"The Company" refers to the company for whom I will be working in Santa Clara. I choose not to say who they are to protect their privacy and mine. "My wife" is my wife. I won't use her name because I don't want to embarrass her.
December 4, 1996
Well, here I am, starting a transition diary. It seems like a good idea. When all of this is done and everything is settled, a diary will let me go back and laugh at how insecure, worried, paranoid, disappointed, upset and unhappy I was along the way. What an exciting thought.
It's been a couple of months since I decided to stop lying to everyone, including myself, about my transsexualism. The first person I told was Jamie Faye Fenton, a wonderful and supportive friend who just happens to live three thousand miles away. She obviously understood what I was going through. On a Friday night (Oct 25, 1996: a day that will live in infamy) I emailed her my "coming-out" message: previously she had known me as a cross-dresser, but I don't know whether she was surprised to find out I was a transsexual. If she was, she didn't act like it.
In typical Jamie fashion, she rose to the occasion. She sent me a copy of Millie Brown's book "True Selves," which arrived at my office priority mail the following Monday morning. I read it that afternoon, stopping only for a couple minutes here and there to take care of necessary things. What a wonderful book!
Now that I think about it, what I said about Jamie being the first person I told isn't quite true. I told my wife and my shrink too. More on that later.
All that week, the guys in my office were across country at a trade show. So of course I get a call Tuesday night from a friend's boss (in the Bay Area!) asking me to call him back about some "opportunities," as he called them. Ohmygod, what opportunities they were! I had finally accepted that I was not going to be happy living as a man, and that I was going to have to fix my body to match my mind, and here's a guy offering me a job in the Bay Area! What better place to transition could there be?
So I flew out there on a Thursday night. Didn't do much once I got there. Friday morning I got up and went to a job interview. After three hours they offered me a job making twice what I'm making here, plus bonuses. The good thing is that it would be in California. The bad thing is, well, that it would be in California. I have to move, to leave North Carolina. My wife and I had just bought a ten-acre farm here to on which to keep our horses, and we love it in the country. So what do I do?
There's no easy answer. Right now I'm waiting for the results of a background check and a drug test before they can officially make me an offer to relocate me to San Jose (they pay for relocation too!) I'll make a definite decision when the offer comes through. I think I'm going to take it.
December 5, 1996
The Company doesn't know that I'm a transsexual. I called the HR department a couple of weeks ago (before I flew out there) and told them, asking if I should tell my manager. They said no, that it was none of his business and shouldn't matter anyway. Well, fine. That postpones the inevitable. Postponement is good, since I'm basically a wimp and want to avoid conflict at any cost. Or at least put it off as long as possible so I have time to get good and worried about it before I actually resolve the issue.
There is no God. There is no loving, benevolent God. No loving, benevolent God would cause me to be this way, which has basically ruined the best relationship I've ever seen. My wife and I are closer than any two people I've ever met. We never fight. We understand each other. We respect each other. We love each other. But since I'm going to change my sex and she's not a lesbian, our relationship will change. If God were good, he would have either given me a man's mind to match my sex, or a woman's body to match my mind. It's not fair.
What a depressing thought. When I was young I searched for a religion. I tried just about everything. I finally settled on the Craft (Wicca), because it most closely matched my internal feelings. It told me that it was okay to feel like a woman trapped in a man's body, that while it's not normal at least it's acceptable. My Southern Baptist and Methodist upbringing told me I was an abomination. Nobody likes to think that they're an abomination.
The Craft allowed me to respect myself and others. I relished diversity, celebrated it. But slowly I drifted away from religion, realizing that it wasn't giving me anything spiritual any more. So now I'm what I like to call an "Apathetic." I guess there's some higher power out there, but I really don't care because it doesn't affect my day-to-day life.
December 7, 1996
My wife says I will not have any problems passing as a woman. She says I have more breast development now (no, I'm not on hormones yet) than any guy she's ever seen, and I'm pretty thin. She says that she would have a hard time being in a relationship with me because she doesn't want to be with a woman, especially if the woman is prettier than she is. I find that encouraging because it means I'll be able to pass, but it's awful news because I can't keep my relationship with her.
I'm pretty feminine anyway. I guess I always have been. My hair is long, my mannerisms are feminine, my face is feminine (for a guy), I'm small (for a guy).... I'm hoping that I'll be able to look back on this and see that I was worried about nothing.
Well, nothing except losing my very special, intimate relationship with my wife. Sure, we can be best friends (and we are now), but it just won't be the same. She'll want a boyfriend to sleep with. So will I. How can it be the same without physical intimacy?
December 10, 1996
My wife stayed in town tonight because she had a dance class. She would have been home around 10pm but the horses got out when I tried to feed them by myself. After an hour of chasing five horses who didn't want to be caught, I called her--on the neighbour's phone, by the way, because ours doesn't work--for help. She hopped right in the truck and started driving home early (it takes about 45 minutes to get to our house from anywhere in Raleigh). But by the time she had gotten home I had coaxed all of the horses back inside the pasture, even the crazy part-Arabian. ;)
I don't know how she could handle this farm by herself. She knows much more about horses than I ever will but she's just one person. It's a lot of work.
December 11, 1996
The Company manager called me today. I passed the drug test. I got the job. I'm moving to Santa Clara.
It's finally happening. I smile a little bit, then I cry. I'm gaining the freedom to transition and losing the best relationship on the planet. I'm making plans to start hormones when I get out there and freaking out because I don't know what my wife will do here all by herself. She's not going to move to California just to watch her husband become a woman.
How horrible this is for both of us. How wonderful this is for me. It's just not fair.
December 12, 1996
Tonight my wife and I talked about my moving to the Bay Area and her staying here. We've agreed that if I'm going to start transitioning immediately (which I will; the only time I'll be in Guy Mode is when I have to go to work) then I'm going to need some help. So I'm going to live as a woman at home for the next three weeks to get ready for it. My wife has a very good eye for detail; we'll get all of the kinks worked out before I leave.
At least, through all of this, we're still very close. She's going to come out once a month and spend a long weekend with me, so she'll get to see me develop along the way. We won't have an intimate relationship any more, though. This stinks.
December 14, 1996
Well, I'm sitting here at my ISP upgrading the gender.com server to a version of Linux that post-dates the Triassic period, specifically because Jamie Faye (who is one of my dearest friends in the whole world, whether she knows it or not) has been bugging me to do it for months. This will allow us to do lots more stuff for the transgendered community, including a project which Jamie and I have been discussing for a while now. More info later. ;)
I called Dr. Millie Brown last night and set up my first appointment for when I come out to Santa Clara. It's Jan 15, which I hope is enough time for me to get settled before adding more complexity to my life. She also invited me to a monthly meeting of other transsexuals which I'm very excited about, because it will let me lots more people who are going through the same thing I am.
Millie's book really did give me the courage to pursue my transition. I told her that, but I don't know if she realizes just how important to me that book is. I'll make a point of telling her often. ;) Incidentally, for the other people reading my diary, Jamie and I reviewed True Selves, Millie's book, for Transgender Forum, which you should definitely check out. A copy of my review is here.
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