Future Me

 So course is still going well, I am on placement with the Salvation Army in their Reintegration Service which is essentially helping clients who are leaving prison after a sentence of more than two years to find their feet in society again.  This mostly means finding jobs, housing, setting up accounts etc

It is a really interesting placement to get really, and lets me use some of my personal experience, so I am actually quite lucky in that regard.

So assuming I get all of my hours done and pass the last few assessments the game plan is to graduate mid-December, and then I will be moving back to Dunedin to continue my studies, three more years of this stress just so that I can be a registered counsellor.

But it does mean I'll get to see all of my Dunedin people who I absolutely adore, and I will hopefully be moving in to an amazing house with some people I have already lived with before so that will actually be fantastic.

Everything feels like it could actually work out, which is awesome and gives me that bright shiny glow of optimism that I feel like I have been missing a little bit this year.

I'm still more tired than I would like, some days its really hard to get up, or focus on the things I need to.

So I am hoping I can do something about that soon too, because I'd be unstoppable if I could get that under control.

I keep meeting amazing people, and sharing amazing moments, and it actually sucks that I won't be seeing some of these people so much for a few years.

So if you're reading this, I love you, and I won't ever forget you hehe

Love.
Abigail

Mourning and Tranquility

One of the hardest things about transition is the mourning, you mourn for the life you wish you had growing up, you wish you'd had those formative years in the gender you know you are.
You mourn for aspects of the life you had as well, I personally feel sick whenever I see my old name on things these days, but thats not to say it was all bad.

Watching old concerts and things tonight, and remembering all the amazing women I was with at the times that I saw them, I miss being loved, I miss being able to share things with somebody else, I guess im mourning the romantic side of myself that I have basically buried for the past decade.

And then on top of all of this I am also mourning the life I could have had if I had been diagnosed with ADHD much sooner, how much easier things could have been, how less frustrated I would have been, and how less likely I would have been to drown everything in drugs for so long.

Much as I am super sorrowful tonight, in general lately I have been feeling the best I have without hard drugs in my life.  Sure my ADHD meds do have a little dopamine impact, but its beyond that, its the clarity I feel, the certainness about things, and combine that with the steady progress hormones have had on just making me feel at home in my own skin and its a really unique feeling.

I guess this is how normal well balanced individuals feel most of the time.

A month and a half to go... and then I can see other human beings again, a friend recommended getting a massage and I think I am going to have to, if only for some human contact in a relaxing context.

For tonight though, I am just going to drink in the nostalgia, I am going to let myself be sad for all of the people I ever loved and who I never knew how to love properly at the time.
As a human being I feel like I have grown enough for ten life times in the past two years.

Anyway, just wanted to note this.

Love,
Abigail

Modern Relationships

I just wanted to write something about human contact, and the people who mean something to us, there are an awful lot of posts online about how technology is ruining our ability to be empathetic or our genuine human contact, and I really take offense at that.

In my lifetime I have met some of the most exceptional human beings, I have been really lucky in that regard both in real life and online.
And maybe its not like that for everyone, but from my perspective if you meet someone who you can be yourself with, and who see's your damaged imperfect soul and loves it anyway, it shouldn't matter what they look like, where they are in the world, whether you have ever physically interacted.

The therapy of those deep personal conversations with people applies no matter who they are, there is nothing more blissful in life than sharing your deepest heartfelt feelings and thoughts with someone who not only listens and understands but enthusiastically encourages them.

If we somehow decided that only face to face interactions like those counted, we would have far fewer of them.

In New Zealand where I am now, I can sit under the stars on a freezing southern night with a group of my friends discussing our place in the universe, and how we can be better people, and its beautiful and social and I bask in those blissful nights.

But I feel exactly the same way when I am talking to my girls in Kentucky who love me like a sister, when my gorgeous friend in LA tells me that I am a beautiful precious soul, my grumpy trans friend from the wilderness of Washington state, or when the friends I made in Europe are telling me they miss me. 

I feel amazing no matter how I interact with people, and lots of them I have never met, and I may never meet given my current legal predicament.

As far as intimate relationships online go, I have had a few, and emotionally they were probably more fulfilling than my real life relationships.  But they will never be the same as real life, you need physical intimacy and closeness for things to really progress.  But it's every bit as easy to be infatuated and fall deeply in love with someones soul online.  Dangerous as that is.

I do miss being loved and touched by people, I have been really lucky to have loved and been loved by some beautiful women in my life.  And I wish I'd tried harder to hold onto a few.
But by not holding on, I am able to be me now, so now I just need to get myself to a point that I feel like I can date again as me.  And hope I have that feeling again.

Ugh... so there we go... vent over.

I love my people, I guess is my point, so thank you for being a part of my life.

Reflections

Basically every year around my birthday, I pause and think about all of the things I told myself that I would have achieved in that year, if I am being honest most years I am feeling really disappointed that I haven't achieved nearly as much as I had planned.

This year though...

I publicly "came out" as transgender, and my friends and family have all been really fantastic.
I quit the job that was eating away at my soul and returned to University to seek a degree in Psychology with a bunch of gender and philosophy papers along the way, and I passed my first semester of that.
I moved back to Dunedin to be around some of the most fantastic people I know, and away from Wellington and someone who had been my closest friend for years.
I have been working a contract job working on farms, waking up at 5:00am every day and finishing around 7pm, for seven days a week, its bordering on miraculous that I am actually still doing that given my normal work ethic.
And in December I go to the endocrinologist to hopefully get my approval to start hormones finally.

So it has been a gigantic year.

And next year is set to be every bit as big if not bigger, since I will be doing all of these huge things while sitting in the maelstrom of a second round of puberty.

I never seem to let myself have it easy for very long.

The shift to presenting feminine on a daily basis I am aiming for around March, and I am still incredibly nervous about that, I have gone to a few parties and things like that but only in a very cautiously dipping my toe kind of way.  I haven't had to deal with the day to day reality of people looking at me for being "different" and I still don't know how well I am going to take that.

But even though it scares me half to death, I am also super excited about it.

Do several things a day that scare you.

Happy 40th birthday to me for Monday, I will still be wading around in cow shit and not even able to really enjoy it, but the cow shit is helping me get to where i need to be going into next year, so hooray for the cow shit this one time.

Lots of love,
Abigail.