The Woman Within

This past weekend 5/15-16 was a wonderful experience as Joanne and I were able to meet up with so many of our friends at once! Since Marsha and Sue were coming up from New Jersey and Connecticut respectively, and a bunch of our other friends were coming from Massachusetts, we thought to all stay at a hotel in a location central to everyone. We arrived at the hotel about 3pm and quickly readied ourselves. Joanne set up the dining room table in our two bedroom suite with an array of place settings for doing a Mary Kay makeover which she and I were hosting. I spent the better part of two hours helping her set the table, getting the food I had prepared the day before ready and getting my makeup on. Stacie showed up first - around 5pm to get dressed and ready and then everyone else filtered in after that. We had Sheila, Lida, Sarah, Marsha, Sue, Kelly, Helen (The Mary Kay Director coaching Joanne), Joanne and myself crammed into what was rapidly becoming a very *small* suite! Joanne pro

It's been a considerably busy last few weeks. Joanne has been dealing with a flu, then a cold, then me with a cold and then her with a root canal. I haven't been out enfemme for about three weeks. What I have noticed is that I have not felt the need to get fully dressed at home yet the anxiety grows worse. Dressing doesn't resolve it like it once did and the realization is truly taking hold that it's so much more than the clothes. Joanne sees small changes that I never really picked up on - like the way I walk which is pronouncedly more feminine she says. The way I talk and hold myself seems to have varied as well. Even my voice has been ranging into my practiced femme range and hanging there when we are out. I honestly am not consciously working to achieve any of these things - they seem to just be occurring. I feel like a woman even if I am not dressed and I am feeling like this is some kind of huge mental border I have just crossed. I've also lost track

My last episode is over - and it seems that when I do have them, they are seemingly progressively worse. When I am beyond one of these meltdowns, it feels as if really they never occurred. That's not totally true, but I do feel detached from myself when they occur - as if it happened to a different person. The underlying anxieties are still there, omnipresent and lurking just below my conscious realm but they seem to be manageable. I only wonder when another such breakdown could suddenly occur. For now - all systems back to nominal but the waters are turbulent just below the surface.

Joanne was off to the Walmart to purchase the staple goods needed to help her in her new business venture selling Mary Kay Cosmetics. She called me from the store to let me know the good news that while she was at the bank opening a business checking account, the associate helping her remarked how she would love to have Joanne do a Mary Kay party for the employees there sometime soon. I was ecstatic but the thoughts also hit me like a ton of bricks. I was preparing my dinner over the stove when the thoughts all came at me at once. I realized it all - why I went into the computer sciences - to escape from people and having to deal with gender issues. The panic attacks I used to incur around women. the realization that I was not a woman, perhaps not ever going to be a woman and now married to a woman I loved dearly. I truly wanted to do exactly what Joanne is doing now; something in the cosmetics industry or fashion industry. I've grown to loathe my profession with a passion - this s