Photo Therapy

So I got dolled up on Friday night last week. This was the first time I’ve presented as female in about six months. It’s not that I haven’t wanted to–quite the contrary. Rather, every time I’ve had the urge, there has been some reason or other that I couldn’t do it. Most of these reasons revolve around electrolysis. In any event, I finally pulled the trigger on a weekend where I wasn’t being poked with a red hot needle, and it felt good. Very good. But oddly enough, the thing that feels best about the experience is the picture at the head of this posting.

Trannies tend to be narcissists, and I’m no different, but my fascination with this particular photograph goes a bit beyond simple narcissism. I look at this picture and I see a roadmap of my future. I see things about my face that I hadn’t noticed before. And, apparently, I’m seeing the effects of hormones. Personally, I don’t see that, but I’ve had a couple of friends tell me that my face looks different, especially in my cheekbones. You get a good look at my eyes in this picture, too, to the point where you can even see the corona of amber surrounding the pupils. There is some moderate thinning of my beard shadow on my chin just below my lower lip, and on the sideburns. This is where my last bout with the laser was most effective. I can still detect some shadow in the Fu Manchu area, which make-up struggles to cover. Speaking of make-up, I’ve found a lip color that I like for all occasions (it’s MAC, but I forget the name of the shade), which isn’t too far off my natural lip color. I’ve FINALLY found an eyeliner that combines good coverage with ease of use (it’s Smashbox cream eyeliner, by the way, applied with an angled brush).

All of this is well and good. But, as I said, there’s more to this picture for me than might meet the eye, because I believe that this picture has saved me several thousands of dollars, or, at the very least, many nights of self-pity because of my lack of several thousands of dollars, and it’s certainly saved me the agony of medical interventions. What this photo has given me is the conviction that I don’t need facial feminization surgeries at all. I’m not unhappy with the angles and prominences of my face as depicted in this picture. My face looks good. It looks like it will be a feminine face once I’m done removing the beard, even without surgeries to reduce my ridiculous jawline or to raise my browline. It says to me that the genetic lottery that gave me my short stature has also given me a phiz that will suffice in the next phase of my life. And THAT feels better than good. It puts to rest a lot of the anxieties I’ve brought to this process.

And weirdly, I see my mother staring out of this picture. I never really thought that I took after my mother–the similarities to my father are easier to see in my day to day life, but I don’t see any of him in this picture. I see my mother in the eyes. She had the same gray green eyes with amber corona that I have. It’s startling how well I remember that given that she’s been dead for 20 years, but I can call them up in my mind with no effort. And I see them here.

Not bad for a photo taken from the end of my arm.

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I haven’t been blogging regularly anywhere after I wrote my previous valedictory posting on Y360 back in April, so here are some things that are also happening to me:

Unseen in the photo at the head of this posting is my current bustline. Although I didn’t fill the cups of the bra I was wearing all the way to the brim, I filled enough of it to dispense with breast forms. The bra was a padded B-cup. I figure I’m about an A-cup now. I’m apparently taking to hormones like a duck to water. With any kind of luck, I can save money on a boob job, too. But that’s putting the cart before the horse.

The emotional changes seem to be taking hold at last, too, because lately, I seem on the verge of crying about things more than I can ever remember in my old life. I haven’t had a crying fit over anything, per se–nor have I really had anything happen to me to cause one–but some movies will find me misting up a little, and an actual tear fell as I was thinking about my dog’s visit to the vet last week. Mind you, I still think I’m the most emotionally stable person I know, but that persona is softening a little.

I came out to my older brother in May (my younger brother has known about my alter ego for about eight years now). For the most part, he just shrugged it off. “Well mom always said you were the pretty one,” was his initial reaction. His main concern, oddly enough, was that I might change my name in such a way that he would no longer be able to call me “CJ,” which he has done for as long as I can remember. I assured him that my initials would remain the same. I got around to showing him some pictures of what I look like as a girl over this past weekend. His reaction was amusing: “Do you own any clothing that isn’t black?” he asked. “What’re you, some kind of goth?” I do own a lot of black clothes, I told him, but that’s because black is slimming. He laughed. I have cool brothers.

Take care.