I’ve been thinking about the subject of friendship and transition for a while now, but recent events and a few other blogs on the subject of friends that I’ve read in the last couple of weeks prompted me to write my own blog about it.
Early on in my therapy sessions, probably a year and a half ago, my therapist suggested that I should look for an on-line support group of some kind for people with trans issues, as there’s nothing anywhere near my area. I ended up on CD.com, which was cool for quite a while, meeting on-line with many other people like me. I connected with several other trans-girls there and eventually met with Teresa last year. It turned out that we had a lot of interests in common besides the trans issues and we went to a couple of big events together, a civil war reenactment, and the big yearly airshow in Oshkosh, WI. She went “Teresa-fied” as she called it, and I went in “dis-guy-ze”. I learned a lot about confidence from watching her just be herself, and the best part was that no-one that we walked past or dealt with got weirded out about either of us. No confrontations! It got me to thinking that maybe, just maybe, I could do that also, and maybe it would even work out ok. Fear has a way of slowing down the whole process of transition, so I wasn’t in any hurry to confront my own fears, but I now knew that it was possible.
Teresa was already in the process of attempting to sell her house in Traverse City, MI (an entire story by itself) and was looking into other places to move to, and my house was empty 4-5 days a week with me living at work so I figured “what the heck, she wants to get out of Traverse City, I have an empty house with 2 bedrooms, maybe she’d be interested in living there for a while until she figures out where she wants to go.” So I asked, she thought it was a good idea and, in November of 07, we moved her stuff with a really big U-haul truck to my house, about 300 miles away.
It’s interesting how a person can slowly build up their courage when they have an example to follow. For me, that’s Teresa. She’s out there every day, just being herself, not having any problems with other people, just doing the stuff that people do, except she’s Teresa about 95 % of the time.
For those of you who’ve been following my 360 blog or hers, you’ve read about our various exploits together, with me pushing the gender envelope further and further until I could finally go out and be Amber in public. At this point, I’m almost full time when I’m home (work is a different issue, LOL) and I intend to be full time, no exceptions, at home within the next couple weeks. I’m waiting for my background check to come back to the courthouse so I can get my court date set for my legal name change, hopefully soon. I’ve faced most of my transition fears, such as going to the bank, and the biggie, the bathroom, last weekend. That’ll be part of my next blog, “the chronicles of Amber”. The McDonalds bathroom full of women was a particular highlight of the weekend, talk about anus clenching adventures! LOL
Anyway, back to the subject, friendship. Never underestimate the value and power of friendship! Come out of your shell and connect to some other people if you haven’t yet. Find someone that you can talk to about your shared trans-issues, but also, shared non trans interests. Hang out together, go share some anus clenching adventures of your own! Start living again! (and, no, I’m not talking about anything sexual, mine doesn’t work anyway.)
I can tell you that I know that I would not be where I am now in my transition if it were not for friendship! Of that, I have no doubt!
Filed under: Life Experiences | Tagged: courage, friendship, guy mode, mtf, Transgender, transition |
TRANScend GENDER 