In some recent posts I’ve been mentioning some signs of the succes of my transition. These are issues which I probably could’ve hardly imagined before I started the hormone treatment, back when I wasn’t yet the girl I am now but already left behind the boy people saw me as for most of my life.
Looking back at that period it’s strange that my current situation inhibits me from imagining that I could live that ambiguous again. To know though that I’ve lived like that some 3 years and now feel uncomfortable to take a step outside that way and walk around with a question mark about my gender hanging above my head, is the strangeness of my transition’s succes.
I will give you all the signs of this awkward succes.

Makeup
Because I haven’t started laser hair removal of my facial hair I always put foundation on my face before I go out or expect visitors. I didn’t do that before going my RLE, only wore some eye shadow sometimes and mascara of course. The foundation seems to do the job well enough, so well that I feel uncomfortable having people see me without it (except when I’m at my parents). Not that my beard growth is that visible after the daily shave, it’s the redness after having shaved that more often bothers me. Eventually though when the laser hair removal, which I’ll start in a few months, has done its job it will remove the awkward sense of needing to put on makeup where I didn’t have that sense before RLE. I even felt uncomfortable putting on foundation, so an awkward sign of succes you may call it, because I do benefit from the makeup.

Fully figured
Not much different from wearing makeup is wearing a bra and enhancing my breast size with a little external silicone help, which I insert in the morning and take off in the evening. Before RLE I felt uncomfortable having fake tits almost 24/7, it was something I didn’t look forward to. Though as soon as I had some breast development I thought what the heck, I want these breasts to look like real breasts. And that’s one part of the picture which is important to make the picture of me as a woman complete. Even when I went to use the little silicone helpers I didn’t even get comments like people though it was natural to see it on me while I didn’t change the way I dress neither the way I behaved. Now some 6 months later putting a pre-filled bra on has become a casual ritual instead of something which I almost detested. In the meantime my breasts have developed although not that much to go without the silicone help. So again something which made me feel uncomfortable has become something to which I’m accustomed within half a year, and I even feel uncomfortable to leave the house without that little help on my chest.

Voice
In less than a year time I adapted my voice to how it sounds now from your ordinary male voice before that. I managed that on my own with some tips I caught from documents taken from the internet. At the time I started to adapt my voice I had no idea to what kind of voice I wanted to change it. Now I’ve recently started to see a speech coach, for refining my speech, so to speak. And of course I was asked to speak in my old voice, just to hear the difference. By now not only do I feel uncomfortable to speak with in my old voice, but I also find it hard to pinpoint how it sounded when I would want to start of in my old voice. I managed not to speak with it, but again in a really short time something even more natural to me than an face without makeup, my voice, is something as it is now feels more home to me as it is now than it was a year ago. People whom haven’t heard me in a while make remarks about it and are astounded to the change. So the issue of my voice is double awkward, having a different voice within a year which already feels natural to me and having people say wow that’s so different while I can’t even really imagine anymore how I sounded before.

Telling people or not
These previous signs add to this last and undeniable sign of awkward succes. The fact that people haven’t the faintest clue that there ever was a gender question mark floating above my head less than a year ago. I pass in many people’s eyes. That’s the succes every transitioning transwoman is hoping to achieve during RLE. I can’t say I’ve achieved this for 100%, but there are people whom I know whom are most probably unaware of my transsexual situation. I addressed in a previous post and also in a vlog on youtube how I handle this. I simply don’t tell as long as there’s no reason to tell. The awkward thing now is that less than a year ago I didn’t need to tell because it was so obvious. Less than a year ago when I felt like an in-betweeny and still had trouble imagening how it would be life as a woman not being perceived as ambiguous as I was then by many people.  While in the past I had to inform people about my gender dysphoria I now have to inform them again but their perception is radically different from the perception the people had of me up til last year. Now it has become almost confessing my genetalia while before I confessed to those people back then how I felt about myself. Okay people can respond different to me telling I’m a transwoman and not born with female genetalias. It’s awkward to breach the perception I’m happy with people have of me instead of the perception I disliked. Now I give something up I like while before I gave up something I disliked, it’s the awkward burden of succesful transition. A burden I can manage, because the burden I carried before transition was far worse.