Another new chapter

or the next stop on the timeline...

Anyway, as some of you may remember, in a galaxy, far, far..wait, wrong story.

I married my other half 13 years ago in March (yay!) and around 2007, I started on changing things up, and being who I needed to be. I got very lucky and thankfully we're still together.

2008-2009 I had a serious health scare, and since then life has been pretty crappy, to say the least. The surgery was traumatic (if anyone wants more details I can point you to the story) and it took 6 months for me to physically recover, and there are still some residual issues that I'll have for the rest of my life, but I'm still alive.

Since 2009 I have had more issues (I was always an overachiever, lol) resulting from the surgery and I ended up with depression, social anxiety & the best of all, agoraphobia. They're still not fixed, and in fact are still an ongoing battle. Sometimes I win, but more often I don't.

Trying to cut a very long, and probably boring story short, through it all my other half has stuck with me and now we get to the interesting part ;)

She has always identified as bisexual, but as long as we've been together it's just been us two. Recently we've been talking about things again and we decided (with lots of confirmations, and triple checking) that life (as I almost found out) is way too short, and I need to get out and try some new things. So we decided we're strong enough, and have enough trust in each other that we're now going to have a polyamorous relationship (sometimes called open, but slightly different and nicer).

So, on Saturday we went to meet someone, just to talk, maybe have a meal etc. and it was without a doubt the best night out I've had in years. It wasn't easy. In fact, I almost didn't go & I was stuck to the bed most of the day fighting a panic attack. The agoraphobia isn’t beaten, not even close, but I'm fighting. One day at a time.

I don't know why I posted this. I have been very irregular with posting since I came back here. But heck, why not?


TLDR: I kissed a boy, and I liked it.

Happy New Year everyone

Yeah I know it's late, so sue me. Wait don't, I have no money.

So it's been a while but things have been crazy as you can imagine. The ribs are healing and almost no pain at all for a couple of weeks now, except when I have been asleep or sneeze or try to lift something I'm not ready for like my 35 pound puppy :/

I saw the surgeon and he said the scars look great, I noticed he wasn't worried about the dwarf vampire bites above my navel, claiming they were from the chest drains uh huh.

Last year we had more than our quota of bad things coming in threes so this year we are hoping to have a break please.. k? thanks.

Hope you all have a good year,I'm sure Annie will be back soon, well as soon as the tidal wave ebbs from work.

Be nice to each other, you just never know. I was lucky.

Claire

Dun dun duuun

Looking like try #2 is going to be early November, as soon as we can find which of the 2 remaining hospitals will in fact do as the surgeon recommends.

On the plus side this time I have a new family doctor who is very sweet and is trying to do whatever she can to help get me to the hospital.

We're planning a trip this weekend coming to walk round the hospital, while knowing nothing is going to happen.

*Gulp*

and as if we didn't have enough stress already, we just bought a house! eek

Happy Birthday

to my best friend, soul mate, pain in the a.... ;)
I love you

Support the original ENDA.

Click Me!

Tears of a clown

So, the last week has been a fairly tough one, well I am the one posting .. I received my name change documents from the UK, made them legal by having my signature witnessed etc.

So we thought we would go and get my drivers license updated with the new name, shouldn't be too hard right? wrong. After waiting about 20 minutes for the girl helping us to find a supervisor who could help even more, we were told that they have no clue what a deed poll is and that they couldn't help us. The supervisor did forward the details to "legal", one week later we are still waiting.

Then we went to our bank for another simple procedure, change the name on the account from X to Y, easy right ..nope wrong again. You havn't played this game before have you? :) I can't do the whole story justice so I will let Annie when she feels up to it. Needless to say Bank of America (oops, did I print that out loud?) who supposedly gets a 100 on the HRC equality index, will be losing our accounts if I have my way.

This week our baby shipped out to Iraq, she's a combat medic and probably the sweetest, most loving, dumb ass teenager out there. But she's our baby. Emotions have been running high, good or bad my old habit of blocking emotions has helped me not lose it this week ... or did they, that power is fading, thankfully. I cannot take being emotionally dead anymore.

Last week I also signed up for one of those reunion sites to see if anyone I knew from school was around, well I found my sister. We havn't spoken for probably about 20 years (very long story, and probably not for here). I left a message saying Hi. Almost a week later and got nothing back, so figured ok, that's that then, I tried.
2 days ago I got an email back, she had been out of the country and was happy I contacted her. I then had the problem of deciding whether to tell her about "the real me" or not. In the end I decided what the hell, nothing more to lose, if she doesn't like it, I can always add her to junk email list.

I sent her to the very first post I made on here, so the words came across correctly. I received the following reply.

"ok i have read it ,and is claire you,,well if it is ,you are and always will be my brother things were never easy and if it is you,i look forward to having a sister ,im a little confused whether it is you or not ,,,but if it is please don't think i will turn my back on you ,we have missed out on each others life for far too long so either way ill always be here for you"

She's out for the weekend and said she would email again next week. I don't know how I feel about this. On one hand it could mean I have some of the "old family" again but on the other it could end up with me being hurt again and I do not want to go into the black void I used to be in.

It's almost 1am and it maybe time for a Xanax, maybe I'll add some more to this later.

what a hoot!

I don't know how I managed to take this shot,
it was a snap without thinking or having time
to get focused correctly as I was jumping back.

Liar, Liar

So, they say lightning doesn't strike in the same place twice.
They Lied!
Lightning struck about 200 times ........ on my face.

I don't want to say that having my first laser hair removal session was painfull, I really don't want to say it. But it hurt like hell, like hell was opening it's gates and shooting me in the face two hundred times with electrified bolts of pure pain.

Yeah, I hear you, I'm a wuss.

But this wuss managed to lay/shake through the whole damn session, like the Rebel Alliance taking out the DeathStar.

Surprisingly I was fairly calm on the drive in and while waiting my turn to be tortured, umm, I mean treated.

I expected it to hurt but apparently my research on the removal of facial hair failed to show that having a lot of coarse dark hair on the face and neck would result in my being zapped by rejected/failed Star Wars missile defense system that apparently was procured from eBay (thanks a lot Google). (Just kidding, I'm sure the machines were purchased from the proper sources).

On the plus side the fact that I was able to go and have the session at all is a tribute to the hormones coursing through my veins and that I am actually enjoying the result of my lungs breathing air in and out these days.

1 session down only 5-8 to go.

I can do this, no I can! Seriously ... well..... one zap erm session at a time and thankfully it's not for another 9 weeks.

GULP!

to boldly go ...

It's amazing that the small things in life can seem so big when you actually start to care. I've heard lots of warnings about not rushing into "the whole transition thing" and I thought that it would be easy, I have thought that it's ok, I can take my time.

Apparently I was wrong.

There have been quite a few fatal car wrecks in the surrounding areas that we live, sadly it's mostly innocent people being killed by speeders, drunks or idiots in general. This has not bothered me too much on a personal level (except for the obvious outrage at the way life claims the innocent while the guilty usually walk away) except lately.... It seems that since I have been upgraded (i.e having patches installed ... yes a lame geek joke but I still like it) I have realised even more how short life is. That it's too short of a time to be wasted, especially when life only started in the last year or so.

I am not wanting to rush through the process of transitioning, I (we) have financial and other obligations to sort out, but on the other hand I don't want to wait. I want to do something I haven't done before..... I want to enjoy life.. *shock , horror!!*.

Yes, as my therapist is want to say I am living now, and of course she is right, but I am not yet free.

As the old TV show used to say I am beginning a journey,

You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension. A dimension of sound. A dimension of sight. A dimension of mind. You're moving into a land of both style and substance of things and ideas. You've just crossed over into the Hormone Zone

Echo.. echo... echo

This dog is the cutest, most intense 90lb
best friend anyone ever had.

Stoned

This was a present from Annie, I picked out the stone & she created the wire form to hold it.

"Infamy, infamy, they've all got it in for me"*

As you can tell I don't write that much, but I have been planning a lot.
This month includes those wonderful delights of going to get eyebrows waxed (Yippee!), the first visit to a laser hair removal clinic for a consultation (boy am I looking forward to that? not!), and a trip to the therapist to see if I am still acting like a normal (?) human being. Yeah, normal, that's me. LOL.

Also as stated earlier it's also my birthday & luckily enough it's also patch day!!!



*title taken from ..Carry on Cleo

So ...

We decided to try an experiment and see if it would enhance or spoil it if I posted here rather than on my own small piece of cyberspace.

My name is Claire, and after 35 years of fighting it, I have come to terms with the fact that I am a Transsexual Woman.

I've been married for almost 6 years. I came out to my wife slowly, first just trying to dress a bit and then finally letting her know the whole truth.

We sought counseling in August 2006 and I started hormones in November. So far it has been going very well. We've been quite happy and I really feel so very alive now that I am able to really be me and let my secret out.

We plan to allow the hormone therapy to work it's magic for a bit while I sort out things like hair removal, etc. Our plans are to move somewhere a bit more friendly than our current location (quite backwoods) and start fresh in just under two years.

We're looking at the Pacific Northwest; we heard Portland and Seattle are quite welcoming. My current employer is just about one of the worst possible places to transition on the job, so I have to stay as stealth as possible until we're ready to move.

Coping and enjoying life are two completely different things. I'm a grandmaster at the first; I'm learning how to do the second.

Well, that's me. Nice to meet you all.