tick........tick......tick...tick..tick.tick

I'm beginning to wonder if my time in this female body is ticking down.  I've been experiencing "The Dream" in which I'm male, more often than before.  They are also more vivid, to the point of leaving me ever further adrift from my physical self.  This is my most recent one.

In my dream, I'm sleeping and an itch bothers me to the point of waking me up.  I run my hand under the tee shirt, and start to scratch my chest which is where the itch is so very intense.  What my hand encounters is a male chest, covered in hair, and quite muscular.  The feel of the chest hair, the firmness of the pectoral muscles, must have intruded into my dream to the point it woke me up.

I opened my eyes on the very room I was dreaming in, with my lightly snoring TH beside me.  Confused, shocked, panicked and elated, I ran my hand underneath my tee shirt, the same one in my dream as well, only to find my usual female self.  But all day, the feeling of that chest hair lingered on my fingertips.  The different contours of male and female chests also kept pinging away at the back of my mind.  The only way I could fall asleep was with my hand inside of my tee shirt, against the skin of my chest.

January 4th marked my awaking day.  I awoke to my true self.  No more hiding, no more running, coming face to face with who I honestly am.  At first my feeling was on of pure joy!  I felt free, easy within my physical self that had only occurred a very few times in my life.  That joy quickly began to leak, and drain away, as it became clearer and clearer to me, that one never receives any gift that doesn't come with a price.  My price for understanding who and what I truly am?  The slow melting away of my marriage.

Trying to figure out how to cram two genders into one body, happily is something that I'm currently working on, and so far miserably failing at.  Yes, it's early roads yet, and don't really expect to be able to pull off this transformation overnight.  I do believe that the eldest son and the second son are worried about me.  To the point where son #2, is texting more of late than he had in over 6 months previously.  He's inviting me out to lunch, and taking me along on his hunt for a new car.  Tonight son # 2 and wife caught me crying, I told a lie about the tears being due to a massive headache, left over from the shellfish reaction.  Did they buy it?  I'm not sure.  Son #1 and wife are bringing the baby over more often for me to hold and play with her.

TH has pulled so very far away from me, that when I take his hand when we are out together, he hesitates for a brief moment before he wraps his hand around mine.  And now if I want to hold hands I have to initiate it.  The same with hugs.  Kisses?  Wow, it's been so long since we last kissed, I'm not sure clearly when that was.......

Do I find a way to stuff away my inner self, kill "him" as it were, and try to find my old footing?  Go it alone into a scary world of transitioning, and possibly losing my children in the process?  Because for sure TH will be out of my life, he refuses to live with me if my female body is shed.  Now that I'm awake, can I go back to sleep again?  Now that "he" has stretched and been allowed out of his cocoon, is there any going back?  Could there be a way of convincing TH to stay, if I start hormones and have top surgery?  If my genitals don't change, could he learn to love me with a hairy male chest, and a face that has to be shaved?  These questions keep swirling around inside my head on a non-stop loop, that is invading my sleep, and keeping me poised on the edge of depression.  I quiet the questions, the fears, the desires for only days at a time, before they come rushing back to overwhelm me again.

What is it that we really fall in love with anyway, their soul, heart and mind, or only their fleshy outer coat?  If love is only skin deep, is it love, or something much shallower?  Thinking over it, what would happen if the roles were reversed?  That TH came home wanting to transition into a female, could I adapt to that?  Honestly I have no hard and pure answers to that question.  I would hope that I would try to adapt, but unless I'm put in this position, knowing the truth of my response is impossible.

So, I wait, and hope.  For what?  I'm not even sure what I'm hoping for any longer, but at least my hope is still flickering inside.  And surely that's a good thing, yeah?