transretrogurl

Reader warning! If you read this you’ll find I’m at the bottom of a cycle at the moment, so this is a bit of a self-absorbed rant. Call it a cathartic purge. To make up for it I’m writing another frock-tale blog post straight after, so if you’re here for gushing and fashion talk, I’d skip this. If you are a conflicted, beautiful cross-gender person, keep reading, I’m sure you’ll find something that resonates…..

I always seem to start these blog posts with an apology for the void of time since the last post, so, in keeping with my lackadaisical approach to letting her have some time, I apologise. Had a couple of good reasons though, one being real life (boo, hiss), the other being an attack of ‘what in hell am I doing?’. I thought I’d gone past that but obviously not. Take a confused middle aged man, give him the opportunity and money to embrace his inner girl, to finally be the person he has suppressed, ignored, discarded, pretended not to be and everything is fine, right?

Hell no. You can’t unlearn a lifetime of hiding, of watching your mannerisms in case people think you’re a ‘poof’, of repressing any softness, of practising and eventually perfecting the guise of a run of the mill man.

Picture above – ‘run of the mill man’

Yes, Sarah has been out in the light for three years or so now, and it’s been wonderful. But I’m starting to disassociate.

Let me put it this way. I look at her pictures and I get aroused. I love the look, the fashion, the fact you can see her legs under her skirt, her nails, her provocatively shaped and coloured lips. When I started I marvelled at the fact I couldn’t see *anything* of me in the pictures, it was, and is, a radical shift in mindset and appearance. And that’s a good and a bad thing.

Good because, wow, I’m still amazed and thrilled that it is me in those pictures. I have upward of 18 thousand pictures of her in *hundreds* of outfits, a lot of outfits that modern women wouldn’t dream of wearing.

Bad because it’s not me. Yeah, I know it is, I was there, I remember the feeling of wearing them, the taste of lipstick (and continually having to rub it off of her teeth) and the pain of the bloody heels. But there’s an obstinate part of me, the dyed-in-the-wool kid for the 1970s, that can’t accept that part of me, And lately that disassociation, that divide, has got wider for some reason.

Pictured above – ‘not me’ 🙂

Amusingly, I think he resents the good time she has. He has to get to the makeover, buy the frocks, do all the crap bits, the driving, the parking, the riding of the tube. And after, he is the one that has to tramp back to the hotel, shower, shave. She gets all the fun, he gets all the hassle.

Wow, that’s one hell of a first-world rabbit hole.

But being serious for a second. I’m very, very lucky in that my other half, who I love very much, knows about this. I know what it was like to hide the secret, especially when the urge to be Sarah came like a pink flecked wave over me. And I have a few very close friends, both T and not, who are aware of her. But it’s a tiny percent of the people I know. This is the internet, everything out here is fairly permanent (until we get a big sun flare, but that’s another story). There is a high probability that at some point in the future I’ll need to explain Sarah to people who cannot and will not accept her, especially given the fantastic job I’ve done over the years of persuading people I’m a grouchy bloke.

And that is something I need to prepare for. This disassociation is a dangerous way to be. The choice is clear – I need to be 100% comfortable that I am her, or not be her.

This is an argument that a lot of us have to face and we each deal with it in different ways. Me, I go through waves. It’s like a biorhythm, I peak at the point when being Sarah seems like something I need to do all the time, regardless of the insane logistics (just how on earth do women hold careers and adhere to the insane fashion requirements of this generation I will never know – add that to a disparity in wages and again it feels like I’ve fallen through time to the 1960s when, regardless of how delicious the fashions were, the attitudes to race and gender were barbaric), I dip to points like now where the concept of being a drab middle aged idiot with no moments of pink rage seems almost acceptable.

Picture above – ‘drab middle aged idiot’

I’ve talked in past posts about the T-cycle, and I’m 100% convinced it exists. I like to think it’s a surge of my feminine hormones. But conversely there’s a drab-cycle too. I like to think I’m above hormones and all that sexuality bollocks, but I’m not.

Right now I’m dipping. Amusingly I also feel fat, which is a very female thing to do. But one thing I have learnt in my 48 (soon to be 49) years on this planet is that it’s all perspective.

So how do you deal with it when you get the ‘drabs’?

There are a number of options….

1: PURGE!!!!!!

Stupid option. All you are doing is giving in to the momentary urge to conform to the societal gender rules. DON’T! I’ve lost so many irreplaceable parts of my wardrobe because I use this as a release.

2: THROW ON A FROCK!

Again, no. If you’re feeling out of sorts and conflicted diving into the other gender is a bad thing to do. You’ll just kick off the guilt/shame even further.

3: VENT!

Works for me. Welcome to my vent…. Being serious, it’s nice to just flail at the world (mentally) on occasions. We live a lonely life because of societies requirements around gender, sometimes it’s good to stick a middle finger up at the rules.

If you’ve read my other posts where I’ve gone on, at bloody length, about my history and my reasons for frocking up, you’ll know my history. And for the most part, I’m not bitter about it. I like being different. But occasionally, especially when I’m feeling disassociated from her and, apologies for sounding strange, I’m in love with her, I get bitter. I get resentful about the society we live in, the unfairness. The fact that if you’ve got external genitalia and a wallet full of cash you can inflict your moral values on someone else as if you are the bigger, or the better, man.

Here’s what I wish for, deep in my heart. I’d love to be her whenever I wanted, without feeling like a criminal, without feeling like I’m something less than a ‘normal’ person. I pay my taxes, I am courteous and respectful of everyone, regardless of how irritating and obnoxious they can be. And I know, if my love of the female look ever got out, I’d be in a world of ridicule. I wish that wasn’t the case. And I know that is the main reason I disassociate – I distance myself from myself so I could claim ignorance if ever found out.

Picture above – ‘definitely not me, if asked’

We have made great strides recently in acceptance but to me it feels wrong. Not the acceptance, that should be the default. More the fact that the society we live in has gone PC mad. And while the surface acceptance of the T lifestyle is nice (if I’d been me at the time I would have liked to have been me, the 1940s and 1950s, doing what I do would have made me a criminal) I’m waiting for the backlash. And to a certain extent I see that in the States right now – put a bigoted, small minded man in charge and suddenly a lot of civil and personal rights start to decay.

The irony of all this? I know if I put a dress on right now, had a face full of makeup, put a lovely wig on, slipped my feet into a comfortable pair of heels and sprayed a little perfume, I’d feel a whole lot better.

Now if I could just beat that disassociation…..

Stay beautiful and relatively sane.

Picture below – ‘depressed man’….. Go figure 😉