Let's Get This Party Started!

Today is my birthday!  Not the day of my birth, but the day of my awakening.  What a year this has been.  I have been re-reading my blog from the time when I began to wake up, coming out of my personal coma, and into the light.  Needless to say, it hasn't been an easy year, but one that I wouldn't trade away, period.  I have seen the deepest despair, and the giddy heights of pure and unadulterated joy.

Despair, knowing there isn't any way to maintain anything close to my current life if I transition.  Stratosphere heights came from finally at long last knowing who I am, and how with this last piece of the puzzle of me, everything finally fits, makes sense.  Joy and despair all rolled into one convenient package.  Yeah, that about sums it up.

Last year at this time, with the voyage barely began, I was convinced that I was androgynous.  I know now that not to be true.  I'm a transsexual.  And an anomaly according to my ex-therapist.  According to her, she hasn't ever had a person realize they are transsexual, know they would be happier living within a proper gender conforming body, and then choosing not to.

At first my decision not to transition was based solely on keeping TH (the husband).  We have been married since the dawn of time, 32 years.  And like all long married couples we really no longer have a clearly delineated where "I" ends and "you" begins.  As this year flowed by TH's views on my physical body shifted as he began to slowly understand what this was in reality doing to me, and as his comfort level grew with the whole idea that, yes I'm a guy.

One fine day, we were out shopping and he said to me, "You don't move like a girl anymore.  Not that you were ever very girly, but now….you take up more real estate, you walk bigger, sit bigger."

I let this simmer for a bit, then worked up my nerve to ask fearing the worst, "Does it bother  you?"

"Sometimes."

While the statement was painful to my fledging heart and identity, at least he was truthful.

At first when I made the decision not to transition, the grief about killed me, and I began a death spiral down, cumulating into a 24 hour period that almost saw me leaving all of the pain and grief behind me for good.  If it hadn't been for two really good friends talking to me for hours, I honestly doubt there would be this post, yeah it was honestly that hairs breath close.  Why wasn't TH the one to hold me together?  He was out of the state, visiting his best friend.  He realized when he called me how bad I was, but he was out of reach. His first instinct was to call one of our sons, and I'm rather glad he didn't, as I'm sure I would have spilled the truth to them.  Something I'm honestly frozen with fear of them knowing.

Late this summer, TH gathered me into his lap and arms and told me very seriously that he wanted me to transition, I needed to live for me, not him.  While the selflessness of his offer was breathtaking, the reality of it is just to stark.  Living without my best friend, the one person on earth who loves me for me, is an alien planet I don't want to discover.

Last week I was answering an email, giving the person my physical address as I had won a book by him.  I go by a diminutive of my name, ending in an "ie". Now without the later part of my name, tis a guys name. I rattled off my name and addy and then paused……and backed up and changed Bobbie to Bob*.  I sat and rolled Bob around my mind for a while, and then hit send.

Today I was going to celebrate my b-day with going shopping for an outfit for the "Decades Dance" for the trans conference.  I couldn't manage to get myself out of the house.  One problem its very hard in this smallish town we live in to not run into someone we know.  Yes, I'm very deeply in the closet, and fear the daylight.

And so the year ends rather as it had began, with me trying to live an androgynous life.  Trying to walk the line between nothing overtly feminine and not looking "butch".  I'm not really sure why, but the idea of coming across as a butchy lesbian bothers me to no end.  Yeah, yeah I know weird, but whatever.

This is going to sound odd, but I feel as though I'm on the cusp of …….. something.  I'm not sure what it is that I'm feeling, but ya know the feeling you get when you first wake up and your dream is so vivid, but as the seconds tick past, it fades quickly, no matter how hard you grasp to keep it?  Yeah, that's how I'm feeling lately.  There is something tickling the back of my brain, but I just yet grasp it.  It will come to me, of that I'm sure.

Ok, and now a question for all of you.  It was brought to my attention that the name I've chosen to write under, Biki and my avatar is a sorta feminine.  What do you think, should I change them?  And if you have been wondering how I pronounce Biki, tis said bee-key.

Love ya all!

*my name is NOT Bobbie