jltranscendinglife-blog

[jltranscendinglife-blog]

Being outed

If you've read my other blogs you may have got the idea that I'm not 100% out in my life, especially due to my parents.

So in my work life I am known as my birth name and as female, with my work colleagues I have become close to a number of them, all of whom are now aware that I am transgender.

Nearly two years ago I told one of them who I had known for most of my life, and in the last six month I have told the remainder of my group of work friends.

During those six months there were two occasions were I was pretty much forced into telling one of them about me, but I moved past that as I was only telling my friends and I had always planned on telling them anyway.

However during the last week the girl who has known for two years and was involved in both occasions where I was cornered into telling someone outed me to someone else in work.

She quickly told me at the first opportunity and was really apologetic, but it has left me with a lot of anger.

My colleague in question that now knows asked her during work so my friend's excuse is that she didn't know what to say, she was caught off guard and that she is a shite liar. But to me that just isn't good enough, it wasn't up for her to tell her and there were several things she could have said in reply without just standing there in silence until the conversation progress.

So for anyone who reads this that may end up this situation there a few ways you can try and get around it without lying.

"Why on earth would you think that?" that then plants the seed that you'd be shocked that they'd think such a thing and it also gives the opportunity to change the conversation and to come up with a reply to each of their reasons.

"Why don't you ask them yourself? Regardless of the answer it's to do with them" this is my personal favourite as it makes it seem as though they are gossiping about you and it also gives the choice to you on whether or not you want to tell them should they actually come and talk to you themselves.

No matter or not even if you don't like lying you should never out one of your friends, you should more say no before you out them without their permission. The person in work who now knows about me has previously been quite the gossip and I have a very horrible feeling that she may at least tell her best friend (who also works with us) since that day I have avoided her and thankfully off the day after so I wont have to see her for a few days due to being on different rotas. But there is a panic in me that it will get around work and people will know long before I was planning on them knowing. I of course work with a lot of gossiping girls a lot of whom have been rather bitchy and two face.

It's not easy for me to trust and I hate people knowing things about me and this has left me feeling as though I shouldn't tell anyone until I am ready for everyone to know and to avoid situations like this.

I had to work with my friend yesterday (we generally work alone or in pairs everyday) and I wanted nothing more than to stay far away from her, I had also planned on avoiding her due to how angry I felt, but I somehow managed to stay professional so there were now bad feelings or awkward situations.

As soon as she told me what I had happened in true me style I tried to make her feel better about it, by telling her that I would never answer with a no, because  would never lie about who I was as a person, but there is a difference between me telling someone and someone else telling them. I told her not to worry about it and it was all good, I then ended up telling her f**k off whilst we were stood with another friend so I could tell her what happened that then lead to the nature I have of making people feel better before myself and it led to the arrival of anger. That anger is still here 48 hours later with no sign of it fading.

It does mean that at the moment I don't want to be around my friend, which isn't a great feeling, but I need time to process that someone else knows and it was out of my hands and someone who may very well tell others knows.

I am also the kind of person who likes to know every little detail of things that are to do with me, which means that I want to know exactly what was said in the conversation, but however that involves talking to my friend. Which as I said I don't want to do at the moment

[jltranscendinglife-blog]

Coming out

Well here goes nothing

Coming out, it's something that everyone faces and everyone dreads. I've found a lot of people saying that telling that first person was the hardest and it goes easier after that.

Well for me that's almost the opposite, with the exception of when I told my parents, every time I tell someone it gets worse.

The first person I told was the girlfriend of the boy who made me realise I was transgender, when I turned to her and said "I understand that! That makes so much sense! Maybe this is what's 'wrong with' me!" maybe those weren't the exact words I said but that was the general gist of it.

The first person who I consider myself to have properly told was my best friend at the time. She had been there for me through a lot and I didn't expect this time to be any different. I was still figuring everything out for myself, so told her that I felt as though I had been born in the wrong body, in her attempt she told me she didn't think that and I was exactly how I was meant to be. Some people may read that and think that she wasn't supportive, but she was, she came on the journey with me (on the large part anyway) in discovering what transgender was and how it fitted into my life, she accepted it on the large part, which was always a really scary thing for me as she was very religious and I wasn't sure how this would fit into her lifestyle - and I don't think she did either. But as I said she was supportive of me

I started coming out to my friends on a larger scale when I was around 18/19, I'd known who I was for years and my closest two friends and my sister knew.

But then I had my other close friends to tell, this was scary as similar to my best friend a lot of them were religious and one had previously been slightly homophobic (and it was more a phobia than her being an asshole) everyone was really supportive and of course typically none of them were surprised and they all told me that when I was ready they would try their hardest to change names and pronouns for me. I roughly told around ten of my closest friends before I decided it was time I told my parents.

  Telling my parents were completely different and I had never and still haven't felt anything like it since.

I decided to be slightly cliché and right a letter. I thought it would be best to tell my mum as apposed to my dad as I had always been his little princess and I knew full well that I was about to break his heart. So I left a letter for my mum and went upstairs, it wasn't long before she called me down and we had a very uncomfortable, very teary conversation. Which resulted in absolutely nothing, she wanted answers and I didn't have them all for her. She then proceeded to tell me all the reason why I couldn’t be

- I'm my Dad's Princess

- I plucked my eyebrows

- I used to grow my nails

- I went all gooey with dogs

- She'd had a boy and we were different.

All reasons which were pretty naff but they were locked tight reasons why I wasn't trans.

That was the end of the conversation, she told me she wasn't going to tell my Dad as there was no need to and I went out.

When I came back that night she had needless to say told my Dad and I was about to have another teary awkward conversation.

He reacted a lot better than I thought he would, and said something to me that I wont forget in a hurry. "I'd rather you did this then one day I come in to find you swinging from the rafters," he told me that he didn't understand it, then both of my parents told me that no matter what we would face this together, I felt as though it was a real turning point and then maybe things wouldn't be so bad.

It was a day or two after that when my Auntie came to visit, I never really had grandparents and she was old enough to be my Nan and almost took the typical grandparent role, I went on holiday with her and spent a lot of my childhood with her. She knew that my mum was upset and wouldn't leave and eventually my mum told her, her response was "is that it? I thought someone was dying!" she wasn't bothered mum tried to make it sound as though it was going to really hurt my dad, but eventually she calmed her down and then left, and still everything seemed ok.

However it doesn't last long and my mum at one week later my mum got me on my own and told me that they wouldn't be able to watch their daughter change and that it would be too hard and that I would have to move out, which I just wasn't in a place to do that at that moment in time.

So for around 3 years I have had to live a double life in some sense, now all my friends use my male name and pronouns and see me as a guy, which to be honest is one of the few reasons that I am able to stay sane whilst I have been getting a job and saving money to be able to move out, which is steadily getting nearer and nearer. Throughout all of this I just remember that I have to stay positive and if I can get through it all hopefully one day I'll get to where I want to be!

[jltranscendinglife-blog]

How I Knew I Was Transgender

How I knew I was transgender

Seems like a pretty good place to start in moving forward with this blogging experience

As everyone who is trans seems to say growing up there was always something different about me, and I could never figure out what it was.

I remember being around 8 years old and thinking that if it was possible to have a sex change I would, but at that age I didn't think that things like that happened.

I always had a hard time understanding girls and fitting in with them, and I was much more comfortable with the boys, but unfortunately for me I attended an all girls secondary school.

My secondary school was a Christian school to add to everything and I had to wear a skirt, and I hated every minute of it, I still struggled to understand girls and it didn't help that a lot of people I surrounded myself with were not the healthiest people for me to be around, which in hindsight made everything worse.

I tried to explain it once and it just resulted in everyone thinking I had multiple personalities and avoiding me when it was own clothes day.

So I kept my sheer confusion at how I was feeling to myself, that was until I was 17, then a friend started dating a trans guy, a lot of what she was telling me about him made sense, but then a lot of what she was saying didn't. She told me about how he didn't want surgery and just wanted some things, I don't know whether it was my lack of understanding or her explaining badly/ not really knowing herself, but it didn't fit in with me. As I grew to know more about this guy and understand exactly what he was about and how he felt I panicked, and I freaked out as well, I didn't look into it any further out of sheer fear, that was until I accidentally stumbled across a trans guys video on youtube, now this video was entitled penis envy or something similar, so curiosity got the better of me and I watched it, half way through I realised that this guy was trans, that then lead to me doing more and more research and leading me into the trans world.

That was when I realised that I was more than likely trans, I came out to my friend and her trans boyfriend, and my very religious best friend, all of whom were very supportive, I then chose to ignore it for quite a while not thinking that that life would be available for me so I should just forget about it.

But no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get away from trans related things, they were popping up in every day life, Boys don't cry was on a channel that I randomly clicked on, trans characters were popping into tv shows I watched, people I followed on youtube/twitter were talking about trans realted things as well as people I hadn't spoken or seen for years were coming out as trans, and one of them actually coming out to me. It hit a point where I could no longer ignore what I had been staring me in the face for the best part of a year, so I began the long process of coming to terms with being a transman.

That process in itself was long, I knew that my parents would never accept it and I had also convinced myself that my friends wouldn't accept me either, my friends were all very religious and I thought that it would never work. So I went through the next 18 months of sixth form coming to terms with it myself. I was invited to a ftm local support group and that was were I first started going by male name and male pronouns and it felt great, being seen as a guy was truly liberating, and I didn't look back from then on, when I allowed myself to be happy that I was being seen and taken as a guy I was and I realised that that was definitely who I was supposed to be. And possibly more importantly who I wanted to be

This blog kinda drifted slightly from the title, but it's generally what it's about, I didn't want to make the blog too long, so the coming out process and the process of coming to terms withe being trans I will do in separate blogs, then I get to spend more time on each of them without worrying that the blog is too long. Until next time!

[jltranscendinglife-blog]

Introducing Me

This has been a while in the making, trying to figure out the best way to do this, and the way that is the most productive and least exposing for me. First and foremost this blog is going to be an introduction blog more than anything and I will eventually expand on that any move further with it So I’m Jason, I’m currently 24 living in the United Kingdom, in full time employment, I have an older brother and sister and I am transgender male (FTM) I will no doubt do a blog about what transgender means to me and probably how I identify personally, but not yet.

I am pre-t and pre-surgery, I have however had a small amount of T (about two months worth) but again I will expand on that at another time. I have known that I was transgender for around seven years now, I couldn’t tell you exactly how long I’ve been out for, because there have been so many different levels of coming out, I’m in a pretty negative place in my life but as I have goals to aim for that I am now getting closer to I am definitely feeling more positive.

My other blogs (I have about 6 planned straight away) will definitely be a lot bigger and have more information but I just wanted to set up a platform from which I could build on so until next time!