After telling my brother that I was a woman, I waited to see if someone in the family would contact me or make mention of it. However, I suppose he is being tight-lipped about it. I have a suspicion that he is keeping this secret because he thinks I don’t want it out. He probably doesn’t realize that I have come out to both sets of cousins, I am pretty sure that the wheels of gossip are spinning now. One of my cousins was just wonderful about my confession to her. The others have yet to respond, but I’m ok with that. When I sent them the letter through FB messenger, I told them that I don’t expect a response, that I just wanted them to know. I’m perfectly ok with this arrangement. I can’t and won’t please everyone and this has nothing whatever to do with pleasing anyone.
Aside from the general tell-everyone thing, I have been feeling lackluster and a bit despondent. The constant intrusion of “manly hair” dealings, the lack of time to be Beth rather than my mask has allowed darkness into my thoughts. I don’t care for it, but shaking it off isn’t always an option, sometimes you have to ride the darkness until you find the light. My light is often my wife, who will surprisingly include me in “girly” things. Yesterday, she had talked about waxing and how she wanted to try the wax beans and wanted to know if I would be interested in trying it too. It was nice to be included, to know that she is thinking of me. It has helped too that my best friend, Joe, showers me with compliments about how pretty I am. Between the two, it is easy to forget the genetic misfire of this body.
Onto other things.. Twitter. I have an account, @bethlocke45 ,which I use to shout my thoughts at people. I have avoided twitter for years, yes I love tech and I am an IT person, but I just don’t like being limited to 140 characters. Twitter always felt trite. I can’t say my views have really changed, but I have embraced twitter without my mask, and that is freeing no matter what venue. I don’t have much of a following, but I like to think I have quality over quantity. At first I had put I was a “transblogger” on my profile, which I had seen on others and thought it was a cute way to put it. But then every post, no matter the subject was ignored and instead became an attack on my being a “man pretending to be a woman”. So, I tried taking off the transblogger, but I left my blog address on the profile. Miraculously, I was cured! I was no longer a man, but a woman with whom they could disagree. Sure, I still deal with the mansplaining and the assumption that I don’t know what I am talking about, but it doesn’t take over the entire discussion. It’s amazing the change in tone and how less aggressive people are. I don’t like leaving this part of me off, only because I had a few really good conversations about what being transgender means. In fact, one conversation actually brought about the best talk with the best results. Another MtFtransgender person and I were able to have a conversation with a cis woman and explain what transgender meant after she had asked on a political post. She is now an ally and we follow each other on twitter! So I feel like I am losing that part, but I would have to keep arguing the other 99.9% of the time about my not being a man at all. So for now, I have left the transblogger off my profile. I would rather argue about things that we have choices on, like politics, sarcastic poetry and cat gifs. I told you, trite, right?