid effects had worn off and I was trying to go to sleep, I was seeing a flickering, dancing light behind my eyelids. It most closely resembled that Ghost of Christmas Present from the "Muppets Christmas Carol." You know - ghostly white, ethereal, always shifting and flowing around? Only more formless, no face, just lightbeams. I was overwhelmed with the feeling that this was my soul - I was seeing my own soul! And to my surprise (not really though), it was a female soul. 

I wrote about the experience in an email. He spied on my email one day, concerned that I was getting into even more trouble, having dropped out of high school that year (and having stolen some of his weed that Noah Gabbard and I found while looking for cigarettes - ha!). He found the draft message talking about my trip and the vision of my girl-soul, and he confronted me. He basically tried to talk me out of it.

"Weren't you just "high? You don't want to base your life around some crazy thoughts you had on drugs, right?" ....I mean, I guess, not, right?

"Don't you just like girls? You want to BE with girls, right?" ....Well, yeah! Yeah, I do like girls!

And while I knew the truth of my vision deep inside, I felt persuaded, I felt like I needed to bury my truth in order to fit in, to find success and love and acceptance. My true self could be my little secret, my own hidden place of solace, just between me and my feminine soul. I almost started to forget. Except, I couldn't forget *myself.* And anyway, people wouldn't let me. Many people, including my dad at times, would accuse me of being gay - girls that I wouldn't just immediately sleep with given the chance, dudes in the Marine Corps, friends who throught I was being too effeminate. I got called a "fag" a lot. In my lengthy and ongoing treatment for post-traumatic stress following my service in the Marine Corps, many practitioners have identified my decision to enlist as an attempt to prove these people wrong, to embrace hyper-masculinity as a defense mechanism. Their assessment only seems more correct the more I have embraced my true self. 

I remember when I first saw women Marines marching in a formation at my MOS school. My heart jumped out of my chest. The other dudes in my platoon expressed various levels of shock, disgust, and sexual desire. I kind of played along, I mean, there were a couple that stood out to me as prettier, more attractive, who I felt more drawn to. I tried to stick up for my sisters in arms - "hey, they're badass, that's awesome that they're doing it just like us." But the prevailing attitude was that they were somehow weaker, inferior, their only value as objects of sexual conquest, and their inclusion in our military branch somehow devaluing. I was disgusted. I've always had so much respect for women in the military, who go through everything that the men do AND have to put up with the demeaning attitude of male colleagues, and all too often, sexual harassment and assault. 

My dad used to get so angry about my hair growing out long. I imagine a large amount of this was him passing on trauma from his own youth. He used to talk about how his father, a former Marine who served in World War II and Korea, would simply "buzz" his and his older brother's hair off with clippers as a matter of routine. Paradoxically, he would describe the need for close-cropped hair as both "super easy and efficient, requiring no fussing or upkeep" AND as a way of "showing other people how well-put-together you are and how you paid attention to your appearance." I guess he was one person who was somewhat convinced of my heteronormativity by my time in the Marines. He kind of gave me a pass about growing my hair long - I had earned the right to be a little bit slack, to let it grow long after having it cropped high-and-tight for those years. He now simply chided me about how "maybe I might want to get it cut, maybe I had let myself go long enough" instead of insisting that my entire life might fall apart because I wanted long hair.

My dad sobered up completely, for good, about five years before he died. And we really did get in some healing then. He seemed to accept my long hair, finally - though maybe perhaps only because I'd gotten married, and finally produced the grandchildren that he was worried I might not? He apologized for smashing my miniatures, for pushing me toward the Marines - I got to take the magnanimous position and accept his apologies, telling him how I'd rebuilt several of the figures and how I valued my experiences in the military, even the negative ones. They had made me into who I am. 

My mom and I endured a whirlwind six weeks of home hospice after he finally went to the hospital in late 2020 and was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. He didn't want to fight it, he said he felt it would be best if he could get out of the way. It was a very "Ripley in Alien 3" move. He didn't want to bleed out the family finances, he said. He didn't want to have any clashes with us over parenting his grandchildren - the world was changing, and he finally felt like he could trust me to raise that next generation better than he knew how to, and to look out for them in ways that he couldn't.

It's funny, he probably did need to "get out of the way" for me to be able to transition. I could see myself continuing to advocate to him how "they" were valid, but how I wasn't "one of them," as I had when he seemed so worried that I was a gay teen. In the wake of his death, my mom, my spouse, and I started to plot our move out of Utah and into a different life. Slowly at first, and then advancing rapidly to a breakneck pace. In about the middle of 2021, my partner and my mom asked for my blessing to start feeling out what our move would look like and to start thinking about the criteria for a property we could all move onto to. I less than two months later that we had our eyes set on a few specific places up for sale across the West. Rapidily, our view narrowed, "following the meta-line" as we called it, to what would be our new home in northeast Washington.

Things fell into place, my mom and I checked out the property and it was exactly what we wanted. The inspection was good enough, our offer was accepted (and managed to beat out another from a family that would ultimately become our neighbors around the corner). The move itself was challenging. We didn't really have time or help to sort and pack everything, my seizure a few years prior had broken my arm and shoulder so I couldn't really lift anything myself. We ended up hiring movers and paying them to box and move quite a bit of actual garbage, mixed in with all the bits of our lives. It was pretty emasculating - these big burly men, handling all of our belongings, every look or inquiry to me feeling somehow like an accusation. I over-explained about my injuries, I thanked them for their help even as I tried to admonish them for being late, for being too rough with some of our delicate items. In the end, we were just happy to make it up to the doorstep of Canada with all of our crap!

And then, I thought I would finally get to rest. To recover from it all, for real. To heal from the traumas I found in the Marine Corps, from my seizures, from the emergency cesarean that delivered our first child, and from my dad's early tho-not-unexpected death at the hands of his lifelong vices. But almost immediately, I found my spouse and my mom looking to me to step up in a way I had absolutely not expected, which completely turned me off, making me feel vulnerable and exposed. They wanted me to be "the man of the house." They felt like, in our new rural settings, people would look to me as "the man," and that we somehow owed this to the community. I needed to make all arrangements. My name needed to be on everything. 

And it wasn't about "the doing" of it all. it was about that expectation, and the implication behind it - that people wouldn't respect our family, and would especially disrespect ME, if the male in the family wasn't the one out conducting the business. This really upset me. I pushed back. I didn't want that. I couldn't explain it. Somehow, that "feminine soul" of mine was feeling defensive, and simultaneously more real and more buried than ever before in my life.

It was kind of like my experience in the Marine Corps - I had done the hard, manly thing, but not enough, not completely. I had passed the male standards and was in the male combat unit, but I didn't talk and fuck like the boys expected. Similarly, in the move to Washington, I had held the purse strings, and directed the laborers - but I didn't lift the heavy things, I didn't command respect. And I found that I didn't *want* to. It wasn't that the seizure had taken my manliness, I didn't want the manliness to begin with. I hadn't failed the Marines, they had failed me with their gender essentialism. And yet I had passed their tests, I was one of them.

I wasn't finding the peace we had sought. We had to hire a plow to clear our driveways, and help to clear the snow that piled on our roof over the long winter - further instances of me hurriedly explaining how I was a disabled veteran, thanking them for doing what I would of course do for myself if only I could. I did find a group of miniature wargamers in the nearest city, but when I went to join their league, I didn't speak confidently as a twenty-year veteran of the game, I was timid, reserved. I was however intrigued by the trans-gender / non-binary member of the group - they had confidence, directness, and assertiveness, despite having that "marginalized" identity. At least in the tabletop gaming league, it wasn't a detriment to them.

In this space, my brain was turning things over. I signed up for the regional VA medical center, anxious to get the call for my first primary care appointment. In Salt Lake, I had grown accustomed to being able to state my preference for female medical providers, and, I was disappointed when a lapse in appointments there had gotten me pulled off the care team I'd been seeing for a decade and assigned to some new *dude*. While I waited to be assigned a new primary care doctor in Washington and fretted about all the things weighing on my mind, I often worked on my miniatures and watched youtube. I was struggling to get excited about actually building up my miniature army. Since I'd last played Warhammer 40,000, before the pandemic and only shortly after the birth of our second child, a new edition of the rules had been released. The scout-focused "recon" army I had been playing in the previous 8th edition was hardly even viable anymore due to the scout unit being moved into a different roster slot. I was frustrated. Rules changes making my identity less viable, how dare they!? Taking away the things that made the game fun for me even if I was losing!

I slowly started converting some of my existing pieces to make a couple of new models that would fill rolls that seemed to be more "meta," more desirable in the current state of the competitive game. But I still wasn't excited. Then, it hit me - I could use some leftover female heads from a previous kit to make FEMALE SPACE MARINES! Suddenly, I worked with urgency, with intensity. I found the first head I wanted to use and a suitable model to place it on. I ordered up some new models to put more lady heads onto.  I still fretted over getting that call from the VA. I checked their website to see if there was any information there, any kind of backdoor or pre-enrollment process. I didn't find any, but I did notice an ad for a new VA transgender clinic. I didn't think "oh I need to look into that" - yet. But I did think, "Oh my weird self will definitely be accepted." I continued to fret and piece together my models. Then, while working on my miniature lady marines, I watched a youtube video about "trans women in sports" that pushed me over the edge.

I had already been watching a few trans content creators over the past few years. Everyone watches "Contrapoints," right? But something in the Swedish you-tuber Mia Mulder's "Trans Women in Sports" video really spoke to me. I'd played a few sports in high school before dropping out, but my actual happy and formative memories were of running track in junior high. My main events were always some kind of long-distance, running 400 meters, 800 meters, and up to one mile. The long-distance training was fully gender-integrated, and usually, the races were even run together. The strongest distance runner on our team was one of the teacher's kids, a girl named Heather. If there was anyone to look up to in those races, it was her. My fondest memory of running in an actual competitive race was one particular 800 meter - I was just coming out of the first curve in the second lap around the track and I looked up and, to my surprise, I had caught up to Heather! I was keeping up with Heather! She gave me an approving nod and a smile as I tried and utterly failed to pass her, and we kept pace the rest of the lap to finish the race.

More than this memory, there was something in Mia Mulder's look, her style, that spoke to me too. I didn't just respect her, I couldn't simply see myself in her shoes. I wanted to BE her! Well, not *be* her, exactly - I mean, who could be Mia *but* Mia, you know? But I could see myself being her, or being like her - and I wanted it. I reflexively questioned the impulse - the voice of my dad, back when I was 17, loomed large in my mind - "Don't you just *like girls*? Don't you just *want to be with* a girl?" But instead of repeating the script back to myself, I had a sort of vision in my mind's eye. I saw a floating castle, made of locks, and all at once all of the locks turned and opened, the castle opened from the inside out, transformed from walls into a passage and then into nothing, it was gone. 

I WAS FREE!

I immediately ran directly upstairs, into the closet, and grabbed one of my partner's tops - a slip, the undergarment, you know - I knew exactly which one on my way up the stairs, I knew it would fit - and it did fit! I looked to make sure no one was there, and scurried to the bathroom, shutting the door behind me, focused on the mirror. I ignored my heavily bearded face, looking instead to the lines of the slip, how it kind of flared out at the hips, how it angled to cup the chest. YES, I thought. I can do this. I hung the slip back up, and put my men's-shirt back on. But I was giddy. My partner detected my excitement, she asked me about it...

"Oh, just, you know..." I explained. "Um, no, I don't know?" she replied."Just, like, thinking about who I am, my whole life and stuff, gotta spend some time in the incognito tabs, it's all good..." She was mildly confused and concernedly perplexed, but she didn't pry. Early the next day, when she inquired if I was finding what I needed in the incognito tabs, I knew I didn't want to keep it from her. I was really scared. What if she didn't want to be with me anymore? What about our kids? What if *I* didn't want to be with HER? Hell, I'd kept *all of this* gender stuff "hidden" (not really) from myself (lol no I hadn't), what else had I repressed? SPOILER ALERT - we both still want to be together.

Itook a deep breath, and slowly, clunkily, almost as slowly and clunkily as this whole mess of writing, with probably as many asides and tangents to discuss the badass ladies of late-80s & early 90s sci-fi, I told my partner, the mother of our children - "Honey, you know I've been watching some of those videos for a while...you remember how you took me to the pride festival and I kept saying, 'well I'm not trans, like, I'm a man, I'm a guy, a regular hetero guy, but also I think I must be some kind of gendequeer, or non-conforming, or genderfluid....you kinda didn't buy it...but like you know me, you know how I am...and anyways...I had this experience...floating castle of locks...and so, you know, um, I think....I think I'm trans. Transdgender. Like, or, at least...I dunno if I want to full on *be* a woman - like, I mean, who knows? Is that even possible? but, like....I tried on your slip....I saw this video by Mia Mulder, and I saw myself in her, I wanted to be her....I haven't wanted to be ANYBODY in years and years, not since I felt like I wanted to BE a Marines, and not even really then...." I rambled on, as everyone knows I do... "Hmmm...wow" she started to reply, "Are you sure....? Because actually, it kinda makes sense, I think I kinda see it...?"  "Yeah!? I replied, almost a question in itself. "I think I'm going to shave off my depression beard!"

And I did. I saved a few of the hairs in a vial, almost crying when I did it, because although I wasn't nearly fully committed at that point, some part of me knew, "this is your last beard, there won't be another one." It wasn't exactly a sad feeling. More...bittersweet? More like....I wish that I could have just identified with myself as I was born, and felt more at peace in my own body. We both went through a few days of needing to remind ourselves not to just hate on men, that masculinity wasn't *wrong* per se. But it had felt very wrong *for me,* deep down, all along.

I got the call to schedule my primary care appointment at the regional VA - I had almost resigned myself to just going along with whatever doctor they wanted to give me, but at the end of the call, they asked if I preferred a male or female provider - "FEMALE!" I immediately blurted out, then almost instinctively, I started trying to justify, to rationalize to the person on the other end of the phone, "Um, you see, that's just, my original primary care was a woman, that's who I'd feel most comfortable with..."

"Oh it's not a problem," the voice on the phone told me, "we want to provide you with the care that makes you feel comfortable."

I happily shared the news with my spouse. When the day came, I wore a large shawl scarf as a sort of cape, with that slip on underneath my boy-shirt as well as a bra my partner had lent to me. When I was talking to the primary care nurse about my mental health history - PTSD, trauma, depression, substance abuse - I kept hinting and the gender identity stuff. In many ways, I was still struggling to admit it. I got into a little bit more detail with my primary care doctor, who thought of reaching out to the hospital's designated LGBTQ counselor. Luckily, he was available at that very moment, and I was able to see him for a quick impromptu appointment. We talked through my experiences and my fears, and he challenged my hesitation, still, to fully accept myself.

"It sounds like maybe you're still having some trouble with labels, but that really, you're already pretty comfortable with the idea already of living as a trans woman?"

His challenge actually made me relax a bit. Yeah, he was probably right. We made plans to start regular therapy and I was invited to begin attending a support group for transgender veterans. Although I continued to have hesitancy, from that moment I was basically eagerly waiting to really "start" transition, which is itself an amorphous concept - hadn't I always been trans, really? Wasn't I at least *living as a trans person* since seeing the castle locks open? Would it not really start until...going on hormones? But what if I didn't want any surgeries...or at least wasn't anywhere close to being sure about that yet?

I struggled some in this liminal space. My mom and in-laws commented on my freshly smooth face - "Oh, what a nice, clean-shaven man your daddy is," they said to my kids. Another time, moving a small fallen tree off of a path on our property, my mom exclaimed to the kids, "oh look, your daddy is so strong," and it made me upset, angry almost. It felt like that expectation to be the man of the house. It felt like reinforcing binary gender roles to my kids - the man moves the heavy thing, the women remark on how strong he is. I didn't like it. But I struggled with "coming out." I struggled to even think of it that way. But eventually, I described the experience of going to the VA to my mom, explaining it through a medicalized mental-health lens.

"I've been diagnosed with gender dysphoria," I told her.
"What, like, instead of PTSD?" she replied incredulously.
"No, like, as an additional thing."
"Oh, *another thing,*" she said, seemingly channeling my departed father. Then, remembering her love for me, "I'm glad you're getting the care you need and I hope it helps you. It always tears me up when you're unhappy."

I kind of let things hang in that ambiguous place. I didn't out myself to her as transgender, just "gender questioning," just "exploring ways to alleviate the dysphoria." But in many ways, that still felt like hiding myself, even if other times I still felt like I was in the middle of figuring out who exactly I was. I began wearing the cape-scarf look most of the time, and even a few more overtly feminine shirts. Once, after achieving a particularly close shave, I balled up some socks and stuffed them in the borrowed bra, checking myself out in the mirror. I exclaimed to my spouse, "I see her! I see her!" It was kind of like my own sneak preview of my future self, I was a kid again running around pretending to be the heroic women that inspired me, only now that inspiration was my own self.

Finally, at a local easter-egg hunt that we took the kids to, we met our older kid's future kindergarten teacher, and I received another push. I was in one of my most overtly trans or outwardly "queer" outfits yet - more feminine pants, a soft teal lady's top with a pink women's overshirt, and finally a soft blue shawl from my mother. I had my hair pinned back with blue clips and a bit of makeup and lipstick on. There were some parents at the egg-hunt who were made visibly uncomfortable by me, but, the kindergarten teacher and her husband were extremely friendly to us. Then, the teacher asked my name - and I felt stuck. I told her my given name, the government name, the boy name, and left it at that. My maleness was fully undeniable, not that I was at all close to "passing as female" or whatever. But it put things right out in the open, I was a dude, a guy, just a weird one, and I didn't like that. I'd already been a "weird guy" all my life, and it really just was not working for me! We went home and I told my spouse, I couldn't hide it like that, publicly, anymore. I needed to be "out," full time, all the time, every day, to every person.

I took a couple of pictures in my easter get-up and wrote up a "coming out post" on facebook. A few of my extended family struggled just a bit, but by and large, everyone was supportive. The last person I came out to was my old junior high best friend from the Air Force, Dustin, who avoided social media. Of course, I'd been leaving him breadcrumbs...for months, actually. Before moving from Salt Lake, even. Because I've always *been* me, myself. Just trying to get out.

I pursued hormone replacement more earnestly and decisively, seeing my primary care doctor again to get the referral. It was amazing how different I felt already, and how different and almost universally better I felt people treated me. When my doctor moved my hair to listen to the top of my lungs with her stethoscope, there was a gentleness I wasn't used to. It felt so tender and special to me. Maybe every doctor before had used the same gentle care...maybe the difference was just in me? Who's to say, but, I know that I like the way I feel about those small forms of touch now so much better than before. I used to feel so awkward and tense about anything like that. Now it just seems...easy? And soothing.

I attended the trans support group, feeling at first like an outsider, an interloper. But I also felt quickly welcomed. Many of their struggles were very specific and kind of outside my experience, at least up to that point, but underneath that, the other veterans seemed to be coming from a similar place with similar concerns. One veteran even reassured me to be patient when I said that I had gotten referred but had not heard anything back yet about hormone replacement therapy. She told me confidently from a place of experience - the appointments are all remote, the HRT is all handled out of Portland and Seattle, and it will take time but I will get there. I few weeks late, I saw the gender endocrinology doctor, from Portland, on a remote appointment, and I continued to wait until finally, the HRT meds arrived, from Seattle, just like the other veteran had told me they would. 

Going through HRT can be difficult to describe. There's some basic stuff, the subject of countless youtube videos and blog posts (just like THIS ONE!) - tender nipples that increase in size, a shift in emotions and how they're perceived, changes in sexuality and sexual functionality. Mostly, it just feels *right.* It feels like the constant driving anxiety and despair are fading. Even the rotten horrors of the burning modern world, which are still often overwhelming, somehow feel less so, because they feel less like my problem. What is my problem is how I deal with it all, and how *I choose to be,* and that feels more within my grasp than it has in a long time. I feel like some things can upset me somewhat faster and more intensely,  generally personal and interpersonal, relationship-y, friendship-y things...but that overall, I can calm down and self-soothe soooo much more easily.

Maybe it's just leaving behind the big city for country life? Maybe it's getting completely and consistently sober off of marijuana, something that has at times in the past felt totally impossible (but which came about almost naturally during my second week on estrogen)? But I don't think so. I think this is just the beginning, of these changes in my body and my mind, and maybe I needed to ride the meta-line to this corner of the world and leave the rest behind to be able to get this new start. Maybe it's all kind of a package deal, you know?

The first couple of years of HRT are often described as a "second puberty," and in many ways that makes a lot of sense to me as I sit here, three months in, reflecting on my life. I have been feeling more like "myself" than I have since I was a teenager, when I was finding fulfillment roleplaying as a vampire woman and painting my first tiny model space marines. In many ways, that first puberty and the social expectations about what being a mature male meant are where I really went off the rails. Then, trying to prove that I could be what everyone thought I should be by enlisting in the Marines led me to a high speed crash - and then, ultimately, seeking to validate myself through others practically buried me.

But like the dread kindred Allison Valentine who I dreamed up on a masquerade character sheet all those years ago, I have risen again. I put a lot of Allison's character creation points into useful background support and possessions - a secure apartment, regular feeding partners, a good car, an extensive weapons cache - and one by one, in that first story campaign masterminded by my air-force-bro Dustin, they were all taken away. And in my actual life, I have endured many more real and devastating losses. But I am still here. I feel like I have gained a different sort of strength - a power and wisdom beyond my age.  I still often feel uncomfortable. I'm struggling with hair removal, getting it off of my body and face, one of the most common hurdles for newly transitioning mature femmes. I live too far away from any electrolysis clinics to commit to that most-permanent form...laser could possibly work but still presents a scheduling difficulty. So I do my best using an Intense Pulsed Light "it's-not-a-laser" device to slow some hairs down, an epilator to auto-pluck others, and I work on improving my makeup techniques to cover the beard-shadow.

The locals seem to have gotten the point of my efforts, if not each individually understanding exactly why, or with some still comprehending me as a man "dressed in women's clothes" and not "as a woman on the inside of a male body (that becomes less 'male' every day)." Really, does it matter? I guess only to me, and I'm happy just getting to be me, the real me, the whole me. The "badass lady" me. Our oldest kid joined the recently co-ed Cub Scouts and I've gone to the pack meetings with her - the elderly woman who runs the pack doesn't care what my gender is or how I present, she cares that I was an Eagle Scout, and invited me to consider accepting a leadership position. This brought up all the old fears, and yet, as I've said, they are quicker to quiet down. I'm worried about what it means to me and what it means to my kid, not what it means to anyone else.

I don't know what exactly the future holds - I already received my next 3 months of HRT supplies, and next week I'll have the labs drawn and get the appointment scheduled to set up the next 6 months of treatment. If this the past three months have been my "Terminator 2" and "Alien 3" sneak preview, I think I'm going to like the feature presentation. I already need to take the seizure pills twice a day, every day, for the rest of my life - what's a couple of hormone patches twice a week, every week? Honestly, I like being me, I think I'm going to keep it up!

Thanks for reading,
- Josalyn Isbell