Frustration

[Guest Ashley C.]

Hey everyone, since this is my first post I'll tell you a bit about myself before I start venting . Right now, I'm a 23-year-old law student living and going to school in Rhode Island. I only admitted to myself that I'm transgendered a couple of months ago, and it's been both very liberating and very terrifying (as you all know, of course). I still dress as a guy, talk like a guy (even though I practice my fem voice every time I'm in my car lol), and generally act like a guy, except when I'm alone. I've only come out to one person, an ex-girlfriend who didn't exactly take my revelation very well (we also had a ton of other issues; I didn't just end it because of my gender.)

Anyhow, I'm peed. I want to start transitioning now. This very second, if I could. Every day I wake up in my male body just makes me feel worse about myself. However, the more research I do, the more discouraging it gets when I think about how long it's going to take to transition and (especially) how much it's going to cost. As I said, I'm a law student right now and I'm just finishing up my first year, with two years to go before I get thrust into career-land. Unfortunately, once I finish school, I'll be staring down the barrel of $100k+ in student loans that I'll have to start paying back. Couple that with the fact that I grew up in the south, and my whole family is religious/conservative to the point of near-fanaticism (I, on the other hand, am a liberal athiest...my family only knows about the liberal part). Put another way, most of my family didn't like President Obama when he was running, literally, because he was black, and my mother thinks finding the right church to go to is more important than my grades.

It makes my head spin every time I think about it, and it's all so overwhelming that it's made me almost want to give up--on more than one occasion--and just stay male and unhappy. But I know, in my core, that I can't do that. How do I even begin to transition in the face of all the costs and the pain I'll cause my family? Because right now, with all the money I have to pay back and my family's intolerance looming over me like an axe-blade at my neck, it feels like I'll be able to transition and come out full-time when I'm, oh, about...90.

I won't vent any longer. Sorry . I look forward to talking to you all, and I hope somebody out there can talk me down from the times when I feel like it's just too difficult and expensive to go through with.

Ash

[Guest Elizabeth K]

WELCOME WELCOME WELCOME

Hey - you MUST be transsexual! My therapist says as soon as we figure it out - we want INSTANT ACTION!.

Well - I found out from a gender specialist therapist. If you haven't started that - you can't get very far.

And know that the first options are not that expensive. I realized my condition in November and have been on HRT 5 months day after tomorrow. I'm also in electrolysis. I also live full time at home. I also got fired for being in transition - so be careful - grin..

My timetable is SRS in about two years. It seems forever, but people say it goes fast. Now if I can get a job to pay for it!

Your story is just about right. Many of us here are just about like you. So post and post and post! We want to know you and to work with you.

Baby - we KNOW you... and we know its HARD. Stay with us - and we will do our best to help you. And you can help those after you... that's how we work.

Welcome once again... soon people will be dropping by to say hello and offer you vitual food. Hold out for Sally's quinmillion-triple chocolate chip cookies.

Lizzy

[CharlotteW]

Hey Ashley!

Welcome! I will say this: I am becoming quite sympathetic on the instant action thing. I thought I could handle presenting as male indefinitely as long as I didn't have to consider myself male. It's starting to drive me NUTS!

Still, you want to dot your i's and cross you t's on this one. Transitioning on your own can be VERY VERY BAD. I knew one girl you went through realization, full time and SRS within six months. And only school kept her from going faster. But she came back bitter and nasty and hating the world. Not my words, a transman that knew her from before. She was not the most pleasant person I've ever met, especially after she and I had political disagreements. Evil witch. So you wanna do all of this right.

I'm sorry to hear about your family. My fundie mom told me, knowing I was trans, that transpeople were morally equivalent to cannibalistic serial killers. So much for mother-daughter repore. Still there come a time when you gotta survive, and while some people will tell you there's no such thing as transition or die, it does exsist because I wouldn't be here otherwise. Don't repress, it will drive you to suicide, and I say that cause that's what almost happened to me last year.

My condolences on your politics, but you'll find yourself more at home in the community than I ever will. I don't understand why your family hates Obama cause he's black, there are SO MANY other reasons to detest the man. Anyway, one step at a time, one day at a time. It will get better, if you let it get better, but remember only fools rush in.

[Guest Donna Jean]

Hello, Ashley...........

Welcome to the Playground!

I'll get you some hot chocolet and cookies (Sally's very best!) and we'll get you all settled in....OK?

Well, Lizzy is right...once you turn the corner, it hits you square in the face...most of what Liz said applies to me, too...

I'm 3 months HRT....electrolysis....and pretty much full time at home!..(I still have a job....)

It becomes the most amazing journey....so hang on tight!

You can learn a ton of things here by reading and learn to not make some of the mistakes that some of the others have made...we all help each other ...when one is weak..the others are strong...that's how we survive...

Please get comfy and relax...

It's gonna be one heck of a trip.....

XXOO

Donna Jean

[Guest Ashley C.]

Thank you both so much for your quick responses . I have the strangest craving for chocolate-chip cookies all of a sudden...

Aside from losing weight and doing the stuff I already do at home (shaving my legs, painting my toes, etc.) is there anything else I can do that's very inexpensive? It sucks living from loan check to loan check. It's just so frustrating because sometimes I want to show up to class in a dress and shock the hell out of everybody .

[Guest Elizabeth K]

Aside from losing weight and doing the stuff I already do at home (shaving my legs, painting my toes, etc.) is there anything else I can do that's very inexpensive?

Pierce your ears - trim your eyebrows - grow your hair long - wear clear or slightly tinted fingenail poish - use lip gloss, EVERYWHERE- and the ultimate? I started carrying a purse - a really neat thing to have, you can carry everything with you then - leaving it in the car's trunk when I go to the store. No one seems to care seeing me carry from the house to the car - they think its a medicine bag, or computer pouch or something. It's a bit obvious in a store where people get up close - but I sometimes do it anyway.

Cheap and rewarding ways to express your femaleness (if you were a crossdresser, your femininity - as a trans, your femaleness - always remember that).

Just an idea or two..

Lizzy

[Sally]

Oh, My!

My two sisters, my best friends forgot an inexpensive expression of femaleness that we all share - because Lizzy suggested - insisted that we do it - Dee Jay, Lizzy and I all wear ankel bracelets all of the time.

Donna Jean and I have matching musical note charms on ours (her wife gave them to us) and Lizzy's is an antique.

they aren't very expensive and you can wear them all of the time, under your socks when presenting male and lose the sock and the long pants when you want to show off your shaved legs, painted toe nail and ankle jewelry.

Love ya,

Sally

OMG!, I almost forgot the cookies, luckily they didn't burn - it takes forever to clean that much chocolate out of a virtual oven!

[Guest Ashley C.]

CharlotteW, if only I had the means to transition in six months. Not saying that I would--I want to make sure I get everything right the first time--just, if only. With all the money I have to pay back, I'll be doing well to transition in six years. Who knows, maybe this law degree I'm working on will actually be worth more than the paper it's printed on. Only time will tell.

Perhaps I should have used a less-political example to illustrate my family's extreme points-of-view . Here's one that always drives me crazy: I have a few family members who take everything they see on the news as a sign of the impending apocalypse. Ask my mom, and she'll tell you California's going to break off from the west coast of the US, catch on fire, and sink into the ocean any day now because "that's where all them gays live." I'm telling you, they live on another planet...

Great advice from everyone, thanks for replying. Getting my ears pierced sounds like fun, I might give that a go when the next loan check comes in lol (I'm telling you, I'm broke!) . Plus, I already have a purse, it's just never left my room !

Much love,

Ash

[Guest Ashley C.]

And by "them", I mean my parents, not gay people, of course. Oops!

[Guest Ashley C.]

Living on another planet, that is. My parents. They do, not gay people.

Gar, forget it....*shoves own foot into mouth*

[CharlotteW]

Ash, it's pretty clear what you meant. My mom's apocalysim comes in fits and spasms but yeah I understand totally where you are coming from. I know this probably isn't going to effect you anyway, but you have to understand a LOT of what Fundies do and say is not biblical at all. Now, I'm a non-trinitarian arch-heretic of the first order, keep that in mind, but my heart grieves that you've lost faith because of the BS you were raised in. Not because of Hell or anything (I believe in Hell, but you only stay there on your own cognition) I nearly did that myself. I don't know if you are angry at God or devastated by a seeming lack of evidence, but being an atheist means you do care about the divine enough to make a judgement call. I was in the latter category. I called out in the depths of my despair for anything to let me know God was there. I swear to you he answered. I don't believe in God; I have felt His presence. Warm, intoxicating, all encompassing love is the best way to describe it, but it's like trying to explain color to someone who's only seen in black and white. Years later (aka last year), I was in extreme despair because I couldn't repress my transness anymore and I was deathly afraid of never feeling that love again, but as close as I came to suicide, it kept me alive.

Christianity is made ugly by 2000 years of tradition and dogma, but the love of God smashes through that caked on sludge like that Kaboom crap Billy Zane hawks on the infomercials. I'm not asking you to come back into the fold, that's something each one of us has to do on our own, but please don't close your heart. Be willing to listen to the stillness, just as you are listening to your inner self. After years of judgement and hate, it's hard not to take this as a cruel joke, but God does love you, and that knowledge can be key in achieving a sense of peace through this difficult time. In any case it seems to be working for me, to the disbelief of my more religious friends.

[Sally]

Ashley,

I understand the pay check to pay check aspect of life - 57 years worth of it - I am not willing to cheat anyone and it is impossible to get rich through hard work - someone else gets rich off of your hard work.

Never had much money, never will, not going to worry about it - while my mother is telling me that I am not trans and why - how she knows what I feel and I don't and more things to make me feel bad about myself she always reminds me about the sweet passages from the Bible about the birdsand how they do not plant or work but he will feed them and through one source or another ever since my ex left in mid Novemeber - someone has sent me money, hired me or placed an extra order each month, just enough to stay afloat!

So the more I help the tortured souls in Laura's Plaground, the more I get extra payments, sort of like being rewarded just for doing what I should be doing - helping others.

I can't explain it and I'm not going to plan on it but somehow I will make it and you will to - study law and use your degree to help people who need the help not the people who can afford to 'buy justice'.

I can't explain it any better so I'll just say, have faith, believe in something - even if it is only you!

Faith will see you through.

Love ya,

Sally

Thin about the ankle bracelet - they are very inexpessive.

[Guest Elizabeth K]

My parents are deceased, but they passed the craziness down to us (I am the black sheep - hey! is that politically incorrect? donno)

My sisters are Christian Wrong - Born Again

They thought Hurricane Katrina was GODs way of punishing New Orleans for tolerating the GLBT community. Never mind that the GLBT part of N.O. lived in an area that was spared, while those that died were simply the poor and sick who had no way to get out!

I live in the New Orleans area, if you haven't guessed.

They live in Texas, where the men are men and women are too - a TOUGH place to be if you are trans!

So it goes...

Lizzy

[Guest Ashley C.]

So it goes. I don't care about money either, but it's funny how you can't do anything you want to do in life without it. I figure if I can transition, put a roof over my head and food on the table, then I can't ask for too much more. And the only things I believe in anymore are myself, my friends, and good people like you all. That should be able to get me through just about anything, I hope.

I'm supposed to have an internship with the RI Commission on Human Rights this summer, counseling and representing victims of various forms of discrimination...maybe that will open some doors for me. Who knows, maybe that's what I'll end up doing as a career. I'd love it if my job was to wake up every day and help even the score against pricks who deny people like us our jobs simply because we're just being ourselves.

I'll stop there...talking about civil rights tends to get me worked up. On a much happier note, I feel better about myself now than I ever have since talking to you all. It's unbelievable just how much it helps to talk things out with people who won't judge you. Thank you so much!

Ash

[Guest mia 1]

Get that jurisprudence and help us in our travails we will pay you not looking for you to do pro bono..so get on it girl.....

[Guest brenda lee]

Hey everyone, since this is my first post I'll tell you a bit about myself before I start venting . Right now, I'm a 23-year-old law student living and going to school in Rhode Island. I only admitted to myself that I'm transgendered a couple of months ago, and it's been both very liberating and very terrifying (as you all know, of course). I still dress as a guy, talk like a guy (even though I practice my fem voice every time I'm in my car lol), and generally act like a guy, except when I'm alone. I've only come out to one person, an ex-girlfriend who didn't exactly take my revelation very well (we also had a ton of other issues; I didn't just end it because of my gender.)

Anyhow, I'm peed. I want to start transitioning now. This very second, if I could. Every day I wake up in my male body just makes me feel worse about myself. However, the more research I do, the more discouraging it gets when I think about how long it's going to take to transition and (especially) how much it's going to cost. As I said, I'm a law student right now and I'm just finishing up my first year, with two years to go before I get thrust into career-land. Unfortunately, once I finish school, I'll be staring down the barrel of $100k+ in student loans that I'll have to start paying back. Couple that with the fact that I grew up in the south, and my whole family is religious/conservative to the point of near-fanaticism (I, on the other hand, am a liberal athiest...my family only knows about the liberal part). Put another way, most of my family didn't like President Obama when he was running, literally, because he was black, and my mother thinks finding the right church to go to is more important than my grades.

It makes my head spin every time I think about it, and it's all so overwhelming that it's made me almost want to give up--on more than one occasion--and just stay male and unhappy. But I know, in my core, that I can't do that. How do I even begin to transition in the face of all the costs and the pain I'll cause my family? Because right now, with all the money I have to pay back and my family's intolerance looming over me like an axe-blade at my neck, it feels like I'll be able to transition and come out full-time when I'm, oh, about...90.

I won't vent any longer. Sorry . I look forward to talking to you all, and I hope somebody out there can talk me down from the times when I feel like it's just too difficult and expensive to go through with.

Ash

Ash ,Hi I am Brenda Lee , I too am wanting to transotion right now. I understand your pain. Sweetie I guess it takes time. The wonderful news is here at Laura's we all have a wonderful family and friends . Please feel free to vent at any time .LOL Brenda Lee