There's no going back now

Whelp, now I've gone and done it.  My Google search history now officially includes "Why do I want to be a girl?" and "Explaining Transgender Desires".  Honestly, life probably would have been demonstrably easier if I'd let myself ask such questions earlier, but it's coming from a slightly different angle than you might assume - for one thing, I'm already 45 years into this life, and I'm not in a gender identity crisis at the moment.  In point of fact, my self image and definitions are at an absolute peak of stability as compared to pretty much the entirety of my life.

The reason I'm asking these things of the almighty Google isn't so much to find the answers for myself as it is to try and find the words to properly share these feelings.  Regrettably, the kind of post I was looking for hasn't leapt out at me, and morbid curiosity led me into a couple of religious websites for some unknown reason.  If I'm truthful, it was better than I expected - the first such article led to an encouraging mention of a new alliance of 150 religious organizations vowing to protect transgender rights.  The next link I ran down was singularly depressing, though - the opening phrases actually seemed somewhat inclusive - among other things it included an unqualified assurance that God loves everyone.  Further down the page was an explanation that essentially the church acknowledged the existance of trans persons.  Acting in accordance with that identity, however, would not be tolerated in any way - excommunication and withdrawal of blessings for expression, social, or physical transition.  Not what I needed to set the tone I was looking for today's piece, and I'm afraid I didn't have the endurance to do more than glance through the next few pages of results.

The last half dozen therapists I've encountered all asked me specifically why I wanted to transition, though, so I'm feeling a need to be able to articulate such things on demand.  Thus far I've mostly just tripped over about a dozen different ideas trying to simultaneously make it out of my mouth hole.  Doesn't end up being the most convincing argument, I feel.  I'm due to be having an intake interview with "Gender Pathways" in two days; the question seems likely to resurface then, so it's been cycling around my brain quite a bit.

It's hard to know where to start.  The assumption that sexual needs figure in heavily isn't wrong, exactly, but it's a less direct route than you might suspect.  For one thing, I've pretty much completely broken any remaining impulse towards romantic action within my marriage.  My wife had a horribly difficult pregnancy that ended with a scarily dramatic birth - 30 odd medical bodies working on your mate at once is intimidating as hell, I have to say.  The trauma of that basically killed any chance for sexual expression for the next five years, outside of one or two occasions that my memory issues largely excised whole - it's horribly frustrating to try to address such issues when you can't even hold on to the efforts that are actually being made.  Things got better for a very short while, finally, but I think I may have pressed too hard in my enthusiasm for our resumed activities - her own interest evaporated quickly, and my OCD decided to introduce a distressing new outgrowth around the same time, conveniently completely sabotaging any capability I might have had towards resuming romance.

(Deep breath.). I find myself bracing for these next few words - there's still an immense amount of shame tied in here.  As my daughter finally decided to take potty training seriously, she managed to culture a good sized yeast infection, which then made the rounds through the family.  Or at least I suspect that's the sequence - at this point it's a little hard to deliniate which portions of my issues had a physical basis and which were largely mentally self inflicted.  Regardless, it was a nasty strain, requiring high dose antibiotics to shake.  The trouble is, it seemed like the itch kept coming back.  I felt horribly unclean and unworthy throughout, and took to bathing meticulously and drying everything thoroughly with a hair dryer.  Didn't seem to help, and Covid was in full swing, restricting medical inspection to a couple of insanely awkward selfies as our entire county was essentially shut down.  No real help to be had from the professionals, other than a suggestion of changing to an exceptionally mild soap and a referral to a dermatologist some weeks down the line.

By the time that appointment rolled around, in person appointments were back on the menu, meaning that I got the full inspection from a pro.   The good news?  He didn't see anything.  The bad news?  He didn't see anything.  So basically I feel like I'm being outright told that I'm imagining things and producing symptoms psychosomatically.  Great, another part of my brain that's broken, that I can't work around even if I know what and where the defects are.  So, over the next two years I'm horribly self-conscious and ashamed to even be around people - my own self disgust hangs around me like a cloud.  Depression closes in; hitting the affected area with a barrage of jock itch powders and creams seems to help a bit, at least in terms of symptoms, but while I manage to make things slightly more bearable, it's still not conceeding to a complete defeat.  This horrible purgatory cycle kept hanging around, right up until I checked into the ward a couple of weeks ago.  Guess what they don't give you access to there?  Hair dryers!  My frankly ridiculous (in retrospect) habit of trying to keep things extra dry appears to have succeeded rather too well.  Thanks, OCD!

All that is basically a very long winded way of saying that I've assassinated my own sex life quite thoroughly over the years, even apart from the complications of trying to figure out transexuality.  It really messed with me in some disturbing ways.  I digested the series "Happy" at one point, and when one of the villains describes castrating himself as a young boy, I found myself momentarily jealous of his conviction   Even worse, that truly warped thought then cascaded into despondent depression as I realized that even self castration would probably not clear the infection.  It had me in a singularly bad place.

While I'm doing significantly better mentally now, and my perception of the jock itch issue has pretty much finally given up, the likelihood of repairing my sexual relationship with my wife, under any circumstances, seems abysmally low.  So, realistically, any level of transition isn't going to affect my level of sex directly.  Zero equals zero, no matter how you slice it.

Even with that thought in mind, even if my remaining opportunities amount to nothing more than masturbation, I can't describe how much better I would feel to get rid of this male shell.  I've always had a weird relationship with sexuality - my body has never felt like _me_, and my genitals even less so.  When I'm in the act, I'm mentally always projecting how my partner is feeling, almost experiencing the thing empathically or parasitically.  While I do feel pleasure at the time, it's so disconnected from the physicality that my bits may as well be phantom limbs.  On the plus side, this has meant that I'm actually quite enthusiastic about the use of sex toys, as I have no investment in the prowess of a poorly designed organ.  In point of fact, for a while I was quite proud of my performance, as it felt like I was deeply, viscerally connected to my partners needs, if not my own.  Internally, I always thought of sex as my closest approach to musical talent - playing around felt instinctual and I could honestly lose myself in the moment.  Regrettably, I've always had some level of difficulty with retarded ejaculation (can't mentally "find" the finish line to cross it), and this has only increased as my anxiety and depression have become ever more prominent.  At this point, the impulse towards even attempting masturbation is abysmally low, and I only make it to release, even on my own, perhaps 20% of the time.  Enormously frustrating and discouraging, as you might have guessed. 

Even my ability to fantasize is a bit f'ed up.  Selecting and watching porn is again always based on projecting exactly how the heroine is experiencing things, and any males in the scene are surplus at best.  Raunchy fanfic and rule 34 stuff are disproportionately effective, as the characters are already well established in my head - thinking of myself as a demi-sexual (attracted more to a person's character and thought than their form) helped me come to terms with bisexual attraction early on, and a reasonably large addiction to reading has given me insight and attraction to any number of fictional characters' minds.  It lands a little weird with friends and family, as well, as I'm extremely dependant on categorization just to get through the day.  Apparently this is true to such a degree that anyone I know well largely disappears from my perception as having any physical sexual attributes at all; it's all personality to me.  My wife apparently finds this charmingly (?) cute, as numerous of our relatives are "stacked" in the breast department and I'm just flat out oblivious.  The minor plus side of that is that, according to a lot of the reading I've done on trans experiences lately, MtF responses to horomone replacement therapy usually end up one cup size smaller than their female relatives.  So I guess there's going to be some backache on the horizon.

The more I turn things over in my head, the more these tiny quirks finally make sense to me, in weird ways.  The one phrase I've managed to come up with thus far to explain things to any degree is that being a girl would mean that I'd have access to all of the adjectives that I'm forbidden to even mentally touch.  Stuff like pretty, attractive, and sensual, to be certain, but as my disability has progressed, a lot of thoughts that I know are litterally incorrect have crept in and whispered their truth, at least in my specific special case.  At this point, even concepts like talented, smart, confident, desirable, and even worthwhile have become labeled as the exclusive teritory of the female form.  Obviously, this is maladaptive, but I can't shake it.  Becoming female myself feels kind of like a conceptual cheat to get around this, but it would make a huge difference, regardless.

Even off axis fantasies seem to be aligning with some level of understanding through this lens.  Sissification has always been a weird one - it's not something I want, exactly, as the symbology is weirdly "too weak" in my head to accept, but it's still attractive because it would allow a route towards exploring dress up and makeup and such without as much guilt "please don't throw me in the briar patch!"  Chastity, orgasm restriction, and endless teasing seem like they should land as negative or undesirable, but that's the key, right there - the overall message is that your partner values your sexuality, that you are in fact desirable.  BDSM is more understandable, to me, as it almost fetishizes trust and control, which are HUGE buttons for me.  I'm actually so fixated on control that I have a genuine phobia about roller coasters and carnival rides - I have no level of trust for the operator, can't  see them when the thing is in operation, and I can't let go of that.  Turning over control to a lover, or having them bless me with the reins for an evening, feels like the ultimate expression of that trust, in contrast.  Coming of age, discovery, and playful corruption all make sense as desirable themes, as each makes the idea of positive sexual change more plausible, to me.  There's honestly been a disturbing amount of disconnect between logic/belief and actual thought, there.  I identify as an agnostic; I don't believe anyone on earth knows for sure what happens next. I love the idea of reincarnation, but I very conciously forbid myself to place any faith in the idea, for fear of being disappointed when I find out different in practicality (yep, I'm aware that in this scenario, I'd be dead at the time).  Despite this, when I'm extra down in the dumps, a lot of times my mind will start framing thoughts as "you should change that, next life" as if this were some sort of morbid video game.  Belief gets really weirdly layered in my sort of mental illness, apparently.

Other attractions have gained clarity as well.  I used to think that my affinity for photography was more about holding onto perfect moments of emotion, but as I look at it anew, a whole lot just comes down to plain old envy - I love taking pictures of beautiful women, not because I want to sleep with them or preserve an erotic impulse - it's more about holding on to that same weird projective feeling - the impression of capability and self-assurance becomes mine, a little.  At least for a short while.  By the same token, I can't get enough of photographing animals and children - there's absoutely no embarassment or holding back; they're always fully in the moment.  These qualities have always seemed completely unattainable, to me.

 

There are notes of wanting privledge, as well.  Or at least that's how I end up labeling it internally.  Not so much the classic bit about women not paying for anything and exceptions being made for the assumed delicacy of the feminine form.  Stupid stuff like wanting to be able to give a compliment without being seen as a creep.  That one is a huge fear for me, to the point where I've nearly mastered the driveby comment - never slow down, don't even make it a conceptual possibility that you might stop.  I'm a tallish/biggish man, as well, which is only ever intimidating in ways that are inconvenient.  The thought that I'll lose both muscle mass and a level of safety along the way doesn't give me even the slightest hint of hesitation - I've thought of myself as little more than dumb muscle for quite some time, and my coordination has suffered enough recently that I'm not even being trusted to move things around.  I won't miss it.

I think more than anything, though, it would allow me to finally let go of some of the rules I've half consciously built for myself.   All of the horrible "shoulds" that hang out in my head might be a little less potent - there's no expectation to "act like a man" if you are, in fact, not a man.  Huge slices of life experience are simply not availble to sample, because it would be "inappropriate".  Knowing these attitudes are inheritted and wrong does absolutely nothing to mitigate the problems they cause.

 

...and it's now two days later, I have yet another wall of text in front of me, and I still feel like I haven't gotten anything conclusive out of my head.  I'm going to have to find a way to be ok with this pace of production, though, as it's continued to feel like this blog is a means of solidifying gains in perspective and thought.  The effort is more than worth it, I think.