My NEW Revelation

For all of my friends and cohorts who know me, know of me and can call me family (you know who you are), I have been struck with a revelation just today! I am not transgender, I am transsexual. I am working to get that stigma understood for my friends and family to really understand, but I think time will be the best healer and leveler of the playing field, so to speak.

I feel strange about this revelation. I feel stupid about it, though. One thought in one direction and multiple in another, and it led me to the Logo TV website. Another couple of hours later and I stumbled upon “TRANSform Me”, a television series that takes three transsexual women and make-over a pleading woman who lacks her own style and fashion sense. It’s a wonderful program. I enjoyed it.

I am looking for some assistance. I live in Mississippi and not too many people here are up-to-speed about the LGBTQ lifestyle, much less our community. It totally sucks about what I am doing in my new job. My roommate, who also used to work for my boss, told me to “dress like a guy to get the job, but work through it a few weeks and gradually change it up.” I couldn’t completely do that; I brought my purse the first day, and dug through it to get my hairbrush and my pens and cellphone. Sorry, I will reveal all, but not too soon. (I wear my man-pants like I would as a woman would, and I like it better that way.) I do wear “t-shirts” but are just pull-over blouses that look like close-fitting t-shirts. It does help me to feel better while working in a mostly female environment.

After coming home sick on Friday with laryngitis, and trying to stay out of the family’s way while I recuperated, I surfed the internet for some stuff and played Eve Online, too. I’m still struggling to stay warm in a warm house; frequent chills are getting me down. (I might have something that I don’t want to go to hospital for; I got out of there for pneumonia in early April, and I don’t think I recovered from it.)

I like my job, don’t get me wrong, but it’s harder than most telemarketing jobs I’ve had. There’s no training course to get through. There’s no hand-holding here. It’s all about the quantity of the calls you make and how to get back into the mix when you’ve gotten a bad call or an answering machine or the customer on the other end forgets who you are and why you’re calling and makes you look like a fool (that part’s recorded).

I now have a purpose and a direction. I need to have my surgery, grab my paperwork and assess what needs to be fixed first, then go from there. The easiest one: my Social Security card. The hardest I think will be my drivers’ license and passport. I can’t wait to get this underway! I need a job to carry on making money to do these things; without one, I cannot even start hormone therapy and counseling. I feel this job is a step backwards and it feels like someone is swatting my hands with a wooden ruler every time I try to make forward strides.

The family I live with love me, the kids don’t want me to move. I can understand that, too. I do love it here. I feel better here than I do at my sisters’ homes; B’s home is smoke-filled because she and my brother-in-law both smoke. C’s home isn’t so bad, but she’ll go into any room with a lit cigarette and then apologize when she’s in the one I’m borrowing. Her husband, T, chews tobacco, and that’s not as bad as second- and third-hand smoke.

I discovered that my closest counseling location is in Gulfport, MS. That’s quite a distance from where I currently reside. I don’t want people to think I’m lazy or disrespectful, but that’s nowhere near Tupelo! I want something closer to me. (If I can have a lawyer assist me with getting Medicare for my diabetes and depression, then I’m one step closer… I think.)

So tired of people giving me the run-around and telling me they can’t help me unless I have some sort of income! That’s monetary discrimination! Everywhere I turn, if I don’t have the money, I can’t get the treatment I need. I have bill collectors already hounding me for money, for a 3 1/2 day hospital stay! It totals to almost $9000! Moved to another state and I’m in debt already– within the first 6 months– is the state of my luck!? I sure hope not.

What can someone like me, in dire straits, do to get the help I need? Should I check myself into a mental health facility, tell them about my suicidal tendencies due to my depression and lack of support system? What options do I have short of getting labeled disturbed or insane? I’m caught between a rock and a hard place and can’t seem to get enough purchase to thrust myself away. Please help me.

Whenever I can, I check my Yahoo!Groups for the latest conversations and pictures. I want to have these kinds of good things happen to me, too, but I cannot where I am living! Florida, in the county where I moved from, I was denied all kinds of care related to my transsexual nature: hormone therapy, individual counseling, AND surgery. Denied them ALL! I was on county healthcare, and they took care of my diabetes supplies and meds, my depression and ‘head shrinking’ meds– all of it!– yes for something as simple as getting prepared for my transition and making way for the new me: FORGET IT! They apparently thought that I didn’t count. I didn’t matter. They had their medical stuff covered, whatever it was; I didn’t because, apparently, I’m just barely human enough to be considered human, to partake in that medical system. I have to purchase medical insurance out of my own pocket, and with my job, I don’t even think I can do that right now…

If I had some way to get the treatment I need, the connection to others like me in a location I can call home, I would be so happy right now! I am so depressed right now, and sick, that I’m thinking about “it” while I’m playing with my tiny multi-tool. I just need someone to hold me close, and tell me “everything’s going to be okay” and really mean it. I’m struggling to keep a fresh face and happy mood. This facade-crap I have to play at work is really getting me down! I think that’s my I’m ill now, too.

Why should I compromise my values and ethics for a boss who has no clue about who I am? I want to tell him. Nowhere on the application did it list GENDER. Nowhere! I am not a man, I am a woman who has needs and wants and goals and feelings.

Please leave your comments. I want your advice and assistance in this. If anyone is interested in hiring me for logo design, font work and other such graphics, please comment below. I want to move in the worst way, have a valid drivers’ license, and want to get out of Mississippi in the worst way!

Midnight Revelation

Not sure where to put this or how to express how I truly feel, but that’s why we blog, isn’t it?

Over this week I’ve been trying to help the 16-year old daughter of my friends, with whom I’m am a guest in their home (along with their 18-year old, and another 6 (2 additional girls and 4 boys) ranging from 11(?) to 2 years) and have been for almost a month.  They wanted a 2-week trial, and I stepped it up and ran with it; they accepted me:  all of them.  Most of the youngest call me “uncle”, but the oldest 3 call me “aunt”; we’re not related, but I don’t really mind.  I miss that kind of family life.

I’m going to be filling out an employment application at a local insurance telemarketing agency that P had worked for previously.  I am so nervous.  I have been living as a woman since October (2012), and the gentleman who owns the place is a nice man and a pastor of a local church. P informed me of a few things:  dress less like a woman and more like a man when filling out the app and for the interview (just land the job, you can carry on from there); earn some money and start getting the things you’re going to need; upon employment, we had agreed I’d pay some into the household for my living expenses.  I feel I’m making strides, but backwards in this situation.  I’m a woman, not a man.  That was something I hoped I’d never go back to!  The Manly Life!  I’m a woman and that’s all there is to it!

I have struggled to make things happen and convince people in the community that I am a woman.  I carry a purse.  I wear my hair a certain way.  I wear makeup, but not excessively.  I dress in women’s clothing!  I know, deep inside, that a woman is who I am– not the manly facade that I had to create to keep my father happy about his son– and I don’t want to do back on that!  Ever!  I had a tough time with it around my former landlord when I came out to him and my former fiancee.  He told me that I was not to cross-dress on his property; he was afraid of his grandchildren asking too many questions about me.  I told him he wouldn’t have to worry.  Almost a week later, I moved out.  I felt insecure.  I felt exposed; almost to the point of complete nakedness!

I knew I had a place to go.  P&M’s!  That’s months ago!

Being here, living with P&M (this is a different P&M than the first one) and their 8 children (the other P&M only had 1 child) is different and kind of fun.  Many of them have mental issues, problems with interacting with others, ADD, habitual lying, and other such disorders… (Wow!  I fit right in! LOL)  P has told me that she can say stuff without thinking, and I told her that was fine.  A small incident happened, and I let it go; P apologized to me about it.  If I don’t hear it, that’s fine.  If I do, I can and have been known to take offense.  I tend to let it roll off my back; she means no harm or malice toward me.

My bras have been feeling like fiberglass lately.  Not sure if it’s something related to the high humidity, my perspiration, my deodorant, the laundry detergent or a combination of those that’s making any kind of bra uncomfortable to wear.  It seems that I may have misplaced my power adapter for my electric razor and my sunglasses case; they are somewhere in this house!  I had them moving into the split bedroom, but I cannot find them to save my life.  I just don’t get it; they don’t just get up and walk away!  One of the older kids may have taken them to school not realizing what they were, realizing what they were and wanted to sell or get rid of them, or hid them on me to find months from now.  I really needed my sunglasses today!  My eyes were bugging out of my head, and I was not impaired by a sinus infection.  They hurt like that sometimes.

Found the cord to my razor!  I remember putting something there (one of my cloth grocery shopping bags) and had forgotten it was there.  Oops!  Sorry, kids!  That could mean that my sunglasses could be in here, too!  Hooray!

I don’t necessarily want to revisit my male alter-ego again.  I don’t!  I did things that I regret; I did things that I didn’t, but it all comes down to who I know I am!  I guess I’m living in the past, dwelling on things that I regret, and not finding a way to resolve them.  Maybe my father was reading into something that I didn’t know, or acknowledge, after my mother died; I may never know.  If this is how things are supposed to be, then why does this interview/employment app scare me?  I don’t want to step back into the cowl of darkness and re-explore my demons, my darkness, my testosterone-fueled short fuse-snapping anger fits!  That in itself scares me!

I live in the Bible Belt of the US!  Mississippi!  In a tiny little town, where I can walk about 400 feet to the public library out the front door.  I can walk to the closest grocery store about 8 blocks away.  In that same distance I can cut through the hospital-dedicated exercise path and reach the duck pond.  Much of the things that are in this town are within walking distance.  Walk across the street, same side as the house and library, and where the library sits, there’s a big white Baptist church!  No joke!  There’s a mental health counselor on the main street only about 5 blocks from here.  (I wonder whether they can help someone like me from the LGBTQ community.  If not, I can grab the information online for them to take a look and go from there.  Otherwise, I’d have to go to Gulfport!  That’s about a 8 hour drive, one way, and I don’t have a car!)

I am uneasy.  I am nervous.  I am wondering about this possible job and that I need employment; just stick to it, and I will prosper.  I know all that!  I want to do it my way!  That’s what I want.  Just really scared…  I do have some anxiety with this ‘reversion’ and I’m not liking it.

Wish me luck.  I’m turning in for the night…  Please pray for me and we’ll see where this goes.

Thanks.