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”.