Time to get this out in the open

I'm going to try to catch up on my blog - though I'm sure, by now, people have stopped following it.
I had dropped off Blogger, preferring to spend more of my time on facebook rather than posting my musings here. I posted this on my original facebook profile back in July 2010. I've brought some information up to date since it's original posting, but most of the original message is as it was posted nearly 2 years ago. A lot has happened in the past 2 years, more than I can put in this one post I think.

Some of you may have noticed that, as Dranem, I've not been very active on facebook for awhile now. I've actually have been fairly active online, just not with my male facebook profile that many of you are connected with. Some of you already know, or may be suspecting, but I've not completely come out and discussed the issue openly to everyone. Locally, there's not hiding what my lifestyle is currently like. But, to a good deal of my distant friends & family, I kept putting it off trying to find the right moment to say it, or the right way to say it. In the end I've come to realize there's no real right way to say it without surprising or shocking at least some of you.

For a very long time I've battled with, well, myself. I've tried to 'fit in' for the longest time, and never quiet getting there. While in Winnipeg, my depression had reached an all point low. I was 300 lbs, out of shape and had over all given up on a lot of things. I had come to believe I had failed as a male in society, I had to do something.... so I moved back to the Maritimes.
This seemed to help refresh my mind to some degree. I got a bike, started cycling, changed some of my eating habits, and started loosing a lot of weight. With the shedding of the fat, something else that I'd been keeping dormant starting getting stronger. I began to notice my mannerisms getting more and more effeminate, and found I was having a harder time to suppress them like I used to - and yes, there's a lot of things about me that I would keep from others. So I started doing some research, started speaking to some medical professionals, trying to figure out what was wrong with me.
Well, I finally managed to see a provincially funded therapist, not having $125/hr for a private one. After a few sessions and a lot of me talking and answering questions, the specialist confirmed something that had been slowly getting stronger in my mind: I wasn't really male. Oh sure, physically I am, I'm decently strong, and fairly fit now that I'm back down to a decent weight, but mentally I don't THINK like a guy does. I've discovered the condition is called Gender Identity Dysphoria. Where my mind gender doesn't fit my physical one. Looking back on things, I can locate traces of my femininity back to my early teens. Before the term Transgender became commonplace, there was the term Transexual. I had seen transexuals as gay guys who wanted to be women so that they could no longer be seen as gay. And well, not being gay, having no interest in men sexually, I couldn't be transexual. I've fought for years to suppressing my emotions and feelings. I've tried to do what everyone told me, to be 'a good man' and live up to people's expectations. Looking at other guys and trying my best to mimic their actions and their mannerisms and succeeding to some degree or another, but never quite getting it. It all felt like an act, fake, not natural, like I was putting on a show for others. I hated not being able to be myself.
I believed Transexualism as being a kink. It's a sexual thing. A person feeling the need to be female so that they can enjoy an heterosexual life as society imposes on us. But for me, this is more of a case where I feel more like a girl. I understand women more then men, and have generally had more female friends. I've never really been into 'guy things' and really don't understand the male need to prove oneself. Over the years people have seen this as a lack of competitive spirit, but in truth I just don't have a fickle ego and the need to prove who I am. In my early 20s, I used to get hit on by gays all the time. They would read my feminine side and hope that I would be gay. Many offered to guide me out of the closet, and thought I was just lying to myself, but I never found men attractive. To the comment of one guy who insisted I was way to femme to be straight, I finally told him that if I was homosexual to any degree, that I was a lesbian trapped in a male body - because I don't even look at women the same way most men do. For years I knew I was a geek: I never fit into the 'in crowd' at school, I was not into sports or cars, I was not a 'manly' person. I'm poetic, artistic, and have come to call myself a modern-day bard. But I wasn't gay, so I strove to make sure that people knew that I loved women so that they would at least not accuse me of being gay. This helped in some degree, but there was still something missing.

So, for the past 4 years now, I've been working on my transition to better understand myself. I've found that I'm a lot more female than I thought since I've started dropping my male-learned mannerisms. Though I still need to work on my voice and my facial features, most of the rest of me is quite female. Since my coming out, the people I've met have no trouble seeing me as female, and have a hard time believing I was able to 'pull it off' as a male for as long as I did. And while there are some remnants, I'm finding I am finally enjoying being myself for a change as a woman. I don't need to hide who I am, or pretend to be someone I'm not. Physically, I've found that I fit women's clothing better than men's as my hips are now nearly 6" wider than my waist. So, to help the rest of me get to where I'm going - or something like that - I've been taking hormones to further feminize my body. Being over 25, I realize I'll probably never look like a natural woman. But with just enough makeup right (I rarely wear alot), the right clothes, I am more often than not accepted for a woman now. I still feel I need help with my voice, and have had some speech therapy. Some people will most likely appreciate this, as they find I don't talk loud enough to begin with, so this will help me in more ways than one.

This will probably take some of you a while longer to absorb all this. If it's taken me over a year to sort myself out, I don't expect everyone to suddenly treat me like a woman tomorrow.

I'm open to any questions you may have and will try to answer them as best as I can. Any outright hate messages will be ignored. I realize this will probably be a shock some of you, but you don't have to take your insecurities out on me because of it. Just know, that I'm happy with the woman I'm discovering. I feel more confident and more sure about myself for the first time in longer than I can remember. I hope some of you can find it in your hearts to accept my happiness. Otherwise, I'm sorry, but I'm not hiding myself for the rest of you any longer.