Maiden’s Journey

In short, I am basically a coward and couldn’t bring myself to start the conversation with my wife and now it’s the new year and I’ve gone to bed alone feeling devastated.  I had this sort of plan that I would start 2023 as Nicola, having told my wife before the end of 2022.  The idea was that I could wear a skirt in front of her tomorrow for the first time, to show her who Nicola is. All this as a first step to getting her on board with the steps involved in my transition.   But I didn’t manage the first step. Couldn’t work out how to begin the conversation. I kept wanting to say something. Some way of sharing who I am, but I didn’t have the words or the time didn’t feel right or I was just too scared.  Now I am hating myself for being so cowardly and pathetic that I have to live a life I don’t want because I’m too afraid to ask for what I do want.  I feel like crying. I’m so sad. 

Continuing on from yesterday’s post where I shared the first part of my 2023 transition plans, I have taken a couple of small steps today.  Firstly, I have removed a lot of my body hair using removal cream on my shoulders and back, as much as I could reach anyway, and shaving my chest and stomach. It’s far from perfect, but has made a difference and my body looks less masculine by not being hairy. After all, there’s nothing very feminine about chest hair poking out of a bra, so it is a source of dysphoria that I have now removed, albeit temporarily. This is not the first time I have done so, and I know it grows back quite quickly, which is a pain, but from what I’ve read about hormone treatment, after six months of testosterone blockers and oestrogen, body hair should go away. I certainly hope so, otherwise it will need a lot of maintenance.  Also today, I have worn female underwear all day under my male clothes and have sat to pee every time. This is a trivial thing really, a...

The end of one year is when the mind turns to the next and what one hopes to see take place in the new year.  It’s a strange tradition that we hope for the new year to be different (better) from the last, although the older one gets, the more experience suggests that everything more or less goes on as before and many things get worse.  Of course the reason most years are the same as the last is because I lack the courage or motivation to make any real changes. Obviously the biggest change of all, changing my gender, I have not done. All wishing, no doing. The problem is though, time is passing and I’m still in a male body wishing I was a woman. I’m 48 now and although I keep reading that it’s never too late, it is starting to feel that way. Or more accurately, it feels like I have missed out on too many years and that I am watching another year when I could have done something and experienced life as a woman, just slip by.  How many more years do I want to do that, until ...

I haven’t written for a while as I have been a bit uncertain about where I am, what I really want and whether I’m willing to do what it would take to have that anyway.  This week though, I was traveling for work and would be passing a large shopping mall where I first ever stepped out into the world dressed female to see how it felt. That was two years ago, in 2020 and at the time it was terrifying and exciting in equal measure. I walked around visible in a dress in public and the world didn’t end, nothing bad happened, it was fine.  Since then, opportunities have been few but I had been out one other time a couple of months ago to test myself by going and interacting with people in a coffee shop and supermarket to see if I could cope with living in the world without passing. That too was scary but actually was fine. It feels like I probably could cope with social transition.  This week, I wanted to take the opportunity for some more real life experience, although I didn’...

Hi there! If you read my post from earlier in the week you’ll know that I felt that I needed to come out to my wife and start to transition but didn’t manage to find the courage and then began a familiar cycle of feeling crushed and hopeless, followed by denial and unaccepting my feelings about my gender and trying to get on with life as a male.  If you didn’t read my post, well basically that happened.  What is good is that I am familiar with my own patterns of feelings and behaviour now and I recognise them for what they are, merely brain processes to protect me from taking risks with perceived danger. And I also know that I’ll be back, the feelings are temporary and sooner or later I’ll start feeling that I need to be a girl. So I settled in for my next few weeks of denial and being a man and ignoring any of that ‘trans nonsense’.  Except this time, it hasn’t taken weeks. It’s been a few days and my feelings are back and strong already. Not only that, I’m starting to s...

It's the beginning of autumn (fall) here in the UK and we get a beautiful golden light in the early morning and late afternoon.  It has rained overnight so everything looks shiny and gilded, it's really lovely.   There's probably some kind of brilliant metaphor that I could try to link to there, but that's not where I'm going with this, I just wanted to share a nice moment with you.  Perhaps I should have just taken a photograph.  What I actually want to talk about is the patterns of thoughts that I have come to recognise in myself.  I mentioned a couple of posts ago that it feels like my own brain is trying to 'gaslight' me into feeling or not feeling certain things and I suppose this is another example of that.   A brief recap for those who haven't read the last few posts: I finally managed to come to terms with my wish to transition, made a plan to come out to my wife, and then my courage failed me and I didn't go through with it.   T...

Ok, so I bottled it (that’s a British expression meaning to not have the courage to go through with something you planned, not sure if that translates!) I feel bad and embarrassed for myself but I think it’s important if I’m sharing my story here for others who are maybe in a similar situation that I share the downs as well as the ups.  What happened? Well nothing. There just didn’t seem to be any right time during the day to bring it up, and normal life was going on and throwing a huge thing into the conversation unexpectedly didn’t seem to be a good idea.  So I thought I’d look for some online inspiration to help me feel positive about my journey so I would want to take the leap.  Twitter was full of people talking about depression or discrimination they had suffered. That didn’t help. The first YouTube video that came up on ‘how I knew I was trans’ was a 100% passing beautiful young woman who was saying how she played with dolls as a child and wore pink and always knew...

I'm thinking this weekend I should take that terrifying leap into the unknown that I have been dreaming of for ever, share who I am with my wife and family and start my journey for real! Can I really do it? I know who I am: Nicola and I am a transgender woman.  I know what I want: to be able to fully live my life as Nicola as a woman I know what I need: to socially and medically transition These are positive things that I feel really good about and 100% want and need my life to be.   Just the small matter of taking the scariest step of them all and sharing all of this with those close to me, who will probably feel that I am pulling the rug from under their certainty about what our relationship is and who I really am, and therefore might well react quite badly initially.   Hence my trepidation and slight uncertainty that I'll be able to actually go through with it.  My brain is playing its usual trick of trying to prevent me from taking risk by focusing on t...

Having spent years thinking about who I am and what I want, and wasting many hours of your time dear reader, I have finally got to the point where I feel certain about my need to transition.  And I’ve got to say, this feels great. It’s like a weight of doubt has been lifted and I can confidently move forward. I’m able to visualise a future and all the positives that can bring rather than only see the barriers along the way. I have hope, which is joyous.  However, while my optimistic tendencies are happily looking to the future and how amazing that is going to be, there is one immediate and not insignificant barrier to be faced: at some point I am going to have to share all of this with my wife and teenager.  Now the teen will be fine, he’s of the view that all genders and sexualities are normal and you can just be what you want to be. So long as I reassure him I won’t pick him up from school looking like a drag queen to embarrass him, he’ll be fine with it.  My wife ...

Do you know, I almost added a "?" to the title but that isn't appropriate.  Such is the state of where my head is at right now, I feel ready, no question mark.  This feeling has come upon me suddenly after literally years of procrastinating, and to be honest has slightly taken me by surprise, although in a good way.   To feel certainty, and real certainty, without any of those nagging doubts, I've got to tell you, it feels amazing!   I don't even know where it has come from, because nothing tangible has changed in my life.   I did go out presenting female in public last week and that certainly made a difference.  It showed me that I can totally do this, it can be fine and I will cope.  Having done that though, there's this part of me that wants to jump straight to living that life always, and I am wanting to listen to that part of me more and more.  The other thing I have changed is the type of content I have been consuming. I had s...