Emotional in Church

My daughter says I get emotional in church. And it is true. Like so much else in my life I have doubted myself, my beliefs and my faith. When I am in the sanctuary, I feel Poppa's presence. I feel his warm affections for me. How could I not be emotional, on the verge of tears, to know He Loves _me_? So many years I spent in shame for who I thought I was and the conviction that Poppa did not love me. But now I _Know_ He loves me! I know I am as He made me!  How can I not cry?

Looking through these eyes...

I catch myself, sometimes, thinking about how I see my world around me.  It occurs to me that I see a lot of my world the same as when I looked through these eyes and thought I was a man.  The feeling is that nothing has really changed in me.  At first that disappoints me.  I think that how can I be a woman, really?  I see things the same as before when I was a man.  And I do see things very much the same.  So what's different?  Where is the mismatch, the discontinuation?  The people who know me now cannot imagine me ever having been a man.  They experience me, my nature and spirit as a woman.  And I wonder, if I am a woman now and nothing has really changed in how I see, does that mean I was a woman before?  A woman trying to make life work living as a man? There is a great deal in my life that I have revisited and much of what I did makes more sense from a woman's point of view.  I just have a hard time accepting that I was a woman even then.  I wanted to be a girl, but I never thought of myself as a girl.  And maybe the wanting wasn't a needful thing, because I already was a girl.

Wanting to Belong

I wasn't able to articulate part of what was going through my heart last night, part of why not having measurable breasts punched one of my [many, many] buttons. And that was/is a need to feel a part of, a need to feel I belong, a need to feel relevant.

The place my mind/heart went last night was, "If I got augmentation, I could be a part of that conversation and not outside - looking in."  And I've considered augmentationa number of times and have never been able to come to a hard-and-fast thinking about it.  That in itself advocates against the surgery.  But last night, the desire to have breasts of a more appropriate size to my body, the desirability of breasts, period, was fed by that need to be a part of my family and thinking that having to wear forms all the time made me ...  like a second class, shirt-tail relative.

My family reading this, probably, had some degree of visceral reaction to that statement.  And they are right to.  I know in my head, when I sit down and think of it, that I am as loved by my family as I can be.  Sitting in my daughter's car going home last night I was clinging to that knowledge by my fingertips.  Knowing in my heart and mind how much Debra loves me was all that kept me from losing it last night.

I have always needed to be a part of, to belong to/in/with a group.  When I was young, my Dad's job would change locations often, every 6-18 months.  All the friends I had made got ripped out of my life like noxious weeds.  This made me, on the one hand, desperate to make new friends, and on the other, I held back giving my full self because when we would move, I would lose a piece of me.

But more than anything else, the result has been that I have never done "alone" well.

I have been left with a need to be "a part of" that is so strong it drives me to consider breast augmentation for that reason alone.  I have been considering of late that my desire for Gender Confirmation Surgery has an element of being "a part of"  and there is the the lie that I tell myself that without the breasts and without the vagina I am not a "real woman" like all of my friends and family.  The reality is that I am no less a woman, no less "me" with this boy's body than if I had been born with XX chromosomes.  But like most truths, that gets buried in all the noise.  And most of the noise I generate myself.

So I am left with this Marvel-Comic Monster of a need to be a part of the life around me when the thing I truly do need, require for survival, require to thrive, is to love me for me.  Intellectually, I recognize that I am someone really special, but I am an emo kind of girl, always have been.  And emotionally, it's hard to get to that same place that I know how special I am. And how much I love myself for who I am.

In the end, more than anyone else, more than anything else, I need to belong to me.

Loving Me

Debra was over tonight for dinner.  It makes me feel really good when I can cook for her.  It's been a long time since she has come to where I live to have an evening with me and she hasn't been here to my new place for an evening since the night I first moved in.  It is definitely a Mom thing when I can cook dinner for her in my own place.  I've missed it.

After dinner we talked a little and then went over to a friend's to visit.  Lisa had eye surgery earlier in the day and we went by to say hi and comfort her.There were a couple other people there keeping her company.  Debra and the others got to talking aobut getting properly fitted for bra's.  I kinda got lost in the conversation.  After a while we left.  In the car, I struggled with trying to not let my body define me, and wrestling with breasts that are too small to measure and whether augmentation would be appropriate.  I very nearly lost it.  I told Debra where I was and she said she wondered why I was so quiet during the conversation.  Augmentation isn't the answer, though I don't really have a reason to not get implants.  I was ... am... grappling with trying to find that whole person I want to be, trying to love me for who I am.  I am so much closer to that place than I have ever been, but ... but I am not there just yet.a  The answer isn't in other people or in things or changes to my body or to the way I live, but simply in loving me and it is so very hard.