Skip to main content

5th May - how do I be?

I’m trying to figure out how to be me and I don’t really know the answer.

Knowing that I am trans and that I am a woman but not being out and able to openly express myself as that, I am in a weird place where everyone reads me as male but that’s not who I am or want to be.

Although having said that everyone reads me as male, there are some women who do sense that I am different and I’m surprised when they bring up trans women as a topic of conversation more frequently than I think they would with men. Positive conversations too, nothing negative. 

I had a meeting this week with a colleague. We talked about my hair being shorter now and I said it was a lot less effort than long hair and I didn’t have to worry about conditioner or drying it, which I had to when it was longer. She said “now you know how we feel” to which I replied “I wish”.  But I don’t think she noticed. Later, she told me about another professional we both know and how they had lunch recently and she was sure he had breasts, not just man boobs but actual breasts and his LinkedIn profile now says they/them pronouns. She wasn’t anti but I could tell that she thought it was weird. Her teenage kids know some they/thems at school but she hadn’t met one our age before. I said I knew a few trans people our age, the first time I have admitted to a colleague that. I’m sure if she joined the dots of this and previous conversations we’ve had, she would work it out. Or maybe she already had which is why she brought it up. 

Speaking with another colleague this week we were discussing communication styles and I referred to some of the things that I do naturally and have to work on as female traits. 

I feel ok with hinting at who I am with a few people if it enables me to be a little bit more myself and not have to be male. 

That’s the thing really. I may have decided that trying to transition is too hard and I am not going to do it, but that absolutely does not mean that I therefore want to be a man. Far from it. I want to be as woman as possible. 

One of my friends that does know about me suggested I try to live my life by walking, talking and behaving as Nicola, even though I am not transitioning. I’m not sure if she means it literally, that I should learn a feminine gait and do voice feminisation, or metaphorically that I should “walk the walk, talk the talk” and because she’s a counsellor by training, she wouldn’t tell me, it’s for me to work out. How annoying! Why can no one just give me the answers?  Wouldn’t that be nice. 

I think what she was saying was to do as much as I can to feel like I am being myself. Just because I have a male body, doesn’t mean I have to behave as a man. 

This is something I think I can embrace, and want to, but I don’t quite know how to yet.

All the time though, there is a voice in my head that wants to transition. “Why not just try hormones, see how you feel? The only way to truly know if it’s right is to try”. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

27 May 26 - does my brain actually have a “girl mode”?

As I keep reflecting on my night out as Nicola last week there are a lot of questions and ideas that are swirling around in my head.  One is, whether my brain has a “girl mode”, because I felt so different and behaved in ways that were unfamiliar to me.  The really distinct difference in how I felt this time was that I didn’t feel like I was a man in a dress at all, I just felt like me. I remember thinking that this is what it is like to be “inhabiting womanhood”. Evidently I have ridiculously pretentious notions after a few drinks, but it was what I was feeling. This is what it is like to actually be a woman. Less pretentious.  An odd thing, but one which does make me wonder if my brain has some kind of “switch”, is that I looked at women differently. I am exclusively attracted to women and I am attracted to boobs and bums as much as the next man (cringe at associating with being a man). I know it is impolite to stare at a woman’s chest, and I make a conscious effort no...
Post a Comment
Read more

21 May 2026 - a night out

Having a night on my own in London, I wanted to go out presenting female and get some more “real life experience”.  I had drinks and dinner with some colleagues early evening and to be honest had already had too much wine before I went out later by myself. This probably helped my confidence, although not my coordination with nail polish and mascara, which were a bit slapdash to say the least.  I remember last year getting in a lift in the hotel in a dress ready to go out, and being self conscious of people staring at me. This time, didn’t give it a thought. Likewise going into the underground and being on the train with other people. I didn’t notice if anyone looked at me and nor did I care. I was just me being me and wearing a skirt didn’t feel like a Thing, I wasn’t conscious of my clothes at all.  Similarly walking through a busy Soho to the bar, I just felt like I normally do walking around town.  Got to She Soho. Amazingly the bouncer asked me for ID. I’m 51...
Post a Comment
Read more

31 Dec 25 - reflecting on the past year

I could see 2025 as a failure.  After all, I started the year with the intention to begin my transition. I still haven’t started.  I made initial contact with the endocrinologist clinic about feminising hormone therapy, but then didn’t progress that at all as soon as I encountered the blood test hurdle.  Here at the beginning of 2026, I am no closer to living as a woman than I was at the beginning of 2025. I have not come out to anyone, I don’t have a hormone prescription, my body is still male, my presentation is still full time male, everyone still knows me only as my male name.  Has the longing to be a woman gone away because I haven’t done anything about it? No. Obviously.  Although I have not begun transitioning, I have achieved a couple of things this year.  One is that I survived my wife catching me out and finding a pair of knickers that I had forgotten to hide. It was awful, and she was terribly upset, but I got through it and that is somethi...
Post a Comment
Read more