22 October - a whole weekend to be myself

My wife was away for the weekend so got two whole days of being myself. Unfortunately there was not really an opportunity to go out into the world and without being seen it sort of feels a bit pointless, although it was nice to do something for myself. 

As well as dressing female all weekend, I removed all my leg and body hair, did makeup and painted my nails.

What have I learned from this?

Positives: 

Getting rid of body hair and leg hair is great, I feel so much more feminine without it. It’s a masculine thing so it’s absence removes that feeling of “eugh, I’m all hairy and male”. 

Wearing a bra full time is fine, not uncomfortable and actually quite nice to feel it’s there all the time. It’s a feminine symbol, so it’s presence is positive. 

Growing my nails for the past few weeks and now painting them looks lovely. My hands are large for a girl, but long pink nails makes them quite feminine.

Less positive: 

Makeup is really hard and whilst it should be feminising, it actually makes me more conscious of the masculine aspects of my face so that I feel more like a man in lipstick than I do without. That’s dysphoria of course, which is quite contextual and can actually make me feel worse when I’m Nicola but I don’t notice when I’m in my day to day life as a male. 

Summer dresses and tights offer no insulation. Brrr 🥶 

My shoulders are slightly too wide for the dress I was wearing on Saturday, so it doesn’t sit right unless I constantly tug it into place. I’m also slightly too tall for the waist to sit where it should and my forearms are too broad and look male (again something I never normally notice when I’m being male, in fact my arms are comparatively skinny and I don’t have muscle so look quite unmasculine. Contextual dysphoria again. 

I changed into my long sleeve bodysuit and a a-line skirt which I think suits me better, but I do want to be a pretty dress kind of girl.

Overall feeling: 

Just going about my day dressed female is the same as doing it in trousers really. Gender only really makes a difference when interacting with other people. I can enjoy feeling feminine and dressing pretty but if no one else sees it, am I being a woman or just playing dress up? Has the whole weekend been futile? 

I know that I love the feeling of expressing myself as me, and all the girly things I’ve done have been nice, so if there’s meaning in doing something nice for myself then I suppose there was a point.

What I haven’t really achieved is any kind of progress nor anything that will help me to make any decisions. Being myself was nice, but not so amazing that I am now compelled to leap from the closet and never be a man again. But it’s nice enough to know that I don’t want to always be a man and never get to be myself.  This I already knew, so I’m no further forward. If I had been able to go out into the world and present female and interact with people as Nicola then would that have made a difference? Probably not as I’ve done that before a few times and ultimately presenting female to strangers is still not real, the only “real” experience could come from presenting female to the people in my life.  Of course there’s no way of doing that without coming out, so that’s a problem: I can’t know whether I should come out unless I have come out and tried it, but if the answer is ‘no’, it is too late by then. 

I am still stuck then, no answers either way, just a nice memory of being myself for a longer period. 

How does anyone ever know whether to take the leap?