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No transsexuality is not a sexuality, I hope that’s clear to everyone. Sexuality, even asexuality, is about sexual preference in intimate (sexual) relationships, and transsexuality is about a severe incongruity between a person’s physical sex and the person’s gender identity. This post isn’t about my transsexuality, but foremost about my sexuality, and of course the impacts of my transition on it thus far.

I’ll start with that last thing the impact of my transition on my sexuality. In the run up to starting hormones I’ve always considered the possibility that my sexual preference for women wouldn’t hold entirely and that there would rise a preference for men. This hasn’t happened, maybe not yet, but clearly any preference for men is absent. What has happened these past months is that I’ve become more confident in my sexuality as a lesbian. There’s still certain physical hurdles, but participating more in the gay and lesbian scene has brought me much closer to having an intimate relationship (to a degree) than was the case ever since my ex and I broke up in 2003. So aside from acknowledging that certain men can be kind and have beautiful eyes, nothing has led me to believe that I can fall in love with men. Sure maybe that would have been different if I sticked to the straight scene, but remember before I started transitioning my sexual preference has always laid with women. There weren’t even crumbs of attractiveness towards men in my past.

I grew up in a 99% straight world, and I grew up holding on to the safety I thought being a boy handed me. You could say that this included being attracted to girls. The fact is that before and after becoming aware of my condition at age 10 I have always known that I (as a boy) was honestly attracted to girls. Alongside being attracted to girls I experienced a kind of jealousy towards them being able to be themselves. I wanted to be a girl, to be myself in fact, but I didn’t discover myself as the woman I am until a few years ago, so I looked at those girls and imagined how it was to be like them. Now all I want is to be myself, but what stayed with me was the feeling of being attracted to girls without experiencing the jealousy like I had in my teens.

Being attracted to girls never confused me, it felt really natural, something I didn’t need to struggle with like many lesbian girls. I could uninhibitedly be attracted to a girl, and although I hardly acted upon it until age 18 because of my shyness and insecurity, I didn’t need to come out for my sexuality. The sense of my sexuality feeling natural to me now continues to be existent during transition. Before I was confident enough to come out for my gender identity and transition, I as a guy then, fell in love with a girl. I had put energy and effort in looking like the guy I could credibly make others believe I was, and feeling confident about it to live my life like that. So combined with my desire to fall in love with a girl, I got into a heterosexual relationship. Although I came out about my gender identity to her in the first year of our two year relationship our relationship continued its heterosexual style. Despite my foolishness to grow facial hair since I was 17, and continuing that up til age 21, my ex-girlfriend experienced me as feminine during our relationship in different aspects. She even told me some friends of her thought I was quite feminine. Well of course this was pleasant to hear and know, but it couldn’t keep us together, and I guess we never really thought about how our relationship would be if I transitioned. It was after this heterosexual relationship and two little flings hardly worth mentioning that I decided that what I really wanted was to transition. So my transsexuality slowly came to the forefront and my sexuality went into a state of slumber. I didn’t feel comfortable being in a relationship as long as my gender situation was dubious to those girls whom would get to know me. I was uninteresting to straight girls, because of my outward feminity, and I was even more uninteresting for lesbian girls, because I wasn’t clearly a girl either. This was all in my own perception, but I still believe there’s a lot of truth in the perception I held for about 4 years. Beside that I also told myself that I above all needed to invest in myself before I could give love to someone else again. So sexuality became an issue far from my mind.

Nowadays, 8 months into hormone treatment I can say that I’m perceived as the woman I am by the people around me. My sexuality has to my perception not changed radically in any way, but did I before transitioning make others believe I was heterosexual, now I am obviously lesbian. Not the dyke type, neither the girly girly, still feminine though .Of course loving an other girl still has to be brought in practice, but undoubtfully I am attracted to girls, and being in a relationship with an other girl is only a matter of love and time.

My gawth, she’s excited. I never knew I could mean that much to someone whom has never been able to touch the tip of my nose, simply because of the sheer distance and the body of water between us. Jessie wants to visit me for a whole month in December, yes that’s still 9 months from now, but that doesn’t mean the both of us can’t be horribly excited! I’ll take her to the Boijmans Van Beuningen museum in Rotterdam, to the Rijksmuseum and Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam, to Paradiso for a concert hopefully, to see my brother in Utrecht, my best friend Sabrina in Venlo and for Christmas we’ll probably be at my parents.
Most of all she’ll see me and I’ll see her, we’ll hug and act goofy and spent time making breakfast and diner for one another. If I schedule my university graduation correctly she can even attend that and we’ll be the two weird girls who’ve never heard of a dresscode. She’ll kiss me under the mistletoe and she’ll be my newyear’s kiss. Don’t think too much behind it though, best friends having the chance to meet eachother after 4 years just do these kind of innocent things. Of course I shouldn’t forget about how she’ll embarrass me by exclaiming nasty statements in Dutch, and it’ll be all my own fault because I taught her a bit of Dutch. For one wintery month long she won’t need to be cold in the room she lives, though she’ll sleep on a couch and will have to miss the bells hanging from her bed in Chicago.
We’ll spend time in silence with each other, we’ll spend time talking loud and blissfully with each other. We’lll spend time looking for each other in the supermarket because one of us ran of to the asian food section or the other to the dessert section, we’ll spend time buying tofu and seaweed and making food for the other the maker won’t have herself. And if it snows that month we’ll go out to make snow-angels, and if it rains we’ll hide under my umbrella fighting for whom decides on which direction we’ll go.
With the whole of my heart I hope this will all come to be.

Though, by then some things will be different, not only both of our summer birthdays will have passed, she’ll have finished her first year of college with great grades, I’ll probably have finished my university eduction. For me my transition will have lead to some changes, physically I’ll have bigger breasts (if I’m lucky a small b-cup…woohoo), I’ll have lost most of the nasty body hair because of the hormones, and much of my facial hair by professional hair removal, I’ll have my adam’s apple reduced surgically (i’m hoping), who knows I might have a new hairstyle, and finally I’ll have my name officially changed.
As a person I will hardly be any different from how I’m now, modern techniques make it possible for us not to miss out on what we’re both going through this year. December still sounds far away and I shouldn’t forget about all the other stuff in my life, life will be good, even if December would be spent without Jessie life will be good, because we’ll meet one day, which I promise, for I love her to be part of my life as my much as I love my own heart to beat. She could have run away from me with ease, even without physically cutting the wire of my internet connection, she hasn’t and neither have I, that makes our friendship in these for both of us difficult years really special to me.

I’ll meet you in December, dearest Jessiebee.

Are my feelings for her as real as they would be for someone I could sit next to, physically? Or are part of my feelings imagined, unrealistic? Am I picturing those feelings onto her even though I know these feelings are not mature enough to make such an impact on me? It’s really starting to trouble me. I honestly missed her past week, and she can make me horribly insecure, it doesn’t happen on purpose, it’s part of the way we communicate. The internet is flawed, it has made it possible for me to meet a wonderfully amazing person, but its ways feed my insecurity far more than in real-life contact, something I never show to any of the people whom I know over the internet. This flaw of the internet bites my feelings like a hyena’s jaw of rationality. It won’t let go of me, or I am rational towards my feelings with the internet flaw as my greatest argument and keep feeling troubled all through our contact, or I give in to my feelings and risk a hard slap of reality when her feelings don’t seem to match mine. That risk, am I willing to take it with the ultimate consequence of losing her.
We’re far apart, literally, but apart from a few intermissions we steadily grew towards each other. I was part of her late puberty, she’s now a lady. She was part of my difficult twenty-something years, now I’m becoming a lady too, though a twenty-something lady going thirty. All I know about her is what she told me and what she writes on her personal spaces on the web, and sometimes I forget that it’s the same the other way around. After more than three years of knowing each other we can only know what we’ve shown to each other, until a month ago I didn’t really know how she’d act in real conversations. Within a month I’ve already grown accustomed to her behavior, as if those 3 years before that did prepare me for talking to her in real-time. It feels like our relationship naturally evolved, as if it was the right time to start having our chitchats over the webcam. It does show that our relationship is something we’re both dedicated too. Then why does she still make me insecure you might ask.
Our relationship is a strong long-lasting friendship, as true as a friendship over the web can get. We love each other as friends, I can’t deny that. She’s been clear about not having a long distance relationship, she’s never mentioned in the context to our friendship, but it’s clear we won’t go beyond friendship. I agree with her opinion, having a long-distance relationship is a no-go area. It’s my own opinion, and I have my own arguments to keep to my opinion. What I do have is feelings, like I really missed her this past week. What I also have is an inability to figure out my real feelings, both of us said things in the past and recently which don’t concur with something which is solely a true long-lasting friendship. I don’t know to which degree her comments were realistic or playful and I don’t even know it about my own feelings. The only thing I know is that I wouldn’t dismiss the possibility of giving in to larger feelings if the situation was right for it.
This whole discussion with myself does make me emotional, with a bit of sadness surrounding it. Despite being on a hormone treatment I’m still in control of my emotions to prevent me from crying, something I evolved in my last years of secondary school (comparable to high school). I have no idea what to do with my emotions, one thing which could solve it would be that I’d find the love of my life right here where I can touch and sit next to that person. It would be one possibility, an other possibility could be meeting her and finding out how we’d really interact with each other. That possibility is in a way a step in our friendship which can’t be prevented, to be honest. She wants to meet me, which makes me awfully happy, but it’s awfully scary too. I could be me as I always am, holding myself back and being overly kind, to do so could be a big mistake. Acting that way would prevent testing real interaction, it would be giving in to a fear of intimacy. There are the rational reasons of preventing intimacy with her, there’s the emotional reasons of letting the intimacy into our relationship at least to a slight degree. Usually I don’t give in to emotional reasons, that’s how I grew up, but I’ve also felt what giving in to emotional reasons can do for me, but the past 4 years I hardly chose for the last option. The rational reason of not wanting to ruin what we have is a serious one I won’t want to deny either. I never had this dilemma before, I’ve heard about it, but knowing I will meet her this dilemma is growing onto me. It will mess with my feelings, feelings I already mess with myself too much, even if I don’t want to mess with ‘m.
I guess she’s at least equally complex in her feelings as I am, she’s shown bits of her feelings, in general, I actually don’t know how complex her feelings are towards me, but as complex beings as we are we tend to make a lot of things in our life complex, like feelings. Of course I could simply ask her about her feelings, though I’d be a selfish bitch if I did that. What right do I have to ask her about those feelings? There’s no ground for her to account her feelings directly like that to me. She’s mentioned some feelings (not concerning me) in certain conversations, voluntarily, as in having a conversation about it and possibly discussing it. Often they’re about family or boys, it’s on her terms, I can’t force her to say something about her feelings. I can mention something with which she concurs, but I can only mention it because she has let me to get to know her these past years. I try to prevent any presumptuous remarks, she doesn’t need anyone whom tells her what she feels. That’s also why this post is solely about my feelings, and my opinions on how to handle these feelings. Though, I could equally regard this post as a presumptuous way to get her thinking about her feelings in this story. It’s not meant this way, but this post would probably cause it either way. Then why am I going to hit the publish button, this selfish act, will it be read by her, will she consequently respond in any way to it. She’s not a person who’s easily bossed around, so I can’t tell her here to disregard everything she just read. Even more so because an independent mind with highly personal feelings will make any person stray when it encounters something which could trigger the heart and mind. So my conclusion is that it is highly stupid to post this personal discussion of my feelings and motivations. The thing is that I’m an oddly paradoxical stupid human being, whom willingly makes the internet flaw, and thus makes her own feelings uncomfortably vulnerable to her messed up mind of rationality. Thus I am a selfish self-pittifying unquestionably stupid girl. I apologize, I’m a messed-up student of life, because I did something like this before, which was more direct though less extensive, and which wasn’t necessary in any way.
It’s written and nothing changes, but does it really …?