Well, life never ceases to throw me curveballs, and I keep trying to hit them. This morning when I got up, I had an email from my therapist. She apologized in advance but said that she thought she had been hasty in telling me that I didn't need any more individual sessions. She did say I'd made a lot of progress, but that there were more things she wanted to discuss with me.

At first, I admit I was a little upset with it. Here I thought I'd been making all these great strides, and she said as much, but to "go back" felt like a retreat. Then I thought about it some more and I realized she's right. I'm still very new at this, despite how comfortable I am with it, and there are still things that have been happening that I need to work through.

To illustrate, I had my first full-time weekend last Saturday and Sunday. I had geared up to go over to a friend's house dressed for a gaming session, and that didn't work out; the game got cancelled. Then everyone with whom Jason and I would have gotten together was alternately busy, but I'd taken all this time and effort to putting together a good outfit that I decided I wanted to go out and enjoy being out. I'd been out a few times at this point, nothing really new. I didn't plan on anything going wrong; who does?

I shaved my face again, arms, chest, everything I thought would show. I styled my hair, made sure my outfit was alright, put on my nice shoes, and in short I did everything I could to look good. Jason complimented me on how I looked, and I thought I'd done a good job.

The counterclerk at the coffeeshop took one look at Jason and I and said, "So, are you two brothers or something?"

At the time, I just got irritated by it. Here I was, putting out all this effort into looking nice, and that's what I got back. Now, earlier in the day I had spent all the energy telling Jason and Lurene and my older sister Jennifer to politely kick me in the rump if I started going off on how I didn't pass and all that, and now I was getting frustrated over it again, so I managed to talk myself down off of my irritation, but it still wasn't very good for my self-esteem.

Monday, I think I just walked around in a state of post-ecstasy depression. I had gone out, as myself, for two days without any real thought into it beyond what I wanted to wear and had I shaved adequately and in all the right places. Then, bright and early Monday morning, my carriage turned back into a pumpkin. There's an entire mindset change, really, that's more than just what outfit I have on. Over the weekend, I was myself, Kristina Davis. Then, when I went back to work, I entered an environment where I had to remember that, as much as I understood who I was, nobody else did yet. I felt like I was trying to project being someone I'm not, even though I don't really act any differently at work. I guess that's one more part of it all.

Then today hit. Between what happened on Saturday and the email I got this morning, suddenly it felt like all the progress I had made really didn't amount to much. By the time I'd gotten to work, I'd recognized that I did have a lot left to work through with Feleshia and I sent her back a note saying I didn't mind coming back in for more one-one one sessions, but I was still very down about it. I thought I'd been doing so well, and then suddenly I felt like I hadn't really done much of anything.

Fortunately, my fourteen-weeks-of-no-work-at-work winning streak hadn't broken yet, so I had no productivity to interrupt with my moodiness, but I still wish I'd had something during the day on which to focusto get my mind off of all of this. It didn't happen. I was supposed to attend a meeting at 4:30PM, but by the time it rolled around I was in a miserable mood so I showed up, heard about ten minutes' worth and then left. Jason had to work late, so I just went home and tried to make dinner, but I'd worked myself up into a good funk by then so I just hopped online.

Jennifer was on, thankfully, and I related the whole sordid situation to her. She was very supportive, as was Lurene when I talked to her later that night, but they both essentially the same thing: "Hon, you've been doing this for two months, tops. Don't get discouraged by what happened, and don't take it as a sign of things to come." They both said a lot more than that but that was the gist of it.

As usual, they're right, and I've been beating myself up over nothing. Well, not nothing. I've been getting angry and frustrated that all the things I think I ought to know I don't know, because I never learned them. Being a girl was simply not something taught to me. I'm having to unlearn twenty-five years of habit and adapt to my future, and there's a lot physically that still hasn't shaped up. Being depressed over my first day being a failure is silly, however understandable it may be.

Things felt for a while like they were going really quickly. Not unpleasantly so, but just fast enough that I wasn't really able to think about things as they happened. These are feelings that have been hidden inside for a long time, and they've only been near the surface for about eight months, two of which I've been in therapy, and suddenly I'm fulltiming on the weekends. I'm actually glad for what my therapist said. I have made progress, but I still have a long way to go.

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Lurene did make one interesting point in our conversation tonight. She said, "Part of the secret to passing is to think of yourself as a girl. Not transsexual, not in transition, just female". Looking at it, it doesn't seem like much in the way of wisdom, but it makes a lot of sense. I have been thinking of myself as transsexual, because that's the best word that I had to describe what I was. One day, though, I won't be. Many years from now, after all is said and done, I'll be as female as the next woman. At that point, my transsexuality will be past-tense. I should start thinking in those terms now. It may make the illusion of who I have to be legally harder to maintain, but it will probably make the reality of who I am easier to be.