Journeying Down the Yellow Brick Road

I feel an ebb and a flow in transition, as if eddies, currents and rip-tides which oft seem to drag me out to open water far from shore seem to then wash me back in towards shore..... not the shore from which I entered the water to be sure, but a new and wondrous beach to find myself upon nonetheless. Although I oft long for the beach I commanded many years ago, I cannot deny the wonder, the beauty and the amazing experiences of the sands I now find myself upon and exploring anew.

There is no celebratory stance nor would I consider this an enviable position. I simply find that I am,and I exist apparently, within this realm. It is a place "natural" to my being yet without personal attendance worthy of fanfare or celebration. It just is me. The "pink sunglasses", temporal as they were, are gone. The reality of this station in life is simply here and the decisions commensurate with how to move ahead, finding a path which serves to preserve the most and impact negatively in the least becomes the ultimate challenge.  I find my music choices on this blog site as well to be as a shadow of how I feel.  There is at once and together a sense of simultaneous joy and of sadness, one of both motion and movement, tension and tenacity, empowerment and powerlessness.... all plainly heard yet thinly veiled within the notes of carefully chosen "pieces".

Looking at the "pieces" of my life from the outside, this station I am securing in my life all seems like a magnanimous thing. The complexities, however, conspire to create a maze that seems to always be unfolding just always slightly ahead of me... as if adding new corridors, passages and the attendant choices in the process.  This is a tortuous maze of both peril and pleasure, of things lost and of things found.  Being a woman is no better than in being a man but there is, for me, one realm which fits for me and for which affirmation comes from those who find me in this place.  It is unique, perhaps, that this congruity exists.... but it is what I am finding to actually BE.

I have been on Estrogen now for about 3 months.  It's just the beginning really, but it is like worlds apart from my life before.  For the record, it is NOT a magical pill of happiness.  It is not that panacea to cure the world's ailments nor even all of one person's..... mine.  But what it is affording to me are gifts which can not be perceived by men who have lived their entire life as men, nor by women who have lived their entire life as women.  It is a gift which is only seen by those who know what it is to suddenly have it.   It is the curse by which many natally born women would wish to be gone.  But it is unique in experience and it is an experience which I can only describe in summation of it's many small nuances which combine together to create a new and very wonderful fabric of life emerging.

It is not for the physical characteristics which one would first suspect materially would be obtained as a matter of being on Estrogen (E) that I hope most to attain.  It is something much different, more subtle and yet so much more.  It is the seemingly intangible forces which pervade and bind within and which are more amazing in their superlative subtlety than anything else.  The things I have found and which have been documented by others were aspects for which I held concerted skepticism.  And as surely as we are each different, we shall surely find our own experiences to be similar in ways, yet different in others.

What I have found.......

Emotions.  It is as if after 48 years of life on this Earth, I am finding emotions more easily surfacing.  I find that I can cry more easily and even have combinations of laughter and of crying at the same time....something which was so bizarre yet of which I was told could happen.  I love that I can feel more, sense more, and connect more with others, especially the women both trans and natal in my life in ways that I realize now men could never have with each other.
 
My sense of smell appears to be heightened to specific odors and it intrigues me how much more subtly vibrant this sense has become.  My spouse has noticed what she could only describe as a musky male scent as being gone.  It was something she found pleasing and was saddened to know it now gone.  By the other token, I now am able to sense that generally musky male scent where before I could not.  The intensity of course varies but it is generally an omnipresent sense now.....one I never had.

Mentally, there is a sense of greater focus and a similar sense of a less scatter-brained mind that always seemed to be in "high gear".  It is a calming and centered feel that I can almost not describe in its intangible tangibility, yet it exists and others have noticed that I appear to be more calm, more relaxed and more centered and at peace than I ever was before.

I find it easier to be able to communicate in ways that allow for multiple tangents and tracks of conversation within the same conversation.  I call it multi-threading of my processor in my brain. To those who are computer engineers or similar as I am, that term will be understandable as being able to process multiple thoughts, conversations and ideas at once.  I'm really liking whatever re-wiring appears to be going on upstairs.

I do understand that it is extremely well known that women use many thousands of more words within their vocabulary than do men on average.  The attribution of this is given to brain development based upon hormonal washing by either male or female hormones in the human brain.  It is not a scientific observation but a casual one for me that I am finding, that my linguistic abilities feel heightened and it may be necessary, at some juncture, for me to go back and assess my earlier writings for any pattern changes which may have ensued as a positive relation to these observations.

In summation, what I can say is that the feeling I have now, on E, is akin to the old 1939 Wizard of Oz movie.   In that movie, as you may recall, it begins as a Black and White film and, when Dorothy finds herself suddenly in the Land of Oz,  becomes a world of vibrant color.  It is as if I saw my own world in muted grays and pale pastels and if now I am seeing it for the first time in vibrant colors.

 Of course there are other changes happening to and the most obvious of those is some redistribution of fat in all the relevant places cogent to the average woman's.  As well too, there is a softening of the skin with a drier consistency and a generally more translucent appearance.  My naturally curly head of hair, thick already, seems to be growing noticeably thicker.  Muscle mass has decreased and although I have always been active in my outdoor activities involving my legs (where little change has occurred), my arms have lost a significant amount of muscle mass in a relatively short period of time.  As such, I have begun exercises such as push-ups and chin-ups in order to counteract this.  I personally enjoy my limber ability to bound around with the strength of an 18 years old as I approach the half century mark in life and do NOT want to lose that spirit, spryness and stamina.  I just have to work a little harder now to maintain it.

I occasionally look back and wish I sometimes was back in Kansas with the stability which Dorothy had in her safe little world, but this is an amazing new world in colors that are vibrant and alluring.  The adventure of the life unfolding as I make new friends and build new bonds along my path of unknown adventure is incredible.  Opportunities, both personal and professional are opening up before me.  It is an adventure of a lifetime down my own yellow brick road, which although fraught with hardships both socially, relationally and logistically is one amazing tale of adventure which I would never, ever now wish to give up.