Fatigue

I have had inquiring minds ask me, when did you go "full time".? My usual answer is I am not sure.  It kind of depends on your definition of what that means.  For most it means, tell everybody (work, friends, family) and then present as your new self 24/7 without "ever" going back.  But I think that standard is some kind of pie in the sky view.  There are very few that just draw a line in the sand all of a sudden take the leap.

There always seems to be some constraints on when will others allow you to be you all the time.  

In my case I tell them that I was basically something like 23.25/7 as opposed to 24/7.  What that meant was there were a few hours a week where I needed, mostly for business purposes, to be "him".   I was very lucky that my job did not demand my presence in an office every day.  So one day out of the week I might show up at work as my alter-self for 4 hours or so.  Then get home and "undo" it.  So in a way, I was full time as long ago as last April (2010), meaning I did everything else as my new self (Groceries, doctor appointments , appearing in court, picking up and dropping kids at school, going out with kids, etc etc.) and only a very few as my old self.  Considering there are 168 hours in a week this meant I was girl 163 hours and boy maybe for 5.  I would fake it on the phone a bit more than that.  But by my math that is like 97% of the time in girl mode.  I am going to call that full time.  We can do best two out of three Indian leg wrestling if you disagree.

So by the time I had the big reveal in September 2010, I had been living things pretty much full time already for 5 months. And of course for the last 3 months I am now truly 24/7.  That is 8 months essentially, or if your round for a 30 day month, or 5760 hours. I did the math on hours to make a point.  Even if I subtract out the 5 months at 97% it is still nearly 6000 hours as me.  Granted, I was sleeping some of that time.  So were you.

I have a friend who recently boasted that she had been "In this business for a lot longer than me."  And as such she had some unique perspective.  I would be inclined to agree but not in the way she thinks.  She is part time, so part time in fact that her world kind of starts on Friday afternoon and goes to Sunday night.  Lately she slips in a weeknight.  But if I am generous, that would get her to ~60 hours in a week and over a period of a a few years she probably gets to about the amount of "stick time" that I already have in 8 months.  And that math might hold true except for one problem. Making progress. Of course that depends on your definition of progress...

You see I am of the opinion that on this "road", having short immersions is not the same thing as coming and staying for a long time.  The staying bit changes your perspective.  For example, if I am going to the dentist, I do not think about who I will be when i go there.  I just go.  Recently I went to a restaurant that is local to my home.  Prior to about 90 days ago I would avoid it enfemme.  Now it is just another restaurant in my neighborhood.  Kinda neat I would say. :)

Said another way, I am now just living my life.  I no longer need a special venue, or an event, or need to have other trans friends in tow to go and be me.  I just do it.  And to be frank, I am tired of having an expectation that I need such places to go or that I must have a trans entourage in tow.  Some of my trans friends, the ones that have yet to move into the mainstream do not get this.  Or more likely they say they do, but they really don't.  It is not their fault I suppose. Like the former Alaska governor they can only see the part of the world they can actually see from their own front porch.

An example is probably worth illustrating here.  In the recent election I supported our governor who was re-elected.  (Yay!).  Yesterday I got an invite from the Governor to attend his Holiday Open House.  Now by any stretch of the imagination, that is not going to be a trans venue.  It is about as mainstream as you can get.  And I am likely to go.  And I am also likely to tell many of my trans friends, unless you got a similar invite, I will be going alone.  Why you may ask?  Well for one, you were not invited and for two, TransFatigue...

You see if you gave me a choice right now between a mainstream event and a trans oriented event occurring at the same time I would skip the trans event.  Yep.  And it is worse than that.  I would probably not want 90% of my trans friends to be at the non trans event either.  Let me qualify that.  The 90% of my friends who are not yet functioning in the "real-world".  And yeah, that was me until a few months ago.  But there is a reason for this perspective and it is is that I have no "fallback".   

Oh sure I could pull a stunt and de-transition.  [Sound  of laughing out loud]  (Donna Rose, bless her soul, told me last night that I could no longer pass as a guy if I wanted to.) :) That sounds like a good plan.  We have seen where that ends up in some cases.  Not pretty.  No, I am in "Damn the torpedos, full speed ahead!" mode.  We have been using a phrase of late around here to illustrate this.  In the bacon and egg breakfast the chicken is "involved", the pig on the other hand is "committed".  Me, I am a pig now.  And so that means that when I go someplace, and interact with folks, I do not want to talk, or think, about being trans anymore.  

And when the rest of my "peeps" are around, they just cannot help themselves.  Conversations inevitably disintegrate into discussions of surgeries, and hormones, and hair removal, and documentation, and boob growth and "does it all work" afterwords.  And at this point, I might actually want to have an intelligent adult conversation about the state of affairs in say Africa, where there is a charity I support.  Or maybe talk about some neat stuff I do with my kids, or some interesting hobbies I have, or music, or a show I saw.  You know, like real people.

And so my friends, whom I love dearly, are going to have to get a grip on the notion that my social life is going to start to not revolve around being trans most of the time.  Sure there will be times where it does, but the priority has shifted for me.  I have some stuff to prove, minds to change, and goals to meet.  The one about being trans and getting that mostly worked out.? That problem is no longer at the top of the list.  Apologies to those who might be offended but frankly, I am tired of it.  Hugs to all, time to move ahead...