June 9th, 2007
Today was a big day. It started off with yard work (ugh), followed by rushing out to shop for a new outfit to wear to my support group meeting. They've seen all my other stuff and I need to build up a wardrobe anyway. While I was out, I needed something new for church tomorrow, and knew I needed more blouses for work next week. Not having much time yet to get all that done and get to group, I only got the outfit for the day and the work blouses. (btw, I got a white tunic top with ties on the side, and a burgundy colored skirt. Not sure what you call the crinkle effect on the material, but it's like that). I thought I was doing well on time, but by the time I got back showered and ready to go, it was already after 2pm and it starts at 2pm. Getting ready takes me some time, as I'm not the fastest at makeup and I took extra time with my hair. I still got there before the meeting came to order so I prefer to think of me just being fashionably late. We had a good turn out today and as always, a few 1st time members showed up. I try to make a point of talking to all the new people, as it's very important they feel a connection and know that people there do care. I just love being at group functions, because I'm free to try and be the type of person I always admired. As a child, my role models were Mary Tyler Moore and Marlo Thomas (That Girl). I'd always wanted to be outgoing and friendly to everyone and admire all the people I've met in my life who could do just that. Ok, back to the events of the day.
Oh, I forgot to mention that while I'm doing yardwork, a couple of Jehovah's Witnesses came bay to talk to me about how much violence there was in the world and if I was wondering why there was. They at least acknowledged I was in the middle of yard work and didn't try to keep me. I couldn't help though, asking them what they thought about people who felt they were women, but in men's bodies and men who were trapped in women's bodies. The guy said that they believed that God gave us our gender at birth, and those that had feelings otherwise could, with the help of counseling and studying the bible could become happy with their gender. At that point, I informed them that I am a transsexual, and in a year or two would appear fully female and said I've really been that way all my life. So perhaps God made me that way and I've always been female, and do follow through and become as female as possible, would be staying true to God. I furthered my point by speculating that if I was born with a deformed & useless arm and desired to use modern technology to replace it to have a nearly fully functional arm shouldn't I do so? He replied that 'Well, that's just a physical thing'. My reply was that I'm talking about a physical thing too, my mind has a female gender and my defect is having a 'Y' chromosome that gives me a male appearance. His wife helped us back out of the confrontation by saying that they really just wanted to call to everyone's attention about senseless violence in the world. I couldn't help but add that 'yeah, there's even violence against transsexuals too'. That did get an acknowledgement out of the guy that those things were bad too. So we parted on good terms and I tried to get them to think about what I'd said and consider looking at people like me as also being God's creature and just being the same gender He assigned at birth.
So anyway, it was another good session with the support group. I always feel so at home and well, just myself. No one has any presumptions of me being male or how I used to act. I think the problem I have with anyone who's known me before, is that they have a hard time seeing me as something else and somehow, I let that prevent me from acting they way I wish I always could have been. Ok, that might sound confusing and only someone in my position might understand that. If I'm not clear, just ask me sometime and I'll try to paint a clearer picture.
Anyway, I talked to as many people as I could. Since we only meet once/month and not everyone is there each month it's hard to have enough time to talk to everyone. There are those who are further along than me, and I really want to learn from their experiences, and new people that I'm trying to at least avail myself to them if they want to talk. I feel it's very important to make new people feel welcome and that they belong. I don't try to convince them this is their path or tell them what they should do, but the support group I feel is there so that anyone who needs to figure out what path their on can do so in an environment that allows them to be open & honest.
After group, several of us went to Union Station for dinner ( they do have good food ). After that, a few of us went shopping at Great Northern. Now, 2 of us are MTF and about the same point in our 'road maps' of transitioning. The other is a wonderful person who is a genetic girl. Because of her, the other 2 of us could feel confident enough to go into JC Penney's and shop. And we did have a good time shopping, and bought what we needed. Most of the time I walked around waiting for the 'gender police' to come around and ask me to leave. Fortunately, I can't say that anyone really gave me a second look. I thought someone did but people are looking all around in a store and you don't really now what they're looking at. My big test was purchasing my outfit that I bought for church the next day. I did have to talk to her and look her in the eye. She was young, maybe recent high school graduate. She almost seemed new to the position because she ran through her whole spiel as if she was just trained and had to go through the same speech with everyone. Maybe because of that she wasn't trying to figure me out as much as she was just trying to do her job correctly. I guess you can see I'm a little paranoid about what everyone thinks of me. My psychologist has been helpful on that aspect. I was much more paranoid before. Anyway, all went well on the shopping trip and nothing slightly negative happened at all.
Afterwards I had them over at my place for a drink and we checked out 'meetleann.com' and a few other sites and had a relaxing time. It was such a great day. So much so that I wrote a huge blog (I quickly decided it should be it's own page and not a text box entry into the main blog page).
Ahh, there now I don't have to repeat my days events over and over again with everyone and I also didn't bother anyone who didn't wish to hear about it (I'm assuming if you got this far, you were interested).
