Maggie Kay’s Blog

I have been very absorbed with my book having written 11 chapters. I have the end finished so I can make a consistent plot.
As for my transition, this week is a “duzzie” . Tomorrow, I meet with a psychologist for a one time session to get a second SRS letter and a back to back session with my regular therapist. Friday, I attend my legal name change court hearing, my SO is coming along and we plan to have a day off after to celebrate. I’m not sure if is is as wonderful for her as it is for me because she is still grieving over losing her hubby. Then that night we are to have my 57th birthday party. This will be my first as Maggie and my family so far has indicated that they have something special planned. I wonder if my daughter will be OK with this. She is having second thoughts about me being a woman. So it is hold on to the seats week here

A few days ago, I marshaled my resources today as funds were finally available for my name change. I printed out the fillable name change forms from the Transgender Law Center’s web site. I filled them out per their instructions and example then took my papers to the court house. It was not nearly as scary as I thought but I was very nervous and my short term memory was not very sharp under the stress so I kept checking that I hadn’t left my purse behind or my keys laying on a counter etc. In the end, my forms were accepted and my check was taken. I got my court date which is one day short of my 57th birthday. If all goes according to plan, I will start my 58th year as Margaret Kay. I am exhilarated, relieved, drained and slightly shaking. It cost $555 and be all done six weeks from now. $320 for the court fees and $235 to post the four order to show cause announcements in a local newspaper.

A few days later, my order to show cause form was signed by the judge . Her name is KAY so this is somewhat neat. I scanned the form and emailed it to the paper for publication. It was a piece of cake! The clerk at the courthouse was so nice to me again today. I could see she that was happy for me. The reality of the whole thing is settling in on me as I will be soon legally be Margaret Kay. I have been using this name for some time and rarely hear or read my old male name but this somehow is a huge step. Now I can start changing lots of other stuff like my social security etc. So cool! I never dreamed that I would get this excited about the name change but it is really a big upper.

I went out today shopping and to the post office. Once in a while I need to get out of the house and be with people again. It helps me because I get the feedback I don’t get here at home. If I look nice and a man starts up a conversation with me, I feel better about going on with my struggle. Today this happened. It wasn’t a big deal and only a few comments were exchanged. It was enough to let me know that I am approachable and that from a male, says I am female to him. It is not that I am still considered male around here but what has settled in is a non issue mentality. We don’t talk about my transition at all. Sometimes we talk about doing stuff and I go out with Jane now for walks when she comes home from work. Still, it got “normal” too soon. It is like a huge hurricane and in the middle of the most intense part, the eye passes over and all is calm. I’m looking for that next eye wall to hit and so far every day it doesn’t. OK, I could say that maybe the storm is over and I should rejoice. However, it seems unnatural and some things do remain of the old struggles. I really need to have something more than sisterly affection. I know that I am very lucky to have her here at all but the heart wants what the heart wants. I do keep saying to myself that given time, she might come back. On the other hand, I sometimes dread seeing her come home because I am afraid that emotional eye wall might return.
I went shopping today at Goodwill and bought a skirt, pair of slacks and four tops for $35. Pretty nice. I had a lovely time trying on clothes and bathing in the complete joy of being in my woman’s world. So what if I am old? What else should I do? Sit in a rocking chair all day and mope that my youth was wasted on maleness? I say no to that and I will take what I have left of this life living as Margaret. Smiling.

I just had a business call from someone who specifically asked for “Kurt”. He wanted to talk to him. I had answered in my best female voice and the guy asked for Kurt. Well, I got flummoxed and said, “This is he” and I was WINCING and CRINGING.  It was a salesman offering me a new CAD software package. I did the rest of the conversation in a more male sounding voice but still not as deep as I used to. I was more effeminately gay sounding instead, which was as far from the mark as was being “Kurt”.. ARGHHH… I so wanted someone else to call so I could handle it better, right away. No one has asked on a phone conversation for Kurt in months so I was not prepared. NO canned answer.
This brings up what I will do to deal with the old Kurt persona as I complete the transition. There are hundreds of people all over the globe who have talked about my designs in forums/web sites and used the name Kurt. Many still use it to this day when they are discussing one of my designs. There are papers and manuals that I wrote as Kurt too. LOTs of them. This creates a big issue of me being stealthy as Jane wants. I don’t want to make every call into a TG evangelistic session either but there must be a middle ground. Jane asks several times a day when I am going to remove my coming out posting on my discussion forum. She says that I should just be myself as a woman not a transwoman. I take that to heart but with my past, can that really be done? A returning customer who posts asking a question posed to Kurt will be answered by Kay ( I use Kay for business contacts and Maggie for personal ones). Will this cause confusion unless I keep the post in place? It is still being viewed everyday as I can see the count increasing. Not a lot but still enough to know that it is still newsworthy.
Kurt was a noted designer and Kay is a newcomer. Am I stupid not to keep it known that I was Kurt at least at some level?

I watched my daughter leave this morning to go to her first job and it was a magical moment. She is so poised and intelligent that I am sure she will do very well even though she was very nervous about her first day. I wanted so much to have this moment where she would have such a success and a whole family behind her too. I sit here this morning all alone as now these gals in the house have jobs to go to but I say behind with my business and an adorable cat for company. As a parent, having brought a child up to this moment is one of the milestones of life. We managed to keep the strife of my transgender condition to a level that we can live together. I had thought that my contribution was no longer needed here but when it was shown to me the state of the finances in our new house, my income is still important. This has made today a bit more poignant as there are three independent women now sharing this house. As far as the neighbors are concerned, that is exactly what we have. There never has been a male person here since we moved in. This is sweet.
Yesterday, Jane was carrying a large bag of bird seed for our outdoor feeder and I offered to help her carry it. She smiled and said,”Girls don’t offer to carry another girls stuff”. I grinned from ear to ear. Maybe this will work.

The one thing that remains as a major hurdle is my voice. I have this high pitched voice in female mode and I can speak loudly in it. This means that it is not falsetto. However, it is so high sounding that I have difficulty with it. I still think about Jane’s comments about it sounding weird too. I keep practicing and I will eventually get this no matter what. I listen to podcasts of women talking and emulate when I can. A woman’s voice sounds so nice. I have deep feelings of envy when I hear one.

In the last session with Eileen, my therapist, I discussed my recurring dream about snakes coming to get me. I also told her about a childhood event where I at six or seven, went with a bunch of teenage boys to kill dozens of rattlesnakes under rocks in a stream bed near my home in Pennsylvania. I did it to prove that I was a brave man. There was another event where I went alone with a hand ax and nearly got bitten. I killed hundreds of them.
She told me that there has always been a connection between snakes and women throughout history and in mythology. Myths are the dreams of a society. I researched this and indeed many cultures associate snakes with the female. Many associate them with fertility and child birth. It may be because of the umbilical cord or of the sleek shape of the snake. The psychiatrist Jung also made an association with his female “anima” as part of the female image. I do remember seeing the head of the Medusa in a movie where the head of a woman with snakes instead of hair turns men to stone if they look upon her. That movie was released at about that same time as my snake episodes. Also, my mother would often say of a woman she disliked that “she was a snake in the grass”.
I have been terrified of snakes ever since. In my dreams, they are coming to get me for what I did. They swarm all over my bedroom floor in some of my dreams or are in my bed in others. Sometimes, my p**** becomes one and attacks me. Eileen’s idea is that I was attempting to kill the female influence in me and prove I was a male, by killing snakes. However, I am female so it was a self destructive act designed to please others and reconcile my male body.

Here is where it gets interesting. Eileen, said “Why Dorothy?” I said because my mother is Dorothy. Eileen said that Dorothy ( of the Wizard of Oz) is an icon in the Gay community.  She is a symbol of coming home and realizing one’s true nature. What kind of child would Dorothy have? A transgendered one? It is  another connection that I have to the LBGT community. That I wanted to use her name in the title is amazing. Because of this the book will have more appeal to a wider audience.

I was going to write a post about my reactions to a trans support group meeting this past weekend but another topic jumped to the head of the line. That subject is my realization of the damage being an untreated transwoman in my life. I looked back at some terrible moments in my life and see clearly that it was my gender variance causing the conflict. The effect was some of the most hurtful times in my marriage ( both, in fact) where I basically went into panic attacks and ran out the door sometimes in my bare feet. I was angry, combative, defensive and highly emotional. No matter how hard I tried to resolve the issues of dealing with others it failed. On one occasion, we were watching the movie “Mr. Mom” and I suddenly went into a panic attack. In seconds, I was pressed against the sliding glass door, clawing at it to open it and also trying to climb up the glass. Jane began to shout at me and eventually I realized what I was doing and stopped. At that time, I was looking for work but my wife was not pregnant. I see this as a beginning realization of my gender status at a visceral level. A little over a year later my daughter was born. More changes were on their way.

As the years went by, my family concluded that I was insane or at least severely emotionally disturbed. Instead of going to a full time job, I stayed at home as “Mr. Mom” In the spare time, I wrote software and tried everything I could to get back to a professional career. Little did I know that I was in the right job already. I was a good mom. However, I admit that I didn’t fully adopt the rest of the household chores leaving a lot of them to my wife. The reason was that I was still fighting the notion that I was a woman. I couldn’t go the last mile. This caused many fights because, Jane could not see why I could do some womanly things but not others. To her as a feminist, it was all just work. To me as a “Leave it to Beaver” baby boomer, I saw myself becoming June Cleaver. It was too much for me. I could not resolve my body and mind. Being transgender never occurred to me. All I saw was a man who couldn’t be a man. That scared the daylights out of me.

However, over the years, I continued to struggle and do female oriented things. I began to wear plain styled women’s underwear and yet overcompensated by joining the men’s club to go play golf. I bought a Porsche 911 and resolved never to drive it while I had women’s clothes of any kind on. I also resolved never to wear them while playing golf. I practiced golf mercilessly. It didn’t matter if it was in the rain or while having the flu. I got to the point where I had a 110 MPH golf club head speed and was very strong. But, I also hated my genitals. I didn’t want to use my p**** in sex. I sprayed my p**** with Benzocaine to make it completely numb. I really didn’t want to feel it. I was never on top during sex. Eventually, I attempted to self castrate with rubber bands but stopped when I realized that it might go wrong. I could have ended up in the hospital in a world of hurt. There had to be a better way.

I saw a news story about a company that offered men’s lingerie styled after women’s but sized for men. Later that morning in the shower as I thought about me wearing lingerie with lace and pretty colors, I began to weep. I was weeping with joy. A joy that I had never experienced. I was changed after that event. I bought real women’s lingerie not wanting anything made for a man. I bought LOTS of it. Never in secret. Jane knew about it but every purchase caused a fight as she wanted to control what I bought. I didn’t so I kept her out and showed her what I bought later. After a few years I began wearing a bra full time.

One day, Jane and I got into a huge argument over my need to have women’s clothes. I purged out of deep shame and guilt. I threw out over $1000 worth of expensive lingerie. Mostly new. There was more in the mail too and I threw the unopened package away when it came. The immediate result was massive depression. I stopped shaving, threw away my shavers and mostly just lied down in a darkened room for three weeks. Eventually, I decided that it was better to have the lingerie and be civil and be able to work. However, there would be two more massive purges with similar consequences. All were triggered by arguments with Jane over why I needed to have these things.

It was during this time that I started taking hormones. Herbals at first then natural estrogens and progesterone. I took massive doses of Tagamet as an anti-androgen. My excuse was an enlarged prostate. Having a medical background gave me credibility. Why I did this is not exactly clear. I do recall looking at my chest in the mirror one day and seeing a breast which made me instantly filled with joy. I wanted more. I found out that males could develop breasts and with my gynecomastia already started, I would help it along. Seven years later and now on full prescribed hormones, I have breasts and my body is feminized. I am much happier.

However, deep scars remain as I struggled to cope with feeling that made no sense all my life. Hurts remain in Jane’s memory of terrible arguments over my gender related issues. I was not pleasant to be around. I acted badly. My transgender nature drove me to hurt myself and others. I lost the ability to work with males and as a result had be self employed. I gave up a promising career in science because of my inability to cope with my gender. I was in emotional torment most of my life. That I managed to have a family and my many accomplishments was in spite of all the storm raging in my mind. Why did it take so long before I could have peace? Why do people still stand in my way to be me at last? Can’t I have some years as an active alive and happy woman before old age takes all of it away?

I have decided that I will come out to my business customers as this charade is getting too hard to keep up. Some people know me as Maggie and others as Kurt. The phone rings and I can’t tell who it is and now that I am getting used to using my female voice, it is very awkward to recover to pretend I am Kurt again. It is also holding me back from my goal to be who I am. There is no way to hide anymore and I do not want to anyway. I have nothing to be ashamed of and if my business collapses because of my status as being a transwoman then it was not a business for me. I know that I am risking my security and opening my self up to ridicule or hate emails but this living a lie has to end.
I also understand that being a transwoman who tries to wear the “pants of a male” is being a hypocrite to herself. If the world hates me at least they can hate me for who I am. On the other hand, some might accept me and who knows what will happen. But I need to say, “I am trans and proud of myself” . I have given a heads up email to my business partners today who have had special positions or are more than just customers. I can’t be afraid anymore.

I called the jury duty office and told them about my name change and transgender status. The clerk took the information to her supervisor and after a few minutes she said that they will change my name on the roster and re-issue a summons with the new name. No big deal. She was very polite.

OK, this is a weird one. We are moving and I have to sell some stuff. I just sold some old camera equipment that I listed on Craig’s list to a guy. As we were looking at my camera collection, he asked me what I did when he saw my office and I told him then came the question I never expected…

He asked, “What does your husband do?”

I replied, “He is not around anymore. “

He said, “So you are divorced?”

I fumbled, “Ah, er, um…. we are separated.”

He asked,”How long were you married?”

I said, “Twenty years, we just drifted apart”

He went on, “Ya, I was married for two years.” “Then one day it was over”
He continued, “You live here alone, then?”

I quickly said, “No, I live here with my daughter”

He said, “OH I see” and I changed the subject to moving. Soon after that he left.

I never never expected this!