transretrogurl

It’s hard to put into words the way I feel right now, but that’s never stopped me from trying before, so I’ll have a go.

I want to laugh out loud. I want to cry, long hard sobs of wrenching happiness. I want to be by myself and quietly examine the day’s memories and inevitable effect on me. I want to out drinking myself stupid in an orgy of excitable madness (although I can’t because, bah, I’ve gone ‘dry’ for January).

Today I got up at 4:00am, butchered my face (one of the least fun shaves I’ve ever had, left me looking like I’d been bobbing for lawnmower-blades), drove the sixty odd miles to Birmingham Intl train station, jumped on a packed rush hour fast train to Euston, walked in the rain to Euston Square, jumped the Hammersmith and City Tube to Baker St, jumped the Jubilee to Bermondsey, and walked to Boys Will Be Girls. There, having spent a couple of minutes drinking coffee, bemoaning my failing and middle-aged body, I put myself into the caring and talented hands of Cindy to do her magic to my aged and creaking body.

And the results were beyond magnificent. Rather than my usual ‘retro-retro-retro’ I asked Cindy to do her magic as she saw fit. You know, the ‘standard’ look for a casual cross-dresser about town. Which in Cindy’s case is just, well, utterly sublime.

And seven hours of laughter, joy, stunning shocks at seeing her, Sarah, revealed in the mirror as I had never seen her before, I find myself on a comfy double bed in a comfy hotel overlooking the river Thames, quietly, and not so quietly, taking stock of my life to date.

I’m going to be honest. The last couple of months I’ve teetered on firmly putting Sarah back in her box. I thought she was done, I’d pretty much ticked all my bucket-list entries for her, and I was finding looking at her pictures was not effecting me the way it used to. I just didn’t see her, I only saw a confused middle-aged bloke behind layers of make-up. And that’s a depressing way to be when the whole idea of being her is such a joy in my mind.

And it’s not that the pictures were bad. Far from it. Sarah has evolved massively in the last year, each look and session different and something more, but in standard English-bloke mode I was doing an Eeyore and just, well, being down.

Today changed all that. There was something about the look today that was so utterly unlike the person I have to be on a daily basis, so enticing and, yes, attractive, that it took my breath away.

For the first time in a long time I looked in the mirror and was smitten with the girl, no, the woman looking back at me. Her mannerisms, her outfits, her look. And to realise repeatedly that it was *me* looking back, it was something else.

I’m very lucky to be in a position where I am here right now, able to take advantage of the services offered by wonderful people like Cindy. And today taught me that I need to stop listening to the doubter inside.

So I’m a little happy, a little sad and a lot humbled by the experience. Happy because, well, just look at the photos in this blog. Sad because she is someone he/I would love to meet. Humbled because it just highlighted the joy that you can get when you just let yourself be yourself.

So, on that off-blonde bombshell, I’m going to bed because I have another session in the morning. And I’m going to enjoy the feel of the corset, the taste of the lipstick, the clicking of my heels as I walk to the studio for the photos, the laughter as we look at the photos an instant after they have been taken, the smile on my pretty, female face the most genuine thing I’ve had in literally forever.

Stay beautiful, and stay true to yourselves. And once in a while, you beautiful people, just bask in your own glory and your own selves.

And yes, we did a maternity outfit. Because why the hell not 🙂