: Welcome :

A note from the author:
Welcome to Waterlilies, my personal journey of gender transition that covers the period of my life between Oct. 1, 2005 (my first day of going full-time as female) until February 14, 2007 (recovering from sex reassignment surgery in Montreal). In order to make this blog read chronologically, I have changed all the dates so they are consecutive in reverse order, so please disregard all blogger-generated dates listed as inaccurate.

In order to read the blog in the correct order, navigate the archives backwards. For example, this entry is dated on Blogger as Dec. 31, 2007. The next entry will be dated Dec. 30, 2007 and so on. So when you finish December, click on September 2007, and so on. All dates are in the year 2007, although actual events happened between Oct. 2005 and Feb. 2007 as noted above. If you want to read about my SRS experience, for example (the last six entries) skip to January.

I hope you enjoy reading about my story.

Michelle
October 3, 2007

It's time for a new chapter of my life. After the next 24 hours have passed, I will come to a milestone in a journey that has been at times difficult, exciting, heartbreaking, joyous, confusing, enlightening, painful and wonderful. Twenty-four hours from now, I will finally be free to be myself, the person I've always meant to be, if I wasn't born in the body that I was.

Hi, my name is Michelle, and I was born as a male. I'm 37 years old, of Chinese descent, and lived most of my life in Houston. For the past six years, I've been a public relations executive at one of the largest independent PR agencies in Texas. Tonight was my going away party, when I told all my co-workers (the ones who didn't already know) why I was leaving my comfortable job and taking a chance by moving to New Jersey to find a job. Before I go, I'm going to get cosmetic surgery on my face, breasts and midsection to make me more passable as female, although I do fine with that already with the right clothes, hair and makeup. But going from an A cup to a C cup in bra size makes it a lot harder to mistake me for a guy.

I decided to start this new blog because after tomorrow, I will be full-time and starting my so-called Real-Life Test (RLT - there's going to be a lot more acronyms coming, so you may want to take notes) where I prove to my medical caregivers that I can survive in the female role for at least 12 months in order to qualify for sex reassignment surgery (SRS). I've been pleased to find out that there are a lot of people out there who are interested in my life, so this blog is where I'll post my day-to-day activities and thoughts about Houston, New Jersey, surgery and my life in transition, a 37-year-old girl learning to become a woman.

My birthday was last Sunday. Since my 35th birthday two years ago, my life has changed dramatically. To briefly recap, although I have had transgendered thoughts and feelings all my life, they only became strong enough for me to act on them two years ago. After researching on the Internet, I started experimenting with herbal hormones and came out to my spouse in November 2003. After she got over the initial shock, she supported my desire to explore my feelings and seek medical supervision.

To prepare my physical transition, I went on the South Beach Diet in March 2004 and started losing weight to get rid of my male pot belly. Over the following six months, I dropped more than 60 pounds, mostly driven by my desire to feminize my body. In July 2004, I entered therapy and started taking pharmaceutical-grade female hormones (estrogen and progesterone) and another drug to block the effects of testosterone in my body. In October 2004 I started laser hair removal treatments on my facial hair to remove what little beard growth I had - I'm very lucky in that respect that Asians normally don't have much body hair because laser is very painful and very expensive.

Over time, these procedures have feminized my appearance dramatically, as shown in the before-and-after photos below. The first one was taken in Oct. 2003, the second one was taken in May 2005, less than 20 months later:



2005 has been the watershed year for me, starting on April 1, when my three-bedroom house caught fire in the middle of the night due to a faulty garage door opener and was destroyed, nearly taking me, my spouse and my five-year-old son with it. We managed to escape in time, running out into the street in our pajamas at 2 a.m., knocking on neighbors' doors to use the phone. The fire destroyed nearly everything in the house, incinerating half of it and ruining the other half with smoke and heat. With the help and generosity from friends, co-workers and family, we managed to recover our lives, but regrettably, for various reasons, our marriage did not survive. We separated in April, and are in the process of selling our property and getting a divorce.

So that brings you pretty up to date with my life so far. Feel free to share this blog with anyone you feel might be interested - I am writing this for public consumption, and therefore will not use any names save my own. Take care, everybody.

: Frequently Asked Questions :

So you're a transsexual. What does that mean?

Transsexuals are people whose bodies don't match the way they think and feel, and they seek to remedy this by changing their bodies to match what's inside them. I have struggled with this condition for almost my entire life, since I was very young. I have always felt uncomfortable being the stereotypical male in society, but in order to assimilate, I have learned to play the part convincingly enough to get by.

But over the last few years, as I've learned more and more about what transsexualism is, and how it has affected other people, I have taken steps towards expressing my true nature, although up until the early part of 2005, I wasn't sure where that would eventually lead. Nearly losing my life when my house and all my possessions were destroyed by fire in April made me realize that life is too short to go on pretending to be someone you're not. It was shortly afterwards that I made the decision to come out and start living full-time as Michelle.

How did you choose your name?

This is a question I get a lot. Michelle doesn't mean anything to me, and yet it does. It is a name I have always liked growing up, just the sound of it. It's also a very common female name for Asians (i.e. Michelle Kwan (skater), Michelle Wie (golfer)) and I'm trying to be as ordinary as someone like me can possibly be. When I was thinking of what to call myself, Michelle was the name that kept popping into my head so I just went with what felt right.

What's the difference between transsexual and transgendered? I hear both terms a lot.

There are many kinds of transgendered people, and among them are transsexuals. Transgendered is a general term that encompasses crossdressers, transsexuals, female and male impersonators, drag queens/kings, intersexed individuals (hermaphrodites), gender dysphorics, and others who do not or chose not to fit into commonly prescribed gender labels. A transsexual is a person who desires to live full-time in the opposite gender role from their birth sex, and takes appropriate steps to do so, which can include sex reassignment surgery (SRS).

What does being transsexual have to do with sex?

Because the word transsexual has the word "sex" in it, people often think it's mostly about sex. While that's sometimes part of it, transsexuals are usually more interested in getting their bodies to match their inner identity, rather than finding a partner. For me, it's really about having my body match how I perceive myself in my mind, and adjust accordingly how I am perceived by the world at large.

How did you get this way?

Plain truth is, nobody knows what causes this, although theories abound. Many people believe there is a biological component. The most common theory involves hormones affecting fetal brain development. But again, no one knows for sure. Personally, I don't really care what the cause is. I've felt this way as long as I can remember, and I think it's better to look forward than backwards.

I don't think of being transsexual as a blessing or a curse. I just think of it as a trait, like being right-handed or tall. Unfortunately, any trait carries with it certain social stereotypical presumptions. The misconceptions transsexuals have to deal with are that it's all about sex, or that we're all flamboyant, ultra-feminine divas. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I just find that living and interacting with other people as a female feels right.

When did you know you were different?

One of my earliest memories of being TG was in elementary school. I used to jump rope with the girls when the boys were playing games on the playground - I was pretty good at it too. I've always preferred the company of girls growing up - I never had a stage where I thought girls were icky. It also pained me to see girls being teased by guys, and of course I never did it when my male peers did.

I had serious thoughts about being TG by the time I graduated from college, but at the time I didn't understand transsexualism, nor did I seek treatment. The Internet was still very new in 1990, and there was very little information available online, unlike today. A couple years later, I met my wife and we fell in love, which pushed all thoughts of being TG out of my head for almost a decade. A couple years ago, I started to realize that I was getting more and more unhappy because I wasn't addressing those feelings I had after college. I told my wife, and we endured an emotional roller coaster, as you can expect, but she eventually accepted that this was something I had to do. I started counseling and was diagnosed with GID in July 2004.

So what has been going on since you started?

I've been taking steps to transition since last July, which includes undergoing laser procedures to remove my facial hair (yeowch!), starting hormone therapy, growing my hair, developing a female voice through speech training, buying clothes and learning to use makeup. I have been living part-time as female (nights and weekends) since this past May. Once I go full-time starting in October, I will have my name legally changed on all my identification documents (driver's license, social security card, etc.).

What is the next step for you?

I am planning to have cosmetic feminization surgery on my face, breasts and midsection on Oct. 27 to improve my ability to pass as female. The final stage of the Standards of Care set by the medical community is the Real Life Test (RLT), which involves living as a member of the desired sex for a period of time. This is to help transsexuals determine if sex-reassignment surgery is right for him or her. In most cases, the transsexual is required to live for a minimum of one year in the preferred gender in order to be approved for sex-reassignment surgery. During the one-year RLT, I will need to present myself as female 24/7 to prove I can function in society.

Sex Reassignment Surgery (SRS) is the final event in the sex-reassignment process. Although transsexuals have no reproductive organs (uterus/ovaries) the final result is cosmetically and functionally indistinguishable from that of genetic females. Some decide not to have this surgery, but I currently plan to have it.

So how does it feel to be transgendered?

It's basically being uncomfortable with your own skin, and not in an "I don't like my nose" kind of way. It's like you have something painfully wrong inside you that you can't fix, so you deal with it every moment of your life the best you can. Most of the time you can ignore it, but it never goes away. And from all accounts, it gets stronger as you get older until you do something about it. I could probably ignore the need to transition for a few years or even a decade. But if I chose to ignore it or deny it as I've done in the past, I would not be living an honest life. Suppressing one's identity over a long period of time can sometimes lead to more serious psychological conditions, such as schizophrenia, alcoholism, depression, and suicide, as the TG person attempts to deal with the internal pain caused by being forced to be someone they are not. I haven't gotten to the suicidal point yet, but I'm not going to wait around for that to happen. Life is too short, and I know I would be depressed and unhappy if I did not address my TG issues now. I would certainly have regrets later in life.

: First day full-time :

"Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness to just be happy."
- Guillaume Apollinaire

I woke up this morning realizing that today is my first day going full-time as Michelle. It's a curious feeling, not the overwhelming happiness that some might expect, just kind of relief, mixed with a little trepidation for the unknown challenges ahead. People who have met me in girl-mode sometimes comment that I carry myself as female as if I've been doing this for years, but if you count up the days I've actually appeared in public in girl-mode since going part-time in May, I'm still a neophyte. The total number of days probably amounts to about a month, and very little of that was spent interacting with non-trans people. I guess that's why they call it the real life TEST. But even though I haven't spent much time studying for this test, I think I'm ready enough to take it.

For me, one of the worst things was putting on what I call the "boy-suit" - which refers to not just the clothes, but slicking back my hair with ultra-strong hair gel and tying it in a tight ponytail. It's also the absence of makeup, which makes everyone look better, but is unacceptable on guys in our society except under specific circumstances (like being on TV). And then it's the whole male persona that had become increasingly foreign to me that I had to adopt. It's a little like someone who absolutely adores dogs getting ready for to go to work as a dogcatcher. Except it's not just about the job (which I loved, and didn't really require much of a male temperment as would, say, a trial lawyer); it's everything from looking at myself in the mirror, using the men's room at work, not being able to interact with co-workers as female the way I do with people outside of work, and the overwhelming pressure of staying hidden in plain sight.

I commented to one of my co-workers that there were lots of signs and signals that would have clued in the astute observer - the occasional nail polish, the disappearance of facial hair, the black Anne Klein purse, the long hair, the plucked eyebrows, an occasional use of a subtle matte lip shine, my penchant for engaging in girl talk, subscriptions to health and beauty magazines and women's clothing catalogs in my mailbox, and my lack of variety in male clothing. Since the fire April 1, I've bought very few male clothes, as you might expect, just enough to get me by. All told, I bought one shirt and two pairs of shoes, five white undershirts (to smooth out the sports bra straps) and five pairs of black socks - just enough to get me through each five-day workweek. Everything else I'd worn in boy-mode had been donated (thank you very much to the people reading who donated those, btw) so the end result is that I rotated basically four long-sleeved shirts (gray, blue, white and orange) and two pairs of casual slacks (black and olive) every workday since April. I suppose it is a credit to my workplace that people were too busy with real work to engage in such trivial and detailed surveillance.

So on my first day of going full-time, I'm going to do what most transsexuals look forward to doing at some point - I'm going to clean out my closet and donate of all of my male clothes to charity. Maybe they will find their way to some of the victims of the recent hurricanes here in Texas. I certainly didn't get full use of most of them, so there's plenty of wear left in everything except the aforementioned articles :)

: Living an honest life :

There are many challenges to transitioning from one sex to the other - physical, mental, social and professional. But transition isn't done for sport or for fun. True transsexuals undergo transition because they feel that they don't have a choice. Often, transition is what happens after the transsexual person has had serious thoughts of suicide or even attempted suicide. But it is just as valid a reason if the person feels that life simply isn't worth living if he or she has to pretend to be someone they are not.

Two years ago, most people would probably say I had a great life - a beautiful wife, a wonderful son, a cozy house in a very respectable neighborhood and a satisfying career at a terrific company. The problem was that there was a price to be paid for all that - my identity. In order to have all these luxuries, I had to subsume my true identity, the person I felt that I was inside. And it came to the point where all those other things didn't matter to me anymore if I couldn't express my inner identity. I realized that those things would never make me happy if they cost me the opportunity to be myself.

When I first came out to my family, a lot of people asked me why I "wanted" to be a girl. I could never really get them to understand that they were asking the wrong question. In my mind, I am already a girl psychologically - just not physically or socially. So my choice is not between being a girl versus being a boy - it's a choice between suffering in silence versus taking proactive action. What they should have asked is, "Is being a girl worth changing your whole life?" And my answer would have been yes, because I'd rather live an honest life full of hardship than a comfortable life full of deception.

Being a girl is not a turn-on or anything that makes me happy in and of itself. What makes me happy is seeing my progress every day and realizing that I'm closer to living a life where I never have to pretend to be something I'm not.

: Basics of transition :

The transgender experience is as varied as the people who live it. Not everyone goes through the prescribed medical procedures that lead to SRS. Transsexuals can be as young or old, rich or poor, male or female. I know people who have transitioned as early as 14 years old; as late as in their 50s or even 60s. There are people who go from male to female (MTF) and female to male (FTM). And different people deal with the TG experience differently.

Some people are comfortable being part-time in their chosen gender for years, choosing simply to dress appropriately without taking hormones. Often the need to transition grows stronger over time, especially once the trans-person acknowledges and starts to accept it. Therapy is an important part of making sure that the person is fully aware of the irreversible effects of hormone treatments and that their transgender feelings are not masking other mental or emotional problems.

Once the person is diagnosed with gender identity dysphoria (GID) the therapist might refer the patient to an endocrinologist to prescribe hormone replacement therapy (HRT). For MTFs, this consists of taking large quantities of estrogen and progesterone, plus some kind of testosterone blocker. This can take the form of pills, injections or patches. For FTMs, this means getting regular injections of testosterone or other male androgens. Some effects of MTF HRT can be seen in a few months, such as loss of libido and breast growth, while other effects such as diminishment of body hair, fat redistribution from the waist to the hips and thinning of the skin can take several months or years. The effect of testosterone on FTMs is more dramatic and quicker - growth of muscle mass, increase of body hair, appearance of facial hair, changes in skin texture and deepening of the voice.

It should be noted that contrary to popular belief, female HRT does not cause the voice to change. Once a male has gone through puberty and started utilizing the full range of the larger male voicebox, the only way to change the voice is through speech training. There is a surgical procedure to raise the voice pitch, but it has a very low success rate. One of the biggest challenges for many MTF transitioners is developing a passable female voice.

Hormones affect all the soft tissues in the body, so the effects can be dramatic. However, there are certain things hormones will not change. They can't affect bone structures, so it can't make a tall person shorter, or turn a man's prominent brow bone and square jaw line into a soft, feminine face. Prolonged HRT renders the existing genital functions useless, but does not take away the organs themselves. Surgery is required to effect the changes that hormones cannot.

I am very lucky compared to many MTF transsexuals in many ways - I have soft facial features that only require minor surgical intervention. My voice pitch is naturally high for a male, although the difference between my male and female voice is still pretty dramatic. I had very little facial hair to deal with, having never grown a full beard. I have very little body hair, and even less on HRT. I haven't suffered male hair loss on my scalp as some males do. I don't have a great deal of muscle mass to rid myself of. My biggest handicap is my height - at 6' 1", I've always been considered tall even for an Asian male, so I feel positively gigantic as an Asian female. But the way I see it, everyone has something they don't like about their looks. It's just a matter of accepting yourself the way you are and being happy with your body.

How passable a person is can determine how far they are willing to transition. If a MTF is hopelessly masculine in appearance (think Arnold Schwarzenegger) and can't afford the extensive surgeries to correct her appearance, transition may not be possible because that person could not survive the inevitable discrimination she would have to face. Some people know they need to transition at a very early age. If they are able to obtain the support of their family and transition before puberty has done too much damage, these young transitioners often turn out to be completely indistinguishable from non-TG people, with the exception that they obviously cannot bear children. Older transitioners, or late-stage transitioners, have a harder time from a physical standpoint, but also have greater access to resources not available to younger TS people.

Some TS people believe that transition is something that should be avoided if at all possible, that it should only be something attempted if it's a choice between transition or death. Transition is hard, there's no argument about that. It's probably one of the hardest things that anyone can do in life. But I feel that once you realize that you have to transition, it's best to just get it done with and get on with your life.

: Getting personal :

People are often curious as to what it feels like to be transsexual. As I said, the experience is different for everybody, so I can only speak for myself. I wrote a letter to a family member back in March, and it basically sums up my feelings on how I feel about it.

There is no test, no way to obtain conclusive evidence of gender dysphoria. I wish it were that simple - that would certainly solve a lot of our problems if we removed all uncertainty about our condition. However, gender dysphoria is listed in the latest version of the DSM-IV, starting on page 576 in the section on Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders. There is widespread clinical evidence that the condition exists - 1 in 30,000 is the most common statement of prevalence. You could sooner deny the existence of GID as you could of homosexuality - they are very similar in nature. Just as it took many decades for homosexuality to be removed from the list of mental illnesses, I expect it will take many years for GID to be properly understood by the majority of the medical profession. But just because I can't take a pill to "cure" my GID doesn't make it any less real.

Intersexed people are less common than those with GID. These are people whose bodies have been affected by the presence or absence of certain sex hormones in utero or have a chromosomal anomaly that results in variations such as XXY (Klienfelder's syndrome) or XO (missing Y chromosome, called Turner's syndrome) instead of the more common XY or XX. I have gotten to know several such individuals online. This is a completely different condition than what I have. My body is normal, my brain is what has been affected. Hormones affect every tissue in the body, so it should not be too difficult to believe that the fetal brain could be affected by powerful hormones that trigger sexual development.

There have been studies examining the brains of M2F transsexuals post-mortem, and it was found that their brain structures more closely resembled that of genetic females than genetic males. Whether this was set from birth or the result of a lifetime of cross-living, no one can say for sure. Regardless, I am not all that interested in proving my case scientifically. Even if I were tested and found to have a genetic anomaly, how would that change anything? It doesn't really help to solve the problem at hand, which is what to do about dealing with my feelings.

In the case of human brain development, there is very little scientific proof to substantiate any solid conclusions. But just because we don't know what causes autism, lupus or any number of diseases, doesn't mean we should ignore them and hope they go away. We treat the symptoms, not the disorder itself. Although I don't consider TS people to have a "mental disorder" (i.e. our brains work fine, it's the housing of our bodies that needs to be "fixed"), we are suffering from pain that is just as real as physical pain that has no obvious cause, and it has to be treated or it will only get worse. For me, treatment is psychological therapy, HRT, steps toward a gender transition and possible SRS. This is the course of treatment that every therapist and psychiatrist I have visited concurred on.

In order to help you understand me, I'm going to use some metaphors for my GID experience to illustrate what goes on in my head, but please don't take them literally. It's difficult to explain something as nebulous as gender identity to someone who does not suffer from GID, but I will try.

When I was born, I was born with a female spirit or soul, if you will. This spirit does not manifest itself in conscious thought, but is a core part of my identity as a human being. As I was growing up and conscious thought started to develop, I was taught to be male because I was in a male body. I gradually built up my male identity - learned my name, learned how to dress, how to act, how to treat others. But all that time, the spirit I was born with - Michelle - was sleeping inside me, growing very slowly. The male persona I had built kept Michelle under wraps, except for brief moments, the times I felt that something was wrong with me but I could never understand what it was. During those rare times, Michelle was able to grow a little bit at a time, but was never strong enough to break through the male construct.

Keep in mind that as I'm realizing all this now, I was never aware of being TG growing up - I didn't even know what it meant until recently. You could say that I had "symptoms" of being TG because I cross-dressed from an early age, but those are entirely different things. Being a cross-dresser does not automatically lead to being a transsexual, although most transsexuals engaged in the activity at some time. Cross-dressing is listed in the DSM-IV as a sexual paraphilia, not under gender identity disorders. There are plenty of cross-dressers out there who never transition, never even think of transitioning. They like being males dressed as females and cringe at the idea of SRS.

Up until about three years ago, I thought I was one of those people. I had no intention of becoming a woman - the very idea was about as meaningful to me as the idea of flying to Mars. When I was young, I wished I was a girl, but I also wished I could fly like Superman. To me, these two fantasies had about an equal chance of happening because I knew I was a boy and was never going to change no matter how hard I wished to. And the idea of turning my male body into a female one through HRT and SRS seemed like complete science fiction.

I never seriously thought about the idea of transitioning until three years ago. My childhood fantasy of being a girl involved being magically placed in a real girl's body, not slowly turning my current body into a simulacrum of a girl. But once I discovered that it was possible to do that, I knew that was what I had to do. Perhaps if I had access to information about transitioning when I was in college or high school, it would have triggered my drive to transition then. Unfortunately, I did not have access to real information because no one wants to talk about TG/TS issues in our society, unless it's to make fun of them on shows like Jerry Springer [this is the primary reason for starting this blog, to balance the distorted view of transsexuals caused by past portrayals in the media].

So going back to my psyche - somewhere around early 2002 I started poking around the Internet for TG information. Why did I start doing that? My theory is that by this time, Michelle had grown from being a helpless infant in my mind to being a young girl, questioning, probing and straining against the male construct that she had helped to build for protection but was now imprisoning her. My male identity could sense her now, and there was an urge to protect this growing person inside of me, a child incapable of dealing with the adult world. Coming out online was the safest place where I could nurture this part of me in a support group of people who understand and give unconditional support. Sadly, I can't say I've gotten that from any of my family, much as I wished for it.

When I first came out to my parents, they suggested that I take testosterone in order to make me more masculine. Basically, I interpret that as they wished to administer a lethal injection to Michelle, the girl side of me who only wants to live the life she deserves to live. Michelle is a part of who I am. Getting rid of Michelle would be like giving me a lobotomy - destroying a part of me that's always been there. In the face of such hostility, I need support from anyone I can get. [this is the other reason for this blog].

This letter has been edited for privacy, but the gist of it is the same - I am not changing who I am, I am becoming the person I have always been and was always meant to be.

: Eye of the beholder :

The first part of this week I've been in San Antonio with my friend Kyla. Kyla is a T-girl, 24, and transitioned in high school down in Brownsville. Just take a moment to imagine how hard that must have been. If you think Houstonians don't get TG people, you can be sure that people from Brownsville think we are from another planet. I asked Kyla permission to post her picture here, so here's one I snapped of her a few weeks ago:



Most people who meet Kyla in person would never guess she is anything other than a genetic girl. She works as a makeup artist, so she is an expert at makeup and I'm learning a lot from her. In San Antonio, we stayed with Kyla's best friend, who is a stylist at an upscale salon - we stayed with him during the Hurricane Rita evacuation, and he offered to do my hair for my birthday when we came back. So on Tuesday I got some brown highlights that match my natural highlights, and a bit of a trim. The result is subtle and quite natural, which is what I was looking for.

We also went shopping at Sephora so Kyla could help me pick out some new makeup to replace the stuff I've been using, which is mostly still stuff cobbled togther from donations after the fire in April. We started with a moisturizing tint from Smashbox, then spent some time picking out a four-color eye shadow palette from Stila. And I got a beige glitter pencil from Nars.

Presenting a nice appearance is important to me obviously, but it's not my mission in life to be beautiful. I have to accept that there will always be people who "clock" me (recognize I'm TS) no matter what I do. Even Kyla gets clocked on rare occasions. I remember earlier this year when I came out to my parents, my mom said something very hurtful to me at the time - she said that while I was handsome as a male, I would never be attractive as a female. She said it as if that would deter me, as if the realization that I'm ugly to her would override a lifetime of feeling unable to express my inner self. If being beautiful was that much more important to me than being myself, I wouldn't be a transsexual - I'd be a fashion model. I'm glad I'm not that vain and egotistical.