And now for something completely different?

 I have at long last a name for my oddness the weirdness that is me.  But, while it's nice having a name, a tag, a category it still leaves the question unanswered, now what?  How is this going to change my life?  To ask the even bigger question, should it?  And in what direction do I want to go, how far do I want to go with my label as androgyne?

Tis true that it's only one part of me, it's not the whole me, yeah.  But, this part of me, has been buried so long, so squashed, so entombed with most of my out loud personality that has been pulled down to monochromatic instead of vibrant clashing colors.  Living in a small town, having to hide the true me, never fitting in and not wanting to fit in to be very honest.  T.H. didn't care if I fit in, but he did look askance at my clothing after I arrived in Alaska, and the dulling down of me began.  He didn't want me to stick out to lessen the amount of gossip and hate aimed at me.  So, while he was trying to help me, it led me to constructing a very workable fake front me.

It's almost like an archeological dig, carefully peeling back layers of empty dross, to unearth what makes me, well me.  I have become very introspective of late, searching for meaning of my actions, clues of my emotional being as to what I read and listen to.  A few years ago I became very depressed, which is very unusual for me and my music of choice? Linkin Park.... which is about not fitting in, not getting what you want, and not really being able to get what you strive for.  My current Marilyn Manson infection?  He is all about punching normal in the face, not caring if people think you are weird, because weird is better than being a cookie cutter person.  Fight against the molding of society, live as you want, not as someone wants you to live.

So, now what?

I don't really know.  I am happiest not looking extremely feminine, but the other end of the stick, the butchy girl?  No, not really that either.  So, what do I want?  I don't have a clue.  Am rather at a loss to be very honest.  I do know that there is some articles of clothing that will be no longer worn.  I hate tops that show a large amount of skin, and I have been pushed into those by my daughter in laws... Why?  They were very vested in making me over, and just kinda ran over my protests.  Did I protest very loudly?  No I didn't.  Why.....sigh, I want their love, and was hoping  that being compliant would make/keep them happy with me.  I know, what a pathetic person.....

Aek and I were chatting about what I want the other day for me.  What parts of my true personality do I want exposed for all to see.  What physical changes do I want, if any.  I think the best thing would be to take small steps into my new life.  First things?  Hair, glasses and tweaking the wardrobe.  Looking for clothing that makes me happy to wear, rather than a sigh when I look in the mirror.  Hair that let's even strangers know that I am...... original..... different...... unusual...... an individual and not an herd animal.  My glasses already reflect that but they are green.  I am hoping to dye my hair an interesting color, and I don't want my glasses to clash.  We will see.

Body modifications?  Humm, no I don't really think so.  Well, I would like to be taller.....  I mean I would like to look less like a girl.... but as to removing parts, or modifying others?  No, that's not really right....  I AM both male and female and trying to make your outer fit that is tough.  Do I ever feel completely female?  Not since my last pregnancy.  During the years that I was building babies and when they were very small I felt very feminine, and my clothing choices, the make up wearing showed that quite clearly.

In high school my favorite way to dress was either the jeans and tees model or the "girly" outfit I wore.  My "girly" outfit was tights, high top converse in black, short jean skirt, long sleeved tee shirts or sweatshirts that were huge and shapeless and almost as long as my very short skirt, and a military jacket from Angel Uncle.  A delightful mix of boy and girl.  No make up, no perfume, no purse, but a short skirt and tights, the body of a female and a mind of..... a boy/girl.

My closet door is still firmly closed.  I did tell a very good friend of mine.  Why her?  Because we have been friends for years, and I knew I could trust her to understand, and even more importantly accept me. Until I have done a more thorough excavation into me, and what if any thing I want to change, I am putting off telling the boys.  I need to be more settled in my feelings, more sure of who I am before I tell them.

I need to decide if I do want this to be a spring board to changes, and just how radically of a change I want/need to make to feel complete and whole.  So, is it now time for something completely different?

  

Prayers for Lee and his family

Everyone who has met Lee, all knows what a very special person he is.  So full of love and caring for others.  I've never met a more accepting person in my life, ever!  When ever anyone stumbles, it seems that Lee is there, offering a hand up, a pat on the back, and endless patience in listening and offering advice.

Lee has made a huge difference in my life,  and I can't believe that I'm the only one.  So, for every nice and kind thing he has left in your comments, or spent time on chat trying to help you, say a prayer for Lee and his family.  And if you aren't the praying sort, then keep him in your thoughts, and drop him an email, telling him you are thinking about him.

random things times 10

Hello!! New and shiny followers!!  So nice to have you come and visit, pour yourself something cool to drink, or warm depending on your preference and get comfy for our visit.  So, I think most of you know me pretty well by now, but still there are some weirdness lurking around that ya just don't know.  There are a few things on the list that I will admit are fodder for teasing, and I'm cool with it, so let the teasing begin!

1.)   Ok, this is something that is definitely fodder for teasing, and that's why I started my list with this....... I like polka music.  Yes, polka.  And, I enjoy dancing the polka too.....

2.)   I don't like jelly on my peanut butter sandwiches.  My favorite way to eat a peanut butter sandwich?  
with Miracle Whip, and a few leaves of iceberg lettuce.

3.)   I would rather eat with my fingers than silverware.  But, not when I'm out to eat, or having company  in.  I do have some manners.....

4.)   One cup of coffee can jack me up for the entire day.  Yes, just one cup, and no, not super strong                          
either.  In fact my coffee is a very light brown, almost a tan with the amount of milk I add.  Oh, and
lashings of sugar.

5.)   I used to play both the violin and the piano.  Strange thing though was that reading music for me was  always a struggle, luckily after only a few times playing the piece I usually had it memorized.

6.)   For the life of me I can't remember phone numbers, yes including my own.  However, if I have dialed the number enough, you can just hand me the phone I can dial it for you..... I don't know or understand it either.

7.)   Number one played song in my itunes list is "What I've Done" by Linkin Park.  How many times?
Oh, only 423...  And the lest played from my Top 25 Most Played Songs on itunes is "Twisted Transistor" by Korn at 161.  I have only listened to that song for about 5 months or so.

8.)  I love to swim!  Water, I swear is my natural element. Six months preggers I could out swim T.H.!  And not by a teensy bitty bit, but not even half way there before I was done..  My favorite stroke used to be the butterfly.  When done correctly, not only do you fly thru the water, it just feels perfect in some weird way to me.  I tried out for the swim team in high school, didn't make it due to my poor diving ability coupled with my slow back stroke.  But, came in the top 3 in breast stroke and crawl during practices before I was cut from the team.

9.)   I have a collection of teddy bears.  My favorite one is just a brown jointed bear that came with a sticker on his tummy that said, "tip me i growl".  So, I did what the sticker said, tipped him and he.... well he mooed.  Yeah, mooed like a cow.  Of course that lead to tipping everyone bear on the stand and they all growled except that one bear.  It was a week before Christmas, and all I could think about was the land of misfit toys, so of course he had to come home with me.

10.)   I don't really care for greasy or fatty foods, but every now and again I just gotta have a plate of something fried!  French fries, onion rings, fried fish...... what have ya not so picky.  How often does the desire for fried items hit me?  Umm about every two or three months I'd say.  I'm super picky about how much butter goes on my toast, very little on super crunchy toast.  Don't eat the fat around any meat.  But love bacon cooked very crisp, none of this floppy bacon for me thank you!

Ginormous hugs for all of my new and old followers, meeting all of you has enriched my life beyond my wildest imagination.  My life since I have meet you is so much richer, fuller and I'm happier than I have been in many a long while.  And a special shout out to Victor the rodeo star!

Biki!

Perry v. Schwarzenegger Trial Begins in the Supreme Court

Yesterday the Supreme Court heard opening remarks in the Perry v. Schwarzenegger trial.  I won't go into details here due to the fact it is much better to read it yourself.  All the links are at the bottom of the page.  But, reading the trials give and take is fascinating, the first witness up is a historian who is laying the groundwork demonstrating the years of discrimination, and doing a bang up job of it too.

This is fascinating reading on many fronts. The first of which of course is to see this horrible discrimination come to an end in our country. And the second is the fact that it is happening in our lives.  This is something that will be remembered for many years, and we have front row seats!  No matter how this court case comes down, I think it will be a seminal moment in our country's history.  As other "recent" country defining snapshots have been.  President Kennedy's and Martin Luther King Jr. assassinations,  civil rights movement, the peace marches, and of course 9-11.

This morning when I woke up, I noticed a strange silence over most of blogger land and was very surprised by the silence.  I would have thought that this one topic would have been on the finger tips of every blogger!  I would have thought that discussions and debates would have flowing back and forth fizzing thru the web and buzzing in everyones head.  My blog roll is fairly long, and out of all of them, only two are talking about the trial.  Two!  This could be the year when gay marriage is finally legalized in our country.  Not some pale imitation like civil unions, but honest and true marriage.  Or this is could be the year when the many years of hard work to win legal protections and freedoms is rolled back to zero....

If you are against marriage for LGBT thinking it will dilute the gay culture, that I can understand.  Assimilation is the way most people lose their culture, and you are proud of who you are.  This court case is still vitally important to your future and I truly can't understand the silence.  Why or how is this case important to you?  If it is proven by the highest court of law that discrimination is acceptable when dealing with marriage for LGBT, what other legal rulings will come under attack?  What other protections that have been hard won could be pulled back?  Yes, it could happen.

Start reading, keep up on the current events of this trial, and if you are a praying sort, pray this goes in favor for all LGBT.

Here are the two blogs that are discussing the trial:

http://gayfamilyvalues.blogspot.com/2010/01/perry-vs-governatorpart-one-youtube.html

http://gayfamilyvalues.blogspot.com/2010/01/gays-v-governator-part-deiuxtwitter.html

http://ishouldbelaughing.blogspot.com/2010/01/five-best-things-ted-olson-said.html


Here are the opening remarks
http://www.equalrightsfoundation.org/news/text-of-ted-olsons-opening-statement-in-prop-8-trial-as-prepared/


And here is the step by step from the web site Prop 8 Trial Tracker.  There are several parts.

http://prop8trialtracker.com/2010/01/12/liveblogging-day-2-part-iv-afternoon-session/

reflections on my new birthday

After the meltdown, a few nights ago... sigh... sorry about that, life for me has been very unusual.  My outward life has not changed at all, still same same same.  But, my inner life?  It is as different as if I moved out of my head and into someone else's.  And, I guess to a great degree that is what happened.

My inner life was noisy and chaotic, full of sound and fury.  Getting to sleep at night, has always been a chore for me.  Making my mind shut it, so I can sleep has been something I have fought as long as I remember.  I sleep well, but getting the brain to quiet down and let me be, is something else.

I'm so happy, so calm, so....... at peace within.  Free.  I feel free.  What a wonderful feeling.

But, I couldn't figure out why I was feeling this peace, this freedom.  So, while I was chatting with Lee tonight, I asked him, hoping he could shed some light on the subject.  And, his answer made total and complete sense to me.  His words were pure wisdom to a new born.

 Lee said, "Because you have been holding on trying to understand how you felt and knowing it now frees you."

Yes.  That is it.  I am no longer white knuckling my inner self.  The feeling is indescribable, however wonderfully glorious it feels.

I haven't been around many people since I've had my new birthday, and am honestly wondering how it is, if it is, going to change how I act.  I have a tendency to fade into the background around many women, so I am kinda wanting to try out my new inner confidence, and see what occurs.  Will it change anything for me?  Could it change my actions?  These questions will have to bubble and brew until I have a chance to try.

A few nights ago, once again in our darkened bedroom, very quietly T.H. asked, "Umm, do you want me to treat you any differently?"  My poor T.H. is adrift and is floundering, but is only thinking of my happiness.  I reassured him that no, he treats me wonderfully and he was never the problem.  This is not something he has done, or not done, but something that has been inside of me as long as I can remember.  He was reassured, and relieved.  I have certainly put T.H. through the wringer in our years together.

In 1995 I legally changed my first and middle names.  I wanted a clean unsullied by hate and violence name.  Every time I heard my named called out to me, it made me wince, an inner flinch I would suppose would be the best way to put it.  I gave T.H. proper warning, telling him that I was looking for a new name, and when I found it, would be changing it.  After a few months of "shopping" I don't know how many different names, I finally found the one for me.

Each time we were building a new baby, we would hunt for names, both boys and girls.  And of course none of the girl names ever got used.  T.H. so wanted to use his favorite girls name, and to be quite honest, I didn't like the name at all.  Every single time he would mention it, I would sigh, and write it down, without any intentions of ever using it on our baby girl.  But, when the babies all proved to be boys, he was let down he truly wanted a little girl.  What better way to honor his love for me, than to gift him the use of his favorite name.  When I filled out the paper work, and showed it to him for the first time, he was both shocked and touched.

So, yeah for both T.H. and myself yet again a new beginning.  And if you think about it?  He hasn't truly been married to the same wife for 31 years!  He had one wife for 16 years, one for 14, and now he is starting off with a new shiny model again!  Humm, does that mean in 12 years, some other large change is going to occur for me, for him?  Who knows!  All I do know, as long as he is there to hold my hand, dry my tears, and love me, love me, love me, I am blissed out with his love.  Because all I really want, all I really need?  Is T.H.

Meltdowns and Closets

Wow!  Umm, so sorry about that last night.  Was over stressed to the breaking point, as no doubt you could see.  The last week had taken it's toil on me, and the weather was stupid cold -30's, which makes my emotions fly all over the map.  I was pushed to the edge wanting to tell T.H. and fearful of telling him. Several people told me not to tell him yet, to wait.  And what you have to know about T.H.'s and me? Is that we share everything.  We have no personal secrets from each other, and the thought that everyone was telling me not to tell, when all I wanted to do was to tell?  And since I am so new, I thought everyone knew better than me..... and kept it bottled up.  And as the day spooled out I just got more and more upset, until a silly little misunderstanding with a good friend on chat, broke me down into unstoppable tears.  After crying for several hours, like a silly goose, I wrote that last post.....  And I did promise Aaron that once a post is up there is no pulling it down, it adds to the integrity of the blog.  So, my ugly meltdown will stay up.

So, there I was, completely over whelmed and felt I had no where to turn, was alone with all of this angst and it was just flowing out of me, and I couldn't get it to stop.  Finally showing some intelligence for the first time I swear to you in all of yesterday, I went and woke up T.H.  He has a terrible cold and hasn't been sleeping well....but at this point I had had had to have him hold me.  Yes, I know, how selfish of me, but I was out of options and as you can see there was puddles of me everywhere.

I woke that poor man out of a sound sleep.  He was met with a mess, face and shirt soaked from my tears, shaking and unable almost to talk by this time.  T.H. didn't even ask me what was wrong.  He just pulled me into him and held me, until I calmed down.

I screwed by courage to the sticking point, and told him.  My voice was a quivering mess, tears were still on tap, and I just wanted to vomit I was just that scared.  Finally getting my voice out, I asked him not to interrupt and let me go until I finished.  So, here is a bit of how it went....

"Umm, you know how I have always felt like a freak?  Never fit in at all?  Well, I now know why.  I'm a...a...umm androgyne...... ummm transgendered."

"Ok, baby ok.  I just need to know two things.  Do you want a sex change operation? And are you going to leave me because of this?"

"NO!  I don't ever want to leave you!!!  And I don't want a sex change either!"

"Good!  We can work around anything else."

We sat in the dark together for hours talking through everything.  T.H. agreed that having words to define me brought clarity to me and my actions.  He then told me something he had never told me before. That all of his friends thought that I was a very unusual female, and that they meant it a good way!  They said I made sense, unlike most females.  As the night wore on, into really morning by anyones standards, T.H. said the best thing to me,

"I loved you before this, I love you now, nothing has changed there.  This makes no difference to me at all.  Except that maybe you can find some happiness within yourself."

  Today while chatting with Dave, he noticed that I wasn't quite my normal me.  And when I recounted my whole story.  Dave said, "You came out of the closet Biki!  Congrats!" And so a person, that didn't even know she had a closet?  Found the doorknob and let herself out.

From here on out, January 4, 2010 will be my personal birthday.  And yes I do intend to celebrate it, from now on!  And Lee, thank you for pointing out it WAS my birthday!

Hugs all around!!

Biki!

unkillable monster

and yet again the monster has escaped from its cage leaving me torn and bleeding......will this never stop?...i suppose it never will.......forward progress is made......happy me.......and then i stop watching it........and someone slips in and opens the cage door...................................................................................only this time im very very tired of fighting it...........so for once it can have its way with me.........and i shall see how this all ends.......not talking of suicide not a coward....love my family to much........but done battling against an endless tide.................................................................................................................................................. i shall see who wins the monster or me......................................at this point i dont really care anymore.........

Unscheduled Scenic Routes...... is gone

Well, as you can see, I have changed the title of my blog.  And why?  Well the old name reflected my feelings of being lost, not understanding why I was different, only knowing I was.  Finally understanding who I am, and not being the freak that I have always felt is beyond words wonderful.  It is just as a window being opened into an long unaired room, blowing in fresh air, and dissipating the dust and despair.

I feel free in a way I haven't felt in...... well forever.  The last few days have brought clarity to my past like never before.  Feeling like a new born had me desiring to jettison my old blog title, and this new one describes how I feel now.  Out from my confusion, isolation, and into the possibilities that today and tomorrow hold.  If there is any regret at all for me, it's the years of wasted effort flailing and thrashing around in self doubt and anguish.

Thank you all again for being so supportive of me!

Continuing the theme from my previous blog, the banner pictures will continue to reflect my mood at the time of the post, except for now they will reflect my feelings of my androgyne gender.  Is it a boy, or a girl putting on the jacket?  Who knows, and that alone makes me smile.  How long will this continue?  I don't know, for a while at least.