Becoming

It has been a while now since I've posted any sort of developmental progress in my transition. There really hasn't been much of a reason other than not having a good way to get them down on paper or having something else to talk about. While the changes I'm going through now are, at base, the same as I have always been going through they feel different. I am still having physical changes from the hormone replacement and I'm still having emotional changes due to being myself and learning who I am.

Looking back over the last, almost, two years it feels like I had just gone through the entirety of puberty in a matter of a year and now I'm starting to flesh out, to define, the woman I will become. I feel like my developmental age has almost caught up with my actual age. I'm starting to feel more confident and comfortable in my body and I've fallen back in love with my hair which is now past my shoulders. Honestly, I have changed more physically than I thought possibly, especially for someone who had gone through puberty such a long time ago. Even since last writing about any changes what has happened now is on top of that. I've mentioned before how my skin has gotten so much softer, well recently it has gotten softer again, and smoother. I notice different areas around my body that just feel totally different when I touch them. The odd muscle memory that you don't think of, like reaching up to scratch my cheek, is how I notice many of these changes. I touch my face and my muscle memory says "No, this should be more solid and back a few millimeters.".

Speaking of my face, crying has taken on a new feeling. As a tear goes down my face it takes a completely different path than it used to and it feels different on my skin in general. Then when it falls it lands between my breasts and keeps going. That is a completely foreign feeling to me, normally the forest of chest hair would have sucked that up like a towel.

As I have mentioned I am back in love with my hair. Not only has it gotten longer but it is fuller, stronger, shinier, in general more healthy. I guess it could be, and probably partially is, because I am taking care of it better but it was a change that seemed to happen practically overnight. One day after getting a shower and drying my hair I couldn't help but think it felt totally different to me all of a sudden.

With all of these physical changes I think it would have been impossible for them to not affect me emotionally. I feel beautiful. I look at myself in the mirror, or I touch my hair or skin and it brings a smile on my face, a smile of contentment. It's a strangely familiar feeling to me, one I can't place a finger on but it seems to call from my much younger years. I'm not sure if I can sufficiently put into words the feeling that overwhelms you into wrapping your arms around yourself, tilting your head to your shoulder and feeling your own body just to enjoy it, just to bring to memory how wonderful you feel right now both physically and emotionally. It is powerful, and my solitary regret is not having someone around to appreciate it with me. A regret I feel because for whatever reason, the next feeling that comes up with how wonderful I feel now is how much I'd like to share it with someone. That in itself is a feeling I'm not used to having.

Feelings I'm not used to having is something that has become some of a theme for me now. For the majority of my transition so far I have been in situations I have been in many times before. It is good it went that way, and I'm not sure if it wasn't subconsciously on purpose. What it did was allow me to get used to feeling, for the most part, emotions I have had before in situations I have been in before but now through this new lens. As I have mentioned, dealing with the emotional changes is one of, if not the most, tumultuous parts of my, and I would hazard to guess any, transition. The sorting out of base emotions like anger, sadness, happiness, attraction, etc had to be done, no differently than a teen having to sort out there emotions through a tsunami of hormones. I am more comfortable with them now, I can identify which emotion I'm settling on and can deal with it as needs be. Now that I have done this, I'm more capable of taking on more complex emotions. I find myself now defining myself as a woman. I'm collecting emotions and feelings and deciding how I will let them shape me as the person I want to be.

And now it's story time, and I'll describe a host of emotions new to me.

Well, first of all I should say this. As usual, I am about to write about a few people I just gave this website address to. I'm not sure if they actually read this or not, but apparently this is a thing I do. So without further adieu, I'll introduce these people and in the meantime, hope I cause an emotional tear or two to be shed ;)

In a good way. :)

So recently I have been volunteering at our local women's center on a couple of projects. I've met some fantastic women through the center, strong women that anyone could look up to. I certainly do.

Two women in particular, the two I deal with the most, are women I have no other way to describe and have to others in the past, other than super heroes. The amount of work, time, effort and emotional investment these two women put into their day is just staggering. Dwarfed only by the number of people they help and the degree in which they help them.

One of the two is a little older than me. She seems very much like I could picture myself after a few years. Intelligent, thoughtful, wise, patient... and with a seething feistiness you can't help but feel you don't want to see unleashed.

The other is a few years younger than me. She seems very much like the woman I could have been had I only been a woman at her age. Also intelligent, patient, kind-hearted, getting wiser and while she doesn't have a feistiness that is almost palatable you can tell that being on her bad side is analogous to bringing a knife to a gun fight.

Both of these women seem to be doing exactly what they were built for. The amount of advancement and sheer work that needs to be done around women's rights, health and safety requires women just like these two. It was after sitting and talking with them for three hours about what needs to be done, their plans for the future and how I can help that I came across a new set of emotions I hadn't had before.

I was so struck my these two women that they were on my mind for the rest of that day and I thought about them often after that day. What I noticed was how much I admired them, and that made me realize two things. First, it was the first time I could recall truly admiring someone and not having it turn somehow sexual, and second, how I have never had a role model.

Having no role model was something I have had on my mind off and on after my therapist asked me one day if I had any female role models when I was young. My answer was no, not only did I not have a female one, I never once had any sort of role model. I think I could take up an entire post just on the causes of that, but mainly, I never let myself. Honestly, I had no idea what I was denying myself, but at the same time, what choice did I have? How could I have sculpted myself as a woman I admired when I wasn't allowing myself to feel that way, when I was running away from feeling that way?

It may not seem like much, but to me it was a powerful revelation when I realized both of these women could fill that role for me. It was powerful because for the first time I was seeing myself as a real developing woman, I felt like a young girl looking up to these two women in complete awe at who they are. It was a feeling I couldn't help but hold on to and cultivate. It was too new, and felt too natural to let it go. It felt like exactly what I should feel like at this point in my emotional development. It has brought to mind questions and answers (not necessarily linked to each other) about myself that I had never come up with before. To see two women that seem, to me anyway, to be so much like me, or like who I could be, made me feel like a woman, period. It validated my existence as the woman at heart I always thought I was, the same woman that I hid for so many years I forgot who she was.

It is also a powerful thing to see your path laid before you. What has come from knowing these women is seeing that I am on the right path, or at least a good one for me. I no longer feel like I'm screwing up my chance at being the woman I have always wanted to be, for two reasons. One is that my goal seems attainable now, it seems attainable now because I see how I am the emotional "child"  growing into the adult woman who seemed like an unreachable specter in the dark. The other reason is now I know I don't have as far to go as I thought and the road isn't as perilous and impossible as I was certain it was.

I think, if you were to go back to some of my older posts and compare it to this one you would see the difference in levels of emotions I'm talking about. It is strange going through teenage-like development at 36 years old. Strange, and it sucks too for the reason I would have preferred to go through it when I was a teen. With that impossible notion to square though, it is good to have the maturity of an adult to go through my younger years with. I find I have the ability to section out each new feeling and emotion and nurture it as I see fit. And while I don't have the unknown pleasure of having this happen naturally and mostly without my knowledge, like what happens to teens, I do get to watch it happen. Being able to watch it happen, for me as a trans woman, gives me the encouragement to go on. Self encouragement, the hardest but most useful kind to find. I see myself, wading through a new emotion, or new part of myself and I can see the progress. More importantly I can see myself becoming the woman I always wanted to be.