Trapped....

 I feel so trapped today my skin, my body the prison. There isn't anything I can do right now to change it. My mind has become once more plagued by the could have been's and the would have been's and most especially the should have been's. The need to's and have to's have joined the mind fray this time as well. I do not know how much more I can withstand.
  I could have been born biologically a girl. Why wasn't I? I should have been. It would have put my life on a course that I see so many acquaintances upon. I should be on that course too. I need to be on that course. I have to be on that course. I should be following that course!
  So people say now I am at least heading in that general direction. I suppose so. Still I need Reassignment Surgery. I have to have it. It is one of the last remaining walls in my head, and the only way I can continue to move forward in my life. I just can't afford it.
   Nine years ago I was diagnosed with a Seizure Disorder. Hit me hard you could say. Many in my family and other acquaintanceship did not really understand and therefore were no help in that situation. They told me to get a job while I was seizing every few hours or so. It took a few years to get it and me under control. By then I had no job history. Has does one get a job let alone money for a Surgery they need with no job history?!
   If I had no job history how did I get money to start my transition you might ask. I had a brief job as a stage tech. It wasn't even part time but I was able to save up enough to see the therapist and later the doctor to get started. Hormones are cheap compared to many other prescription drugs. Once you have your Note to start HRT and get the initial doctors visit out of the way Transitioning isn't all that expensive until you need to get blood drawn again or see your doctor or you arrive at the point of Surgery.
   I shouldn't need to have Surgery. I could have been born the way I should have been born. It would have saved so much more trouble for me, family, and more in the end.
   Why? Why do I need Reassignment Surgery? It will match me entirely as a whole for one. Another reason is Relationships. My Sexual Orientation has made itself known clearly at last. It was never clear I saw my orientation through a fog my whole life until now. I know I was always uncomfortable around guy talk because I wasn't attracted to women the way they were. I didn't see women the way they did. That's right I am attracted to men. I do not know if I can have a relationship with a woman. I think that has been part of my social problem now and growing up. I was expected to and I couldn't.
  At first I didn't know why those OF's popped up every so often like they did today and plagued me so. I do now. It's regret. Regret for a past I could have had, and regret for a Future I may not get to see. A Future I desperately want and reach for with my heart and soul. I will strive for it. I just don't know how to go about getting there. I suppose right there is another reason I feel Trapped.

Passing For Me....

   Funny how things went for me yesterday. The night before I stubbornly bit my lip and put my foot down as I made my mind up to be me the next day. I knew my mother and I would be going around town here in Utah County doing our weekly shopping for groceries and such. That is exactly what I did when I awoke.
   My mother hollered through the house as I was laying in bed that we needed to go to the store. I crawled out of it and went into her room to find her hacking and slashing at things in her game on her computer. I knew I had time.
   I took my time in the shower turning the heat up to ease the aches in my back. My muscles there for some reason keep being pulled and become stiff all through the day sometimes multiple days in a row. Hot water sometimes helps and stops the stiffness from settling in. I also did the usual feminine routine to make sure I was presentable. No girl wants furry legs.
   As I waited for my hair to finish drying and the fog on the mirror to clear. I checked my Facebook. One of the few mediums I have to keep in contact with friends and the local GLBTQ Community. A couple of friends were heading to the Festival of Colors. Damn I wanted to go to that. It sneaked up on me again! Oh well next year I suppose.
   I headed back into the bathroom and started doing my makeup. I can never decide on what Eye-Shadow to use. Only a few shades I have moderately go with my eye color. Finally satisfied I finished applying the rest and went into my mothers room to ask a question.
   I needed socks. Some thin ones, paper thin to be exact. She looked around and handed me a pair. They would do. I needed them for my healed boots. As if I wasn't tall enough already! It was also a mistake to put them on that early.
   My mother wanted to clean up the house by getting rid of all the trash that had accumulated. Spring is here after all and Spring cleaning had begun. I made multiple trips to the dumpster across from our apartment. In those healed boots. By the time we were done and ready to head out my feet and ankles ached. The first person to say I have no stamina for heals gets my heal kicked in their nether region!
   I heaved a sigh of relief as I sat down in the car and we headed off to the store. The employee's at the Orem Harmons were familiar with us. From the cheese guy and gall, the butchers, the bread cutters, down to many of the cashiers. We were valued customers and always recognized us when we came in. Yesterday was no different.
   I got a few double glances but the same smiles I always did from them. However the other customers were a different story. Most didn't even think twice about me when they saw me! If they did double takes I could tell they were looking at my height due to those boots. I was just another average Jane in the grocery store.
   We went to Costco after Harmons. Things there were a little different. I got a few strange looks, but it was not anything I couldn't put up with. I have put up with strange looks before in SLC. Most in the crowds of Costco are intent on grabbing and snatching they're bulks and rushing to get a place in line so they can get the heck out of that mob.
   As we got home and were carrying the groceries in our next door neighbor saw me. I don't know what he was thinking. I know this was inevitable I am me and going to be me for a lifetime. And I stayed me all day Yesterday. I even went on my walk last night as me.
   On my walk a couple funny things happened. I had just left and was at the first light to cross University Prkwy. A group of young adults around my age came and waiting for the light with me. A few kept looking at me. I noticed they were trying to figure me out. Shortly after on another street somebody stopped and asked if they I wanted a ride. This street isn't exactly the place cars should stop to do that. I shook my head and the driver moved on.
   I don't need a Real Life Test. I've already passed. I can pass for people pass me by. I have the confidence to be me. I am now and forever Visibly Me Maxine Marie!

Screaming Me!

                I don’t know if I can do this. Write my story down this way. I want to cry as I type. It is hard to express what I have really gone through in my life. Who am I is where I should begin I suppose. My name is Natalie and I was born a boy.

                I hated that word that phrase, a boy. You’re a boy Nathan. You’re a boy Natalie! I wanted to scream. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! Why won’t anyone listen? Why can’t they hear me? I am here aren’t I?

                No for a long time I suppose I wasn’t. For a long time I was someone I was not. For a long time I was Nathan. That hurt me. That depressed me and that practically almost killed me.

                I don’t know what is going through my head sitting here at my computer writing this. How will this help me? I still want to cry. I have to close my eyes and put my hands to my face every so often and breathe just to continue. Keep going Natalie. Keep going.

                I’ve been transitioning for little over a year now. That boy everyone kept telling me to be continues to fade into my past. He still haunts me. Every day more and more I see the real me emerge like a butterfly out of a cocoon.

                I may be all over the place as I write this. I am free-writing my thoughts. Whatever pops into my head I type out. I think it is the only way I can do this in all honesty. I have written blogs about my transition but that seems different than this. Easier even. I am not sure why.

                Natalie keep it together and continue. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! On these pages silent screams. No wonder no one can hear me. My written words have only been shared with a precious few.

                Natalie is not the name I actually go by. It was the name of a Transgender character I made up. One I was using in a story I tried to write of my life before this. It didn’t work out. I don’t know why I brought and kept the name Natalie here. It fits me. Fits me just as well as the name I currently go by.

                Strange how things keep changing in my life and mold around me. How they can go from bad to worse and from worse to good. I am happy. I am a happy girl. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! That’s right I can scream it! I AM A HAPPY GIRL!

                I had to breathe again for a minute. I don’t know why this is so emotional. Why being born a boy would continue to haunt me now that I am becoming the girl I know I am. Perhaps it is because things are coming to a head in my life.

                That is a scary thought at times. I mean where I live I can be hurt easily just for continuing to present somewhat as a man. What do I mean? My transition has reached a point where I can not entirely pass as a man anymore and without a shave and some makeup as a woman. I have some scary encounters none have been while I was fully as me. All have been in that limbo-like state. I am becoming a frightened girl. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

                Lately I go on my daily walks at night. I can wear a jacket still in this warming weather at night. It doesn’t help except to give me a little confidence to be out. Last night however with two jackets on due to the rain they did nothing at all. I was on a section of street that wasn’t well lit at least on my side. The other while well lit had no sidewalk. A car pulled up beside me and its cabin light was on. The guy in side was scruffy mid late 20’s and had a cigg in his mouth and money in his hand. He kept looking at me and following along beside me in his car. He did so for about two minutes before pulling away and I breathed again.

                Hormones do more than just develop your body into a more feminine shape.  Muscle mass is reduced and body fat redistributed as well. What you may have been able to do before transitioning you may not be able to now. Not in the same way. Like opening a can of pickles!

                AHHHHHHHHHHHHH! I have to keep screaming. I have to let it all out. I am so emotionally tense. It has built up all this time all these years. You’re a boy Nathan. You’re a boy Natalie. NO I AM A FUCKING GIRL GET IT FUCKING RIGHT PEOPLE! YOU CAN’T TELL ME WHO I AM. YOU NEVER COULD! You never could. You never could get me.

                You think they can hear me now? Natalie the girl.  No not Natalie. I like the name. I could even go by it, but I am Maxine. Maxine Marie that is me. Although Maxine Natalie Marie has sort of a nice ring to it! Kind of a long name however. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! Perhaps I could use it as a Pen name when I become an Author.

                I suppose this has worked out a little bit. Free-writing a part of me I mean and my experiences. Perhaps I shall put it in my blog. Start sharing it there however I wish certain other people were reading my blog. All in due time I suppose.

                In my blogs I write I usually have a sign off I do when I end something I have written however this wasn’t meant to be a blog. I have Free-written this entire little blurb. I suppose I will just end it with an, AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! 

The Right Life....

  The right life. Is there one? I have always seen myself on a path just next to the one everyone else is walking on. Separated by nothing for I could see the other path and the people on it clearly. Alone on mine I wander. Outcast by God and doomed to a fictional life that was never meant to be. The wrong life.
   Why? I use to and still do ask myself and God this simple question. Why was I born in the wrong body? Was not the hardships I was going to have in life not enough? Did I really need a Gender Identity thrown into the mix? Did I need to be denied the other path and most importantly to me a family of my own one day?
  A family of my own. I would love to have children of my own flesh and blood. That can never be. Due to Hormone Replacement Therapy I am sterile, and I will not go off hormones for the few weeks it would take to become fertile again. There is no guarantee that is possible anyhow. At this point it is Reassignment Surgery or bust. I cannot live any other way. I never could the lifetime of depression I once faced was proof of that.
  My depression. My family nor my doctors never could figure out what was the cause. I remember so many different anti-depressants over the course of many years to help with it. None ever worked and a couple only masked it. I was hospitalized the first time at about the age of five for suicide attempts. Deep down I knew all along the cause of my depression. I was different.
  Different. It took many years to put another term to that word. When I found the term Transgender it hit home  immediately, and just as quickly I denied it. I was Mormon this couldn't be! It meant upsetting my family and at the time my family meant everything to me. Aunts, Uncles, cousins, and Grandparents they all meant the world. They were my world.
   My world came crashing down on me years later. Everyone started having families of their own. Something I never really had and never will. We all drifted apart. I think I drifted even further as my Gender Identity plagued me during all this. What could I do about it? I had nothing to work with and didn't know even where to begin.
  I knew I must find my right life. Living the wrong one all those years had taken its toll. I sought and finally found help. Everything still seemed so hopeless however.
   Hope. I finally had it when I took my first dose of hormones. My depression of nearly thirty years lifted immediately. It didn't take any anti-depressants. It took the simple pills that would help me to become the woman I know I was meant to be in the first place.
   I do not know how my family will see all this. I have never been taken seriously within our family circle. I think that is what really hurts. It's not whether I will be accepted or rejected. It's whether or not they will even take the time to listen in the first place. To them I am still the hyper little boy clutching Grandma's skirts. I doubt they will say anything until they see me wearing a skirt of my own. That is when they will comment and from past experience I doubt it will be pleasant.
  When coming out as Transgender you eventually learn that people surprise you. Many have. A couple have been family. However I can't help but draw a line on many of these people. I have known them too long and they're reactions have been predictable for sometime. Still there is room for growth and understanding and perhaps I may still be misjudging them.
   So am I still living the wrong life? No. At least not entirely. I am getting at least as much of the right life as I can get. One can only go so far when they have been born with the wrong body. I still see myself on this other path. I do not know if I will ever get off it and on to the other one. The right life. Is there one? No not for anybody.

The Merry-Go-Round: A Relationship

   Damn, it's early yet in April and I am already writing my fourth Blog of the month! I have been hit hard this month and it seems to only be getting worse. My life here at home is growing increasingly worse as my mother retreats further into her own little world. Treating me like crap in the process.
   I am practically a stranger she can turn her nose up to now. I believe that is how her mind is seeing it. Her friends in her computer game are closer to her heart than me. Her own child.
   A verse from a song pops into my head. It's from a Hymn from church, "Has given me a Earthly Home with Parents Kind and Dear." Parents, I never had those not in the general sense. As children when that conversation would arise of, "I have a mommy and daddy," I had to respond I only had a mommy. Back then that confused my peers and they asked questions I just couldn't answer. Like, where was my daddy? I only said I didn't have one. For a time I honestly believed I was found under a cabbage leaf in the garden out back.
   My Mother had issues of her own. She didn't know how to be a mother and she never learned how to be one. Her idea of being a good mother was taking me to get fast food and the toy that came with the meal. Which was something that affected my health and my mentality growing up.
   At about the age of eight my therapist and hers told her to leave home. She somehow got it in her head that meant a whole other state! I remember crying begging her not to go and to take me with her. I wanted to go on this trip to. She left and I rarely saw her for a few years. The therapists only meant into her own apartment. I don't know how she made the leap of it being another state. I can only think of one reason. She wanted to get away from me.
   By the age of eleven my Grandmother felt I should be living with my Mother again. I admit excitement at the prospect of living in another state and getting out of Utah. However things were different there. My mother worked nights at the hospital and slept during the day.
  Pretty much that was the next few years despite me going into foster care for a couple of them. My relationship with my mother in Washington was depressing. My family back in Utah met and decided I needed to get away from that. My mothers reaction when she told me was one of the few emotional caring moments I have ever witnessed or remember between us.
  Twelve years ago as we skip over a portion of my life. I came out as Transgender to my mother for the first time. The next morning my Grandmother was immediately at our door to talk to me. Being LDS and Transgender in my mind was taboo back then, a big No No! I believe my Grandmother answering my Mother's call meant, Stop the train! Pull the emergency brake! However I stuck to the tracks for a time and kept moving.
  I remember talking to my mother about me and who I was back then. About how she was feeling about it and how she would feel if I went all the way. She told me,"Your my child I love you no matter who you are or become or what you do."
   Coming back to the present I should have seen this treatment heading my way. It's a merry-go-round relationship with us. It always comes around again only faster with each spin. Things begin to blur and eventually you become sick and need to get off. Yes that perfectly describes the Mother Daughter relationship I have always had with her. As Visibly Me Maxine Marie I suppose it's time to get on another ride. Perhaps I will try the Roller-Coaster!

I am Trans and I am Mormon....

  My name is Maxine, I am Transgender, and I am Mormon. I belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I was born, baptized, and raised Mormon. I knew by faith I had a testimony of the church, its leaders, Joseph Smith, Christ, and God. However I also knew I was different from the other youth attending church. I was born in the wrong body.
   I didn't know how to communicate at such a young age what I was feeling. What I knew. I remember as little kids when we would talk with each other in primary. The girls would say I going to be a mommy some day. The boys would say I going to be like my daddy. I would think to myself, "I don't have a daddy, but I want to be a mommy." I never spoke this out loud at least to my memory and knowledge. I am sure if I did the Primary teacher would of corrected me and spoke to my Grandmother and Mother about it.
   I have gone over in other blog's about signs I was different growing up. I won't bring them all up here. There is one though that jumps to mind. One while I am in childhood that has always been ingrained in my memory. It concerned clothing, church attire.
   I remember standing in a white shirt, slacks, and my clip on tie. I was at one of the entrances inside the church building. I don't remember if it was before or after, most likely after for everyone was standing around talking and us kids were running around the halls. I was zoned out and observant in this moment, an occurrence that happened at times throughout my life. I watched as girls blew by me in their dresses and skirts. Free and unhindered. While the boys stride was limited do to their dress pants, and their ties flying into their faces. As I continued to look about me I also noticed the adults. They were standing around talking. The women again in dresses, skirts, blouses. Relaxed unless they were trying to control the children running about. The men whether they would admit it or not seemed too hot in their suits. They looked as if they were gasping their last breath and about to asphyxiate. I came to when my name was called I remember that. Before we left I thought, "I won't grow up like those men." I made myself a promise I wouldn't that I would stop it anyway I could. For that was an unacceptable future one I just wouldn't be able to stand. I must be a free me!
  Well like all children in the church you grow older and graduate from Primary. For the boys you become a Deacon. I remember I wasn't really all that excited about becoming one. I didn't like the change imposed upon me. White shirt and Tie was mandatory, and I couldn't get away with a clip on anymore. It began to scare me that I wasn't going to be able to halt it! I had made myself a promise. I won't grow up like those men on that pulpit and sitting in the seats that I passed the sacrament to. I was helpless.
  It was this point in my life I started praying to God. I prayed over and over for him to change me. To make me a Girl. Every night I would do this. Explaining to him why, pleading to him! The next morning I would wake disappointed and at times in tears.
  Before I knew it I was shaving and a Priest in the church. Now I was Blessing the Sacrament. In Priesthood I was being taught how to treat Women. To prepare for a Mission. I was also being taught to one day be a loving and caring Husband and Father that could provide for the family.
  This was all wrong too me. Sure I wanted a family of my own just not this way. I didn't want to be a loving caring Husband and Father. I wanted to be a loving, caring Wife and Mother! I didn't want to serve a mission though I had pressure from family to serve one. It was all wrong to me and my promise to myself was officially and utterly broken.
  I went to Job Corps after that. I wanted my High School and that was the only option for me to get it. I was warned by my Bishop to remember who I was. That too many youth go there and forget and fall away. Perhaps I took his warning to heart for I came out as Transgender for the first time in my life there.
  It was out in public now. Even if it was a closed campus, but two hundred plus students now knew. After a few weeks I had the gumption and guts worked up to tell my Mother. She didn't take it so well, and the next morning my Grandmother was there to "talk" to me.
  I remained out as Transgender and Me while I was at Job Corps surrounded by those supportive friends. After Graduation was another matter. I felt forced into my Bishops office. Things he said made me feel guilty. I tried to be a faithful church member after that. However I no longer felt comfortable there. I felt comfortable no where. I stopped attending.
  A few years would pass and I would make attempts online to contact Transgender community's from time to time. The Bishop's words would always come back and haunt me and I would stop and cut off contact again. Other times I would try and attend church see how old friends were doing. They were happy and I was not. They were moving forward and I was not. They were themselves, and I was not.
  It was around this time that my Home Teacher and former Adviser of the Priest Quarm started coming around. He began Shepherding me back into the church slowly. Eventually I started getting lessons to prepare for the Higher Priesthood. I had been attending church, and reading my scriptures over and over. I worked with the Bishop and when the time came I was ordained. I was an Elder. I still wasn't happy though my family was. At the time I figured that was all that mattered.
   To get into the temple I had to have a job and pay tithing. I strove towards that goal. With all my might I put in effort. I never made it. Oh I made efforts to get a job, but a seizure disorder had other plans. It was a sudden onset. Hit me in the car while I ran a stop sign unconscious and crashed into two others full throttle at rush hour on state street.
  Took them six months to figure out what was wrong with me. For four-five of them I did nothing but lay in a stupor on the couch. Doped up and content to be doped up. I didn't want to to feel anything. Even then I received pressure from Church and Family to get a job. Even while I was passing out in church falling over barely missing chairs and desks and pews.
  A few years later I had moved out of that ward. Church was harder for me to attend where I now lived. I started thinking about God. I started thinking about my Life and all that has happened in it. I became angry, and I blamed the bastard! It really didn't help that a couple years after my move I was enrolled into a school that was founded on Mormon values and Morals. That place was about as Molly as you could get!
  The term Molly Mormon is used at least here in Utah to describe the zealous. Those people who are so obsessed with the church they let it rule their entire lives to the point that it even goes against it's teachings at times. For example when I got there slanderous rumors were still being spread around about a former student that hadn't been there in years! A former Gay student. It took a few months but I found out through overhearing a conversation I wasn't meant to. That those rumors were started by certain staff there. I thought nothing of it at the time, but I did spread around what I had heard. That rumor didn't get told all that often anymore after that.
  It was here at this place I came to a decision at last. I needed to come to terms with my Identity. I told my therapist there I was at a fork in the road. One future leads to Church and Family. The other Estrogen and Gender Reassignment Surgery. I knew though I had to explore the Transgender side of me. I had to get information. I had to speak to others! I can't just live it without doing that.
  So I found a support group to attend. I learned much and reevaluated everything I had thought about before concerning my Gender Identity. Eventually I came to the conclusion despite what the Church thinks and believe this is me. There are things not set in stone. I still hated God at that time. Began to despise him at this point for adding Gender Identity to the list of things going on in my life.
   You see believe it or not I love my Religion. That was taken from me. That is not my choice and I don't believe it is God's. At least not entirely. I do believe it was his words that set it in motion. The Twelve and the Members of the Church did the rest and it will be on they're heads. I cannot comfortably attend nor can I partake of its services even if I live a good life. I guess I do hate my Religion. It is a Love/Hate Relationship.

  It is only now today that I have finally come to make peace with God. I don't know how long it will take to make peace with the Church. I don't know how long it will take for me to pick up the scriptures again and read them with a open heart and contrite spirit. I don't know how long it will take for me to pray every night before bed again. I do not know. I only know that I have knowledge in the fact I am me, and God knows it. And with the peace I have made with him today I have a Testimony that God will not condemn his daughter Maxine Marie Wright.
   

A Family Pioneering....

   I always believed that when the year nineteen hundred hit things in America were changed forever. They were instantly different from the eighteen hundreds. That the west was tamed, everyone had a automobile, streets were paved, and all the major cities were built. I don't know how or why I developed these concepts. Perhaps it was the movies or reading about it in school. I don't know. I do know this I was wrong.
  In the year nineteen hundred people were still crossing the plains on their own two feet if they had to. In the west most streets were dirt even in many major cities. Many towns and cities were still tent towns back then.
   What really blows my mind for a loop is, out here in the west I had family. Family living in one of those tent towns. Pioneering and carving out a life for themselves and their family and future generations to come. Family my Great Grandmother would sometimes tell a story or two about because she knew them. My Grandmother she knew a few of them as well when she was a girl. These people have become legends, heroes to me.
  Back then not sure exactly the year. My Grandmother does. My Great Great Grandfather Lee Mecham lived in one of those tent towns called, Duchesne Utah. He was a striking young man, kind and charitable or so I am told. Perhaps he could have had his pick of any young lady in the area if he had a mind to. However it was Jessie Bernice Peterson that somehow caught his eye.
   She was pretty much the only one in the area educated enough to teach the young. So she became Duchesne's first School Teacher. She lived in a small cabin with her parents and two brothers. Her brothers slept outside on a box spring, the cabin being too small to fit them all. I suppose I could see why Lee Mecham loved her. She was quite beautiful and the west had given her a tough spirit. Personally I believe the tough spirit is genetic. Our family history being what it is and all.
  Well young Lee Mecham would court beautiful Jessie Bernice Peterson at her families cabin. In those days that was the way of things. On his way home he would find her brothers had put molasses on his saddle. They didn't approve of him, and he never complained. Eventually they were married and started a family of their own.
  One story I remember being told to me. After they were married they homesteaded along the Green River. Now Her brother's, and parent's each homesteaded a section down river. Can't remember what Lee was doing either homesteading another section or attending the cattle. But she had to tend a section by herself for a time. There was still problems in the area with the local Indian Tribe so she slept with a rifle under her pillow every night. She knew how to use it too! A tough spirit.
  Grandpa Mecham died in the nineteen forties of a massive heart attack. They had company over and were sitting around telling stories and jokes. He through up his arms like he was about to give out a huge laugh but it never came. I hear tell of people who showed up at his funeral thanking the family for him. People no one in our family knew or had only seen around town. People he had done spur of the moment favors for or helped out occasionally. That was just the kind of man he was, the kind of person I would inspire to be.
   My Grandmother told me she asked Grandma Mecham (Jessie Bernice Peterson) years later why she never remarried. She told her that he was the only man for her. I guess when you have had the love of your life No one else can live up to those standards.
   Grandma Mecham died in the nineteen seventies. She had crossed the plains in a covered wagon and had lived to see man walk on the moon. To have seen the things she has seen in her lifetime. To see the world change around her. I have to wonder just what did she think about it all?
  I do know these stories and photos have giving me a whole new perspective on time, life, and change. Thing's may happen quickly like the industrial revolution or things may stay the same like using a plow for the  last two thousand years or more. I also know it wasn't those things that mattered. It was the people and experiences that were encountered as time, life, and change moved things forward. That's what I Visibly Me Maxine Marie know.

Cute? Me? Huh?

   Cute is a term I never thought people would associate with me. I grew up encased in a very shy shell perceiving myself ugly and therefore ugly to the world. I was never comfortable with myself because I wasn't myself. So how is it now I am suddenly an object of Men's attention?
  I know it is something to do with my recent photos of myself. People have been telling me I look good, pretty even. I don't always agree, but sometimes I see a glimmer of beauty come through.
  I use to daydream when I was young what would it be like to be them. Them being the girls I saw at school. A boy telling me I was pretty in my ear, and if I liked him enough perhaps a kiss as a reward on the cheek. But mostly I just wanted to be able to laugh, joke, talk, and even cry as a girl with a group of friends at the lunch table. I suppose that sounds kind of sappy to some of you, but that was me back then. It was all that kept me going even though I knew deep down that would never be able to be.
   Here I am now though years later. I won't mention how many, and things are quite different. I have been on Hormone Replacement Therapy for little over a year now. Many changes have taken place. Biologically, Emotionally, Mentally, and Spiritually for the better. However I don't think my mind was ready to cope just yet with, Men.
   I have been telling people I am concerned with my Identity first and foremost. My Orientation I tell them when they ask will have to wait in line when my Identity has finished working itself out. That is just it though isn't it. One's Identity is always evolving, growing and moving forward. I can't make excuses anymore about my Orientation. Not in light of recent encounters and more that are likely to follow.
  Recent encounters. Yes encounters as in plural, as in I have had more than one so far. Men have been opening up chat with me on Facebook. Usually it was someone that sent a friend request months ago, and we had friends in common. However I never heard anything from them until that chat box popped up on my screen.
  They start out innocent enough and introduce themselves and say how we haven't really interacted all that much. Though a red flag is raised when after the introduction they immediately say you are so beautiful Maxine. They ask about my transition and again tell me how beautiful I am. I humor them a little by giving nonspecific details and information about myself. Frankly by this point they have already begun to creep me out. The info I give them seems to satisfy them somewhat however they soon get around to wanting to meet me and visit with me in person. I am in no way cool with that!
   During one of these recent encounters I saw a friend online and sought her out as a lifeline. I popped up another private chat window with her and told her what was happening. I asked her "What am I doing to attract this?!" She only responded,"Your cute, people see it." Huh?! Not to mention blush!

   Cute? I will say it again a term I would never think people would associate with me. I have had people tell me even before I started HRT that I will be a pretty girl. I couldn't believe them at the time. Not sure I am entirely ready to believe them now. After all all I am really seeing right now is but a glimmer of beauty in my photos or when I look in the mirror.
   It took me thirty years to get to this point in my life. Thirty years to come to grips and start becoming me. How long will I go before I come to grips with the rest of the world and being Visibly Me Maxine Marie in it?