Just a few things on my mind

Hello dwellers

I know it’s been a while since I was here to provocateur in  your world .

I have been busying myself with being stealth,and just living life as the person I am.

There are as usual things that keep stabbing me in life and so are hard to ignore.

1. It seems the religious right who seem to have taken over an entire party of our politics in the U.S., I must say to them you don’t represent  how all conservatives feel,while I’m conservative in my beliefs that the Federal Government should get the hell out of our lives and stop creating new programs that never work ,with the thought they know better how to live my life than they do.
2. Let’s just get back to basics  and realize that the Christianity does not own the political system and that “the rights rights of all people come from our maker and not specifically from their God but from the one and only deity. whom ever that may in the end be,we all have our ideas and ingrained,beliefs on this, and all should  given reverence regardless of what lives in our own hearts.Does Buddha or any other God have the answer ,I think not ,I happen to believe in the teachings of Jesus but there have been profits way before him,or are any wrong or do they all just compel us to be decent to one another as a sign of mature understanding?
3. While I support the LGBT community as a whole I have to say through experience that  it’s more like this LGB    T.
4. You can’t always assume that the gay community has your back as a Transgender person because it is just not so. Their political philosophy does not always align with mine and I might add with a vast majority of  the conscious world. They are mostly concerned with their own agenda,and have little if any understanding of what my life has undertaken over decades of misunderstanding.
5. Being human and nothing less should be the goal of  the world,And that seems far off to me!

The sad and the real with a little humor

It is a sad time that I post this night,my stepdaughter has taken her life by suicide,she struggled for many years from depression and alcohol addiction

 

I am devastated by these developments tonight ,but thankful for my daughter Vicki Eastwood who survives by the grace of God, for her the pain must seem insurmountable,at this moment. For her I give my most precious love and warm comfort.

 

 

In other news: I came upon my 3rd Mammogram held by the women’s clinic @ St. Elizabeth women’s clinic.

 

This being my 3rd, mammogram I thought of it as simply routine,much to my surprise however it was less than ordinary.

 

As was the norm she had a battery of questions, before we began the procedure

firstly she ask how many pregnancies I had to which I answered none ,nextly she ask when I had my first period, to which I replied  I’m still waiting for that too. She gave gave me an odd look but didn’t skip a beat and continued right along with the questions.

The really good news is that no evidence of breast cancer was found,with the caveat that I have very dense breast tissue which makes reading the scans difficult.

Next day I had my bi-annual visit with my Oncologist who always gives me a thorough breast exam as well. She was pleased to note also that I had since April lost 23 pounds. The reason being that my general practitioner had prescribed a statin drug for my cholesterol . After extensive research I made an informed decision to not take this drug which multiple studies have proven to show that these drugs are dangerous and truly a scam which now includes 1 in every 4 Americans , I also have friends who have suffered the side effects,of these big pharma drugs, 1 who has developed alzheimer’s and 2 who got diabetes,as a direct result from going on statin drugs.That being said knowing my numbers were outside the the guide lines I made radical changes to my diet and got my numbers back in the normal range within 60 days. Mostly this has been a blessing in disguise for me as my being on HRT has come with some weight gain that I didn’t exactly want anyway. I had tried all the fad diets with no success,but this time I made a long term commitment to really take control of my diet it has paid many dividends some being more energy and the weight loss is a blessing as well.At first I missed some things but over time I lost my desire for them and really find my new way of eating to be most desirable .

Well not to harp on that issue too much ,I will move on to other subjects.

 

Also in my personal news I have two successive visits with my ” mental health person” ala the VA in an attempt to get my papers signed so I can change the gender marker on my ID they have let me know that when I see my GP on the 17th they will indeed sign the paper work. This leaves me with now going back to court to now change my marker on my birth certificate which could have been done when I went for my name change but no  one let me know that so now it will cost me close to another $200 to return to court for just this one thing that could have been done the first time.Can you say FRUSTRATING !!

 

All this being said my transition has been for the most part just lots of effort,and graced by the love of a very accepting and supportive family. To them I can’t begin to express my gratitude and thanks for their love in this difficult but very necessary part of my life.

See you all soon with more news

 

Butterfly

Still here

Lot’s to tell,finally but reluctantly our long winter begins to release it’s icy grip on this part of the world.The grip began early and we have had temps running 30 to 40 degrees below normal since mid October for a  lady like me who can’t afford the luxury an auto it has been most burdensome,the combination of being trapped inside for what seems a lifetime now,and the effects of my hormones have added some unwanted pounds to my physic,it doesn’t help that I love to cook and comfort food abounds in Shelle’s abode in the winter months (I should mention I’m a good eater too and I often eat more than I should when I’m stressed) well enough said about that I obviously have some work to do when spring allows me to get out work off the winter pounds.

On Other fronts I have still been on my quest for my someone,things in that department  have moved slowly up till recently,when a couple of events have caused some serious changes in my life,I have a male friend now for about two years who has always just been a platonic friend with no kind of intimate attachment,just friends,we are very close but just not close enough to be in a relationship,so I thought. But recently I had the occasion to go out with a guy and that sent him over the edge it seems, he said he couldn’t stand the fact that I might become attached to someone else and then not have the time for him anymore,Does it sound like he is more attached to me than he lets on or is it just me? Yea me too! Well he has always kept me away from his family I guess he was ashamed to have them know who and what I am even though I’m just me everyday,all that has changed rather suddenly,and I’m now fully welcome in his life,even still he says he wants no committed relationship,well me being me I had to insist that I not be held hostage by his feelings and still be free to pursue my someone,he agrees with words but not actions he is visually upset at the prospect.

In recent days I had an answer to my Craigslist ad, first one in months at least the first that seemed real enough to warrant a good look,I  engaged and we began a dialog that soon left me scratching my head,he said to me please don’t let race become an issue for us,to which I quickly responded how could you ever seek out someone like me and even bring up that issue I have probably experienced more discrimination in my life than you ever did in yours.I was never raised to see color I deal with all on the”content of their character not the color of their skin” Hope something good comes of this but I have learned to be cautious with these persons.

Updates forthcoming,

Butterfly 

Regret

I try very hard to avoid issues that are very politically charged but this is one that has affected me personally and left scars on my life that will never go away.It happened not just to me but also to the mother of my son,God bless her for who she is.A part of my heart will always reside with her’s.This life story begins around 40 years ago,we were around ten months married and were just blessed with a son,not something we planned but something thrust on our lives,we had just married and on our first night together she conceived our son to be, most believed that this wasn’t true but we both know it’s very true, we were doubted by some as being not married when this happened I assure you we were she is a woman of great virtue and I stand up for that now just as always.

It was the early seventies and we were in the throes of  the times a young hippy couple  recently displaced from our home in the midwest to the ever so liberal place of our dreams, California everyone’s dream destination at the time, we were a true sign of the times dreamers looking for our dream and it seemed we had  it in our grasp at that moment.

We had recently left San Francisco and taken up residence in Ventura,circumstances left us living in a house on the side of a mountain it was a magical place beautiful and a place where our son would learn to crawl and eventually walk,it seemed at the time as parents we were also learning to walk.We had this image of Dennis Hopper hanging over my sons crib with an inscription below saying (Who says you can’t buy salvation )It made for a very funny encounter with some Jehovah’s Witness people who came to our door while our son was still very tiny,they ask to see the new-born and when they did they saw this and made a hasty retreat from our residence.

Back now to the substance of my life’s discomfort in all this,knowing that we could easily conceived and that our financial position at the time was at best shaky we took what we thought were the safest of all precautions ,my dear bride subjected herself to the use of a device called an IUD this proved to have terrible results for us, as we got pregnant again almost before we knew what was happening to us, our close friends at the time steered us to planned parenthood where we sought help with our new dilemma,we found that the device had grown into her female parts and was causing great harm to her and it would need to be removed ,but along with this we were coached by our friends and planned parenthood to make a decision that would leave us both with a pain that would never leave either of us,We opted to have our child aborted and for me to have a vasectomy so that she wouldn’t have anymore bad results with birth control  methods that might be harmful to her.I know it was a traumatic experience for her,and  hope she realizes it was for me as well,we were told it was probably a girl child something as a father at the time I would have loved to have in my life.And now there was little if any chance that I could ever have this chance again.I know we both hurt inside after our decision and we spoke of it never going forward but I know it lived on inside of us both.

 Now as my life wanes and I have become a woman myself I think I understand better the hurt she must have endured,not that it didn’t cause me much pain as well but I had a far different understanding of women’s issues  back then.I have come  over the years to be revolted by the number of human lives that are ended by planned parenthood they didn’t ever offer us planned parenthood they offered us the death of our child and never even once counseled us toward keeping the precious life we had made together. Now at this time of my life I can only hope to find a mate and hopefully have the chance to be a mother before I leave this earthly place,I was promised this in a relationship I had recently and it hurt me deeply that it was all just a lie.

Planned parenthood performs around 300,000 abortions a year all in the far left view that women should have autonomy over their bodies,is it really that or is it planned murder. They seem squeamish when it comes to executing life when it comes to the death penalty claiming it’s cruel and usual punishment,but it’s okay to target and kill by drone anytime at will,this selective vision of murder is very troubling to me, life is precious and yet the ones who are most for ending it are already born.

Butterfly

The Invisible Man

While I have made no secret that it is my desire to enter into a life relationship with a man,I’m reminded by my dear friend Cyrsti that I have embarked on what will likely be a long difficult and maybe impossible journey.I’m sure you all remember my disastrous last  experience with Craigslist not knowing much about  posting a personal there I got a very good education into the way most men perceive girls like me,I know that  the image they in general see comes from viewing porn sites and dreaming of what could be. Few I wager have ever given any thought to what a true transgender is all about they rely on their very skewed image that comes from not the  greatest of sources on the subject. I learned early on that transgender dating sites are no place to look as I always end up with the same type I last encountered  with my first Craigslist debacle. When I ask that they send a picture I had no idea that I would end up viewing so many mens private parts. It was easy to know which head these fellows were thinking with, not saying I didn’t find it somewhat flattering that so many found me attractive enough to have those desires but it just isn’t me to seek out sexual encounters with  every Tom ,Dick and Harry, I’m looking for something more , a cerebral connection  that makes a connection with their heart, not just with what their heart makes throb if you know what I mean. I do want intimacy I’d be remiss to say otherwise but  I have the patience to wait for someone very special  to make an entrance to my life.I thought armed with some experience now with Craigslist I would try again with a much refined list of desires, I may find myself lonely for a great while if the past couple of weeks are any indication,I have however made a connection with a nice fellow interested in being friends and having honest conversations with me It’s a start and I at least have found someone I’m able to honestly share with if nothing else it renews my faith that there are men of decency in this world with the patience to listen. I may indeed end up some old spinster but not for lack of trying I assure you. I know it’s asking a great deal  of the world to have my path cross with a soul mate but I just can’t bring myself to think it is completely out of the realm of possibility. In all my years I never gave up on myself so I’m not giving up on humanity either,I feel in my heart that I have been preparing for this all my life and that it WILL come to me. Meanwhile I’m seeking the invisible man or least one of the rarest of men on the planet.

Butterfly

Soap box Shelle

Often I get inspired to speak out about issues that touch my life differently than others this is one of those times. Before I get real wound up I first want to say that no matter who we are what gender ,race, ethnicity or any other difference we all know that “THEY” and we all know who “THEY” are but never tell, have really screwed things up for “US”.

Firstly I wish to go on about an issue I have touched on before that being, LGBT  while the LGB persons have made great strides this past year toward equal rights and have gained the right to marry in many more states,the advances for “T” not so much. I know I’ll get grief for this but I don’t really like being grouped in with the LGB persons because our civil rights issues are vastly different from theirs. First off their group is very easy to join all you have to do is profess that you are one of them and bingo you are automatically embraced by the whole group.They are militant in nature but have permeated nearly every corner of our society these days and so their agenda is moving quickly into the mainstream of society hardly a soul  anymore blinks an eye at being any one of the LGB community.Joining my group the “T’s” is a much different matter however,first off you get grouped in with,Transvestite’s.Transexual’s,Crossdresser’s,Shemales and on and on you know the umbrella I myself belong only to one under this grouping Transgender.I have great disdain for some under my “Umbrella” and feel that a lot of them are an anchor stopping my civil rights from moving forward at a faster pace because some of them bring shame and degradation to who I am and further promote a bad image of my circumstance in life.First to officially join my group you must submit yourself to a therapist and be diagnosed and so marked by society rule before you can actually be “TREATED” for your disorder why isn’t my professing who I am enough just like the LGB people? And then the other differences begin to surface I can be jailed for using the bathroom of the gender I express,and God forbid if you go to jail you get to go in with the opposite gender that you express,I think you can see the problems we face that will never come up for  people in the LGB group this group however doesn’t have a disorder like me, how does all this promote any safety or happiness in my life I submit it doesn’t it just tramples further on my right to be human and live as who I am.

And then there are the sexuality issues something even I hadn’t really come to grips with before coming out and beginning HRT,It was one of the first questions my son ask me when I came out to him and at the time I had no answer I didn’t know I was too engulfed in transition to even give it any thought.I feel like Pre-Shelle used relationships with women to avoid having to deal with issues about my sexuality and it gave me a free pass to fit in without being detected as who I was.I think looking back I was very wrong and caused damage to a couple of very fine ladies in my life by attempting to hide my true self from them out of fear,I will likely beat myself up for this weakness of character for a long time.At any rate as time and Hormone therapy began it’s major changes in my noggin I began contemplating just what was my sexual orientation? I concluded that since I 100% identify as a women at least between the ears where true gender exists and that my deepest wish was to live as close to a normal cisgendered woman’s life as I could and that I really wanted a man in my life. I think to my son that meant I was gay,I disagree I think I just seek what seems to be the natural order of life for me I have little to no experience with men so I can’t make a full judgement as yet but I am on a quest to have one of my own someday. There in lays new issues that are far different than that of the LGB clan and the cisgendered people it takes a very special type of man to overlook what I am and have a normal relationship with me I have scoured the land seeking this in my new life but to little avail thus far it’s akin to having lighting strike you three times in the same spot in ten minutes time,sure there are willing participants for sex but this is not the only thing I seek I want a connection of the heart to go with the carnal pleasure.Well wish me luck peeps. Stepping down from the box for now.

Butterfly

Facing Reality and Moving On

Well here we are a brand new year a clean slate to begin a new piece of life art,in that spirit I have to take a long hard look back and then turn back around and see if I’m not seeing things in my future which surely should be left in my past.Truth is I see things that I mistakenly let myself indulge in that just don’t have any foundation in reality I fooled myself into believing that I had somehow eclipsed some precipice and could just go forward thinking I had somehow left behind the reality of what I am and live a normal life as a woman the bare bones truth is I can’t while in my everyday life and dealings with most people I interact with it works like that,but certain of my relationships will never let that be anything near the truth I just have to face the fact that I am what I am and it will never change.I can never enter into a relationship with anyone man or woman ever in my life without this truth being  the focal point of the picture so I must learn to live with the fact that there will always be an asterisk beside the person I am and learn to move on from there and find the positive things that come from  my special God-given character.So I must realize that as I am a woman I’m a very unique kind of woman not one offered that gift by birth but one who took an inner strength that I was born with and turned it into a remarkable gift I can share with the world.Here in front of all of you is where I belong sharing with you my special life and my  failures and successes as I navigate this complicated journey that is  real and all me and all those like me instead of setting my sites on things that will never be I need to celebrate what is my reality and know that it is a gift to some and to me that goes far beyond my here and now understanding something that’s growing and continues to bloom in the springs of life.I’m obviously horrible at finding a relationship that bears the fruit of my life experiences but maybe that’s because I haven’t yet learned to present it in way that is palatable to the right person I’ll work on that,I was born full of passion and passion can be a great tool there are many kinds of it the kind that drives us to better and loftier things and a kind we can share in a very intimate way with someone or many others,all this is the real me and I will learn going forward to share it in the spirit God intended.

Butterfly

Years end Subjects and Life Updates

Guess I’ll start with a painful story I’ve been putting off,because I’m humiliated and depressed about it,My recent plans to be married have vaporized as I was completely duped by someone perpetrating a scam on vulnerable persons like myself.I mostly have myself and my strong desire to share my life in a committed way with someone of like interest to blame.

That being said we have to realize that indicating our true identity as transgendered persons puts a strain on finding people who see us as just a normal person seeking a normal life ambition,as soon as we tell the truth about ourselves the parameters change and we are seen in a different light by many (not all I’m happy say). A second problem is also that the vast majority of men think with the head between their legs rather than the one on their shoulders,so finding one who is in the least cerebral is a crapshoot at best. While I myself would like to just forget the fact I’m a trans-person and live my life as just another woman it doesn’t seem likely that that that will ever happen when put into the context of a relationship because honesty is a basic premise to all successful relationships I feel it’s important to be upfront about my gender uniqueness from the very start of things,this however puts me in a more difficult spot than most cisgendered persons.

Going forward I have be ever mindful of my strengths and weaknesses in the area of the heart and know myself better that others will know me too,and know that these complications exist for me whether I want them or not. A new year is nearly upon us and a newer and improved Shelle will spring forth with it,we learn as we live but to not take chances means we just weren’t trying at all. Some famous sports guy once said you miss 100% of the shots you never take. I took one and missed horribly but I’m still in the game and still honing my skills.

Butterfly

On another subject that has been in the forefront of my thoughts and procrastinated for far too long now is dealing with the unfinished family outing of myself.I come from a huge midwestern farm family and while most are scattered across the country over time,I have not completed my coming out to all of them  I have too many but as with most of my life dealing with this subject is frightening at best but still I think important to my sanity.I have Aunts and uncles and cousins that have played significant roles in my life that  I have become estranged with over the course of time partly because I lived far away from the center of their lives for  many years and of course for personal reasons didn’t stay in contact with.In the summers we have family reunions out here in the heartland where as many of us are left and able get together over some good Hoosier  foods and fellowship and catch up with each other,this past summer I refrained from going not because I didn’t want to but because not everyone is aware of my choice to live as someone they have never met yet,and I felt like to just show up at their event would be very disruptive to their happy times I didn’t think being the focus of the event and having to explain  all day would be proper.There is also the looming issue of God forbid  funerals for many of the persons who are far up in years,being a no-show at these events seems very disrespectful to their families, but still certainly not a place to just show up as the new me,and create a scene. So In the coming new year I will set a task for myself to reach out to all I can in hopes of removing any missteps in my future dealings with any of them and possibly offering me a chance to once again be a participating member of my extended family circle.Certainly this is not a task I’m looking forward to but at the same time I feel like to continue to avoid getting it done shows a great character weakness in me that I don’t feel comfortable going forward with unchecked. Wish me luck as this will be undoubtedly a daunting pursuit,I realize much of it will likely have unpleasant results but I have never deluded myself into believing that keeping my sanity in life wouldn’t come without some alienation.     

Butterfly

Well the new year is almost upon us all and I want to say Thank You from the bottom of my Heart for all your kind words and supportive comments this year to all HAPPY NEW YEAR.

The Reverse Purge

Throughout my life I from my early years as a child and right through to near present times I  collected feminine clothing articles and for most of my life secretly used them to satisfy my need to dress in what I knew was the appropriate way for my gender. As a child I would first borrow items from my sisters and finally my mother wear them and then carefully return them as stealthily as I could hoping never to be caught or have my secret revealed. Time went by and I began buying my own things and hiding them after dressing, these moments when I was able to slip away and be alone as my self helped over time to give me times when I felt  somewhat whole in my mystery world that no one knew of. It also began a cycle, one that many like me have experienced I would go in and out of periods where I felt I could purge these items from my life and live as what the rest of the world saw me as,but alas it never lasted long before I would begin to again start a new wardrobe and cycle would begin anew, this went on and on many times in my life until I finally made the commitment to let my secret out and live my life as Shelle,even then I found myself looking back  even going back living between the two lives a blurred line that kept me with one leg on each side of the fence.

But soon the Hormones began having a very strong influence on my thinking something I was really not expecting,I had for certain thought that some good physical changes would occur but had no idea of the mental changes that would take place.It seemed that all my thought patterns were becoming  more feminine and many things I was interested in most of my life were falling by the wayside and being replaced with other very powerfully driven female interests, things I dreamed about in life were becoming a reality no longer just hidden thoughts in the back of my mind.As this continued to manifest I began to realise that to have one leg on either side of the fence was not part of my end destination and that if I continued to enable myself to indulge in this I might again spend more time than necessary to achieve my goal of being a woman full time. And so began a new period in my life one I will call the ” reverse purge” I began a systematic program of ridding my life this time of all my male clothing articles,some I gave to friends who fit them and some went to Goodwill,until finally it was all gone and the thoughts of looking back finally faded with them,this purge seemed so right and I had no ill feeling like with my others that I would soon be wanting to replace it.I realised that I had released myself from that life and fully embraced who I had been seeking in this lifetime journey,It came with a lot more work everyday but work I should have been focussing on more anyway.

Finally I had crossed a barrier that moved me a long way down the road to my true self I found it one of the most liberating moves on my journey right up there with coming out to family and friends.Freedom is not easy for anyone it always comes with sacrifice and hard work,but the prize itself is so sweet.

Butterfly

From there to here

In the beginning of my transition I found it hard to imagine that I would reach the place I live in now mentally,I felt at first some inherent need to have it known that I was a transgender,and an almost Nazi like belief that approaching life in that way would help me reach my goal which was ultimately to be a woman,I believed there was a cause to fight for, but learned it really stood in the way of my end goal.

I started way back even before making anyone aware of my decision to study very hard the way I would present myself if I indeed ever had the opportunity to be what I saw myself as internally.

And then it came, the therapy, the decision to come out and let all others begin to know Shelle,and let’s not forget the powerful influence the HRT had on me not only physiologically but mentally as time went forward.

At first I thought that it was a most important part of being Transgender to make the world change  because I was changing,and that somehow my voice could change the narrative and magically make a better world for all like me and others behind me. but as time went on my focus began to change and redirect me to a more fundamental issue,what direction was my life taking I wondered?

My thinking started to change dramatically,a lot of it from coming out to family and friends and everyday exposure to the world around me, as I lived life as the woman I saw in my mind I realized that  others too saw just me and not a transgender just another girl in the world,I was really ME but hadn’t noticed really that I wasn’t the other person at all anymore no matter where I went or what I did I was now Shelle,Shell, or miss and ma’am. I was just another woman in the world,with only a very few reminders of being transgender except when you place yourself around others of your kind who find it important to remind you what you are and that you should stand united with them to change it all. While It’s true that there are legal obstacles that  create problems for the transgender community It’s not likely that the ones In my age group will change them or live to benefit from most of it and there is a large group of younger more militant people behind me most of which I find difficult to relate to,they can bear this standard without me while I choose to live my as me  to become a good wife to my husband and live in happiness.My way to push forward with their agenda will be to be an invisible life ambassador,unseen as a transgender and seen only as Shelle.Just being treated as a normal person feels more comfortable to me than making sure people know I am a person with gender issues of the first magnitude.Certainly there are still reminders in my life on a personal level that won’t let me forget what I am but I have learned to push them far in the background in favor of having a fairly normal existence.

I used to belong to and join all the transgender sites I could find thinking that being grouped in with others like me would give me comfort I guess in a way it did at first but as time passed and my life took on it’s new reality I lost a great deal of interest in all this and found myself visiting them less and less and now almost never. I’m focussed more on living now something I never got to do most of my life,as I just fought the monster that lived my life for me.

Still along the way I made wonderful friends who also share my life story friends I hope I never lose and friends whose stories are like mine and yet vastly different,all of us fight this in very unique ways and with different life results.My life result is at this point putting a smile on my face and I think one that will last as long as I do.I think less and less about my condition and more and more about just blending into the background and being loved for the person I am.

Now I will turn my attention toward  the  life love affair I intend to have with the man I’m about to marry,A long happy love story I hope to share with you all as it unfolds.

Butterfly