transtryingtheirbest

[transtryingtheirbest]

the working from home experience

[transtryingtheirbest]

coming out and out and out and out

I've been working hard trying to broaden the circle of people who know that I'm trans. There is still a little part of me that still doesn't feel like or believe that it's real - even though I find myself not wanting to wear boy clothes at all now I don't have to. Even on work days where I'm having meetings, I find myself wearing a t-shirt and skirt at my desk (thank god for working from home).

I find myself looking up advice and tips on coming out as trans, even though I feel like I'm older than the target audience. One thing I saw and liked was the idea that it's not 'coming out' but 'inviting in'. This feels right to me as I find myself 'coming out' over and over again as I tell more friends about my journey.

And here's where I find some anxiety. It's a journey, and one I've set off on without a clear destination in mind. So what do I say? Because I've mainly been telling friends through text, I find myself experimenting with how I've broken the news. I started off telling people that I had started a journey and that I wasn't a man. This felt a little melodramatic, which I will get back to in a second, so I started saying simply that I wasn't a man, and then I moved to saying I am trans rather than disclaiming being a man.

Back to the feeling of melodrama. Part of me understands, intellectually, that this is a big deal. I've been met with support and at least half of people have said they are 'proud' of me for trusting them enough to tell them, but I can't help but try and downplay it. I find myself adding caveats that it is only relatively big news, or little news, or hey by the way I'm doing this. I think I struggle to feel like it is a big step because in many ways, I haven't stepped out yet.

Sure I've told my brother, but I haven't told my parents, and I'm not sure how they will react. I'm fine shopping or walking the dog outside, but I'm secretly terrified of running into the neighbours, even though I shouldn't care at all. They gotta learn sometime!

I think part of this is that I haven't, as yet, had a negative response to me coming out as trans. This of course is because I've chosen to tell people I'm *pretty* sure aren't bigots, but I know that eventually, I will hit one. Maybe it'll be the more conservative parts of my family. Maybe it will be a coworker, or someone in the company I only deal with occasionally will turn up their nose at me. I still scan the faces of every person I cross out in public, sure that I will see some disgust or disapproval on their faces. And I don't know how I will deal with that. Talking with my partner, she raised the idea that once her father found out, our relationship with her parents might change drastically. This is not a big deal, as we already don't have a terrific relationship, but it reminded me that there will be some people that won't take it well.

Yesterday, in the work teams chat, an assistant from another office posted that an associate had an email signature that read "[NAME] she/her". Without any comment from her or anyone else, I was left wondering if she was having a dig at it, or she didn't understand it, or whether there was some innocent context I was missing. But I couldn't help feel the dread that when I come out at work, that she might not be supportive.

And so I keep trying to broaden my circle of people who know. This weekend I'm going to go out for the first time to a pub as femme presenting as I can. I'll keep you all updated.

[transtryingtheirbest]

So here I am. On Tumblr again. I guess I should introduce myself. I've never been good at introducing myself but I can start with the relevant basics.

Hello, I'm A. I'm 28, I was assigned male at birth, and I grew up a boy and at some point became a man. Anyone who knows me knows this But something less people know is that I have spent a lot of those 28 years wishing I'd been born a girl.

For a while, in uni, I thought about starting a blog, much like this one, which would let me rant about secretly being a woman or trans or something like that. I don't know what I would have said, I don't know what I would want to say even. I still don't. I didn't ever make the blog because I felt like it was stupid and I wasn't really trans. I put it aside. Even if I was trans (and how could I be) I was a fat man. If I were to transition, I'd be a fat ugly woman, and that would be worse. I could live my life of privilege as a cis male (who is basically white even if that isnt strictly true) and I could be happy, or happy enough. I tried to put it out of my mind and kept this up through uni and into full time work after graduating.

As everyone knows, the novel coronavirus arrived in 2020 and messed everyone's life up. Fortunately, as an office working yuppie, the main effect of this was that I started working from home. I made a few non-committal statements to my girlfriend that I might try doing make up or wearing more femme clothing, and lockdowns made me grow out my hair but I didn't really do anything until about three months ago when bored and procrastinating from work, I pilfered a lipstick from her make up bag and put it on.

I looked good, I thought. Better than good. Such a small thing, a tiny insignificant change and I was examining myself in the mirror like a preening bird. I wasn't noticing my double chin or the bags under my eyes. I flopped my hair around until it sat more girlish and admired myself again. An ocean had been crossed. The step of colouring my lips a deep violet showed that I could be more than the limits I'd always assumed were there. Within a week I'd bought a set of supermarket make up brushes and a fun "mini power palette" of eyeshadows and a lipstick shade called "thirsty bae". Bright red. Subtlety is for suckers.

The great thing about being stuck in your home is that you can order things off the internet and sit around waiting for them to arrive. I scrolled through Shein, a fast fashion site which mass produces clothes in China and ships them worldwide with great haste. This probably means that Shein fills landfills in the developing world and fills the sky with aircraft exhaust fumes, but on the other hand it means that a nervous maybe-not-a-boy in Australia can get their girlfriend to measure them and then fill a cart with dresses and skirts and shirts of all kinds of shapes and styles, so who is to say if they're good or bad.

If putting on the lipstick opened the door, wearing the cutesy overall dress and white blouse pushed me through it. While I'd always wanted to be born a girl, I never felt like I had dysphoria about my body. I hated it, sure, but I hated the way fat clung to my face and my belly (and in an example of my vanity, despised the fat that built up there far more than the fat that chose to choke my liver), but I never despised my broad shoulders or my big feet or even my penis. But looking at myself in this cute outfit, I felt euphoric. Immediately I lost all interest in my entire male wardrobe. I shaved my entire body in the shower. Another Shein order was made within the week.

I found myself putting on makeup and skirts/dresses on every day. I turned off my webcam for work calls, patiently waited through morning scrums to apply mascara and eyeshadows and lipsticks safe from prying eyes. I started to get bold, I would take out the bins girlmode. Walk to the post box. Take the dog on walks. Eventually I was comfortable enough, or rather brave enough, to do the shopping in my dress. I scanned every face for disapproval or disgust but aside from a child who seemed more intrigued than anything, nobody paid me any notice. This was revolutionary. I definitely did not pass, and it didn't matter. People didn't tell at me or throw rocks or any of the many unrealistic scenarios I had dreamed up. So I did it again. And again.

This week, I told my brother and cousins that I was trans/non-binary. I'd asked internet friends to use they/them pronouns for me previously, and even gone over to a close friends house in femme mode, and the more people I told the more that I felt like my little attempts to transition actually amounted to something real. I tried to be nonchalant with my coming out but was showered with slightly bewildering support and joy from my brother and cousins. I had to sort of stop and think to myself why they were making such a big deal of it, before letting myself accept that this is a big deal. So here we are. I don't know where this gender journey will take me. I'm not certain if I'm an enby or genderfluid or a trans woman. But I know this.

I'm 28, I was assigned male at birth, and I've spent 28 years hiding that I'm not male. I'm not a boy and I'm not a man. I am trans. I am a transfemme person.

I am 28 years old and three months ago I put on lipstick and finally saw what I could be. What I should be and what I will be.

And I'm so fucking excited.