New Body!

Looking back, when at the start I gave this blog a name mimicking a feminist health manual, it should have got the prize for the most ironic title of the year.

Recently I discovered that my body and my self are in fact two very disparate items - my body is female, and now I know that my self is male! Now I am working on my body being united with my self.

In some way I probably always knew that, but somehow I had never drawn the relevant conclusions. Looking back (again!) I can see now that my life is just about the classic case of a transsexual.

For complicated family reasons which I won't go into, in childhood I had always tried to be 'a good little girl'; but also always rebelled in a quiet little way. Always played with boys, loved boys' toys, dressed like a boy where I could, could not deal with it when at the age of around 10 my girlfriends began to find boys interesting; growing up into a woman's body was a catastrophe.....I almost failed at school only just scraping through the final exams - but once I left home suddenly education became interesting and satisfying, with the result that in whatever I have studied I have been doing pretty damn well at, regardless whether it was social sciences, systems analysis and statistics, or music.

I nearly always had short hair; even when I had long hair people would take me for a guy; my clothes, while made for women, mostly were unisex and I was often taken for a guy. Particularly in places where I work, like the southern former Soviet Union and Central Asia, where women are feminine and I am not, it was always hard to use female public toilets (I don't do that any more!). And there are other aspects....

Happiness has been kind of a rare companion - I was very happy when my son was born (maybe my body was ok after all?), but thankfully he was a son and not a daughter. I don't know what I would have done had I produced a girl that likes pink! Ye gads! Instead I could now play with the toys that I had never had as a child - the railway track, the race track, and so on.

In the last few years my problem with anger management became more pronounced, and finally I went to get help. It took quite a few sessions with the therapist to find this 'transsexualism' problem - so deeply was it buried! And gee, it was scary at first! How could possibly I live and work(!) as a guy in conservative Eastern Europe?

But I thought I would try it out; first by wearing guy's clothes, and since August presenting as a guy. Luckily I am surrounded mostly by educated people who are all very supportive (you really know who your friends are in a situation like this). Of course there are also some prats but that's life. It's the problem of their little minds, not mine.

And now I hope to start the medical treatment soon - that will be fantastic. It's great to be a guy!

Variations on a theme of toothache

Oh heck!

Wednesday went to the dentist to finish off a little piece of work on a tooth on the right hand side which had got infected three weeks ago. In passing mentioned a little discomfort on the left side.

Dentist took a look and muttered something about a very large filling. Then took another look and realised that this (wisdom) tooth no longer has a friend above, and hence has started to rise up, creating a little pocket between it and the next tooth which caused debris to get stuck there. It has to come out, he told me.

I was aghast! After losing about 5 teeth before I was 25 I had always sworn I would fight for every further tooth! But arguing brought nothing, so out it came - with relative ease. That did not hurt, and it won't hurt later, he told me. I have a feeling he dropped a little silver thing into the hole. Bit surprised that it had only one root, but I see that sometimes the roots fuse.

Ha. 'Tis Saturday morning and I am now finding a good use for the painkilling medication I got after my hernia operation in January, when I did not need it. F*ck's sake. But when yesterday I went to finally finish off the other piece of work the other dentist said that it was healing well, and indeed it looks like it is healing well. But it still frigging hurts; I pray there is no infection.

Tomorrow I am off to Kazahkstan for three days and I'll have to manage the painkilling medication really well to survive flights and conferences etc. Last time I flew to Georgia I had a stinging headache and virtually no access to medication; that was horrific.

I wonder when it will stop hurting??