Saying hello for the first time.

[Vanessa_S]

Hi, everybody, I'm Vanessa.  Pleased to meet everyone!

 

You'd like a quick description?  OK. I am a mid-fifties, 6'3", overweight computer, trivia, and chess nerd who is starting the biggest journey of her life -- transition.  (Yeah, with my posting here at Laura's, that's a surprise. :-) ) Now, for a story...

 

I didn't really feel anything was not right with me until shortly after I hit puberty at age 12.  Even then, it was just a feeling that, somehow, I was in the wrong body.  What the right body would be I didn't know -- growing up Catholic and isolated in a heavily conservative and Mormon part of the U.S. west, I just didn't have any access to anything that could help a struggling adolescent figure out anything.  The possibility that one could be female inside a male body (or vice versa) wasn't even a concept then, for me or anybody else.  I liked being around girls, but mostly stuck with hanging around the other nerdy male outcasts.

 

Got through college in the Northeast, mostly unhappy but plugged away anyway.  For a while, with the bare beginnings of gay and lesbian activism on campus, I wondered if I what I was feeling meant that I was gay, but that didn't feel right either.  Still attracted to women, starting to really notice what women on campus wore and how they carried themselves, but unable to formulate any plans past that point.

 

Then after college and working in my first real job, I discovered bras, and that I liked wearing them.  Random mail-order catalog, idly looking through it -- and suddenly got a strange urge and ordered a bra.  It came in the mail three weeks later.  It was too small by quite a bit, but wearing it in the privacy of my room made me feel a little bit better about myself.  Comfortable, really.

 

After that, I started to wake up.  I realized that something had to change, and that something was me.  I took me a couple of years and a little bit of furtive experimenting and research, but I finally realized that I was not a transvestite (which would have been okay, actually), but that I wanted to be a girl, a woman, a lady, a WHOEVER, but I wanted to be female, and I NEEDED it.  I started making plans.  Crude, undetailed plans, but plans nonetheless.

 

Soon, it's 1990 and I'd resolved to finally stop planning and worrying and DO something about the growing hurt inside me -- and I then met J.  A wonderful woman, who seemed to really and sincerely like me!  Strange, isn't it, how love sometimes suddenly blooms when you least expect it? And I had a decision to make.  Would I tell her about my issues and almost certainly lose her, or put those issues aside for a while and love her and be with her?

 

At the time, it was an easy choice.  I moved in with J, and we got married a couple years later, all the time staying silent about my other needs.  I built a little room in my head, packed my desire to become a woman away in it, and locked the door.

 

We were married for 23+ years, and, although we had some occasional bad times, nearly all of it was good, and sometimes great.  I've never regretted that decision, and if I were a time-traveler, I would do it again.

 

A few years ago, after she lost her job, J's weight issues combined with depression started to really set in.  She started giving up.  And nothing I or anybody else could do seemed to help.  Of course, I stuck with her, although I did start to hear a quiet knocking on the door to the room in my head...

 

Eventually, a long illness set in.  I was her caretaker and amateur nurse for 5 years.  Earlier this year, after a prolonged hospital stay, and with the knowledge that she was either going to be in immense pain or drugged nearly unconscious for the rest of her life, and that she would never be able to go home, J decided to refuse medical treatment other than for the pain.  She fell asleep, and five days later she died.

 

I pretty much had given up too at that point.  Depressed and alone, I was headed towards just waiting to die myself.  Fortunately, I had some good friends who realized what was happening and helped to pull me out of it, at least to the point where I could start to deal with my life and the future again.  The knocking is getting louder, by the way.

 

Several of them said the same thing, that I have a new life ahead of me, whether I wanted it or not, and that I could choose to rejoin the world and live, or I could choose to stagnate and eventually die.  I'm only a decade and a half away from the three-score-and ten.  What was I going to do with the rest of my life?  Who was I going to be?

 

I went over to the room, opened the door, and said "Me and me have to have a long think".

 

The feelings and the hurt never went away, I had just tried to hide them away for a couple of decades or so.  I guess I never really hid them away very well, I just suppressed them despite the growing tension between the role I was playing and the life I needed to live.

 

So, here I am, a few months of thinking, a few experiments (I went to a mall 1.5 hours away dressed up!  Twice!), and a few financially inadvisable retail therapy trips later (see : the mall...), and I've decided I'm going to transition, and see if I can finally grab that chance to be at peace with myself.

[tracy_j]

Hi Vanessa

Welcome to Lauras

Thank you fro your introduction. I am sorry to hear you have had some bad times, but glad you have had happy ones too. Your life story is similar to many. You will find people here friendly and helpful. Please do not hesitate to ask questions and join in as you feel. We help each other.

I am looking forward to your input

Tracy x

 

[Cindy Truheart]

Hello Vanessa,

It sounds like we have a lot in common on several different levels. Welcome to Laura's.

Love and Light!

[Rachael]

Welcome. I am sorry to hear of your loss. You are not alone my guess many have suffered similar situations. Try to remember the good times the two of you shared. I also lost Patti after 22+ years together. I am at a loss for words. 

[Charlize]

Welcome to Laura's Vanessa.  I found the support i found here as i shared and read the shares of others very helpful in gaining acceptance of myself. I also made those trips to a distant mall and slowly found a path to a life as my true self.

You are not alone.

 

Hugs,

 

Charlize

[Timber Wolf]

Hi Vanessa,

Welcome to Laura's! You'll find friends and support here. You no longer have to take your journey alone.

 

Lots of love,

Timber Wolf?

[MarcieMarie12]

Hi Vanessa, my condolences about your wife. Welcome to Laura's.

Hugs,

Marcie

[KathrynJulia]

Hello Vanessa

Condolences on the loss of your wife.  My transition didn't begin till I hit age 55 when I began by talking to my doctor.  I was almost 56 when I started hormones.  Everything then moved along 18 month of hormone replacement  was when I decided full speed ahead.   I legally change my name and announce my intention that I was transitioning to full time Iiving as a woman and that fall I traveled to Mexico with my sister for some feminine facial surgery

and breast augmentation surgery. That was 2013 and there was no looking back.  When the University where I. worked turned me down on their surgery, I waited till I was 59 1/2 and pulled some money from my 403 b retirement and went to Thailand where I finished my transition in 2014.  And I haven't looked back.  I'm accepted as a woman now.  My only regret was I sure wish I had finished it all when I was younger.  But it's never to late.

Kathryn Julia

[Vanessa_S]

Wow.

I'd like to thank everyone for their kind and truth-filled words.

THANK YOU!!!!!

I may not be the fastest writer, but I do intend to hang out here and try to contribute.  Transition is a process, not a fixed point (as my therapist told me), and it is good to see many people here at different steps along the way.

I'll try to come up with more to say....

Hugs,
Vanessa

[Jani]

Greetings Vanessa and welcome to Laura's.   I too am sorry to hear of your wife's passing.  You do sound like you have some wonderful friends that looked out for you when you needed it.  I like to think that's what my friends here at Laura's are for as well.  We do support each other.  

That's great that you've made a decision and you seem to be happy with it.  I'm glad you answered the knocking at the door.  It is a big first step but it will get easier.  Its been noted many times; it's a slippery slope we step onto.  We are here for you when things go well and when you're down.  Don't be afraid to make postings of your own and to join in the conversation.  

Jani