Two days have passed, roughly, since I last updated my diary, and I'm of mixed feelings on that. On the one hand, I did promise that I'd generate a thorough recording of the trip here, and on the other nothing "unusual" has
really happened. We did identify that the bedsores on my rump have been standard pressure sores that have gone away over time, and last night I was able to lie in bed comfortably for the first time in several days which I have
to say has been a blessing unto itself.

Last night, we ordered Thai pizza online, which I must say was far more of an experience than it needed to be,
but well worth the effort in the end. One of the local pizzarias had left a laminated menu at the nurses' station, and at the bottom they'd listed their website, amusingly hosted by the same company providing our dialup access. So, we decided that rather than try to go through the nurses, ordering through the staff and then dealing with cash hassles and such, we'd just take care of the entire transaction online and pay with a credit card, as they said we
could, which would make things nice and convenient.

Of course, nowhere on their site could I find a place to enter my credit card information, and then it said that it would email the details of the transaction to my listed mailing address, which I had marked as nobody@menagerie.tf to prevent any unwanted advertizing. So, I went through the entire ordering process again to get the details of the order, only to fail to have the email materialize at all. Right after that, I managed to
knock my catheter bag into the floor, and shortly thereafter I had a crying fit all over Jessie's arm.

The pizza itself was quite good, once it did arrive, though. I was so shocked when the delivery man arrived at the room—ahead of schedule, no less—that it tasted far better than I expected it would, even given that the sausages on my "meat deluxe" were curried. The cocktail sauce that came with our breadsticks tasted sufficiently of peanuts to give me pause, but Jessie adored it, saying that zie lacked any equivalent in Western cuisine and that for that alone it was brilliantly weird. 

This morning, I got myself out of bed and did my own cleaning in the bathroom. I still can't shower because of the epidural needle, so my hair is a horrendous mat on the top of my head, but I could take a washcloth to my own
skin, brush my teeth without having someone hand me the spit-tray, et cetera. There's something heavily empowering in being able to do one's own toiletries after so many days in bed. I could have gotten up any time along the way and done this, but until now sitting up hasn't been an option because of the bedsores, and before that I couldn't get out of bed at all.

Of course, now I'm getting out of bed and able to really walk around and such just in time for another few days of enforced bedrest. Dr. Sanguan came to the room just after I'd finished cleaning myself and inspected things, and he said everything looks set for the skin graft either tomorrow afternoon or Friday morning, so either I can have breakfast and not lunch, or lunch and dinner but not breakfast the next day. However, it also means that I'll be three procedures down, and only one to go before I should start being able to look at return flights to England to see Chloe again.

In a way, this whole trip has been an incredible vacation, despite the painful medical procedures under which I've gone while I've been here. I've gotten to see one of my extended family, I've gone through the last major stage in my transition, I've gotten to see two foreign countries I'd never visited before, and I've actually met a number of people here that, in one way or another, I'm glad to have gotten to know.

In a very small way, I'm going to miss Thailand. Not much, and not often, but it'll probably happen.

I have once again hit the point at which no matter in which position I put myself, something's going to hurt, so I might as well hurt sitting up at the computer. Getting sleep consists of putting my arms under my buttocks to try to relieve some of the pressure sores and then getting between fifteen and thirty minutes of nap until my arms go numb from the weight on them. Then I remove my arms, shift onto my side and crush the packing between my thighs for a few minutes, shift to the other side to do the same, then lie back again on my back, return my arms to beneath my rump and start the whole process over again. This worked remarkably well for the first day. It hasn't
worked since.

Tomorrow, hopefully, Dr. Sanguan will clear me for short walks out of bed, and at that point I can stand up and move around some and take the pressure off of my rump so that when I do lie down it isn't an instant muscle cramp with numb soreness along my buttocks. I haven't had weight on my feet in the last three days, give or take, I think. I was still walking around on Thursday. Today is Sunday morning, so it hasn't been that long on
recollection, but it feels like it has been.

The packing is, in and of itself, a minor demon sent from some level not quite hell to torment me. It's wedged up into the neovaginal canal, which isn't lined yet with anything, to ensure that the opening heals properly while the
skin which is to line the neovagina is in the skin graft bank, being carefully stretched and measured. Every time I shift positions, I can feel the thing rubbing painfully against the exposed nerves within, and it's needless to say
an unpleasant sensation. 

In the interest of completeness, I'm doing my best to keep these diary entries as genuine as possible, but if I keep typing on this one, it's going to degenerate into unpleasantries. I know when all is said and done that I'll have considered this whole experience worthwhile, but as it stands now I can't help but wish in some small part that I'd never started down this road. I know that's the pain talking, not my true feelings, but at the moment, there's a
lot of pain and it wants to have a say.

---

I've been out of bed three times now since Dr. Sanguan came around to check on my recovery. I'd managed to pop the covering to the packing, and he came in on his day off to check on my packing, tape it closed again and then clear me for short bouts of standing on my feet and walking around the room. I still have to be exceptionally careful, and my balance isn't too good because I still have the packing in place, but it has been wonderful just getting out of bed again, even if only for short bursts.

Tomorrow morning I go back to the OR for Dr. Sanguan to change my packing, which should be only under an epidural. The anaesthesiologist put in a special tube for that when I had the vaginoplasty performed, so with any luck I won't ever be totally unconscious again for the rest of the time I'm here, except when I'm sleeping, and that should become easier as well as I continue to heal. I'm really not in that much pain any more, despite what I was saying earlier today. A lot of that, I think, has just been from the ability to get off of my butt for short stretches, something I've been doing a lot lately. 

As I type this, we've had yet another brown-out. I say yet another because it's been the fourth since our arrival. Jessie was asleep for the first one, so when the second happened during dinner a few nights ago and zie noticed,
being able to say "You missed the first one" generated the most beautiful expression on zir face. I didn't say it to be mean, though; at the time I was pretty doped up on painkillers and in the middle of enjoying the first meal I'd had in several days that actually tasted good.

I said at one point that the worst thing about this place was the food. I lied. The worst thing about this place has been the company. Dr. Sanguan has his own ward in the hospital where all of his patients stay, and the general
attitude of everyone within the wing seems to be "We're a little family here," which I'm sure most of my extended family will realize doesn't sit well with me even under the best of circumstances. One of the girls in the group looks like she's had one too many facial reconstructions, her breasts are too large for her body in my opinion, and she claims to be an expert on the process because she came out as female at age nine and has been in treatment for twenty years. I managed to put up with her coming into my room for a brief visit while she detailed her experiences, but it was only by supreme force of will that I didn't ask her to kindly shut up and leave.

I'm probably going to have to speak with Pim about getting our return tickets changed. We're almost certainly not going to be here the full five weeks at this rate. I probably won't be able to extend the trip to England by much since I have to be under a doctor's care at all times or else I'm no longer on medical leave, but I can justify some amount of travel time based on the fact that my hospital stay took less time than expected.

I just hope when I get back to work that it hasn't all blown up in my face and that I'm not out of a job.

I've just met again with Dr. Sanguan, and he says that he thinks he can get me five inches of depth with my scrotal tissue, which means that even a second-stage colon graft is less advisable. This time, I agreed. Part of me feels like I've accepted a lesser solution, but at the same time I remember everything that he said could go wrong with a colon graft, even though those were one-stage surgical complications.

Am I giving up on my goal? Am I accepting a more sensible surgical result? Jessie and I have talked about it, and zie pointed out that Dr. Sanguan probably wouldn't be advising against the colon graft procedure if it were positively indicated by my medical conditions. The fact that I have as much scrotal tissue as I do means that there's no medical "need" for the colon graft to extend depth, and the desirable effects of the colon graft are for
the most part outweighed by the invasiveness of the surgery to get it.

Also, there's the fact that I've got at least one more surgery while I'm here, the scrotal skin graft into the cavity that's been carved out of my abdomen and packed. I've had a tube in the packing to drain out any bleeding, and I've been cathetered to keep me from needing to go to the bathroom since I left the OR on Friday afternoon. I've got no interest in extending my stay or putting myself into any more undue pain.

I think, of everything that's happened here, the worst honestly has been trying to find something on the menu that I can eat and enjoy. Jessie's the true neophile in the family, and even zie's had trouble keeping up with the spices, heat and flavorings in the food. I finally discovered the generic chicken fried rice, and the roo tried the chicken with baby corn, which I found I liked quite a bit. Everything else I've had has either failed to satisfy or tasted unpleasant.

The nurses will change my packing on Monday, and Thursday I'll have the second-stage skin graft. I have no idea how long I'll be here after that, but I've scheduled for five weeks if I need it. I hope I won't at this rate, but if that's what it takes, I'll do it. 

Phuket International Hospital is an exercise in surreality. A nurse delivering hot water woke us up this morning an hour ago, and we asked her to bring us more towels. When she came back with those, she informed me that Dr. Sanguan—what the staff call him and what I suspect is his actual family name—would be meeting with me this morning but that she didn't know when. I mumbled an affirmative and she left, at which point I commented to Jessie how strange it felt to be undergoing an intense and invasive procedure in a country where nobody spoke my language natively. Jessie's only comment in response was to consider the reverse, where any knowledge of foreign language would be near-accidental. I had to concede that point.

The shower in the bathroom here isn't a recessed stall, or a raised tub with a curtain around it. The whole bathroom floor is sunken about two inches, and the shower area is little more than a waterproof curtain isolating about a third of the floor space. We got a shower, and while I was toweling off, it occured to me that, if I didn't know better, I could easily see the bathroom as being located in a moderately priced hotel. Only upon stepping out into the rest of the room and seeing the single-occupancy white-sheeted gurney with attendant cot beside to remind me of precisely where I was and why. That only added to the disconnected feeling. It's not upsetting or bothersome, just... noteworthy.

The bed arrangement led last night to the first real recognition of what was happening. As I said last night, we met several people all here for the same reason. "Hotel Phuket," Kimberly called it, which brought to mind thoughts of "Hotel Saigon" and branching outwards from there. When Jessie and I finally went to bed, neither of us could sleep at first, despite the sleeping pill a nurse had given me an hour prior. I had to sit up and hold Jessie's paw for a while, just talking, and suddenly it struck me just how much I really was scared. The procedure itself doesn't bother me, but the idea of spending the next five weeks in a bed without my mate upset me heavily. Jessie and I both began crying, something I never expected to happen, and as zie curled zir arms around me, sobbing into my shoulder, zie called me something I'd never heard zim say before.

Wife.

I've faced surgery before. I've had my gallbladder removed, two cysts removed from the base of my spine, and an ingrown toenail fixed, as well as a number of minor procedures only requiring local anaesthetic like wisdom teeth and stitches. I know how much what I'm going to be doing will hurt, and that I can deal with the pain. I don't think I ever really quite understood just how frightened Jessie was, of being with me, next to me, here to hold my paw and yet totally unable to help or do more than offer reassurances that the pain would go away. I don't think zie did either.

Zie said the only thing that could've been harder than watching me suffer, even for something we both knew I needed to do, would have been not being here. Zie said zie finally understood and had learned to respect zir father for what he had to face with all of his own wife's medical problems. Zie said zie'd be with me, until the end, and that zie never wanted me to let go until I wished to do so. I don't think I ever will.

Surgery at this point is going to feel almost anti-climactic.

---

I've just finished the consultation with Dr. Sanguan—which is his first name, the equivalent of "Dr. Harry" in the US—and I'm not too pleased with the outcome, but at the same time I find it hard to argue with his analysis. He said I have ample scrotal tissue but negligible penile skin, and that I wasn't a good candidate for one-step colon vaginoplasty. We talked briefly about possibly doing the colon graft later this trip, or perhaps coming back in six months to a year if I decide I'm not happy with the lack of depth or the lack of self-lubrication, but he said full-stop that tomorrow would be the normal vaginoplasty and that we'd discuss later in the trip further options.

After spending six months or more psyching myself up for the pain and suffering of the one-step colon graft, to be told "you don't qualify" is a let-down. At best, I'm looking at having two surgeries while I'm here, something I'm certainly not happy considering. At worst, I'm looking at having to schedule a second trip to Thailand, which means getting more time off from work, more money into the flights, et cetera. It's... disappointing.

At the same time, I'm relieved that Dr. Sanguan was honest with me. It would have been far worse to come away with some of the complications mentioned for people who weren't a good fit for the procedure. Jessie and I have been doing our best to downplay the fact that my results won't be what I expected and talk up all of the positives that result from this. I won't be in the hospital as long, I won't be in pain as long. I may have more time in England. I'll be able to use it more quickly after we get back. Best of all, sayeth my mate, it won't cost as much, so once again I'm saving money.

At times, I feel like I'm constantly fighting this battle. I never quite get what I want, only what will suffice. This is probably the biggest instance of this happening to date. I feel cheated, but nobody's to blame. If anything, it's my genetics at fault, but then that road leads to the "I should've been born female" path, and going that way just degenerates into nailing my paw to my forehead. I'm disappointed, and yet there's no way to argue with it. I can either accept what I'm offered, or I can live with what I have now. I can't have what I desire, but I can learn to make do with what I can get.

I wonder if everyone faces this, or if I'm the only one, or if everyone else does but nobody else thinks it's unusual.

---

This afternoon at 15h, a nurse came to the room and left me a shotglass of what I can only describe as lemon battery acid. I forget exactly what it is, but anyone who's had any kind of intestinal surgery knows precisely to what I'm referring when I mention it. Essentially, it induces a good case of diarrhea, forcing everything in the intestinal tract out of the body. I then got another dose of it at 17h, ensuring that my system's been totally flushed.

The only hitch, of course, is that I'm not having the colon graft procedure, thus I can't see the need for cleaning out the colon. I suppose that it's always a good safety procedure to make sure that there's nothing that could cause contamination of the surgical site, and I know it's normal protocol to stop all food and water intake at midnight the previous day, but this somehow seems a bit ridiculous. I've had two bowls of chicken broth, three glasses of tea, one can of Diet Pepsi, and close to two liters of water with this reverse purgative to ensure that I'm clean from one end to the other.

At 20h, a pair of nurses shaved the surgical site in preparation for tomorrow morning's operation. They pulled the curtain around and blocked Jessie's view of the proceedings, which seems a bit silly to me. It's not like zie hasn't
seen it all before. Then again, I was mildly irked at being asked to change into a hospital gown in front of strangers, and even though I did it with a minimum of complaint I was a bit flustered over it. For as many claims to lack of body conscience as I've made in the last few months, it was a bit surprising for me to discover this last remnant of what some might call dignity. By now, I'd figured I'd gotten over that sort of thing.

It's now twelve hours to surgery, give or take fifteen minutes, and I'm about to go to sleep. Last night, I crashed out at 22h00, and I was up this morning at 06h30 when the nurses came to clean the room. Hopefully tomorrow morning I won't have three hours between when I wake up and when I go under the anaesthetic. Jessie's asked me to make sure zie's awake before I go under the knife. It feels a bit unreal, even now. This was always something that would happen "someday," and now even if it's not precisely what I'd hoped, someday is tomorrow, and there's the possibility of getting the rest of it before I leave, or once I'm fully recovered from this and have a bit more money in the bank.

I don't know if I'll write a diary entry tomorrow. Dr. Sanguan estimates that the surgery will be about five hours, and after that I'll be in the ICU for most of the afternoon and possibly overnight. Hopefully on Saturday I'll be able to get back to the computer and detail how I feel. I won't have any details of the surgery itself, seeing as I'll be unconscious for it. At least, I'd damn well better be unconscious for it. I've awoken once in the middle of surgery already; I've got no desire to do it again.

I really don't have anything more I need to say about it. I've been asked for a detailed report on the process, and this is really it. Most of the time, we've been alone in the room, aside from the visits from nurses and Dr. Sanguan to take blood pressure, clean the room, deliver fresh towels and sheets, and generally keep the place clean. I've had one surgical consultation, and tomorrow is the operation. From here, the rest of the time in the hospital is recovery, and now probably much less of that than planned. I'll keep up notes of what happens and how things proceed, but there's really nothing more about the preparation for the surgery itself.

I need to update my site design, too. As of tomorrow, I'll have burned the bridge.

The jet lag is taking its toll, but I want to put this down somewhere before I forget to do so. Anji asked me to keep a detailed account of the experience, and I've agreed.

The flight from Heathrow to Bangkok was uneventful, though nine hours in any plane is enough to drive me crazy. There was no power adapter for the computer, so after working for an hour on some commissions, I got the warning light telling me that the battery was low. It was fully charged when we left Chloe's, but it doesn't last long.

I'm worried about her, honestly. Seeing her again was wonderful, and going to Brigg to visit her mother's house felt a bit like coming home, but I know she doesn't get much contact with other people, certainly not people with whom she can really be herself. I wish I could spend more time around her, and I know I'll be seeing her again in a few weeks, but after that I have no idea when next I'll have the chance to visit the siscoonie, and that's upsetting, even now. Leaving yesterday evening—twelve hours ago, give or take—was painful. I almost started crying twice in the airport as we entered the secure area.

Bangkok's a sauna compared to our normal environment, and Phuket, being an island, feels even worse. When we got to our room at the hospital, it was raining, but not normal rain. The air holds so much water during the day
that, when the temperature starts to drop after sundown, less moisture can be held in the atmosphere and the excess condenses out and falls to the ground. I remember seeing this effect in Singapore, but that was only two days. This will be five weeks.

One of the other patients in Kunaporn's wing came over to our room as soon as we were situated and semi-insisted on taking us around to meet everyone else in our wing, the others here for the same procedure or related surgeries. I mentioned my desire to have the one-stage colon graft because of the quality of the result, and Kimberly, our guide, began trying to dissuade me from it. I was rather annoyed, and a little unnerved. I got to meet someone else that had had it done, and she's now on her fourth day in bed, cathetered to within an inch of her life and still in pain from the operation. I tell myself I'm a tough chick, that I've had my gallbladder, two cysts and an ingrown toenail removed, but I'm still a bit spooked.

I'll have to consult with Dr. Kunaporn tomorrow about surgical options specifically. Apparently he doesn't like doing the one-step colon graft unless the patient insists or he can see no other way of doing the surgery. I intend on insisting, even granting the increased recovery time and the risk of infection. I'm here for the results, and I'm willing to do what it takes to have the body I want. I can't help but feel that, were I to go back with a less-than-ideal result, I'd end up resenting and regretting the whole trip, instead of planning on coming back for a repeat visit to have my depth extended. Plus, the idea of the procedure I want is to get me away from relying on artificial lubricants; skin grafts from the thighs and tummy won't give me that.

I know what I want. Now I just have to get the surgeon to give it to me, and then deal with the consequences of my decision. I just hope I'm healed enough to go home by the departure date.

We arrived in England last night or this morning or something, and then shortly thereafter Chloe brought us the three hours give or take out to Brigg. We stopped somewhere on the M25 for a traditional breakfast—eggs, bacon, sausage, fried tomatoes, and tea—on the way home. Shortly after arriving, of course, Jessie and I crashed heavily since we'd been up since 10h00 the day prior, and by the time we got to the raccoon's house we'd been awake for close to twenty-seven hours.

So far, everything here is going well, though last night I did have a bit of a hormonal breakdown. Before I left home, I had put on a few pounds saying I'd been good and that it was going to be a while before I had any of those things again. Then last night, I was being something of a hormonal bitch and Jessie was eating cookies, so I grabbed one and noshed it. Then I went for a second and zie said zie'd have no sympathy when Kunaporn told me I was too fat for the operation. Needless to say I put down the second cookie.

Later, though, when I was curled up in bed next to Jessie, I couldn't get the thought out of my mind. What if he did refuse, for whatever reason? I almost started hyperventilating over it. To get this close and then be denied... I
don't know if I could handle that. It took much coaxing and petting from Jessie to get me to relax enough to sleep, and I spent a while sobbing into zie shoulder anyway.

I'm too close to success to fail now. Things could still go wrong, but I can't allow myself to think about them. We leave for Thailand on the twelfth, and three days later I go into surgery. I can't consider things happening any
other way.

I've been off of my hormones now for four days, and while I'm not doing nearly as bad as I feared I might, I'm certainly not doing as well as I'd hoped. I won't say it's hubris; I didn't walk around saying I wouldn't notice being off my pills. I will say that it's a lot worse now that I'm aware that I'm not taking my usual dosage. Before, when I had the pharmacy screw-up, I didn't know I was supposed to be having this many problems, and so it didn't feel
like I had them. At least, I don't remember having them. Jessie says I was a living terror, but I honestly don't remember.

At any rate, I've been all over the map emotionally. Mostly I've been going from intensely frustrated to miserably depressed at my loss of control, and then irritated at my own hormonal swinging and then frustrated at my inability
to control my emotional state, and so on and so forth. It's a weird road to walk, knowing that I'm irrational and unstable and being unable to stop it, only to watch as it happens. It's a bit like a roller coaster, unto which I have likened my mood swings before.

Tomorrow—later today, really—I'll be boarding the flight to England, the first leg of the trip. Hopefully I'll have bottomed out by then, or at least this bloody headache will have resided. Maybe.

I think this is actually the longest that I've managed to put off updating my diary. Six weeks seems like a long time, but to me it feels like no time at all. In the next few weeks, I'll probably be adding a lot to it in a very short time, since I'm about to leave for my trip to Thailand. Today's been a bit hectic, since it's my last day at work, but after today, things will start happening that require notation here.

One thing of note did happen today, or rather didn't. I didn't take my hormones this morning, nor will I tonight. I've started the two-week countdown to the surgery itself, and for the next fourteen days I'm off of my pills. This is one of the big reasons why I'm not too worried about the insurance people covering these first few days; I turn into an unlivable bitch when I'm not taking them regularly.

I just hope Jessie survives to see the end-results of the surgery. The last time I ended up not taking my prescribed dosage, zie called an exorcist.

I suppose it should be indicative of something that it's fully three weeks into the new year before I posted anything. What, I don't know, but I'm sure it must mean something.

At this point, I now have the traveller's cheques to pay for the operation in my possession. The tickets are booked, and my passport is ready. Wrong, but ready. I still have to prod Jessie into getting zir passport finished,
and at this point we're probably going to have to pay an expediting service or a fee or something, but we're out of time otherwise. After that, I still have to get all my monthly-bill people aware of the fact that I'm going to
miss March and possibly April and find out if there's anything I can do about that fact.

Once that's done, all I need to do is pack. That, I think, is going to end up being the hardest part of the preparation.

I'd be lying if I said I weren't nervous. I'm actually scared out of my wits. So many thing could go wrong, from a botch-job to not getting off the table, but all I can do is focus on the fact that the odds are in my favor and that once I'm healed and everything is said and done I'll be closer to having the body that I want. Some things I'll never get, and others will take more time, but the worst of it will be over.

That sort of leads into the next question. At that point, once the surgery is done, am I really still in transition? At what point, if any, do I stop being "transsexual"? I still talk about my experiences, and I have a lot of friends who knew me before, but as far as everyone's concerned, I'm just another woman. There's no question at work, at home, out in public. The few people who address me wrong usually end up red-faced for it as soon as they realize. When does the mantle of "transsexual" get dropped? 

In the strictly clinical sense, it never does, of course. I will forever have the underlying body of a male, surgically and chemically altered to appear female, but I don't have the Curse, I can't bear children and my genes are standard male genes. However, none of those things matter in the realm of social contact, or should. None of those things matter at home, in bed, with friends, in public, at the mall, wherever. The realm in which the fact that
all is not as it seems is frighteningly small and insignificant in comparison with the rest of my life. Why, then, persisit in holding to the label?

In some ways, it's a point of perverse pride. I've succeeded so far beyond my wildest dreams that I've now got people making snide comments about "those freaks" in my presence and never realizing the irony unless I point it out to them. Ultimately, if every person made it as well as I did or better, nobody would know we existed except for the brief time during which we actively changed from one state to another. Success means invisibility, and I'm not sure I like that fact.

I think I'd be far more open about my own state of being if I felt that in opening up to others, I'd be treated as I wished to be treated and not how I would have been treated before I began. There's still a lot of stigma attached to this, stigma I endured and overcame, but that should still have never have been there in the first place. It's a trap: to end the battles for others, I have to agree to fight other battles myself. The question is not why must we fight, but who fights and for what. 

It's a problem for which I don't yet have a solution.

This is likely to be the last entry for 2001, which I'm sure comes as a great relief to several people; the year is almost over, and that elates no small number of my friends.

I also know that, in looking over old entries, I've once again been lax in updating as things happen. I know I use the excuse of being too busy living life to write about it, and to some degree it's true, but another part is the simple fact that I spend so much time talking about what's happening in my life with my friends as they happen that by the time I think about updating my diary, a lot of the information feels redundant. Still, this serves as an excellent record of events past since I don't log my IRC converstaions, so I should make a more directed effort at keeping this up-to-date.

Thanksgiving was about a month ago now, and it went off very well, though a few things happened that I feel I should discuss in more detail. The meal itself was a moderate success, at least according to everyone present, though I still have a few embarrassing memories. I managed to both burn and cut myself on the shards of a shattered Pyrex pan that I had put on the stove for no good reason. The turkey cooked wonderfully, and came out of the oven about two hours early, so I wrapped it and put it back in the oven on warm to keep it hot, which meant that by the time I served it it was dry. Then I screwed up the gravy recipe my mother gave me that I couldn't remember accurately, so I had to send Tanya with money to the store for a jar of gravy. Other than
those things, though, everything else was a hit.

More to the point, though, the day after our Thanksgiving feast, we went as a group of eight to Outback Steakhouse, as none of us wanted to cook. I've been on a diet, even over Thanksgiving and again over Christmas, trying desparately to lose weight in time for my surgery next year, so I said "I can't have any of the appetizers; they're too fattening." Well, everyone else dug into the food with gusto, and suddenly I felt myself ostracized and isolated. 

I don't say this to cast aspersions. I don't say this to point fingers or lay blame. In fact, this is nobody's problem but mine. I say it entirely because in a group of seven other people with whom I should have absolutely no reason
to fear or feel unsafe or isolated, I had an anxiety attack. At one point I had to leave the table and go to the bathroom, and it was an actual debate in my head as to whether or not I'd go back to the table or just head outside.

I'm not happy with this fact. I'm not proud of it. These should not at any point have been people with whom I should feel this way, and yet it happened, and over something so petty as being the only one at the table who couldn't enjoy the appetizers we'd ordered. If anything, this says how heavily ingrained this issue is. It felt a bit like vindication for my behavior at Anthrocon and at the Bashes in times past, and a bit like the second opinion confirming a terminal illness. This is a problem past which I feel I have to work. I don't want to spend my life hiding from my closest friends because I can't deal with something trivial like this.

---

Jessie and I just got back from visiting my in-laws for three days. Every time we head to Michigan, I can't wait to see them. Then, after a few days, I can't wait to get home. Mom is wonderful, and Dad's fun to be around, but the beds there are inevitably uncomfortable, and I honestly do think I'm allergic to the pets Jessie's mother keeps as necessary companions to help her with her depression.

Also, I inevitably feel like I've horribly underspent for their Christmas presents, though I suppose the money for the trip itself counts towards that. This year was reasonably cheap, but it's still quite a large chunk of change. Since we're about to head out of town again for New Years', things are likely to be tight. However, the vacations have been more than worth it, even if I have to tighten my belt and my purse strings when everything is said and done.

I wish I lived closer to all of my loved ones, but until I do, this is the next best thing.

Always, always, always read the fine print.

Seven weeks ago, I finally went to see an endocrinologist. He said that my testosterone count was abnormally high--a shock to no-one--and changed my prescription from estradiol to premarin. He said that the premarin covered more receptors than the estradiol and would help keep my testosterone down.

I took the prescription and went to my local pharmacy, passing it calmly over the counter to the people responsible for giving me the drugs my doctor said I should have. Now, I saw the prescription before I gave it to them. When I read it, it said Premarin, but then I knew what it was supposed to say and I had another prescription for a mail-order group to fill when I remembered to do so and save myself some money. Not at any point did it occur to me that there might be a problem. After all, doctors and specialists are notorious for having bad handwriting, and people who have to read it, such as nurses and pharmacologists, usually have little trouble deciphering the archaic glyphs written on the paper.

They handed me back a bottle, marked Warfarin sodium, 2.5mg. Warfarin sodium? It must be a different name for the same stuff, I thought, and I blithely went about my way. I grew up in a medical household. I'm used to my pills not being sold under the same name twice. Guiafed, guiatex, entex, it's all the same, and there're about eleventy-billion varieties of penicillin and other common antibiotitcs, so getting a strangely-marked bottle didn't raise any flags in my mind.

A few days after I started taking my new prescription, Jessie noticed that I'd gotten more bitchy and frustrated than usual. However, the same thing happened every time my spironolactone had been increased, as well as when my estradiol dosage had been upped. Thus, no word was said and nothing out of the ordinary was reported. I mean, this was a common thing, right? 

A few weeks ago, I managed somehow to bruise myself. I'm not sure what I did. I just woke up one morning and had this massive bruise on my forearm. Jessie and I both looked at it wonderingly, and it was sore to the touch, so I thought I banged it against something and waited patiently for it to go away. It's still there, albeit much faded, but other than the occasional "That's still there?" neither of us really thought about it.

Last Saturday, seven weeks after I started my new prescription, I went to the doctor's office and had blood drawn to see how the premarin was handling my testosterone count. For seven days, I waited for the results, and then finally I called my doctor yesterday and asked.

My estrogen was through the floor, my testosterone through the roof.

I was shocked. I couldn't imagine what on earth had gone wrong. I'd been taking my pills every day! I called the endo's office and left a message, and the nurse told me Dr. Fallon would call me back that evening. At that point,
I finally started to question what was going on with my medication. I called my mother as soon as I got home and asked her if she knew what warfarin sodium was, or if not could she look it up in her PDR.

"Oh, that's easy," she said quickly. "I have that one in my common drugs box I show my students. It's an anti-coagulent. Why do you ask?"

Suddenly the bruising and the bitchiness made a lot more sense. I grabbed the pill bottle and checked the name of the actual drug as prescribed, and there it was: coumadin. If I'd looked, I'd have realized long back that I had the
wrong stuff, but because the dosage looked right and I didn't know what the pills looked like, I never even questioned it. I'd never had this happen before. I explained everything to my mother, and she had a minor panic attack because I'd been taking aspirin with the coumadin, a definite no-no (Premarin is a blood-clotter as a side effect, so I'd been told to take a baby aspirin with it to counteract that effect). From there, it was a quick run to the Rite-Aid with the other prescription in hand, where the counterstaff quickly and apologetically gave me the right pills and a refund for my prescription. 

In twenty years, I'll look back at this and laugh, I'm sure, but right now it doesn't seem so funny.

Recently, a friend of mine wrote a story, or maybe told me about a story. I don't remember which; in the end, it doesn't really matter. It was a good story, or at least I liked it a lot which in my small corner of the universe means the same thing. We talked about the story, and then the subject went away.

Some time later, he wrote the story, or edited what he'd written before. He posted it to a mailing list we have in common. I read it there; it wasn't what he'd described. Most of it was, but the ending was different. To me, it wasn't as good as the original. It felt... robbed, or cheated. The ending seemed inappropriate. When he asked me what I thought, I told him as much.

I think he expected me to like it more than the original. I think he got very upset that I didn't. He said some things to me that I don't think he understands hurt me. They made me feel small and unwelcome, that I didn't know what I was doing. I know he'd never say these things to me and mean them like that, or even if he meant to tell me that, he would never try to hurt me with such things, but this time, they did. I felt that I had been asked for an opinion, and when I gave it and the explanation of why I thought what I did I was told I was wrong, and that hurt.

I thought that would be the end of the situation, and I wanted to just drop the matter. It didn't happen that way. I saw people praising the new story and its wonderful ending. I heard people on IRC discussing the story. I didn't feel I could re-state my opinion. I didn't feel I could leave. I didn't want to stay. I felt trapped. I felt unsafe.

Jessie asked to see the story. I sent zim a copy, thinking I could at least discuss it with zim. Jessie had never seen the original. Jessie thought the ending was brilliant, and zie pointed out an interpretation of events that had never even entered my head when I read it. I felt, for a few very brief moments, trapped in my apartment by my own mate. I never want to feel like that again. I spent six years feeling that way.

None of this is anyone's fault. None of this is anyone's responsibility to fix but mine. I don't know if I can fix it, though, and therein is my trouble. I felt this way at Anthrocon. I've felt this way to lesser degrees at the Bashes I've attended. I don't know how not to feel this way when I'm in this kind of situation. I don't know what triggers it, only that I could describe scenarios in which I know it will happen. All I know how to do is avoid those situations, but then to some degree that means I'm shutting myself out of life, and that's the last thing I want to do.

I was flustered all the way to work this morning. I told Jessie last night that I just wanted to put all this behind me, but this morning I couldn't. I'm writing this here hoping that by the time I get done, I can.

Shortly after I started the weight chart, it stopped. This is, of course, precisely what I said I wouldn't do, for the simple reason that I needed some kind of record of things. I still want that. I wanted it even then. However, I discovered upon a trip to the endocrinologist that my scale at home was wildly inaccurate, sufficiently so that its numbers were leading me into a false sense of security. I was actually weighing five to ten pounds light every day, meaning my actual weight was nearer to 270-275 during that time. It hit 280 the day I went to the endo, and at
that point I said, "This is a good idea, but I need to get a new scale."

That should have been a no-brainer purchase, but shortly after this happened, Jessie got fired from WalMart and suddenly I couldn't justify any sort of extraneous purchase, no matter how reasonable. I had to calm down from that, then find a decent scale that wouldn't scream in horror when I stepped on it (which took all of five minutes once I actually went looking), and then get enough of a lump sum payment off to my credit card to make me comfortable about buying something that wasn't an immediate need-solver.

However, now that it's done, the weight chart is back to regular updates as I hopefully manage in the next four and a half months to lose the weight I need to drop to be ready for my surgery. I'm actually starting up exercise again, though it's not much. I'm hoping it will be enough.

There's a lot more that's happened, but I haven't forgotten about my diary. I know every time I pass a month or so of no update, I start to feel like maybe I should just admit that I'm tired of bothering, but the truth is that I enjoy writing it. I'm not really talking to anyone when I put my thoughts here, but more than once I've gone back over what I've said before, to watch my own progress. It's been fairly amazing, even to me.

Last night, I sat down and, as I try to do whenever I'm in a painful mood, I tried to figure out why I felt so upset. As I said before, it wasn't the events themselves that hurt me. I don't consider myself a patriot beyond the belief that the principles on which the United States was founded were sound and reasonable. I didn't lose anyone in the tragedy. The fact that so many people died at once is awesome in its scope but not really terrifying; death is just another part of living, and that even one person dies at the hands of another is a tragedy; increasing the number of corpses doesn't make it any worse for me.

I think it all comes down to trust and betrayal. When I spoke my mind about how I felt, I knew that my opinions would go against the grain of the majority. I knew when I opened myself to others that I would be seen as hurtful and cruel. It bothered me, to be told that how I felt was wrong because it was different, but I've lived with that in the past. If it had bothered me that much, my transition would have been impossible. I also knew, though, that I wasn't alone in my way of thinking, my way of feeling. I knew there were others who felt as I did, and I turned to them for support, only to have them shy away. I can't hold them responsible for that. They didn't want to be beaten down as I had, and I can accept that intellectually. Emotionally, though, I felt that I had been abandoned by those that I could trust, and that cut me to the core.

Mitchell wrote me off again yesterday for my darkly comedic response to the tragedy, calling my position callous and pathetic. For seventeen years, he was an older brother to me. My relationship with Rod soured me somewhat, but I can look at that now and call it the manipulations of an emotionally abusive boyfriend trying to turn me against who he must've seen as competition. I had really only just begun the process of rebuilding the friendship I once had, when this happened. After reading his message, telling me never to contact him again, I felt that I had been stabbed in the back.

In my circle of friends online, I fared little better. I had several people tell me in private that they felt similarly, that this had been a horrible tragedy but that it didn't really affect them personally, but none of them would at the time speak up in public and let their views be known. Somehow, knowing that I wasn't alone but that I would get no help in the open, it felt that much worse.

I have nothing to say to those who're grieving the loss of loved ones, of ideals, of the innocent notion that America is free from such things, of whatever was lost by those who lost it. It isn't that I don't care. It's that I know my words won't mean anything, coming as they do from someone whose view of the incident is so removed from the norm. I don't go around stomping on people's Slack when I can help it, though at times I admit I speak without thinking clearly, and my communication codec is a bit misaligned.

Instead, I can only address those of you reading this whose views are skewed as mine are, and I find that I really have nothing to say. Any message I could give, you already know, because you're at this point already. The shock is not that this happened, but that it didn't happen sooner. Now more than ever is the time to put the President under scrutiny, to ensure that he doesn't attempt to politicize and polarize this issue as the temptation is to do. This will be the true test of his character: not politics, not speeches, not boards of advisors to tell him what to think, but his ability to lead a nation dispassionately in a time of crisis.

I fear for the future. The clearest response to this measure is increased security, and with that inevitably comes a removal of some form of freedom. Most people, angry and scared, will gladly accept any new yoke handed to them now if they're told it's for the fight against terrorism. The missile defense shield is being hawked as the next step in the arsenal against terrorists, to protect the United States from privately-launched missiles, despite even the experts in the field admitting that the Star Wars project doesn't work.

Worse yet, there will be calls for vengeance, a proof that people can't do this to America and get away with it. Unfortunately, the people in question have already gotten away with it, and now their fate is secure. Either they
died on the planes, they'll die when they're captured, or they'll never get caught. Their destinies are already set. There's no amount of horror we could visit upon them for what they've done that will make them recant their
actions, and there's only so many times we could kill them before they're already dead.

When Timothy McVeigh was executed, he went to his death calm, serene, dignified, and utterly certain that his course of action had been right. The families of the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing that chose to watch him die felt, perhaps, that seeing him suffer as they did would somehow make it all better, that knowing he was in hell for a few moments would make their own pain easier to carry. I doubt that, if that's what they sought, they got what they wanted. We're going to see it again here, I think.

From a welfare state to societal murder,
"Bring back the noose" is always heard
Whenever those swine are under attack,
But it won't make you even. It won't bring them back.
-- Elvis Costello, "Let'em Dangle"

I believe in the death penalty. I believe that there are some people that need to be taken out of the gene pool for the betterment of everyone else. I think some people just don't play well with others, aren't worth the price of a life-time prison sentence and are better off dead so they can't hurt other people. This, though, goes beyond the death penalty. The call here will be for blood, for retribution against not only those who committed the crime,
but those who might do it again. Already people are calling for Afghanistan's devastation, even at the cost of people whose only crime was to be unable to fight against the ruling regime.

I think what is needed now is for those with the ability to find the perpetrators to do so, as ruthlessly, cleanly and efficiency as we were attacked. For the rest of us, all I can say is that we need to get back to doing things as we did as quickly as we can. Any sign that we were hurt or affected by this tragedy will be precisely the response those who did this want, and if we give it to them, they will do it again.

I bought my tickets from London to Thailand for my operation yesterday night. I had the tickets from Newark to London last week. My life will continue as it was before, a little more cognizant of the dangers of air travel but otherwise unaltered. To change how I acted, to live in fear of another strike, is what those who use violence to send their messages want. Perhaps this makes me inhuman, in some people's eyes. Perhaps it does.

I don't think I could live my life any other way.

Once again, I find myself at odds with the vast majority of humanity, or so it appears.

Some time ago, a friend of mine committed suicide. She was a member of my first therapy group, and I had seen her outside of that context maybe half a dozen times, if I were being generous. She was a nice person, and I would have enjoyed getting to know her better, and her death came as a shock to me. I cried for about five minutes, and then I was stunned and silent for another hour, and then I was back to business as usual.

Everyone else in the group thought I was some kind of emotionless bitch because I didn't grieve for her. They thought I felt nothing for her because I showed no response. A lot of harsh words changed hands, and the group
dissolved out from under the tragedy, though there were other events that urged it along.

Now, a terrorist attack has hit the United States, and I've been called un-American and heartless because I've felt nothing in the wake of the disaster.

My only response to the whole situation has been one of dark humor, at the Wag-the-Doggish nature of this whole affair. In the depths of America's recession and the President's slumping popularity, a terrorist strike comes
along to give people something on which to focus and bolster production. War has always been good for the economy. It's the sort of event that people like Art Bell make their livings squeezing for pseudofacts to fit their conspiracies.

I don't know anyone that died in the attack. I don't know anyone that knows anyone that died in the attack. And yet, because it happened on American soil (this phrase has been used a lot lately), I'm expected to be in sackcloth and ashes, wailing and moaning over the horrible tragedy. People who have no relationship whatsoever with the blast are pronouncing vendetta against the perpetrators, and our esteemed President is calling it "freedom
under attack". To me, this is the very sort of attitude that the people who attacked the US had, that striking out at faceless nobodies was the best and perhaps the only means of making a statement.

I am American by birth, but this to me is nothing more than a designation of location, not a sign of any affiliation or belief. I was male by birth, or so claims my birth certificate, and that didn't mean anything to me either. That these events happened in America is shocking only in their proximity; I'm three hours away from each of the major targets. Beyond that, it means nothing to me personally, only in how the after-effects will change the world around me. Because of this, I've already been the recipient of harsh words and I likely will continue to be.

More than anything, if I feel any emotion, it's anger at the double standard by which media stories are reported. Anger at the people who will use this as an excuse to rip away at my rights in the name of public safety. Anger at the faceless, blind sheep who will gleefully accept a new whip in return for the illusion of greater security. Anger at the media moguls turning a loss of life into a media festival. Anger at the idea that anyone could find bloodshed an acceptable alternative. Anger at my own impotence in the face of world-shaking events.

I once walked around in a dark cloud of angst and depression. My life was grey misery, and I believed I would never be free of it. One day, it lifted, and I learned how to love my life and the world around me. Now, instead of
grieving, I find myself celebrating the lives of those who have gone before me. I find within myself a desire to thank those who touched my life in their time on this earth. I wish not for my death to to be mourned but for my life to be exalted when my time comes. I want those close to me to face my death with a smile and the comfort that I milked my life for every drop of happiness that I could.

Now, because I feel no grief, I'm being ostracized by my peers who sit in numbed horror at events that don't really touch them.

I'm feeling very very alone.

I got my passport last night. It was waiting for me in my mailbox when I got home. Anxiously, I tore open the manila envelope in which they'd sent all of my paperwork. The first page was a letter saying that the passport was a limited-duration issue, good until six months post-op, but that I could have it converted to the full duration without question or cost after providing proof of surgery. I was fine with that; I figured they'd do something like
that anyway. I opened up the little blue sheaf.

Kristina Robin Davis. Male.

I have, I think, never been quite so livid as I was in the first two seconds after looking at that. Not even the recent fiasco of the Bash organization for next year put me quite into the stratosphere like this. The Ninth Circuit Court of Texas, the Social Security Administration, the Internal Revenue Service, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, my significant other and my mother all recognize me and consider me female, and here I have a little square of blue cardboard slapped with the wrong information.

For about three seconds, I wondered if I were ever going to be free of my unwanted past.

For the next hour, I swore I was going to catch a flight to Houston and quietly strangle the officer in the passport office that issued my passport.

Then Jessie dragged me to bed, made love with me and held me while I cried fell into an eight-hour coma.

Today, I'm going to call them after I get out of work, and I'm going to ask, very politely, why my paperwork was issued with the wrong information when by their own letter to Ms. Davis, they recognize me as female. Then, regardless of what answer I get, I'm going to assume that when I get back from Thailand next April, they will correct the mistake in my records when I present them with my paperwork saying that I've had the proverbial nip-and-tuck. If they still insist at that point on getting it wrong, I'm going to throw a conniption over the likes of which J. R. "Bob" Dobbs himself would soil his underwear.

I'm keenly aware of what assuming does to people. I just don't feel like arguing with them until I'm back and have the final weapon in my arsenal.

Of course, I also have one last chance at getting them to correct their records. I put in a request at the California Department of Vital Records, the holder of my original birth certificate, to have the proper amendments made to reflect the changes in my information. If they follow through with what I think they agreed to do, then I'll have an amended birth certificate to present back to the Passport Agency to get my records fixed yet again.

I know it's counterproductive, but I would love to see the look on the faces of the people there when I calmly and smugly present them with a corrected birth certificate and inform them that they out of all the government offices
faced with this issue have refused to treat me properly and with the recognition I have earned.

It's almost enough to make me want to sue them right now.

---

This morning when I stood on the scale, it read 265. I'm now five pounds above where I started when I went back on my diet. True, I did have a slew of visitors over that time period, and I let myself go, but I am at a point now where I can no longer afford to let myself go, to act as if having visitors is any excuse for me to neglect my diet.

Right now, I'm fighting for motivation. I'm fighting for every step of the way, every pound I want to lose. When I started dieting the first time, I had a host of appetite suppressants that worked and a ready supply of caffeine, a natural appetite suppressant, to help me along. Now, I can't have the caffeine because it's contraindicated by my anti-androgen, which is also a diuretic, and the appetite suppressants have all been recalled.

I'm down to willpower and Stupid Human Tricks to get back to where I want to be, weight-wise. Not just that, but where I need to be to have a better chance at a successful surgery. Doctor Kunaporn normally doesn't take any patient over two hundred pounds; he made an exception in my case because of my height, but I know I can drop to 220 if I try. I've been there before. I can get there again.

To this end, I'm starting a daily online table to monitor my progress. Keeping records at home and privately has not helped me this time. I know that, if I'm showing the world that my weight is dropping, I'll be happy. Conversely, I know that if I'm having to show it rising again, or if I'm avoiding posting anything because it's not falling as it should be, then I'm doing something wrong and I need to fix my habits.

My goal is to reach 220 by the end of January. That's eight pounds a month, starting now. That's by no means impossible, but it will be difficult. I've done worse, so I'm not too worried. 

I hate that I have to do this to get myself to fix my own bad habits, but if I said, "this is who I am", I would have to hide my face. I started my transition telling myself that I could be who I wanted to be, and I'll be damned before I let go of that.

Yesterday marked the first anniversary of my Real-Life Test. As of yesterday morning, I will have spent one full year living as myself, as Kristina Davis, and not as the person whose name still (dis)graces my birth certificate.

Birth certificates and other government proofs of identification are still something of a sticking point for me; I'm still fighting the passport agency, though one thing has changed on that front that should clear the way for the rest to resolve. My surgeon is finally sending me my Letter, in which he says that I'm scheduled for thus-and-so date and should be given egress from the United States of America to be allowed to meet this obligation. Hopefully it will work. If not, I'm going to have a deuce of a time applying under my old name. I've already submitted the paperwork to the California Bureau of Vital Statistics to amend my birth records. If this letter doesn't do it,
maybe that will. I hope.

Looking back, it's hard to imagine my life before a year ago. I mean,  consciously, I can call up the memories, but they feel alien. I mention on my homepage that I have no intention of claiming I sprung fully grown into the world at age twenty-five, and yet it feels like that in a way. I know what I did, and I can recall specific events, but when I do so they don't seem like they belong to me. I feel like I'm reliving someone else's life when I try to think about it.

I don't suppose that's too surprising, really. I know several people who're going through the same transition who have all expressed at one time or another the desire to have their pasts buried and forgotten. We live in a society that still doesn't totally understand and accept, even if individuals do, and references to our past can get awkward. For the most part, I simply refer to myself as female as far back as possible, and yet there are times of my life where this simply won't work. I lived in a university dorm for a year, and I had a male roommate. No dorm would ever intentionally allow two strangers of differing sexes to occupy the same room, at least not in Texas. Thus, how do I talk about my pathologically normal roommate André without giving away the past?

Should I even care? My friends are an even mix of those who don't know and those who don't care, with most of the former eventually winding up as the latter, but I know someone right now fighting for employment because she
has a military discharge for GID. She's working at a grocery store because she can't get hired for anything better. It's heavily frustrating, seeing this kind of treatment and not being able to stop it, knowing that I could be subject to the same.

At any rate, I look back now at my first year and all I can say is that I wish I had known so much sooner. I envy some of my friends who're going through the change so much younger than I, but I hope that never interferes with our friendship. I can't help but wonder sometimes how much different my life would be now if I'd realized and accepted all of this when I was in college, or even high school, but I'm not enough of a Nostradamus to really know.

All in all, I'm happy with the decision, and I'd do it again in an instant.

---

Anthrocon was last week, and I still have mixed emotions about it. I'd been looking forward to attending for some time, but once I was there, it wasn't what I had expected. Rather, I wasn't able to do what I had hoped.

I simply do not handle large undirected groups of people well. I freeze up. I get silent, curl up in my corner, hope to go unnoticed and panic if I'm put into the spotlight. I can deal with small groups. I can deal with larger groups of people I know well. I can deal with large groups if we're all participating in some specific activity. I can even handle public speaking, since I'm the event on which people are focused. Past a certain point, though, I simply don't react positively.

When I went to Further Confusion with Jessie last year, I didn't really attend the con. I visited with Ryan, while Jessie went to the convention. When I go to the Bash every year, I spend my time socializing with smaller groups, and I grow distinctly uncomfortable when everyone is together. I wish I felt more comfortable, safer interacting with larger groups, but I never have, and it's only grown more acute since my transition. I don't even socialize at work events. I feel out of place and isolated. 

I wanted to attend, to have a good time, but I spent most of it either fighting off panic attacks or hiding in the women's room at the hotel while Jessie at least enjoyed zirself. I don't begrudge the roo for that, and in fact I'm very glad that zie had a good time, but I'm disappointed in my own inability to overcome something so seemingly simple.

With understanding comes growth, and with growth comes new possibilities. Either I'll learn to live with this part of my life, or I'll find a way to overcome it. Either way, I'm better off now than I was before, and I know how to avoid the worst of these sorts of situations.

Another month, another chapter of my life.

The passport situation is getting weird. I'm now waiting on my surgeon to send me a letter indicating my intent to have surgery so that the passport agency will send me a "temporary passport" while I wait for the operation so I can get a "real" passport. I find it degrading that I have to prove I'm having surgery before they'll issue me paperwork, even if I can sit back and say, "yes, I see the rationale in not issuing passports in any identity but those on the original citizenship papers."

In the meantime, though, the California Bureau of Vital Statistics has sent me back my request for a birth certificate, saying that I didn't send them sufficient money with my request to have my birth certificate amended! Now, when I originally wrote them, I only requested to have a copy of my old birth certificate sent to me. I had no intention of getting them to change it yet; I didn't think they would without proof of surgery. That seems to be typical, unfortunately. However, they sent me back the proper form for changing my birth certificate and told me that if I want it altered, I have to send them more money. This may very well be a run-around to my passport problem if Dr. Kunaporn's letter doesn't arrive in time.

As an aside, this diary entry would've been done a few days ago, when I returned from my trip to St. Louis, but the day after I got home, I slept for nearly eighteen hours, and then I came down with a case of stomach flu, so I haven't really felt like myself. Today's the first day in several that I'm intending to stay at work until quitting time at
17h30.

As mentioned above, I did just get back from St. Louis, visiting the annual TSA Bash. As always, it was a wonderful trip. Jessie, Tanya, Randy and I carpooled from Philadelphia to Columbus, Ohio, where we overnighted at Joanne's house. She then joined us from Columbus to Cincinnati where Mag added his car and we caravaned from there to Missouri. Sixteen hours in the car would have been miserable; I'm definitely glad that we chose to break the journey where we did.

The day we arrived, we spent it mostly in wandering about in confusion, trying to find where everyone was. The organizers contracted with the hotel to put us all in a block of rooms together, but when we arrived, we found that we'd been scattered all over the buildings! The internal conference room we were assured was actually over in the attached restaurant, which was not a Denny's despite the literature saying otherwise. This last is probably a good thing. 

The night desk clerk had no business running a shoe-shine stand, much less a hotel. He couldn't find our reservations. Then he attempted to charge me the full price of the room despite our having reserved it under a group rate. Later, when our toilet broke and flooded our bathroom, he told us only that maintenence had gone home and that he might have a plunger if we wanted it. Then, while we were discussing whether or not to move into one of the other open rooms, he proceeded to book every remaining open room out from under us! We did mention this fact to him, and he merely shrugged. I lodged a complaint with the manager, but she seemed to know
that he was a problem but couldn't get rid of him for some reason. 

We did ultimately have to leave a night early. By Saturday, the room had begun to stink from the water (thankfully clean) soaking into the carpet and mildewing. We simply could not put up with another night in that room, and the hotel was quite literally full; the night clerk had rented out the last two open spaces while Jessie and I watched. It was with regret that we packed up to leave, but we consoled ourselves that we would have had to go the next morning early anyway, and that we weren't really missing anything.

While we were there, though... I had a wonderful time. Jessie, Matthias, Ando and I played a few rounds of Mao, which is always good for my spirits if not my general sanity. We organized a mall-crawl, and who would've
thought that something so seemingly banal would be met with such high spirits? I did have ulterior motives, though. I had agreed some time back to help Joanne find a swimsuit to settle a dare with Jessie, that she would go out in a one-piece and swim if Jessie did the same. At the time I heard about this, I thought it childish and I said as much, but I wanted it as much as they did. Last year, the Bash hotel had a pool, and I kept looking at it longingly but I didn't have the courage to get a swimsuit and get in it. This year, even as I protested that I had nothing to prove, I wanted to participate.

Joanne did a lot more in the end than just get the swimsuit. I kept expecting her to say, "This is too much," and we had all agreed that if she did, nobody would think any less of her, but she went on to not only wear the suit but get in the pool and help me drown my mate! In actuality, we had been dunking each other and doing laps while Jessie clung to the side of the pool, and we conspired to drag zim out into the water, but we didn't know zie had a cramp in zir leg and so when we did, Jessie panicked. Things were a bit tense shortly afterwards, and I was very upset at what happened, but Jessie forgave me and I cried about it and everything was better very quickly.

Jo even bought a top and a pair of bras while she was at Lane Bryant, which I thought remarkable. I'm very proud of her. She's grown up a hell of a lot, even if it's in spurts that only happen when she's around family. I wish her parents treated her better. She deserves far more than she gets from them, in my opinion.

We did discuss writing; it was, after all, a writers' conference, wasn't it? Well, it was at one point. I think we've finally organized a reasonably decent event for next year, based on Chairman Foxley's suggestion of a public critique section. Everyone to be a part submits a written work, and everyone present agrees to read and then analyze everything submitted. I do have my misgivings; these sorts of things tend to be dominated by so-called Beautiful People, but I believe that it can be made to work. At least, I hope it can. I hate to think that something intended to help everyone will be forced into invite-only status because the group can't be trusted to read everyone's work.

Finally, I got my play-by-email off the ground at the Bash. I'd been building this for some time, working up characters and background, and it was good to finally sit down and role-play again. I was at one point part of a group here, but in the wake of three of the participants becoming heavily employed, it hasn't happened in several weeks and is, as far as I can tell, dead. It's a shame, really, but I can't say as it's entirely unexpected. My game, however, has just started, though it's facing a bit of a burp while one of the players goes on his much-deserved
honeymoon. Once he's back, though, I hope to see a long-time game running here. I've certainly planned for the future.

I hated having to leave the Bash. I especially hated having to leave early. I don't get to see most of these people but once a year, for a few days, and that's far too rare for my taste. Given my druthers, I'd live close enough to visit them all, but right now that's just not feasible.

Maybe one day.

---

Here I was going to discuss my mistress and the fact that I'd entered into a dom-sub relationship with someone not my mate, but I found that I'd already written another entry last month detailing it all, but that at the time I'd not posted it publicly. I'm still not sure why I didn't. I suspect it was nervousness at publicly confessing some of the things in it, and yet they're all true and things that, if asked, I will admit. I don't have to be ashamed of any of it, just honest.

I wouldn't wish days like yesterday on anyone.

I found out first of all from my doctor that there are no endocrinologists in the area that do hormone replacement therapy that take my insurance. This means I have to pay for all of my treatments up front and then hope that I get reimbursed afterwards, which means I have to budget far more than I would like for medical bills that, supposedly, should be the domain of my insurance company. After all, isn't that why we have them?

Next, my passport application has hit another snag. Now they want proof of my surgery. "It doesn't matter what your driver's license says; it's what's between your legs that counts." No, that isn't a direct quote, but that's the essential tone of the letter I received. Thankfully, they also said that if I hadn't had the surgery yet and needed the passport for the surgery, I could submit all of my other docs and a note from my surgeon saying when my surgery is scheduled. It's not a problem, but it is one more delay in getting the damn piece of paper that clears me for overseas travel, and they've flat-out admitted that they've lost my old one so if they don't give me the new one, there's going to be a real problem.

Finally, I contacted my bank to inquire about personal loan interest rates and found out that they don't offer them! They've got home, home improvement, car, et cetera, but nothing that doesn't involve some kind of major capital
purchase, and medical doesn't count. Again, it's not a crisis, but it's a delay in getting things settled and prepared for my trip. A friend of mine has offered to vouch for me to get a Navy Fed account, and according to him they'll give out loans on practically a handshake, so I'm not panicking but I am annoyed.

My weight was back up to 260 yesterday morning, and that always depresses me. I did such a good job of losing the weight, but I did it by punishing myself and generally starving myself, with the help of appetite suppressants which are no longer available over the counter. I even spoke with my doctor about getting back on them, and he just said the prescription strength ones weren't covered by insurance, which prices them out of my range for now.

If all of the above weren't enough, I've been worrying a lot about my finances these days. Trying to schedule a loan from the bank, I've felt increasingly under the microscope to pay off my debts to my credit cards and get back onto an even footing, but... 

... this is where my life gets extremely complex, or at least it feels like it does.

As I have established elsewhere in these writings, I am a very easily dominated person in certain basic ways. I'm very submissive, and I am, by my own admission, too easily influenced by the emotional states of my peers. The idea that one of my friends, someone I trust, being upset or mad at me, or even unhappy if I have the means of "correcting the problem," makes me sick to my stomach. I can take on any depth of self-deprivation if I know (or believe) that doing so will benefit someone close to me. I try to save the universe, and I fail because I don't know how to save myself first, no matter how much Ayn Rand I read.

Is it a fundamental lack of self-esteem? I don't think so. I do think, though, that it's a result of having grown up alone. All through my childhood, I made friends by doing things for them. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I suspect, is the fear that saying "no" to my compatriots will make them leave me. Jessie suggested it last night, and I denied it then, but looking at it, I suspect it's closer to the truth than I might like to admit.

I'm still afraid of being alone, and I'll hurt myself to make sure I'm not. I don't go in for masochism, but I'll put up with a lot of crap from people that claim to want me around. My first relationship is a good example of this.

The budget, then, is a major source of emotional headache for me. Because I control the purse strings in the family, my job is to say no to the requests of others, and every time I say no my guts clench up and I want to curl up in a corner and die. I'm still trying to win the approval of those from whom I know I don't have anything to prove. I don't make enough money to be able to say yes to everything, but I can't say no without feeling bad, and when it comes to money this is a dangerous game.

---

I'm going to change tacks for a moment, and switch over to a related subject. A few weeks ago, I entered into a dominant/submissive relationship with someone with whom I've grown very close over the years we've known each other. It satiates the screaming demons inside of me, to serve and know that even when I misbehave, my servitude pleases my mistress.

By "mistress", it's pretty clear I don't mean Jessie. Zie knows, zie accepts, zie doesn't understand entirely but zie supports and even encourages it somewhat.

So far, it's only been online, mostly because of the distance between us, but in part because of all of the above factors and because of my own mildly obsessive-compulsive tendencies. I fixate on things very easily, and in something so reality-warping, this would be a very dangerous thing again. I trust my mistress implicitly, even out of scene, not to do anything to hurt me, but she and I both agree that this should not become a relationship that overwhelms or controls either of us. We both have mates outside of it, and we both have lives, and if it ever interferes with either, it should be ended.

Over the weekend, I had the chance to actually play out some small measure of this, with someone not my mistress. Despite my would-be top not being overly skilled or interested in the scene, I still found it very seductive. I feel protected, knowing that at least within the confines of the scene, someone is going to take care of me, and that even if I'm punished it's out of tenderness. I know that to truly be a submissive, one must want what the dominant wants, even if it's self-detrimental, trusting in the top to protect and make safe. 

It's this sense of giving up control that I find so darkly attractive and so dangerous. I already struggle with the fact of being the primary income in my family. My mate, as much as I may love Jessie, is not well-suited to being "in charge". (If zie were, I think zie and I would have entered into that kind of relationship long ago and never regretted it.) The chance to not be in charge is one that I could far too easily accept as proper, and if I were to try I'd likely hurt many more people than just me. 

Having the chance to explore it in person, to actually experience the role of the submissive and then have someone critique me afterwards and give me pointers on how to be a better pet left me breathless and anxious. I walked around with the collar I had been given around my neck for the whole of the weekend and even wore it into the office on Monday as a piece of jewelry before realizing that I had been letting it take over my thoughts and removed it.

There is, I tell myself, a time and a place for everything. However, it's hard to confine an emotion that one would like to feel at all times to a limited set of times and places, even knowing that only by doing so does it become possible to experience it at all.

---

Now to tie these two threads together.

Jessie hasn't worked in eight months. Zie gets up when zie wants, goes to bed when zie wants, knows that the money is there to pay for small indulgences without having to think, has never been denied anything by me, and has, in general, little in the way of responsibility beyond keeping the apartment looking nice. Even that doesn't have to happen if something interrupts, or even if zie just forgets, zie knows I'll be irritated but I won't kick zim out.

In short, zie's been leading the life that I wish I could have, albeit with a bit more freedom than I might necessarily want.

I dumped core last night, telling all of this to Jessie at two in the morning. I've felt that Jessie hadn't taken the job search seriously. I'd had a background nervousness as the sole income earner for a while, but it's been really heavy lately with everything else going on, the times I've spent in the control of someone else putting the times I've
had to be the bitch about money into sharp relief and making me more uncomfortable.

I don't want to give up the satisfaction and happiness I find in servitude, but I need some way of keeping it from becoming an escape mechanism, and the best way I know to do that is to lessen the negative impact everything
else has. The fastest path to that end involves Jessie getting a job so that I don't feel I'm the only one supporting us and thus making all the decisions about where the money goes. It's probably a strange coping mechanism in my head, but it's there and I work with it and I've led a happy life so far, even with all the ups and downs.