Atypical Transgender Late Bloomer

I've had a medical problem for the last five years. It's an effect of having diabetes for 40 years. It leaves me wanting to be near a city with a medical complex. But I live out in the sticks. Hillbilly country. God, guns, guts. So I drive to my doctors. Sometimes it's a two-hour drive. I like where I live. I like my doctors. So I live with the drive. This last week my driving has been sloppy. I wonder if my driving days are about to be over. It really screws my decision to live here if I can't reliably drive. I am invited to Virginia, where I have family but it is not a trans-friendly state. I really don't want to move into those politics. Trans decision making is more complex.

I've never had long hair. Much more of a man's military haircut. That's how my father (the cop) wore his hair, although he dirt flirt with the Dry Look in the early 1970's. I've been on HRT for three years. I've been letting my hair grow for those years. I have a buzzcut, or an undercut, on the sides. For a while, I had my sides shaved with a straight razor by a country barber. All men. I was in there once on Veteran's Day. The TV continually played some black and white old tv channel, mostly cowboys and indians. On Veteran's Day, it was all war movies. I came in, took my seat. I was not what the group was used to seeing. There was a war movie on. Something caught my eye and I asked, Is that Audie Murphy? None of the locals knew what I was talking about. The barber knew, and said Sure it. The rest of them just looked at each other. A great war hero, the real thing, not some JOhn Wayne Hollywood faker. Silence. I think I may have earned some cr...

I checked into a hospital in the South for a full knee replacement. It was a well run facility with a good reputation. They asked me about my gender identification. I said, genderqueer. I have not wanted to mess up my medical records with multiple name fields. Someday, I'll do them all at once. They did ask the Depression/ Suicide protocol questions. I told them the truth. Yes, I think about suicide. Yes, every day. No, I don't have a date or method in mind. Yes, I have a weapon in my home. Man, they did not like that. I think they were more worried about their institution than about me. I get that, but: don't ask the question if you don't want the answer. They wanted to assign a person as my suicide watch. I really objected to that as intrusive. In the end, they blinked. I told them, nobody whose about to kill themselves puts up with a knee replacement. It's a lot of short-term pain for long-term gain. That's not suicide thinking. I realised that telling ...

I visited a friend this week. A solid conservative, yet a good, decent, thoughtful person. I had a gift for him - a lamp which I'd seen that screamed out to belong to him. He lives about 2h15m from me. A doctor's appointment took me to his area. The last time he saw me, I was a guy. I was apprehensive. It went to well. He brought me into his house. We sat and talked. Old-timer stuff. He said, Hey you look different. Then, just to speak of the elephant in the room. Well, I am different. I laid it out, big picture: the HRT, the changing, telling my family, telling my boss. We talked. He said, I wish you every happiness, and he meant it. That really meant a lot to me. A good friend, a solid person, a decent human. I'm not surprised. I was relieved.

Every time I open my browser, it asks: who are you? Who are you today? It offers me a choice between my firstName, which is soon to be my deadName, and my nextName. Of all the stupid routines my computer and software gives me, this one is not tedioous. I feel like it keeps me honest.

I have for about the last 25 years (I am old!) found some explanation in a phrase of my own: Goldfish Don't See the Bowl. What I mean by that is: Most of use do not see the systems we are embedded in: economic, civil, legal, religious, class, even (gasp!) gender . I was so pleased to learn about a speech given by D.F. Wallace, in which he posits: What is water to a fish? His speech is packaged in a book, and the Amazon people have remarkably brought it to my stoop today. I look forward to reading it. I would like to assert: I see the bowl I was put in. I'm actively changing my bowl.

I was told, when I was young, that nothing offends a person as much as something they believe themselves. Boy (which is probably a term I should stop using) does this image below grab a hold of me. It brings up all my fears: being ridiculous, being seen as a threat, being seen as a pervert.

Video killed the radio star. Social media killed the blogger. Maybe blogs are coming back? New cool website for Hannah McKnight, a cool transgender T-Girl (her term). I've seen Hannah on twitter and I'm pleased to see her new website.