One year out of 33. it hardly seems like much. Especially when one juggles all the necessities of life, as a parent and a teacher there isn’t that much time to dedicate to my transition. Yet, despite that I seem to have moved things along. Not completely to plan but closer than I would have considered possible and without my life collapsing completely at this point. That hardly seemed likely, after coming out in a rather traumatic circumstance. This was more due to the implications and timing as much as the massive upheaval for those around me.

The Early Days

The immediate aftermath was of course extremely emotional at home as my wife, and I started to deal with our new reality which remains a work in progress. Coupled with the continual instances of coming out to extended family and friends, which again for the most part went exceedingly well. Yet each time it required courage, preparation and extracted more than a few tears. Against this emotional roller coaster, the first steps of living my life including starting my female wardrobe and going out dressed in public seemed less daunting than it initially appeared. Within a few days of coming out, I was in Rebel Sport trying on some women’s runners and buying some active wear. It was a release of a pent-up desire to be myself and led to my first moment of gender euphoria.

Learning to be myself

Since then, many things have remained straight forward and comfortable. Going out in female clothing became comfortable quickly as was wearing makeup (once I developed some skills). However, other elements of life and things we take for granted have become more complicated and are a growing source of anxiety. It won’t surprise anyone that public toilets are one example as it becomes a serious moment of deliberation if there are no gender-neutral alternatives. Do I risk the male toilets or go with my gender identity? It seems either option at various times leads to odd looks and comments with different psychological impacts. In the men’s room these looks make me feel insecure and potentially a little unsafe while in the women’s it is invalidating and feels like a rejection. Either way my mental health is taking a hit and I end up making my decision based on what I’m wearing, if it is overly feminine like a dress, I feel like the women’s is the safer option. In part this anxiety is partially of my own making through my activities online. As in online spaces we are confronted with the widespread hate regarding the use of ‘women’s spaces’, but I’ll put the blame where it should be on those, nasty hateful bigots, and their fear mongering, after all I just want to pee.

This anxiety aside I have made considerable progress in my ability to present 100% of the time as my true self. The last hurdle was coming out at work which leaped over a few months ago. While big steps like legally changing my name remain a work in progress. The biggest steps thanks to Victoria’s progressive laws like updated my birth certificate, driver’s license, and several government services have been done but everything else including financial institutions and insurance agencies takes time. It is sometimes overwhelming to contemplate all the agencies, memberships, accounts, and records that need to be updated, especially contemplating the time this will take and the possible bureaucracy waiting for me with each step. At this point I’m trying not to stress myself out about it all too much and choosing to take each step as it comes by updating my details when I need to interact with each new agency. So far this has limited a bit of anxiety and nicely spread-out little moments that make me smile each time I change my name somewhere else.

Ongoing Challenges of transition

It is not all about clothes and names but also about behaviour. In some cases, this is innate as I just let myself do what should have come naturally like curling up on the coach, hugging a blahaj in bed or keeping myself hairless. However, after 33 years of pretending to be a boy things like mannerisms and speaking patterns are still distinctly male. Like make up these are all things that I am gradually learning and are easier in the modern world with social media links and YouTube videos. Without these I’m not sure where I would have started. I must give a lot of credit to those members of the community that transitioned a long time ago without all this support. However just because we have these resources does not make it easy as it requires practice and a constant level of metacognition as we think about how we are doing something in addition to what we are doing. This is most obvious in voice training whether it is pitch, resonance, elongated vowels, or variation. It is a constant battle, one that often slips when I am in the flow of conversation. These moments become frustrating as I lament the lost opportunity to practice or get frustrated by my own perceived lack of progress. This would be less of an issue if I was not a teacher and didn’t rely so heavily on my voice but that’s not going to change, so I just need to keep focused on my practice and find opportunities like my YouTube teaching videos to put in some hard work in a controlled environment.

Finally, looking back on the past 15 months, the progress I have made also does highlight the areas that are on hold and makes it harder to cope. Putting off medical transition through HRT has been the right decision for my relationship and is not something I am going to regret overall. Even if things don’t work out in the future, I can confidently say I made sacrifices to give us the best possible chance. Yet, this doesn’t mean it is easy. The more progress I make in all those other areas that allow me to be myself and help others to perceive me as the woman I am, serves to highlight that I am starting to hit a roadblock that only medical intervention will address. This is an added anxiety and source of depression on top of the existing incongruence that I feel between my mind and body. That disconnect is constant and an ongoing sense of frustration but was for a time manageable through making progress in other ways to validate my femineity. Now those steps are reinforcing that divide. This is where my challenge seats now, balancing prioritising my family with the steps I need to take in the future for my own mental health.

This turned into a longer post than I originally intended (let’s face it, I have trouble being brief) but it provided an opportunity to work through a couple of things in my own mind and hopefully may help others. As from experience, reading about some shared feelings can validate similar feelings that others might have during their own journey.