Sharp Dressed Dyke

I have to catch a flight today. Going to Midland, Texas, to pick up our car from a Kia dealership service shop to which it was towed when it broke down near Fort Davis while we were on vacation on September 19. The car was finally fixed last week - it's a known issue with CVT transmissions in 2020 Kia Soul models.

This will be the first night my wifey and I have spent apart since my last girlfriend and I broke up in the spring of 2020 - I used to spend one night per week at her place.

The emotional harm done to us by forcing us to wait years, all the while begging for doctors and therapists to deign to provide us even basic care, all the while they insist that these cruel delays are good for us because "you appreciate your transition more this way!" when, in reality, it's that they don't believe us when we say we're trans but have no objective way to decide it beyond our own words so take the approach of "if they don't give up after enough years then maybe they really are trans...but we'll never be fully convinced."

I figured out a lot of what is behind my difficult emotions about this day. It's part that I wish I hadn't had SRS but also because I was supposed to have breast augmentation at the same time and that was denied to me.

I originally had both scheduled. My first wife would not allow me to save anything to pay for surgery unless I allowed her to have absolute control over the budget - not only that she got to make every decision about how and when we saved for it but that I didn't even get to know how much money was saved and if I ever asked she immediately spent everything and we had a screaming fight about how I didn't trust her, etc.

Two weeks before the final payment was due we did our taxes and our federal refund was 10% of what it had been the year before. Suddenly she began crying and remarking that I was going to be mad at her. I was confused and she finally admitted that the federal refund being at least as much as it was the previous year - several thousand dollars - was a critical part of her budget to pay for my surgery. And, of course, she made herself the victim of it.

With no way to get that money in time it became that I had to make surgery cheaper. I wanted to cancel SRS but I faced severe opposition. My therapist and HRT Drs had already made it clear that way would mean they refused to support my transition anymore. Generally, other people in my life didn't either - in particular trans people I knew were very hostile to my desire to cancel SRS for BA.

It's been 10 years since I was able to make social transition happen. So much has happened since then - I left university IT for corporate and finally was able to have career progress (in university IT I was stuck at junior classification even when I outperformed senior coworkers,) I made 20,000 miles in cross-country motorcycle road trips, I divorced, I moved half-way across a continent and found home - queer community, family of choice, and a place where I belonged. I found the healing to love and marry again.

I remember the decades of severe opposition to my transition before that, to the point of fighting to have me institutionalized to prevent me from transitioning. All of that to stop me from having a better life.

Yesterday was the 3 year anniversary of my divorce decree. We'd split over a year prior but legal requirements meant that was the earliest we could be legally divorced. I had a party the next day to celebrate because it meant I was completely free of my abuser.

I celebrate it this year as a newlywed.

It’s exactly 1 year since I had my hair last dyed and trimmed.

Watched “Loss Prevention” (2018) with my wife last night. She pronounced it “very silly.”

We made black eyed peas and cabbage, both done with bacon, and a corn casserole that has a bit of cornbread quality. It’s not quite the collards and proper cornbread I’d like but it goes better with the other members of my household. I nailed it on cooking the cabbage - pulled it from the heat when it was perfectly cooked.

My roommate has schedule a COVID test tomorrow. There was a possible exposure situation at her work during the week and we’ve been sick - here more than the rest of us. She has been isolating at the house - she has the main bedroom with the ensuite so that’s easier - and adjusting to needing to depend on us to fetch items. She’s had a hard life to date which heavily reinforced “the only one you can depend on is yourself” so this is hard for her.

I discussed with my wifey how we felt about 2020. She said it was probably the best year she ever had. Funny how that is but…escaping an abusive home life will do that.

I’m not one for New Year’s Resolutions, having only done it once in my life before, 10 years ago. Last night I decided to set two goals for myself for this year:
1) Get back into therapy to deal with the surgery regret and various shit from the decades of abuse.
2) Make progress on getting breast augmentation and rhinoplasty.

I don’t think I can actually be in the position to make #2 happen this year but I can get setup to do so in 2022.

I reflected on the ones I made for 2011. They were:
1) Transition at work in.
2) Wear a dress out.
3) By the end of the year no longer be a state government employee.

I made all of them happen that year.

I also gave a re-listen to an old song.



I remember the first time I heard this song, some 14 years after its release. I was driving a Nissan Sentra across central Pennsylvana and somewhere just west of Lewisburg, passing a shop that specialized in customizing Pontiac Fieros, this came on the radio. It hit me hard because I was in a very difficult time in my life then - due to having had an affair my first engagement was on the rocks (and we broke up a few months later,) and I was heading to Juniata College to collect my things from the dorm room and turn in my key as I was on academic suspension for a year. I really didn’t have anyone on my side, and nobody to go along for the ride so I didn’t have to make that drive alone.

I did look up the story behind the song and found that the woman it’s about gave a second interview this year, for the 40th anniversary. She gave one in 2007 when Fogelberg died, and for the first time making public that she was who it was about (she had not before that for fear of causing upset in his marriage - her marriage referenced in the song was over and had remarried by the time of the song’s release in 1980.) She tells of how her grandkids love that it’s “mimi’s song” on the radio, but, quite understandably, refuses to discuss about not lying about loving her husband.

As I said in a prior post, work is keeping me busy, and December got especially so. For more fun I moved to a new place. I'm still in Houston and on the west side, but now about 20 miles from where I used to be.

My work start date was postponed by two weeks. We decided to use this to do a honeymoon.

( Cut because of many images. )

 

I'ts been a while.