Maiden’s Journey

For the past few weeks I have been feeling pretty down and trapped in my life which has felt both unfulfilling and without hope of change for the better.  I’m wondering if that was part of the appeal of transitioning and starting a new life as Nicola. It is a very clear and obvious break with the past, but even with the many risks and downsides, it would create some kind of freedom.  I might lose my marriage, but I would be free to live on my terms without having to compromise and accommodate the needs of another.  I might lose my family, but I would be freed from their expectations of me and who I should be.  I might lose my career, but that would free me to try something new.  For all that these fears of losing everything are terrifying and reasons not to transition and to hide firmly in the back of my closet, they are also secretly attractive to me.  In some ways I think this attraction is related to the way I have been feeling since the university visit...

I have missed a few days and given that nothing is happening vis a vis transition, there is probably not much to say anymore, and certainly not enough of interest to warrant a daily blog. So I shall switch to weekly and see how that goes.  Maybe things could change in the future and I will have more to share, but for that to work, I would need to be actually doing something.  I have been continuing to grapple with understanding why any time I visit a university campus, I am plunged into weeks of despair and feelings of hopelessness.  A huge part of it is looking back on the past and remembering the happier times. Not that I probably was that happy in truth, just the benefit of rose-tinted memory, but the clear implication is that however real it was, it was still better than how I feel now. The thing is though, most of the time, I don’t notice that much whether I’m happy or not, life is so busy that I’m just doing all the time and have limited time to evaluate. Campus tou...

Maybe this crisis had been coming for a while but the trigger that tipped me over the edge was visiting a university campus open day with the teenager. We had been to a couple some time last year and it had the same effect on me then.  Why is this?  Why does going to a campus cause me to collapse into a depression that it takes me weeks to recover from and which also seems to kill off any hope around my gender? I think the gender part is the easiest to explain. Being around young women confronts me with what I’m not. It is not something that I have ever really been consciously aware of, but the picture of me (Nicola) in my mind is about twenty. And that is long gone. So I see a young woman looking how I imagine I want to be and I think that could be me and then (particularly when this really hit me last year as I saw a reflection of myself at the same time) I am hit with the realisation that this is not the case at all. It is more than just feelings of leaving it too late or s...

Not sure why, but I chose some female underwear today, having reverted to male for the past week.   Maybe I thought it might re-ignite my trans feelings or desire to do something.  Short answer: no. I just didn't really feel anything.  Well, less comfortable, but that's not a positive.   Whatever it was that I was feeling and which was driving me on to want to take steps and radically change my life has somehow gone. I tried putting on a bra too and that didn't feel affirming either.   What has happened to me?   This is an interesting thing to ponder.   Does it mean that I was never really trans at all, and having had a revelation that it is unlikely to make me happy (likely the contrary) has broken the spell?  Was I jut kidding myself all along?  Lying to myself?  Being selective with what I choose to believe (and write about) to fit a narrative? I don't know.  Perhaps? Not consciously of course, I haven't ...

Maybe work helps to distract me, as I don't feel quite as low today.  Or maybe just differently sad.  Work has annoyed me, but it's different to despairing about not having the life I want and giving up on everything.  So that makes a pleasant change.   It was the final of a TV quiz show today and one of the team captains is non-binary.  In earlier rounds of the series they've had a female look. with make-up and earrings but ambiguous clothing.  For the final, they really went to town though, with a nice dress.  It was great to see some representation on mainstream TV and for it not to be a thing, they just were wearing a dress and that was fine.   Surprisingly, my wife didn't comment.  I'm sure she thought it was odd but I think maybe she was more accepting of someone being obviously male but dressing, rather than someone who is trying to be female, which she doesn't accept.  I suppose I could have asked her but that seems lik...

I would have hoped to be starting to recover some sort of equilibrium by now but today I've felt worse if anything. Probably not helped by packing away all my female clothing and removing the last of my 'small steps', the nail polish on my toes.  I didn't know, but I now discover that leaving your nails painted for a prolonged period must be bad for them, as now I've taken the polish off, many of them have brown patches.  Hopefully, that will go away, or at least grow out.  The things you learn about being a woman!   After a week of being miserable, my wife finally noticed.  Not in a supportive way.  More that me being down is annoying her.  That is as much support as I can ever hope for there.   All things considered, another bad day.  Trouble is, I can't see any prospect of good days on the horizon.  I need something to look forward to and I just don't have anything right now.      

Today I have just felt really low all day.  Maybe, as it is the weekend, not having the distraction of work has allowed me to feel what I have been able to push aside during the week.  Mostly it is coming to me as questions.  Big unproductive questions like ‘what is the point’ which can’t be answered and aren’t very helpful.  Also more pertinent but equally unanswerable questions such as how should I think of and relate to women if I take away the wish to emulate them?  And how can I hope to be one of the girls when I’m ostensibly a man, without coming across wrong?  It has occurred to me that maybe I should just come out and tell the world that I am trans, although I’m not transitioning so that I can then be the person I want to be. And somehow that kind of coming out feels much less scary than saying I am transitioning, maybe because it is just information with no impact on the recipients, whereas I am transitioning does bring change. I’m sure it’s a bad ...

Considering the loss of all my dreams, I am surprised that I am not feeling a great deal sadder than I actually am. That’s not say that I’m happy. I am in fact really quite sad. Just not as miserable as I might have expected.  Partly I think it’s because I have been busy at work this week and have been able to distract myself from thinking about things, except when writing this blog of course.  When I do try to figure what kind of life I might have if I’m not going to have the life I have been dreaming of, then pretty much all I can come up with so far is to do more work and lose myself in that. I guess that would be fine but it doesn’t really sound fulfilling.  I think the other part of why I am not quite as unhappy as I might be, is that I do feel some sense of relief. I had built up in my head this idea of coming out being this big scary thing, and had all these fears of what I would lose and how bad everything would be for me if I did. Perhaps it isn’t surprising then...

Having come to some sort of conclusion, or perhaps a better word would be resignation, that my transitioning to Nicola is impossible, what do I do now? I have given up on what little that I was doing, and that much is simple.  I can hide my female clothing away and let my body hair grow back (which it already is with annoying rapidity!).   That changes something, but doesn't change who or what I am.  I am still trans and still a woman, whether I pursue that openly or hide it away.  This is a permanent feature of me and isn't going to change.   Giving up on transitioning (at least for the time being) will not make that go away, and at some point, this might become a problem.  Best case scenario is some level of regret in the future.  Worst case, I don't know.   My other concern is a lack of dreams.   I am very much a person who exists today on the basis that the future will be better, or different at least.  I don't re...

 Today is International Women's Day and the firm was doing various events related to that.   To be honest, I don't really approve of the corporate (mis)appropriation of IWD.  For one thing, it seems somewhat hypocritical when the rest of the year many organisations do nothing and the gender pay gap and glass ceilings remain intact.  Moreso though, whilst these are problems, they are very much first-world problems. I think the corporatisation of IWD ignores the international part, which is surely the point of the event, to highlight to appalling ways in which women and girls have to live in some parts of the world.  I didn't see any corporate events talking about that.   I had two meetings today which showed IWD in contrast.  The first was with a female leader of a business, runs a female entrepreneurship network.  One of the things we touched on was how little private equity investment goes to female founders (depending on your source, i...

I have been really struggling for the past few days, and maybe a bit longer than that I guess, to see a way forward.  The weekend brought into sharp focus that the dream that I have held on to all this time is completely unattainable. The dream I have, and Nicola in my head, is a pretty young woman that the reality of my body and actual age precludes. My misgivings about how I carry on with my career and life as Nicola are also barriers (whether real or perceived, they’re still barriers).  Now this doesn’t mean I am not trans. I totally am. And I 100% wish it were possible for me to live as a woman. I am trans and I am valid. I suppose at least I am not going around the “am I really trans” loop!  But I have given up on the idea of transitioning. At least for the moment. Because I just cannot envisage how the probable outcome would be worth the personal cost to get there when it is so far away from the dream.  This morning I put male underwear back on, have been stand...

I would love to be able to say that yesterday was just a blip, and maybe I was tired from traveling a lot the day before, but today is just the same.  The idea of me transitioning, being a woman and being happy seems so remote and impossible that I feel like I may as well give up on it.  Last week I was worrying about how I could fit in with the professional community if I transitioned and concluded probably not.   Now I'm feeling crushed by the sense that my whole envisioning of who I could be is an impossible fantasy.  What might have been, if I had been able to transition before university - not that this would have been possible in the late eighties / early nineties anyway?  Even if it had been possible, and I had enough information to know I could do it at the optimum time, and if family barriers and school bullying could be overcome, even on that highly unlikely hypothetical scenario, I still wouldn't have been who I envision.  Not only is it imp...

After feeling a bit downhearted yesterday, today has been worse and I can feel the weight of negativity bearing down on me.  Hard to describe, but it feels like a tangible presence waiting to crush me that I am pushing back against.   Maybe I'm just tired from a long day of traveling yesterday, but it does feel like more than that.  It is partly gender-related, from being confronted with the reality that the vision of the girl in my head is impossible.  It is fairly unlikely that I would transform into a pretty woman even in the best case scenario, but there is obviously no possibility of transforming into one thirty years younger.  My dream is in every respect impossible to actually exist.   There are other things at play though, it isn't just gender and whether I'd be pretty enough or not.  Being around young people who are at the beginning of everything with all possibilities still before them forces me to confront my reality, which is mid...

The trouble with writing a daily journal with a very specific theme is that the project presupposes that there will be some occurrences related to the theme every single day of the year.  The truth is, some days there just really isn’t anything going on.  I worked from home, was busy and didn’t really see or talk to anyone and well, that was it.  It’s probably a waste of time even publishing this but maybe there is some value to admitting that some days, gender doesn’t figure in my life. 

This always happens when I take the teenager to university open days: I feel some combination of wistfulness and unsettled.  Partly it is just a realisation of ageing and opportunities. All these kids are embarking on their own journey and discovering independence and all possibilities are open to them: any course, any location, to pursue any career in any country, with the chance to be who they want to be as they leave home and go it alone. Being thirty years older, those freedoms and possibilities are no longer endless. I had my time for that and it has passed. Hence going to these places makes me feel regretful.  To make matters worse, there are young women everywhere. Even though I am ancient and middle aged, I don’t really feel any different in my head from when I was a student and my mental picture of my inner woman is, I would guess, about that age. Wherever I look on these days I see outfits I like, or hairstyles and so many feelings of ‘want to be her’ or want to be l...

Had a work dinner event today. One of those typical networking events where one firm hosts and lots of professionals get together and talk.  These things are ok and having been in the same business community for many years, I know pretty much everyone who goes to these things and it’s quite nice to catch up.  It has to be said though, that this community is not diverse. It is all middle aged white men. In a room of fifty people, there were five women. No one openly LGB and no trans people for sure.  If I were to come into this group as Nicola, I would stand out.  I would also be having to reestablish relationships with people who have always known me as my male name and that is going to be challenging. Going into a room of people who know you as another name and gender is probably harder than encountering strangers.  It feels daunting and I sat there at dinner, wondering whether I could do this as Nicola. 

Working in a professional firm, and one of the more conservative professions at that, I am worried that transitioning would be the end of any prospects for my career.  I don't think they could legally fire me, but I would not expect to ever see any more career progression.   It was quite heartening to see an email newsletter from our professional body with a series of articles on diversity and inclusion and LGBT people in the profession.  Specifically, there was an article and interview with a trans woman who had transitioned whilst at her firm, been supported in doing so, and subsequently had made partner.  It sounds like her firm is open to diversity and this has not held back her career.  Good for her! I have reached out to connect via Linked In as it may be good to be able to talk with someone who has been there and come out of the other side, given that I am potentially going to be facing the coming out at work challenge myself.   My direct t...

Here I am at the end of the second month of...what exactly?  Can I say it's the second month of my transition?  Does it count if noone else knows and everything that I have done has been done in secret?  What is it the second month of, if not transition?  My second month of experimenting with femininity?  Dabbling in womanhood?  Is it anything at all, or just some notion in my head that has no reality in the world? Well whatever it is, I've been doing it for two months now and some of it has been successful, in small ways.  I have completely switched to female underwear and worn this exclusively every day of this year.  This is now my normal and I wouldn't even think of putting on male equivalents any more.  It is so normal for me that I am no longer even aware of it feeling any different, although I do have a range of styles and it has to be said that some shapes are definitely more comfortable than others.  When I am aware of them, or ...