Sunday 8th July 2018
Its been a couple of weeks since I sat at the computer and wrote another chapter in my journey. In my last piece, I had just moved away from my wife after being with her for the last 20 years of my life. It was a time filled with a mixture of excitement and if I'm to be totally honest with myself and my readers, a time of sadness. Obviously I was excited because I had finally received acceptance from those who I thought I'd never receive it from. Having it drummed into my head for so many years that I would be considered a freak and no one would accept me was actually a shock to my system. I also felt sadness during this time as I never expected this move to be a permanent solution to my marriage breakdown. I just kind of figured that maybe Maria would see that I was serious about having to be who I needed to be and that it wasn't just a passing phase.
The plan was just to move into my little unit in my little gated community where I lived and live a life true to myself for the six months of my lease, where at such a time Maria will finally come around to reason and I could move back and live a life together. I was still a firm believer in the institution of marriage and that I took my marriage vows very seriously.
For the first month or so of our separation, we actually made some positive progress in trying to fix our marriage. We opened a line of communication between us that we hadn't had in years and spent time talking about how the both of us felt. We would some times meet up at a neutral place and just sit in the car and talk for ages. I moved out of our house where we had shared a big part of our lives in July/August 2015. When September rolled around, I decided to ask her out for the day so we could celebrate her birthday together. I was feeling positive about the steps that we had made in the way of communication and felt that it would be a nice gesture to spend the day together as I didn't want her to be alone on her birthday.
We packed up our car with pillows, blankets and some food like we had done so many times in the past before and headed down to one of our favourite places on the Mornington Peninsula. We backed our car up to the edge of the water, opened the back of our Ford Territory, put on some nice relaxing music and climbed into the back of our car. We both made ourselves comfortable on the pillows and began talking as we looked out across the rolling waves of the ocean.
I still remember the conversation so clearly in the back of the Territory that day. After some small talk, she looked at me and told me that there was something that she had to tell me. I remember thinking to myself that she has finally realised that we are better together than we are apart and that she wanted me to move back in. Something had clicked in her mind that yes, she can accept me for who I am like everyone else around me had done and that life could continue on happily ever after.
What she actually told me, couldn't be further from the truth. Maria wanted to tell me that she had found someone else. That they had met and seemed to hit it off. She wasn't sure where it was heading but she thought it only fair to tell me. I suddenly felt so stupid for thinking that we still had a chance. Hardly a month after leaving her after 20 years, she was telling me that she was developing feelings for someone else. I remember saying to her at the time that I didn't expect that so quick after being together for so long. She replied with, you left me, what did you think I was going to do? Wait forever!
As with most of these Bloggs, this one has taken off in another direction from where I had planned it to go. I don't want to sit here and throw crap at my wife and have you think she is the worst person alive. That's not what this is about. I am from from perfect and I admit that I wasn't the easiest person to live with at the time going through what I was going through. Maria did what she did as a way of coping with the situation, just as I did. Do I blame her for moving on so quickly? Not really, I just wish she had made better choices with whom she moved on with and thought of the wider picture instead of impacting the lives of three other people in the process and no, I'm sorry, I'm choosing not to explain that last sentence any further because I don't want to add to those three innocent peoples pain.
During these first few months of leaving our house, I was settling into my new unit being him during the day to the outside world and coming home and being myself at night. That was my time to feel totally at peace with myself and who I was. The living area of my house is at the back of it and is surrounded by a big tall fence. I was free to walk around without fear of being judged or persecuted. Also during this time, I had decided to go to my General Practitioner and ask him what my next step was medically. Not that I ever imagined stepping out of my house as myself, but I just wanted to be doing something positive to make myself more myself.
I had no idea what the process was other than my brother had told me that I needed to see an endocrinologist. My Doctor was more than a little confused at first with what I was trying to tell him. He had never had a Transgender patient before and was a little lost in knowing what to do. I remember him asking me what it was that I wanted him to do. I told him that I wanted some sort of blocker to help with stopping my hair growth. For as long as I can remember, I have always hated body hair. Any opportunity I could take, I would shave it off. This also upset Maria but if I couldn't dress as the person I wanted to be, shaving the hair from my body was like a bit of a compromise which she tolerated barely.
My Doctor told me that he needed to do some more research before he could prescribe me any form of hormonal blocker, so I left it with him a few days and made another appointment later in the week. A few days later, I was back feeling confident I was going to be walking out with a script only to be told that only an Endocrinologist can prescribe blockers for me. By total fluke my Doctor chose an Endocrinologist that specialised in helping Transgender patients and was a leader in his field.
This was towards the end of 2015, I couldn't get an appointment with this Doctor till early 2016. It was a bit of a setback at the time because I suddenly felt momentum building, especially after hearing Maria's news that she had moved on with someone new. I guess I kind of felt, well, I need to move forward with my life the best way I can now. 2016 finally arrived, and a few weeks later I had taken the journey to Dandenong Hospital to see Dr Hunter.
I wasn't a huge fan of Dandenong Hospital as a rule. Trying to get parking is a nightmare like I guess most Hospital's are except my preferred Hospital, Casey. Yes, I have a preferred Hospital, but odd I know but Casey Hospital has always looked after me well over the years whenever I have had to visit.
My appointment was at the Diabetes Clinic which I thought at the time was an odd place to meet a Transgender Doctor. Before this appointment, I wasn't even sure what an endocrinologist specialist was let alone what he did so yeah, it was a bit of a learning curve.
I sat in the waiting room having got there an hour early and spent the best part of the next hour watching people coming and going from the busy clinic. The one thing I noticed during this time was that the patients consisted mostly of older people. There was no one like me there so I must admit I felt a little uncomfortable sitting there trying to concentrate on the book I was reading and casually glancing up from the pages to see who was walking past from time to time.
Eventually a elderly Doctor called out my name. I looked up from my book to see, as you would expect, a elderly man to match the voice calling my name. For some reason, I didn't expect that. I thought he was going to be a young hip doctor with his fingers on the pulse of modern medicine and here was this old tall skinny guy. I learnt very quickly not to judge a book by its cover. This man knew exactly what he was talking about and although I find it hard to trust the male of the species at the best of times, I felt I could trust this guy.
Dr Hunter explained to me that I needed to see a Gender Psychologist before I could be approved for HRT or Hormone Replacement Therapy. Dr Hunter was able to prescribe me some Hormone Blockers which would help with the hair growth problem. I was on my way, things were actually happening and I could feel that my life was about to change in a way that not even I even anticipated. Every Wednesday night after work for a couple of months I would drive up to Ringwood to see my Gender Psychologist. The Psychologist was a lovely lady and I felt right at home with her straight away. She asked me all kinds of questions about my past and how I got to where I was, some of the questions I must admit I wasn't really prepared for, but I answered them. The final night I saw her she gave me some papers to fill out with even more probing questions but again I went through the process answering every question to the best of my ability till in the end she turned around and told me that this would be our last visit.
I was a little shocked at first, I asked her if she had come to a conclusion about who I was. She looked at me and told me that it was pretty clear that I had Gender Dysphoria. I can't explain the feeling of emotion I felt at this point. Finally, I had a name for it. After so many years of not knowing what was wrong and wondering why I felt the way I did, someone had finally given me answers to my questions. This also meant that I could take the next step and begin HRT. I walked out of her office that night, went to my car parked in the clinics car-park, and let the emotion over take me.
The next day I went into work, went into the office and told my Director that I was ready to take the next step and transition and become the woman that I was always meant to be.
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