Booze

Since Angela's facial feminization surgery, things at home have felt sedate and quiet. I have a lot of things on my mind and I guess I should find someone to talk about them and find some resolution. My daily routine, if I don't have any books to sell, is to go to work, come home go through the necessities of cooking and avoiding cleaning up everyone elses mess. Although my ability to avoid domestic chores is really quite impressive. After the kids are asleep I tend to surf the web and then I always end up drinking alcohol, never to the point of stupefaction but always to the point of just muddling my brain. It's always the same and everyday I feel brain damaged, not fully functional, not able to concentrate and focus. My intellect is like a rusted sabre, useless and dull. I have to stop drinking, for numerous reasons but I dread confronting the grim harsh faced reality of my disastrous life.


I am so grateful to be here with my love Angela and the two lovely children we share the heavy sense of loss and guilt of not seeing my two eldest children is truly awful.

I just hate to be clear minded, all the crap floats to the surface and I just don't know how to resolve it all. All my true friends, seem to be in the distance and hazed on the horizon, I guess I am at heart selfishly insular and tend to avoid chat and light hearted conversation. I never phone anyone, rarely text anyone, send jokes, I like to be face to face, together. It means I have lost intimacy with many wonderful people. My Facebook depresses me, it's like looking at postcards from another planet. I have tangled and alien feelings about other people's happy settled lives and strong feelings of envy when I see the happy pictures and accounts of my old friend's happy marriages and children who excel. I have been completely unable to make the right relationship choices in the past, tried to commit to marriage but always chosen unsuitable partners and to be honest my children have paid the price. I am a loss how to even approach them, what to say. The negativity is immense. The only way to deal with it is face it and confront the situation. I don't seem to have the mental strength, since my brother's suicide I think I've been hiding from anything that means facing the truth...

The truth is a hate my first husband immensely, i don't want to talk to him, deal with him, I certainly don't want to be in the same space as him- he is repulsive to me. He screens all the children's correspondence and I believe uses them for his own security not theirs. I have to decide how to contact them... via the school perhaps? Writing this helps, it helps me reach resolutions on how to deal with things. On an action plan. An updated life list.

Stopping drinking is the first thing, to uncloud my mind, to face my fears, when I drink I don't function on full steam. I actually have a sensation of being lobotomised. Coshed. Last night Angela, told me she was 100 per cent convinced she would outlive me.... she didn't say it but it's because she knows really I am slowly and deliberately drinking myself to death, I don't actually care. It seems acceptable to be a mere moth. Jittery and dwelling in the dark, drawn to weird and deathly lights. I just can't stand it, being alcoholic. This is the point of reference, that I have to stop. I know I need to go back into rehab... but how? Maybe next summer.... if my mum can stay sane and look after my son....when she's good she's wonderful but when she goes into one of her occasional malicious rampages she is dangerous and causes terrible damage. It's ironic, she is great with young children... but I think it's because she has total control of young kids and they don't challenge her. But the point for me is if I have to go into rehab and have daily therapy, like before, i need her to look after Isaac. Somehow I doubt his Dad will look after him and Angela can't.

What's the point here - I am going to stop drinking again - I need to take positive action to stop the negativity. Writing this helps me take action. I will ask Angela if for now she will take me to AA meetings. That way I may not need to go into rehab---- but I need to do something.

The point is I do care, I care because I want the kids to be OK and know they are deeply loved, I need to find the bright and luminous girl I have been and can be. A resurrection is possible, but I can't face the reality till I ditch the drink.


Another point - I am so angry with my mother, that she plotted with my first husband to have the kids taken off me (allegedly because of Angela)that I could smash her face into a brick wall and batter her to death... my anger is buried but it is murderous-- if I started to scream, I'd never stop. BUT I HAVE TO STOP AND TAKE CHECK AS LONG AS I KEEP BLAMING HER - I FAIL TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR MY LIFE - I NEED TO TURN AWAY FROM HER AND FACE MYSELF - THEIR IS AN ABYSS OF MURDEROUS RECRIMINATION AND THEIR IS A LUSH NORTHERN VALE OF ACCEPTANCE WHERE I TAKE POSITIVE ACTION - I do not want my legacy to be a garage of used books and to be remembered as an addict.

My fucking Beelzebub lover- Booze.

I have to do something - for everyone - for me - I am fed up - I hate inertia - I hate feeling subdued - there is more in me. I have to stop drinking and I will.

The list
Find nearest AA meeting
Get out of the house - an activity that involves other women (God knows, I wish I felt like other women, but I don't, I feel totally disassociated from other women and I need them around me. There is nothing like the platonic love of other women to keep you sane).
Do my accounts
Sort my Bills out
Decide to take positive action.
Resharpen my sword.
I need to sort out the garage to prepare for the delivery of 3,000 books this week and use that task of sorting the books, to pay my old bills (they worry me), and use that task to provide a structure for my sobriety.
I want to write about my eye floaters
A table in the kitchen where I can read and get away from the noise of the telly at the weekends and keep away from Facebook.

Blog Split

Hello, perhaps you are a regular reader of my cisgendered-journey? If so please add yourself as a follower and feel free to ask questions or pass comments.

It's been an incredible two years with many highs and lows. To live with a "Great love" is a blessing but to lose your children a curse.

I have decided to split the blog. My documenting of Angela' transition and it's affects on me and our loved ones can now be found at:

http://facial-feminising.blogspot.com

Transgender Love (ie this blog) will also be continued but will be a closer analysis of how I will eventually come round to understanding how my immediate familys breakdown in childhood and my father's struggles with gambling and substance abuse has impacted on my own family. My accounts of my brother's suicide my frayed relationship with my mother and my on going struggles with alcohol seem a sad tangent from the central issue of transgenderism. Hence the blog will now be divided. It seems like an obvious metaphor where I would prefer to live vicarioulsy through Angela than confront my own demons once and for all. They are legion as they are many.

Thank you everyone who who has read the blogs to date and if I have offered a positive insight to anybody and made anyone think again about the existence of third gender people then I will sleep a little easier. Or perhaps you your self have been affected by loss and become a survivor, just like me?

Fear and love are contradictory terms. Love is reckless in giving away, oblivious as to what it gets in return. Love wrestles with the world as with the self and ultimately gains mastery over all other feelings. My daily experience, as of those who are working with me, is that every problem lends itself to solution if we are determined to make the law of truth and non-violence the law of life. For truth and non-violence are, to me, faces of the same coin. The law of love will work, just as the law of gravitation will work, whether we accept it or not. Just as a scientist will work wonders out of various applications of the law of nature, even so a man who applies the law of love with scientific precision can work greater wonders. - Mahatma Gandhi

Relaxing together the day before the big OP.

All about me

Angela is regularly asking me whether I still fancy her, does she look OK? But it's weird. I have no notion what she will look like when the swelling goes down. Prior to the op the team of surgeons where all aiming to get a result that was the same face, just softer and feminine. THE SAME FACE JUST A FEMALE VERSION... but what I am seeing five days after the op is a new face, a face I have not seen before, this is bizarre and we are talking about this a lot. I feel like I don't know this face. How would you feel if you woke up one morning and the person you loved and desired had a new face? It's unsettling and I gaze at her awake and while she sleeps and wonder how it will feel to kiss this newly feminine face. It is very very different. How will the children react when we get back? My young son is staying with Nan in Ireland for the summer holidays, he adores Angela, he does not know yet that she has had the op? I need to prepare him. I think it could be a great shock otherwise. His daughter, who is under 10, knows about the op and why it is being undertaken, but how will she feel about her beloved Daddy's new appearance? We have to be sensitive and use our time together to talk and about what all this means. Where do you find resources on this? Who can advise us? We are as a family in the dark. I hope-and if I felt that there was a god - and I'd pray that by talking honestly and openly it will be an easy transition for our family. It is more life changing I feel, than the Sex Reassignment Surgery for everyone else, as it changes our perceptions. Aesthetics are a very powerful thing.



Walking along the promenade yesterday to get Angela an Ice Cream and me a strawberry Daiquiri, I felt uncomfortable being affectionate to her in pubic and I knew exactly why. It is an old personal issue I have had...
I find it OK to be the loving partner of a transexual woman (on the margins of society, individuals who have been affected by this call it cisgendered, I don't know why) but feel a peculiar discomfort at being seen as an older lesbian.... I don't like it. it may be a cap that suits others but it doesn't feel right on me. This is not a new feeling for me, I have had relationships with women but as much as I loved those women I struggled with a lesbian identity. I just don't identify with that. I have been lying in bed at night trying to work out why? Is it internalized homophobia, is it that I want a man? Is it that I am very cerebral and analytical by nature? I feel that humanity has constructed a society with all it's structures and codes from words and the problem with that is that the world shifts and words also change in their meaning and their power. Have we built a world on the back of thought or is it all just in out heads? I find it very hard to explain what I mean because at the end of the day it's all semantics, descriptions, trying to put a definition on how I feel, who I love and how I love and if I hang the banner of say Lesbians Moms over me and Angela I feel odd... but in essence this is what we will become. I so hope we can be this and that I love her enough to accept all the words that could be used to describe what I purportedly am.

I'm experiencing a kind of quiet turmoil, that my positive feelings for Angela quell but do not erase. What will it mean for the future? I have no bloody idea! I do know that it means adapting and that my love is a living interpretive thing that can dismantle fear and piece back together things that previously got broken.

I will write more later... everything I am feeling is I think normal, when your partner has been through a life changing operation and at the end of this chapter, I know for her it is liberational and where the real person she always was can finally start taking shape and be at peace.


I just need to remember in the middle of all this is me- and beside me is Angela and what remains of my family.

Turning the corner

After Angela had clearly got most of her balance back and was able to eat, we were given the all clear to leave. I was longing to get back to our private space and unpack in order to cook us a lovely dinner. I ended up whizzing out to the supermercado to grab essential provisions for the invalid, ie, chorizo sausage, sangria, garlic, fresh plum tomatoes, onions and anything else that someone else with a mouth with full of stitches would find hard to resist. Later in the evening I cooked it all up with pasta with liberal amounts of grated mature cheddar... and ate it she did, albeit slowly.

We are now in the convalescent stage where, we can only try to rest, ease her pain and deal with her hopes and fears as they emerge. Angela is going to add to the blog soon and talk about what she has emotionally and physically been going through. She is up and down really, laughing and giggling one minute, (One minute I'm one hell of a gorgeous trans person then hey presto I'm a panda!) then half an hour later she is tearful and down. She has felt palpable sorrow and empathy for anybody who has to have their face taken apart and reassembled. All so they can look in the mirror and feel they can walk the streets not in stealth but as just another number. Just to feel normal - like the rest of us. It is absolutely true to say that on one hand Angela and I were accepted but it is a point of fact, every time we went out people stared at us. I wish all transexual women who suffer from this dysphoria could afford this procedure. It must be a terrible curse to be the inhabitant of the incorrect physical form. Gender dysphoria is no joke, it causes divorce, alienation, suicide and horrible fears of rejection. This is NOT a choice, your gender is fixed in the womb, and no one chooses to undergo such an agressive and painfull procedure without being totally driven by the need to feel normal.

It is testament to A that everyday since the op she expressed worry for a good pal of ours Abigail who is due to also have extensive facial feminisation, concerned for how she will cope in the heat and without a partner.

NO ONE UNDERTAKES THIS PROCESS WITH AN AIR OF FLIPPANCY OR VANITY, IT IS NOT A REJUVENATION TO MAKE YOUR SELF A MORE ATTRACTIVE COMMODITY FOR THE OPPOSITE SEX, OR A FACELIFT TO IMPROVE YOUR SELF CONFIDENCE, IT IS FAR GRAVER, IT IS CHANGING THE GENDER OF YOUR MOST IMPORTANT FEATURE. YOU COMMUNICATE WITH YOUR FACE, IT IS THE FIRST THING ANYONE LOOKS AT, IT IS A WEAPON, AN INVITATION, A MESSAGE. THIS OPERATION INVOLVES. PHYSICAL AND EMOTIONAL PAIN IT IS A DIFFICULT PROCESS OF EMERGENCE. IT RICOCHETS THROUGH YOUR ENTIRE FAMILY AND NETWORK OF FRIENDS. NOTHING WILL EVER BE SAME - IT IS STRICTLY A ONE WAY TICKET AND YOU DON'T KNOW THE WHAT THE DESTINATION WILL LOOK LIKE. ... ONE PRAYS FOR IMPROVEMENT, PEACE OF MIND, FEELING A SENSE OF COMPLETION AND FINALLY RELIEF - BUT THERE IS NO GUARANTEE, NO REFUNDS AND NO WAY BACK.

So what now? She has to recover, it will take months for her to get her true strength back, i think after the bruises have faded like a post pyroclastic sunset, we will still have to put a new and different life together; although Angela disagrees with this - for her she sees life made more easy, hopefully not having to worry about putting lippy on before greeting the postman in the constant battle to remain just a number rather than a freak).



What springs to mind is:

Adjustment
Resignation
Patience
Celebration
Grace.

When we got back to the apartment, we were both in better health but in a kind of malaise, Angela is very, very strong and healthy (she has never smoked and did not drink much either) but the trauma of the op has taken it's toll and she has not slept properly due to the physical discomfort and I think being in strange surroundings. It has made us both tired, we have both been having unusual vivid dreams. It has been praying heavily on her mind, whether she has made a mistake - she fears her nose is not set properly.

At 2am on our first night back in the apartment, at the toilet she noticed blood in her urine while she was urinating. This was a little worrying for her but when her urine stopped the blood didn't - there was a fairly strong flow which had completely coloured the toilet water within a minute. She was very frightened. Just before coming here there had been a series of TV programmes about botched surgery and this was foremost in her mind.

So what do you do at 2am? the inside of her penis was still bleeding (although not painful), and to be honest, had we gone to hospital, we would have sat for ages and they would not have done anything then anyway - so we waited until the blood stopped and filled her knickers with a makeshift towel and went to bed.

It was obvious to me that she had bled because the catheter had adhered to her urethra, and caused a small wound when it was removed - I remember she yelped when it was taken out. There was already some blood around her thigh even then - so we guessed that this was when the nick was probably made. It was painless but still disturbing in the wee small hours when I was mopping the blood up of the bathroom floor and then trying to make a pad out of gauze to soak up the bleeding.

In the morning Angela tentatively went to the toilet, dreading what was about to happen - she had not really slept at all, running through the various medical possibilities and ramifications all night. Keeping a tight reign on the flow, - no blood appeared. The relief was visible through those black Panda eyes - I felt like giving her a bamboo stick and a conservation certificate to cheer her up.

So we called Ana the patient co-ordinator and she got Dr Daniel to call us straight back. This bleeding was not unusual at all. The important thing was that the blood had not formed a clot and hence blockage in the tube (which would have meant an urgent op as you could not go to the toilet) - so drink lots of fluids and take it easy. This is not extraordinary.

The last 48 hours has been peculiar, both of us exhausted and me pretty much feeling helpless, just trying to ensure she eats decent food and relaxes.

Day 1 - Airhead syndrome

We had an assessment with Dr Danial and Dr Capitan today and it was agreed without question that Angela should stay in for one more night. If she had become dizzy and fallen I would not have been strong enough to hold her - she was just not well enough to be moved.

Yesterday was a worrying day, A had noticed that her forehead felt like a freezer bag filled with slush. We assumed this was just post-op swelling.
We had not realised that all the swelling on her temple was trapped air, from the operation and not just oedema. Her brow was very "soft and squishy". The air was creating pressure, and therefore, Dr Danial, got a long thick hypodermic needle and made several holes in the top of Angela's scalp and proceeded to apply pressure to her forehead and push out the air. We could hear the air escaping. Hissing like a burst football. It was far worse for A as she got internal noise as well. It was explained that the air would have been naturally absorbed over a couple of weeks if left, but this procedure just accelerated the healing process. We were told it would not hurt as her scalp did not have a lot of sensation, but after the fifth hole was made and he was soaking up the blood with some gauze, her feet told a different story entirely as her toes started furiously wiggling.


It did hurt and I maneovred myself around the bed and held her hand she squeezed it tightly. She bled a Little from the puncture wounds and I am hoping soon to get her hair washed as the last thing she needs is an infection in those wounds. Her long hair is matted with blood, sweat and literally tears, it's going to be awkward to get it clean. I can't wait to get her all scrubbed up and sparkling again.

It was not nice for A to have the air pushed out of the wounds in the top of her head but it did reduce the swelling noticeably and Dr Danial applied strips of surgical tape to keep the forehead flat.


Dr Danial on his round did reassure us that, it was not a cause of concern and we managed to all make light of it.


Today though after her first shower the blood clots from her nose work were loosened and she tried to gently blow her nose and suddenly gasped in horror as she realised her head was noticeably inflating.
Angela was scared and as we had not had any prior knowledge of this phenomenon we were a trifle alarmed to say the least. The doctor's I think are so accustomed to this happening it did not occur to them or anyone else on the staff to tell us. It was bizarre and a real shock for Angela, as we thought something major was wrong. I on the plus side said she always was an airhead and would never need a snorkle ever again.



It was explained today when we sought advice from Dr Danial, that this was normal for any patient who has had their brow and nose bridge adjusted as an air-pocket under the forehead is a normal outcome when the sinus wall has been removed and altered so drastically. The reason for this is that the cutting of the bone to allow it to be extracted means there will not be an airtight fit when replaced into the forehead. and sitting upright whilst sleeping and the cold mask for the rest of the day would help. Anglela was instructed to NOT blow her nose but suck it up and swallow it..... yuck! If this had been properly explained yesterday A would not have got such a fright when she blew her nose.

I need to add here that we have entirely pleased so far with all the treatment and some of the smaller problems like this were well dealt with as they happened. The nursing staff were diligent and all requests, urgent or otherwise were dealt with kindly and promptly. The clinic was superb. I have shared this experience so as to give a clear picture to other transsexual women what they can expect if they are planning FFS..

As soon as the Dr's left, Angela fell into a deep sleep. The tiniest effort is utterly draining.

We will now wait for the nurse and get further blood tests, to check her haemoglobin levels and also, to get her mouth cleaned and her teeth brushed. This could be sore but something that will reduce the chance of infections in her mouth and also make her feel fresher. The catheter is coming out in the next hour and we plan to get her in the chair and enjoy a delicious ice cold orange juice.

I am so relieved that we are staying until late tomorrow and Dr Danial has prescribed extra pain medication!

Hurray!!!!!

A visit from Dr Kai

13.48, I popped out for a sandwich and a large cafe con leche, on my return I found Dr Kai, re-dressing Angela's nose, all the packing had been removed and he was in the process of reapplying the splint and generally cleaning up her face. The new nose looks finer, with a very gentle ski type slope, the bridge is more refined and her nostrils are smaller. He went to great lengnths to create what her refers to as the "nose tip deformity" which is a characteristic that most female noses share. Concern was expressed by A that she would not be able to pick her new nose!

A asked me to take some pics of this new stage and show her them, she is all puffy and rather grotesque, she peeps at me out of one very bloodshot eye.
"Oh Dear" she says gazing at the digital photo, her specs lightly poised on the squishy and delicate bridge of her nose.
"Yes, Love, I've had hotter dates"
She smiles at me gently and Dr Kai chuckles.

Dr Kai, did keep slipping with his pronouns though, with plenty of "he's" and "his" peppering the chat. Although he was very tender with Angela and referred to her as "My Dear", it felt very kind and not in the least bit patronising. He is extremely sexy (as some of the female staff had also noted) and reminds me of some of the lotherio type mediterannean men I have met in LA

As he went to leave his mobile rang, it was clearly "a lady", she wanted to know where he was in no uncertain terms, he placated her with the truth,
"I couldn't find you, so went to see one on my patients, I'll be there in five minutes"
We laughed together after the call:
"That was so obviously a women" said Angela
"Ah women, can't live with them, can't live without them" I laughed.
It was very funny when he replied to us with no intended irony
"Ah yes, women, I like lots of variety"
Angela and i laughed after he went,(well I laughed, A actually made muffled grunting noises like the piglet Babe), she was clearly pondering his reply.... "Do you think he meant VARIETY" ?

With no doubt, tonight will be difficult and we are going to try to get her another night's stay, as she is very dizzy. On a plus point, she ate a good portion of cold Spanish Omelette and ham and seemed nourished by the meal.

Yet again she is sleeping, her cold mask has a reassuring hum, it conceals her face and while she naps will hopefully reduce the notable swelling on her face and skull.

It's lovely and sunny outside and I'd love a glass of crisp chilled white wine. I will so deserve one!

Post Surgery Blues

12.27, Angela is sleeping fitfully,she has been in bad pain today and even the slightest movement is very difficult.
We saw the surgeon Dr Danial, yesterday and he explained the chronic swelling over her right eye was caused by heavy bleeding in the op, apparently she bled more then most people and it slowed down all the procedures and contributed to this especially nasty oedema.


We are meant to be discharged today, but I remain unconvinced that she is well enough to be moved. Even the slightest motion makes her feel very unwell, how will I get her in a cab and up into the room. She has been on intravenous pain killers for the last 36 hours; How will she cope on one tablet every 8 hours back in the hotel? I think she needs stronger medication than that. Perhaps I am fretting, all the staff feel my concern and Angela's suffering is normal after such a lengthy and aggressive procedure, but it doesn't stop me fretting.

Th nose surgeon Dr Kai o'Kay and Dr Danial are visiting at 16.00. Dr Khai is going to removing the dressing from her nose. By all accounts the removal of the "packing" from her nasal cavities is extremely painful but should offer some relief. Hopefully she will be able to breathe better. I do hope so.

Earlier I went down to the cafeteria in the Hospital as A wanted a cold fresh drink, in there I bumped into Juan the nurse. Juan attended to Angela, before the op and is a tall, typical spanish hunk, he is I think gay and such a total sweetheart, sunny and intelligent, with exceptional English language skills, my day instantly brightened when I saw him at the counter. He beamed at me and beckoned me over to sit beside him and we chatted at length about the ffs, recovery, issues of trangenderism and feeling different. I hope I see him again as I would like to invite him to Newcastle for a holiday to meet our friends. it was wonderful to see his smiling face.

For now I am sitting writing this and hoping they keep her in for another night, just for the pain to subside.

Angela's elderly Mum phoned yesterday and was tearful and concerned on the phone at how I would manage in the hotel and seemed consoled that we had an apartment not just a room. So I could cook soup and stuff for A and get her settled. I did feel though that Edith was correctly worried about such an early discharge following such a long operation.

In a week I feel confident that Angela will be feeling stronger and more comfortable. Poor poppet.

We have both noticeably lost weight, due to lack of food and worrying I think.

"I bet all the nurses fancy me" she rattled.

Well it was a restless night with nurses in and out, draining the catheter bag etc. She didn't stop vomiting blood clots for quite a few hours and snoring like she was on her death bed, a kind of apnoea combined with a hideous death rattle.

At 9am this morning, from the third floor room we are using, I can see the seafront with a fine dull grey coastal mist settled over the slaty waters and nodding boats. The streets are empty and it's clearly going to be a beautiful summer's day. Angela's nausea has now passed and she is just sore and exhausted. Speaking is very difficult due to the various sets of stitches inside her mouth, the constrictive effect of the dressing from the rhinoplasty (they broke her nose), her badly swollen lips and the effect of the cold mask. I can see that her brow is very different but cannot tell how good an outcome she has, we know that the jaw work will be largely invisible until, she has a facelift in six months to remove the loose skin. I can tell from the tip of her nose, peeping through bloody gauze that it is very different, smaller and repositioned.

If she was going to really suffer, then was it last night.
The clinic's nursing staff were exemplary, despite many of the girls not speaking English. It was not a problem.


I told her when she came round if she said
"I bet all the nurses fancy me"
I'd know she was a bullshitter"


She's giggled twice at my predictable jokes. All will be well.

It's just going to be a case of slowly getting her back onto oral fluids and waiting for the swelling to go down.

I'd still like a cup of tea.

A swell kinda night

It is 2.37 am,
she is back now, it was a long long wait, she is very poorly with a hydrating drip
a drip for nausea and a lot of pain relief,she looks car crashed, her left eye is like a plum, she is unrecognizable due to the swelling.
After vomiting blood clots for a few minutes and then being treated and cleaned up by the nurses, she started to drift in and out of sleep. it was going to be a long night...the cold mask makes a soothing hum and by all accounts will reduce the swelling in the course of the night.

I would like a cup of tea.
I have no doubt she will look a million dollars but right now she looks like a million Lira... poor Angela.

Three Magi bring great news

22.32, my stomach is in knots and my friends on Facebook are keeping me from going demented. The nurse had just told me in broken English that Angela would be another two hours.

Then ten minutes later the two maxiofaial surgeons who did her brow and chin work came to see me! All three, are young, handsome, accomplished men. They reassured me that it had all gone very well, and her frontal jaw had not needed shaving, and talked me through how they had just removed the muscle that created the fleshy pad with the dimple on her chin. All three embraced me. We chatted about the intricacies of their "work"

"You'll like her new chin" they said
"I liked it before" I replied, smiling. Feeling foolish in holiday makers red cotton shorts and t-shirt withe pen mark on it.
then feebly claimed
"As long as she is happy, I will be happy".
I feel so inutterably sad, I loved her beautiful face, I embrace her happiness but feel a sense of loss. Is this selfish of me? Probably.

They had with them a Facial surgeon from Brazil who had come to watch the procedure as a training exercise and who had offered to take pictures.

So six hours in, and Dr Kai from Granada is now starting her rhinoplasty. I feel sick with worry. I can hear a man down the corridor moaning in pain, the corridors are noisy with busy staff, rattling trolleys, rooms being moved around. Somewhere in Marbella there was an emergency today and it caused some problems, even the plastic surgeons were called to assist. If I have had a long day, God knows how tired they are.

waiting

it is 21.48 here and Angela went down to the operating room at 1600 hours, I popped out earlier for tapas and coffee and sat on the promenade and watched young people in the distance on a huge inflatable playing volleyball, they would catch the ball with their feet and flip over two or three times, then with the ease of simians, flip the ball back over the net for another young bronzed slip of youth to flick the ball back with the tips of a moving hand. I was being texted by well meaning friends and I watched every minute of time move in slow motion.

I wondered at the total carefreeness of those around me, the sun was warm - hibiscus and rhododendron where pinking the banks of earth beneath huge palm trees, it was bliss but the joy was hollow like a painted empty tin. I was just waiting and waiting to get Angela back in one piece. Safe.

5 hours now
waiting
tick tock
tick tock

Of course it's not goodbye

When we turned up today for the op, we had no room, the private hospital had been taking in emergencies, and we had to prepare in a temporary room, it was very clean and bright and well equipped, all the nursing staff, with their varying degrees of English were exceptional, but it did mean that I could not unpack or go and buy essential supplies, such as straws, medicated shampoo, rubbing alcohol. bruising cream, as I had planned. I was also very hungry and wanted a cup of coffee, to feed my caffeine addiction.

With a post it note on her willy saying (wrong procedure)Angela went down to theatre about an hour ago, she had been crying on and off all morning, and was extremely frightened, (a certain amount of drama queendom doth prevail) but it is scary and the procedures are without a doubt quite alarming. I would not like my face, sawed, and chipped and screwed back together.

In one spell of distress this morning, she was sobbing and saying, "Why does this have to be me facing this"... I comforted her, "we are the truly lucky ones"
and all I could think of was all the transgirls, out there working as sex workers or only being able to dream of the luxury of Facial Feminisation. It's a harsh reality when intrusive aggressive theater is the the only recourse to your gender dysphoria and each step seems such an extreme.

I am sitting in this empty room, listening to the Spanish nursing staff chatting brightly and speedily, and Angela is somewhere in the building getting her face taken apart, I feel afraid, and the next 6 hours seems like a long stretch and the future seems like The Russian Steppes or a great vast prairie where I know there are borders to other countries but I cannot see them, yet.

We were well prepared, we know, the next couple of days will be dark, we have spoken to other previous patients and done a lot of background research we know the team is of a high standard and she is in safe hands. She spent the last 48 hours writing a long letter to her daughter, just in case the worse things happens....which we know won't happen, but t doesn't stop the fear I suppose...

I just don't like to think of Angela in pain, she is my best friend... I have a two bride wedding blessing to arrange and I want her to look like the happiest woman in the world. I want her to look in the mirror and say

"Look that's actually me".

Pre-op procedures and palm trees

We flew out to Marbella on Sunday lunchtime with Easy jet, it was an uneventful flight and Angela and I barely spoke, we were reading, Angela was immersed in A life in two genders by Jenny Boylan and I in a memoir of Catholic misery called The God Squad by Paddy Doyle... ironically both books concern remarkable journeys made by brave individuals who have been marginalised by society and through no fault of their own..... Paddy and Jenny both speak out in order to help others who are affected by "issues of otherness". Angela and I are going ahead with this difficult chapter of her life as she cannot live as The Outsider - feeling different is not a cause for celebration in the aisles of ASDA or in a swimming pool when Joe Normal is scrutinising you.


We have both been quiet, and Angela, has been teary and fearful, I imagine it is the tension, a fear of an unsatisfactory outcome, a dread of pain...we are going through the same process as any normal couple would follow for a romantic sunshine and sangria type holiday, double checking passports, caryying round vats of sun block... except that is not the purpose of the trip; our aim is to get Angela's face feminised. (please see previous blogs for details of the surgery)

On Sunday night, we walked along the seafront, with all the Spanish holiday makers, it was a text book seaside idyll, the Mediterranean smells of lemon, garlicky seafood and olive oil. the sound of the sea, rolling like the chants of time, surging over and over. The breeze warm and balmy. Sitting at a low key sea front cafe, later in the evening, amidst dowdy, stern faced Spanish Matriarchs and young Spanish well mannered families on the beach. We were drinking San Miguel and eating paella, several times as we walked through the langerous and laid back crowds we overheard people whisper "Hombre", we felt like any two women alone, but this type of snipe and the the occasional quizzical glances belied the fact we were not like any other couple.

We talked late into the evening about what would happen if she died, where I would go and whether I would cope. We talked of our lives so far and what we hoped for. We seem to be so overshadowed by this Spectre of transgenderism, it consumes and pre occupies us, never one thing or another. It has created a kind of life dysphoria, which we have to negotiate and engage with. If you placed The angel of The North on our patio it would command less of a presence than the chimera of transgenderism.

Monday was taken up with x-rays (revealing a previously undiagnosed clear scoliosis of the spine), bloodtests, CTI scans and assessments with firstly the anesthetist and then two of the three surgeons who would undertake the surgery. Dr Daniel and Dr Kai. Angela has such a beautiful face, with hight cheek bones, and large mossy green eyes, a very dignified nose and full soft lips, her hair is naturally long and dark blond, with the odd strand of silver grey, like shafts of light. It seem strange for the surgeons, to analyse her face and talk about certain deformities, a slight lean of her nose, her widows peaks, the thickness of her noses bridge. I sat in silence, knowing I could never say, "what the hell are you talking about, I love that fucking face".... i would keep her forever as she is, and not change one thing, but that I know would be selfish of me, and if she was happy with her male features then she would not be mine.


We made love in the hotel room, yesterday, and i draped soft silk sleeping gowns over her body and kissed her face knowing it would be the last time, and from hence forth, she would be the same person I loved but yet again transformed. She hopes I will love her just the same, and I hope that my feelings remain the same despite her anatomy.

oops battery running low, to be continued and corrected later.

Love to all

Skegness Butlins: A Trans family holiday

Well Angela, who is fearless, decided that my idea of camping in WigWams in Scotland would be chilly and boring and decided to book a four night break in Butlins. It was so the little girl child in our life could have a fun holiday. My son is in Sligo with crazy-Nan and by all accounts is having a good time.

Anyway to cut a long story short, I was VERY nervous about going and worried about teenagers ridiculing Angela, as she still has some boy features and does not always pass.

Anyway it was MIND BLOWING!!!! No one batted an eye-lid, we did fencing, archery, organised volley ball games for the lttle kids, we swam, laughed, went on scary rides ate way too much pizza and ice cream. It would seem that my fears are very much internalised and I am wrongly wary. Angela was accepted NOT tolerated.
Yes, people did look, they were clearly curious but we did not detect any hostility.
Is society perhaps more understanding of transexual women than I think?
Do I project more prejudice than I encounter?

Towards a feminine expression

After months and months of research, soul searching and self doubt, it is decided and the deposit is paid, we are flying tomorrow to Spain for Angela's FFS, we will be there for two weeks in a self catering apartment
her procedures will include:

* Forehead recontouring (aka Brow Bossing)
and
* orbital recontouring ...these procedures remove the "neanderthal" ridge above the eye brows that the majority of men have, they will remove the bone from the front of her skull, shave the bone then reinsert the modified bone held in by two screws)

* Forehead lift

* Hairline correction (the skin will be pulled into a girlish curve as oppossed to the typical V's that men have at their temples)

* Browlift

* Rhinoplasty (they will break her nose)

* Chin and jaw Recontouring (jaw split at the centre and a section of bone removed, then jaw bone is reattached)

* Trachea shave (removes the appearance of the adam's apple,a strong masculine indicator)

The operation will take around 8 hours.... it is very invasive and the 48 hours afterwards will be very "uncomfortable"

What do we hope for from Angela's Facial Feminisation surgery?


What is it Angela wants from this?
to stop feelings of guilt and shame because of the way others look at her.
to pass in public with little or no makeup - like most girls
to be a beautiful woman
to see her true self in the mirror
to feel right about herself


What do I want?
To stop people staring at us in public
To ease a sense of unease when we are clearly the object of curiosity or amusement / titlation (although this is rare)
For Angela to be able to collect her daughter from her school
For her to move on her boy->girl SPECTRUM closer to the girl that she feels she is

This is difficult, frightening, the very worse scenario would be Angela would die and Isaac, my young son and I would be destitute. I would lose my lover, my best friend and the stabilty we share.

It has been difficult to accept that I will have to acclimatise to my favourite person having a different face. As a man, he was very very handsome and when transformed was often remarked upon as being extremely good looking. But the truth of the matter was she looked like a very attractive feminised man. Not a woman.

I hope to stand infront of the world and passers by see two happy women, not two sad individuals who are stranger aware. I am tired of always having my radar up, and out staring people, glaring at sniggering kids. Enough is enough.

I am worried about her suffering and pain post-op, I hope I can help her through those dark hours.

I hope readers understand that this is not for vanity, it is to match her visual identity to her feminine spirit.

It is for all of us, in our family, our circle of learning.

A change of face: FFS and a new chapter

We are flying to Spain tomorrow for Angela's Facial Feminisation Surgery, it will be the last of her savings. It's a huge finanical gamble dependent on us working like Navvies when she recovers.

Sometimes Angela expresses concerns that I will not stay as her transition progresses and we wonder how I will adapt to her increasing feminisation. I have no idea how I will respond but I would rather be with her than without her.

I once sat in a down at heel, rather grim Blackpool geusthouse with an old flame, Judy, it was just about the last time we met, and I told her that Angela, her nemesis, was not a simple cross-dresser but actually a transgendered person and that she was going to make the change from male to female....it would involve hormones, voice training, living full time as a woman....surgery.... Judy was shocked and emotional, holding my hands she tried to warn me. She felt that my life had been hard and that I needed stability and normailty... a regular family life if you like. Her eyes glistened with tears, she felt I was making a mistake. Life with a transistioning transexual was not going to be easy. Glancing around the kitsch and slightly garish day room, I felt so sad and torn apart... all I could assert to Judy was that I was going to stay with Angela and not let her down, I could not say what the future held, or whether, we would ever actually even live together, I was just a body adrift in a fast moving current, I was going to have to surrender to the forces that surrounded me and only stand when I found myself ashore. I was fearful but hopeful. Something glued Angela and I together, a shared sense of loyalty, truthfulness...I had no choice. It was sad but it was right and truly hopeful. Judy would be OK, she had her wife and family, I on the other hand was looking to the future and all I could see was a huge multi coloured sign that read
Angela's Magical Mystery Tour
Marvellous Adventures guaranteed enroute
Destination unknown!

At that point, in the late summer of 2009, I did not see that, My Mum would go bonkers, my eldest kids would jump ship and Angela and I would move intogether.


So where are we now? I haven't spoken to the kids since March, they do not have a phone. I get messages on a social networking site but I don't know if they are from my son as I know my 1st husband intercepts their mail. I think they are from my eldest son and he is refusing to see me as my mother turned up in Dublin and did her psycho-Nan routine in the street. The Garda were called, she is a nuisance and she upsets everybody.

What am I going to do about the kids? I am going to wait, I refuse to get involved with litigation, drama, back stabbing. I know the kids love me and they know I love them, and for now if they need to reject me because of Angela, what can I do? They went? They were old enough to make their own decisions. It torments me but what can I do? I have no money for lawyers... and Angela is on the edge of bancruptcy. We have two years of very hard work to get things seriously back on track.

Don't call it nosh if it's posh!

Well I have been very busy, I am feeling very optimistic and upbeat.

The children in Ireland have contacted me to say they are fine and wish to remain with their Dad in Dublin. It was not pleasant the way he went about it, like a thief in the night, I wish that I could have seen them before they went. I believe in freedom, if they wanted to go, then fine but was I not entitled to a discussion with the kids at least? - I don't know how influenced they have been, but at least I know they are safe now.

All day people have been calling to my house from Freecycle and removing my possessions, the house is a mass of boxes.
I have been cataloguing my four thousand books into numbered boxes and putting them into a proper system, so finding them will be easier when they are sold (I am an Internet book dealer), I'm on box 41 with about 1,000 books to go... it's laborious and dull but well worth it. There were many errors in my inventory and expensive books that were not even listed online- it is a massive stock check that should have been done along time ago!

Tonight Angela is taking me to one of the most exclusive restaurants in Cheshire, to celebrate our new life together. I am so head over heels in love with her, I had forgotten what happiness felt like, I can feel a glow in my flesh, like a warm radiation. It's been a long time since I felt a surge of joy. Too long.

Anyway a new chapter will begin, with two central characters, in my dark hours I lived vicariously through her, turning to her issues in order to ignore my own problems. I intend these new times to be a healing time for love and the building of bridges.

An Open Letter

Dear Angela,

Well this is it.... a future I never thought possible and didn't even bother hoping for. Us living together, waking up everyday, me tidying up after you, you crazy untidy floozie! And I swam to you through the terrible tears of having the kids taken without my consent. Hard hard times eh hun?... but a time for reckoning too.

We met as two people who had been really disappointed and who were reluctant to break the fearful cycle with the words "I love you". We pussyfooted around... but couldn't keep apart, despite a bleak vision of not being together, we fought for it. You thought you had once married the most beautiful girl in the world who accepted your femme nature.... not to be - sadly she couldn't deal with it. I thought after ten years me and the Captain were going to grow old together, I loved him but he loved me less. Thank God Angela that we met and started to mend each other.

I am so sad that my bright meteorite Judy vanished into a silent distant horizon and that a friendship is impossible. But perhaps we both knew that I would have married her/him if he had not already been married. You knew I loved her. We met in the wrong dimension and Angela we built a friendship so strong it became a bond strong enough to build a future on. That's my life, happy -sad- happy- sad. Thank you Angela for wanting me to see clearly what I refused to see.

I am taking stock
A new era begins.
I wish I knew where the kids were so we could talk - I have had enough messages to know they are ok but I need to speak to them myself.
Am I permitted real happiness?
Angela I hope that we can heal our lives and smile again.

I'm stone in love with you and no bullies, doubters, or bigots will stop me from being free with you.
There have been times of slow meandering waters that shaped my Self, there have been wild times like riding white water... I don't know how I survived...all these rivers swept me to you, I will make you happy, in still waters we will remember, I have no regrets.
xxx
Tillie

Chantra

He's mad that trusts in :
the tameness of a thug,
the boldness of a beer,
or a whore's oath,
love all
trust few
For what trust in these times
Fuck all the slanderers and grasses
Blood will have blood
Let the c***s have a taste of their own toxic poison
Now Gods stand up for bastards
and us queers are raging!!
and let all that is destined to happen just happen

(Johnny Animal)

whispers

May I say quietly to you
as you lie in my arms
tall and satinned
long limbed
whilst the moonlight on the snowy lawn
lights my study
the books bear witness
to us
as queer women.
I run my fingertips over your spine
then theirs
may I say quietly to you
"Lie down"
that "Angel, the sacrifices hurt me
but the boons of love make me rejoice"
closing my eyes just breathing
less of you is more of you
We are inside looking out
I will say quietly to you
"thank you Chikka
for our beautiful contradiction"

Bittersweet

I loathe being maudlin, it's a trait I remain wary of. I'm a stoic public school girl, it's alien for me to say "I feel sad"... I'm more likely to say "Let's get on with it, it can only get better". My upper lip is so stiff it's becoming a shelved smile.

It's not unusual, to close your eyes and dream a dream, to paint a fantasy in the cave of your mind, articulate perfect moments, want happiness, what ever you thought happiness was... When I was alone in Cheshire with the kids, skint, I would habitually close my eyes and drift to my silked Angela in her penthouse, my sanctuary from Gas Bills, a persistant lawn, dysfunctional lightbulbs, I would want to be with her and be warm,and caccooned. It was briefly possible, it seemed futureless. I was wrong... but I wanted to be patient and not have God hand me my fantasy with a scarlet letter.

Never was love so bittersweet. My family is scattered and love is going to remould itself into something I never fantasised of, something I never thought possible.

Salt Spiked Honey

I have been known to tell amusing anecdotes:
Now they slip my mind

In my rather chaotic book-stacked study, alive with jittery monochrome cats, JOhnny Animal pats me on the head, I can smell his testosterone, he says
"Don't look so pensive Tillie, interesting lives are often bittersweet.
Pain can illuminate a path to peace, you would not love so strongly if your losses had not been felt so profoundly"
He is a Buddha.
My entire situation, not knowing where the kids are, or how they feel, is a minefield of dread and self doubt. it's a horrible mental process akin to untangling living threads like coiling parasites, tangled like wool in the emotional archipeligo of my mind.
How the Hell did it come to this?

I am beng offered the fulfillment of dreams I daren't not envisage on the back of guilt and remorse, like planting flower beds on landfill.#

Childer me

One grey Friday
the black eyed woman
with clever words
and deflated hopes
lies on a bed
on a mound
of her absent children's clothes
and crying
from her toes
her chakra's sodden soaked rags
her best efforts stuffed into bin bags
And only Angels can hold her strong
her tears a salve to ease her
into a salted mollasses tomorrow
of bittersweet sighs
Where all pleasures are sensory
Ah, Garlic, Rosemary
for memories
Smooth smooth pearls
Sad sad melodies.
Beautiful beautiful hope
Yes beautiful beautiful hope
like s Spring born willow

No more drama

I wrote this poem on Jan 6th this year.

HER CROWN

I thought my mother was building a pergola
but as all knowledgable mothers do endure to do
It is a crucifix she fusses over
and tutting over her barbed crown
"What a blasted nuisance
dammit the fiddly thing
kids!"
She is going to martyr herself on the patio
freshly weeded
She told me so
"Hold the ladder
and shut your mouth"
And in her field of scolds
She thrashes against the ropes
of her own suffrence.
She screams "Why me?"
barbed and chic in THORNS.



My eldest children have been taken away from me by their concerned father as my mother has filled him with horror stories of my perverted love for a transexual and false stories of me abandoning them.

I LAST SAW THEM ON SATURDAY MORNING. I WAS UPSTAIRS WHEN THEY WENT FOR THEIR SATURDAY CONTACT WITH THEIR DAD, NEITHER SAID GOODBYE.

Mum was banging on the door at 9am this morning, I lay on the sofa and waited for her to go away, I am fearful I will physically assault her.
This morning at 9.21 I have a message on my ansaphone
"Tillie, please will come down to the house, I know I've told some lies over the last few days, I put my hands up to that, what we need is an interim residency order, we need to go and see my lawyer and we can get the children BACK...."
I hung up the phone at that point and stood laughing and crying... yesterday their Stepmother stood in my house and looked on as I put my kids clothes into bin bags, and I knew that her life was now going to be unbelievably difficult, she will be the only breadwinner in her house with 6 people to feed. I could see in her eyes her pain.

My mother through her hideous exaggerations has torn apart my family, will push my ex-husbands wife to the limit, hurt all my children....my head is in angry turmoil... but I have had enough. I am going to walk away, leave the kids with their Dad, I know he will love them and I am going to take this chance to go into proper recovery for my late night drinking and heal my life once and for all. I want NO MORE DRAMA, I WANT PEACE. I WANT THE CHILDREN TO HAVE STABILITY. I am 20 miles away from them and can feel their pain, I do not want them pulled from pillar to post, my mother is dangerous, we are all going to walk away. There is no making amends. There is no more forgiveness. I am not going to through another custody battle. We all need quiet and to feel safe.



I hate drama, lies, shouting, name calling, I've known too much of it.
When asked what I wanted to be truly happy, it was always the same thing, an older me in bed reading the The Sunday Times and Angela beside me (obviously having made me a cup of tea), knowing the children were safe and happy. I have no interest in money, investments, flash holidays, it means nothing to me, my idea of happiness is inner tranquility and to be with those I love.

My Mum has repeated this pattern all her life, she abandoned her mixed up truculent teenage son with a broken leg in a huge unfurnished mansion in the early seventies and then never spoke to him for over 35 years, she said he was trouble...I don't know how he was trouble, he spent his life avoiding her, his warning to me was the same each time I saw him, "avoid her, she is dangerous and relishes in other peoples suffering, she takes joy in punishing others, she was sadistic to us as children and she is sadistic to you as an adult". I have a horrible memory of my mother, I would have been around 6 or 7, my brother is sitting on the sofa crying and I am lying on my belly on the floor, she is telling us both to shut up, I am in terrible pain as she is digging a verruca out of the bottom of my foot with a darning needle, she trying to get the root out, she has been doing this nightly for several days, she is torturing me. My brother is made to watch. She is a nurse and knows best. She was vicious.



This scene haunted my brother his entire life, and he never forgave her for our childhood. After his suicide, she started to play the pained mother, and talks with great love of him, she is a hypocrite.
My children actively avoid her, we all know she is volatile and not to be trusted. I am very very tired of her. I feel she has abused me my entire life and what she has done now is the final act of sadism against me and my children.

I am going to start a new life with my five year old son and go .
I am walking away.
I cannot write anymore, I'm tired.
I did this fight once before, endless court cases, turmoil, the cycle stops here.
There is a beautiful beach somewhere and I am going to teach my wonderful son, my heartbeat, to fly a kite.
No more drama.

Still water and active volcanoes

How do you mend ripped up lives?
I knew my Mother would be uneasy with Angela's transgenderism
I had reassurred her we had been loving and - hopefully reponsible when telling the children- I hoped she would listen...it really didn't look good, but i was truthful.
She had been simmering and making threats for a few days...
but I am sitting in my house in my house tonight...my mum mananged to ambush my ex on Saturday morning when he came for his contact visit and filled him wi with horror stories of my unnatural love.. the outcme is... my ex husband has snatched my eldest kids and is refusing to return them, as he deems my love for a transexual woman a threat to the children's safety.
And I am here - and ain't no placeabo, opiate, silvery plaster, that makes me feel that I shouldn't feel that life is a whore....I need a compass and a miracle.
I don't have another fight in me.

Mother-Love

I will keep this succinct- I knew it would happen when I told my mum that my partner was transgendered and that she presents herself as a woman in front of the children (for that matter, Asda. Macdonalds, Aldi, restaurants.... almost everyone)- that Mum would be confused and unhappy. Yet what saddens me the most in my prediction of her reaction, is her bitterness, bigotry and vitriol.

I told her yesterday about my relationship with "Adam" and that "Adam" was actually "Angela" - and went to great lengths to gently explain that my partner did not dress for sexual kicks, was NOT a transvestite, but was a woman born into the incorrect body. I could have walked away but didn't, not because I am a self sacrificing do-gooder but because I love and care for Angela and feel that she actually loves me for all my flaws.
I had explained, that I had gone to great lengths and studied a lot of material and talked to to other trans parents before telling the children. Angela and I had agreed that we would not expose our children's friends to her trans self, as we fear our children will be bullied.

I was doomed to failure really and knew it, but it had to come from me and not one of the children.

She was on the phone, and would only refer to Angela as either
He
Angelina
(or her favourite)That Transvestite

I Will list her objections
It will damage your daughter as her periods are due to start
You need a man to settle down with you
It's not normal/it's weird
I am not homophobic but do you realise this makes you a leeeeeessssssbbbiiiiaaaan
"Crying" I think you are dysfunctional, I am going to the school tomorrow to tell the staff about what your making the children go through.
I will have to tell your first husband - he won't be happy... (no Baldprick's an extremist Catholic with violent inclinations.... oh happy day!)

I tried to give her reasoned and reassuring replies but it was falling on deaf ears, I know the outcome, (I live in a house she owns) I will be threatened with eviction, she will more than likely try to harrass me if Angela is here for a visit (I will not hesitiate to call the police) she will try to convince the kids that the love we have is abnormal.... this is going to be a long and arduous chapter as she is forced to accept the situation, i'm already tired from my detox and recent cold turkey off alcohol, I don't need the stress but will deal with it.

I chose a tougher road I know... but I won't be cowtowed by anyone.

Not keeping mum

It was just about the final frontier in coming clean, despite being together for 12 months, I had never told My Mum that my partner was a trans m2F individual, a transsexual, transgendered, a woman, whatever the title, it seemed safer and less emotionally risky to tell her the truth of the matter.
My mother has a history of volatile and cruel behaviour, and I dreaded her furious "bigoted" response more than being disinherited. Please bear in mind her pet name for me in front of kids is "whore". Every time I go away she quips about me earning some money on my back. I'm sure you get the picture!

So, lets set the scene, it's my daughter's birthday and being car less I needed to get a lift from my sleepy village to the nearest town to get a birthday cake for her... My mother offered to give me a lift. I was to go round to the Bungalow of Hate and she'd run me into town. As regular readers will know, I have three kids, my eldest boy of 13 has Asperger's (a mild autistic syndrome) but holds his own in mainstream school. mum gives him a lift most morning to school, especially in the winter months.

She says "Josh seems unhappy about something, but he won't tell me and i can't put my finger on it, he says he wants to live with me and you might move to Newcastle? What is it with this Adam guy that's unsettling Josh?"
I got defensive and said it was private and any problems in the house were there well before Adam came on the scene and were to do with my struggle with alcohol and depression and nothing to do with Adam's behaviour. I sang Angela's praises but in her male gender, I had a horrible sinking feeling, sitting in her comfy, axminstered living room, and every time I said Adam or he, it felt like a lie and I knew that my secrecy was forcing the kids to live a lie, there is such a direct connection between innocent secrets and nasty lies.
I felt sick and tired of the dishonesty, swallowed hard and made a huge decision! This was my moment. I was going to grasp it.

We chatted on about the children's schooling and behaviour and I interrupted her:
"OK, I'm going to come clean here"
"Oh Good well I know alot about this ADAM!" she snapped in an accusatory jab
"Oh good, well I don't need to tell you then do I" I was being drawn into defensive mood to her her arrogance "Go on then Mum tell me what you know?"
Mum looked sheepish and arrogant and started suggesting that Adam was cruel to me and the kids in a vague, second guessing kind of way.
"OK Mum can I stop you now and speak without being interrupted, you need to listen to me very closely. Adam is a name only you use" She looked puzzled.
"When I met Adam we struck up a very honest and trusting relationship, and several months in we realised that she was a transgendered person, a woman living in a man's body" Mum looked rather startled at this point!
"Did you know that my partner is in fact a person who everyone calls Angela?"
"No" she admitted.
"I had a choice Mum, when we realised she would have to make moves to become a woman, I could either walk away and leave her on her own or stay beside her and continue to love her... I chose the latter Mum, and the decision was not an easy one, as I knew the kids might have to deal with stigma, but we have tried to be honest and to protect them as much as we can"

The ensuing conversation went well, with all the expected questions
"Will she have the big op?"
"Does she live as a woman all the time?"
"What does her mother and daughter think?"
"Does she have male sexual desires?"
and rather touchingly "Does she have similar friends who she can talk to about this"

She was clearly taken aback but seemed to accept it (i am expecting colossal fall out at a future date) and she did end the conversation saying, "don't move I have every faith you'll find your self a lovely fella".
Well Rome wasn't built in a day
and apart from her maniac laughter and hollers of ""lesbian" as she tried to reverse her yellow Countryman over me when I was unloading the shopping the great admittance went well really..........


hhhhhmmmm-------- watch this space! by the end of the day I got feedback from my son that in the car she insuniuated to Joshua my son "that she felt the whole Angela scenario was very wrong and just not right".
I sense an agenda.... the drama of life is determined to go on.

i'll drink to that?

Anyone here ever done a cold turkey off drugs, alcohol (fags even)? I've done a few withdrawals in my time. Each time is harder, when you know, what you have to face is grim and the future looks bleak. banal without "special effects".The dark hours seem too silent and the blackness flickers with imagined shadows. Well, i have been drinking on and off for years, it feels so good, to be in that anaesthetised place, the forgetting place, where all you hear is music and your smiling and laughing and sometimes flirting - kissing dancing. A heady and spinning place, I love that sense of no responsibilities, freezing that hedonistic moment in an ethanol laced formaldehyde. When I am drunk, being pissed is a beautiful kaleidoscope, my safe place, better than sex, better than heroin, but not better than love. Nothing substitutes the feeling of love. How can you view reality through a kaleidoscope? There are no answers in a mirage. When you're drunk, lust, self hatred, greed, loss, vanity, need can all disguise themselves as that fragile Goliath, love, but none of those are love, but all are things that can be healed by it.

It noticeably started years ago, in my early twenties when I worked as a hostess in London, i was never a hooker but spent a good few years in my underwear persuading idiots to buy me champagne at a £100 a throw so they could dance with me, I was tall for a girl and stood out. I didn't need to fuck men to screw money out of them, the idea to them was enough. I never lied to a man and told him he would get sex of me, I was astute enough to know that most men are predators and like the chase as much as the kill. I was selling the real quick thinking me, the funny, educated sharp me.I was twenty three, beautiful I suppose, pity really, as I could have set myself up for life.I was offered vast amounts of money for sex but my middle name was never Polo (she made a mint with her hole). it paid for my BA - hostessing served it's purpose but at a cost.

I was pissed for the first two years of my degree it cost me a First Class Honours Degree,(Champagne five nights a week and sometimes upto ten pints of Lowenbrau in the daytime).

My tale is a cautionary tale, I never ever told anyone, but once in 1984 (I was 23 and very light) I came round on some wasteland off The Old Kent Road, near our squat, at dawn, the sun was hovering on the horizon and an orange street lamp flickered in the distance and momentarily confused me, the blow to my head made me think "Two sun's?". I had been attacked, was concussed,my skull had a huge lump on the back, my neck hurt and my back was black and blue, my clothes were ripped, my tights had gone,I have no idea of what had actually happened: the last 10 hours boozing was just a black hole that had vacuumed the previous nights events out of my consciousness. Maybe this is truly a blessing. I had no defense injuries. Two weeks later a man phoned my house and told me he had raped me- i did not know his name or where I had been. I had been so drunk I had given my number to a rapist. Before or after the attack? I don't know, the memories of it are tiny nasty little fragments. I have always been too ashamed to tell anyone. He told me where he had left me.He was mocking me. The stranger was accurate about what he had done to me. Some men enjoy the kill as much as the chase. I had been very naive. I moved house and buried an innocent part of me in South East London.
I went into rehab at the end of my second year and then worked day and night to try and do three years work in four months, write my dissertation and do the final years work. I missed the First Class Honours on my course work, by one point, the panel said no at the appeal, I would have to settle for the 2:1, my alcoholism was no excuse. Clever girls like me take too much for granted and I should have known better. It was a bitter pill, I remain disappointed that I did not get a First. I blame myself.

It's so normal and so acceptable to be trollied, no one really thinks anything of it. I saw being pissed as a badge of subversiveness and rebellion, the fun thing about me, the great enhancer. The reality is far darker.

I woke up one morning last week - Thursday I think, and my tongue was black,and yet again we were running late, my liver was so painful it was giving me a vacating order. "Get a new one I ain't staying here anymore" But a liver's not the easiest thing to replace is it? Alone, the night before I had drunk a litre of Chianti, and half a bottle of Cote de Rhone, that I had lost the previous night and had been too pissed to find. Well it goes off if you don't drink it. My symptoms were bad, later in the day I was in Tesco's struggling not to slur from the previous nights drinking.

I resolutely went to the Dr, and told her what I wanted her to say. I knew the truth. Reality was slapping me in the face.

"Dr, I have been using my brother's suicide as an excuse to drink for nealy three years now, I never drink around the kids, i drink late at night and have always fooled myself that i was aware if there is an emergency, but it's bullshit, if there was an accident I am normally shitfaced by midnight and the reality is there is no one around to pick me up if I fall. . I am stopping Doctor, my brother's voice is in my head saying "you're a disgrace, pack it in Tillie, I did love you and the kids need you".
"Dr, I know my depression is the sister of my alocolism and if I can stop the drinking, these blues will go away. I will need to sleep and let the dreams come back slowly". She reluctantly agrees I need sleeping pills to get me over the first week" She makes it clear if it does'lt work this time I am back in rehab (NO NO NO).

On the detox, it just gets progressivlely worse as the alcohol leaves your system, Yesterday was day four, the worst, the truly dry day, I l spent the day on the sofa in my coat wrapped in a duvet, the heat was on and I was frozen and sweating, dreaming awake and paranoid. I felt totally abandoned. Although I did not know that Angela was in her car driving to Cheshire to care for me as only she so tenderly can do.
I realised who my friends where. Angela me and the kids had Domino's pizza for tea... I knew that this was going to be the day I had to get though. I deliberatley had no money on the house after the take away and had no intention of risking mine and my children's safety. I love them I am doing this for us.

The pills didin't work, but they took the edge of the terrible anxiety. And this time I hope I have done it, the pictures of me and Angela and me and the children are good a reference on the meaning of life and how importance optimism, love and hope are...it's a cliche, but to be true to yourself it's only one day at a time. But today really is another day to have some fun, write some more of my book and let the kids know how truly sorry I really am for having been so selfish. I'm not sure how long I will stay dry but I will try for as long as I can.

Give us a smile, the show will go on!
i did this for the kids
FOR ME
To be an ever nicer person, coz I am dead soft and nice really. A bit daft an flakey but nice with it.

There are millions of men, women and young people who are alcoholic, so I will say this because others are experiencing this too. Good luck my friends. I send love into the ether for you. Send it back to me.
I want to be loved and I need to give love. We are never alone.
xxxxxxx

The bucket List

Angela is on the phone and we are talking about how to celebrate her 50th brithday next week. She feels like it's not a big deal but I really want to celebrate the fact that she is here and it is a miracle that she is here as she crashed a microlight into a traffic island years ago and came very close to dying.
Apparently we need to make alist of all the things we wish to do before we die.
I am struggling with the bucket list.....I'm too low maintenance.


A bucket List
Angela would like to dine at a Gordon Ramsey restaurant- i tut tut the expense of it!
I'd like to fly over London again on Bonfire night at 8pm and watch every municipal firework display pepper the city-scape with a million rainbowed embers... and thousands of bonfires like peepholes to the earth's magma.
A Chanel Makeover and £400 for indulgent unctions.
Eat Sushi in Tokyo - in matching kimonos, of course!
Have my facelift (pronto)
Go to Berlin to the kinky dressing up clubs... laughing loudly adorned in corsets and black feathers.
Kiss on top of the tallest building in the world - feel the dizzy love
Gallop on a horse, like you'll never stop.
Float in the dead sea
Visit Epheusus
Have a big trans wedding and be utterly gorgeous!
Be dry and happy
See the kids graduate
A quiet room undisturbed and no bill chasers knocking on the door
To share this with my Love.

Things we intend not to do
Angela says not have a Purple rinse
Have anymore teeth extracted
Have a breast reduction (there small enough)
Jump out of an aeroplane
Be dishonest, that hurts too much.
Get dysentry when in Turkey and cancel trip to Epheusus

Late nights and lonliness.

With a stretched motorwayed chasm between us and a bottle quaffed it's unwise to type and press return, but Tillie is prone to confessional outpourings and immune to the tuts of imagined outsiders or concerned friends.

I want to be somewhere else and for it all to be easier.
I want to be in our special intimate place, in our silky nighties, where gender is disregarded and we are just lovers and friends, smiling in the half light.
And not here remembering our last meeting and trying to reduce the magnitude of it for other people, to be owned but not disown others.

Who doesn't long to be understood and valued? It's a universal longing, I'm not alone in my yearnings. I want to be conjoined, to be adult and emotionally carefree.
I want to sit beside her, pull her to me and place my temple to her temple and know we are two people together in a vast populous who seek an informed closeness.

There are some bridges that are monumental in there construction and that I am the architect of future designs, for my happiness, that I need to garner every resource. I don't feel tough but know I am.
My ramblings are a chaotic love letter to Angela.
In a world of strange pressures, my fingers will apply weird and irregular pressures to her flesh, and the braille of my touch is a language of tender words that speaks love. I know every love is new, but silly Tillie believes that perhaps you can love and be loved in return. The pads of my fingertips tenderly seek your pleasure and say let me please you.


"We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community."

Dorothy Day

Birthday celebrations and life's deliberations

It was my 46th birthday on Saturday night and it was arranged that a gang of us would hook up in The Gay Village in Manchester and trip the light fantastic and indulge in some fine dining. Lots of my TV girlfriends were coming along and it was going to be a well needed break from bickering kids, domestic boredom and late night dipsomania.

The day got off to a poor start with me getting fractious and annoyed with my ex husband (Baldprick) on my doorstep. This was my first husband and the only guy I married, it was only due to the fact I got pregnant that I married him. He is the biggest mistake I ever made, after having the kids he evolved into a violent weed smoking pervert who was unable to hold down a job. The only good thing to come out of it was the children.


It had been planned that Angela, myself and the four children (3 of mine, 1 of hers) would enjoy Holy Holly Day in Nantwich which is a very noisy and exciting re-enactment of a battle from the English Civil War and then on for Cake and Ice Cream in a local cafe. The children were all up early and excited! Anyway Baldprick turned up without prior warning, he had not been to see them for two weeks, and is always late, to take my two eldest children out (and to prepare them their Holy Communion in the Summer) and would not relent despite it being my birthday and neither of the children wanting to go with him. Despite my daughter's tears of disappointment, he demanded he take them. I am tired of my 11 year old daughter feeling traumatised about seeing her father and think I will seek legal advice. I should not hate him so intensely but he is an aggressive arrogant little Napoleon. After he left I felt agitated and angry with myself for letting this jerk rattle my cage. It makes me start seeking revenge and engenders feelings in me that I deplore in others. I know this seems vengeful and dark but my hatred and loathing of him is so deep seated I cannot shake it.


Anyway, Angela decided that we would head off at noon with the two youngest children and make the most of it. It was very enjoyable being together, and her boy disguise was nothing short of genius, even with her natural, sandy blond, long hair, pierced ears, smooth face and painted finger nails she looks quite boyish. I'll always love that boy in her, somehow it makes her completely perfect as a human being, so many polars drawn together, male to female, straight to gay, drawn into my beautiful girlfriend, she is many contradictions yet a magnetizing unison to me. My Prism.

Johnny animal, 20 stone of babysitter, was duly recruited, knowing that whilst Angie and I were out clubbing the kids and Johnnie would all be having fun playing video games and eating junk.


We drove to Manchester and were in high spirits, I was feeling a lot of love, optimism and very secure, both of us boppy and upbeat despite tiredness and our loss of sexual activity in recent weeks (Angie has been taking hormones as she starts her physical transition to be a woman). We were being boisterous and playful in our room in The Ibis and generally wrestling and teasing one another,liking each other a lot. A loss of the sex has been replaced by increased affection and sensuality. The sense of fun remaining. Although if her habit of chucking cold water at me in the shower persists I will deploy battle type strategies to thoroughly soak her when she least expects it!!! Tillie Warmbath ain't going to be Tillie Coldbath and rollover!

Angela picked a short youthful black satin Lipsy dress with killer black velvet heels.
I wore a more mature 1940's Pillarbox red A-line Chiffon dress that showed my curves and made the most of the fact my weight has increased after numerous over indulgences with Angela (oh those Nachos are soooo good) and my increased penchant for red wine (slurp slurp yeah). Joking aside I know I have some pronounced dependencies right now but all will fall back into place when I return to work.


The evening started well, with a delicious meal in the wonderful Villagios washed down with several glasses of Pinot Grigio. The conversation was mercurial and witty in the company of JaneG, Abicat, and Louise, three of my favourite people and all trans in one way or another. (I'll post a pic later if I can). I was totally happy with those I loved, and was delighted to get a gift of beads from the girls to add to my burgeoning bead collection. Thank you ladies. I felt special and Angela looked beautiful as usual. The terrific teeny trans girls from North Wales rolled in, with an air of expensive cologne and exquisite girlish dress sense, all of them young and looking a million dollars... "I am so jealous of their youth" commentated Angela, and I saw in her a rare regret that she could not have been her true self when she was younger. Anyway the hours for dancing were looming and we were keen despite our arthritic inclinations and sensitive dispositions!

I did not see it coming but Tillie had a tantrum looming that was born of several niggles that had been accumulating in recent times.


After the meal we decided to go for a dance and some more drinks. Me and the girls went into View, a spacious and young venue which is predominantly frequented by young dykes, the atmosphere is young and lively, standing on a balcony overlooking the dance floor, I watched a sea of young girls having great time, I felt too old to be there and a touch uncomfortable... I became aware in the corner of the room, a middle aged woman signaling and grinning at Angela, summoning her to come over, this is not unusual behaviour in the village as Real Women always make a fuss of the transvestites, requesting to have their picture taken with them, as they see it novel and amusing. Angela, checked with me subtly and went over, I watched Angela, laughing and giggling whispering into the woman' ear, her face close to the woman's hair, flirting, one of my friends said to me "What the hell is she playing at?" Several times Angela, came over to me, telling me she loved me and asking for me "permission" to flirt on, I felt really unhappy, it was something I have frequently seen her do. From a distance I watched a group of young girls taking pictures of my TV pals and Angela, she was loving the attention, all drunk laughing at the hilarity of the siutation, one of the group asked me to take pictures but not to join them. I find it annoying that my friends are a tourist attrtaction, or freaks to most of these girls, a bit of cross dressed totty to spice up the evening's pissed up piccies. My girlfriend is not a transvestite, she is transitioning to become a woman in her own right, I am living a more complex life so she can be free, I do this willingly as I love her and no other, but feel annoyed when others treat her like a novelty. Angela is a champion flirt and I felt disprespected and unattractive.

I won't go one but I threw my cards on the table and told Angie, how I felt and became hard nosed and bitchy, I was hurt and felt the heavy weight of all our trans issues bearing down on me. She was sorry and earnest in her apologies and we talked late into the night thrashing out the issues that were so upsetting to me, for me to feel secure and to accept that her flirting is based on a desperate need to be ONE OF THE GIRLS and not to actually bed any of the girls. Old insecurites in both of us die hard. I love her and do not wish her to change from the crazy party girl that I fell for. Sorry hun.

Shifting Sands

Things are changing between me and Angela, from our constant assertions that living 200 miles apart suits our "lifestyles" it is now increasingly difficult to say goodbye when we do part. I crave her at night and for all the love I have for my children, I have a separate more sensual love for her. It's surely not a weakness to miss someone and admit you seek their love and approval? We have decided we need to breach the gap between us and at some point I will yet again relocate... this is a huge life changing decision, but one thing is for sure, this time I am not taking a risk and this time I am not going to screw up.


Angela and I have been exploring options, looking at houses online that would be suitable for me rent in Newcastle upon Tyne. This is a step that needs to be taken as we want to be together as much as possible. It is agreed that we will not live together, this is my choice as I feel my three children would put too much strain on our relationship. I would move tomorrow, but I seem to be the perpetual nomad I have been moving all my life and with the exception of moving to Ireland to study, I always move for love. This time I need to weigh up all the pro's and con's see whether I can afford to pay rent etc, see whether my own irrationality will yet again cost me. I am guilty of being impulsive, I was diagnosed with ADD in my late twenties and need to step back and THINK.

Considerations
My eldest boy, is reluctant to move, he has Asperger's Syndrome and dislikes change, we only moved two years ago from Sussex and he has been through a lot of upheaval. It's a toughie. He says he likes his school here and that he will make me happy, he is concerned his friends will discover his mother is involved in a queer relationship with a transsexual, after only recently learning how to dispel bullies he fears my emotional choices will yet again thrust him back into a Lion's Den of humiliation and bias. (He tells me he is not homophobic, but if he intimates this to his peers he will be skinned). He could live with his Nana and carry on with his studies but my 13 year old son wants me to stay here with him and wait another four years till I move (when he plans to go to Uni). This hurts but whatever I decide it will be a sacrifice either way. Loving Angela makes me feel like a selfish parent. I am not sure how to address this. I love everyone concerned. I have told Josh that no concrete decision needs to be made until late summer.

Patterns

I am repeating an old pattern, I can see it, I am yet again moving for love, is this going to be the last time, where I finally meet someone who is not going to turn into a violent controlling bully? I am not motivated by money I just seek basic levels of love and happiness. I feel afraid of fucking up. I'm not sure. Angela has spent 12 months struggling to find feelings of love and now she is transitioning these emotions seem to be surfacing... what if it is the hormones affecting her emotionally. What if I am not really loved? For now I cannot risk it. I need to see Angela through her transition then, we can decide.

Honesty is a painful thing I have learnt but preferable to the heartache of deception and denials.
I need to be patient
Listen to my head and not follow my heart.
Me and the children deserve acceptance, love and security,
as does Angela.

Zapping Mama!

There was I bored and skint, last Thursday, feeling morose to say the least ! Ah poor Tillie-No-Mates! Anyway Angela suggested a sponsored trip to hers, I was to organise the babysitter and jump on the affectionately called Trans Pennine Sexpress- she would treat me to a little Rest and Relaxation with her in the penthouse! So after a quick call to Nan to take my youngest and my babysitter the caring adn reliable Uncle Ernie aka Johnnie Animal, albeit ex LSD and ecstasy fiend and occasional hedonist for my eldest Hobbits, I was all set to be on my way. The plan being that I would kill two birds with one stone, as Angie's boobs are growing nicely now and and are in urgent need of de-fluffing with her Intense Pulse Light Machine. I could zap all her inaccessible places (and I am referring to her back and not her bollocks before you get carried away) I'm more than happy with her imminent breast development - but hairy mammaries, NO way!

Last Summer Angie went to great time and expense to buy a state of the art IPL machine. as she had been flying from Newcastle upon Tyne to Southampton to have her beard treated by this remarkable laser therapy. it was very very expensive, especially with the additional hotel and travels costs. Although never one to miss an opportunity she would combine the trips with a chance to explore the new magical world of a born again Angela....clubbing and exploring the nightclubs of the South Coast. Hence to save the time and cash she bought her own IPL machine - it would pay for itself and would be a nice little business opportunity when she was smooth all over!


There's nothing like the smell of burning hair and stale dandruff to have Angela and I brimming with optimism for the future.

So we had a very rewarding albeit hurty session on Saturday where, goggles on and Angela prostrated on her blue treatment coach i would smear her with ultrasound gel and get to work, I feel no apprehension in inflicting the pain of it on her as I know she longs to be feminine and hairless. It's such fun, in my huge green goggles, high heels, yellow bikini, laser in hand, to feel like the beauty therapist from Hell!

It was a special two days, of connecting and looking to the future together and look at ways to start a business opportunities. On the journey up to my private Nirvana with Angela I had met two enthusiastic guys on their way back from a business conference where they had been planning the UK launch of a new eco friendly health product MOnvaVie that was a Multi Level Marketing opportunity. I was interested in this antioxidant drink (made from Acai berries) as normally with businesses chances like this they are normally well established in your country so you cannot get high enough up in the tree to really financially benefit from the distributors you recruit and the products like Herbal life aren't that hot. I decided to arrange a meeting with the guys with me And Angela at a hotel in Newcastle as we are always looking at ways to increase the frock fund! We decided after a lot of research that we would run with it and get involved! The next twelve months was starting to look a lot more challenging!

Also on Thursday morning I had had a phone call out of the blue offering me a job interview- finally another chance for me to escape my fevered cabin.

Although a price was to be paid for Tillie's life in the fast lane!

My mother is inclined to the odd psychotic episode and had decided to blow a gasket on the afternoon of my return, ( my crime being that my train was delayed by poor weather and my mobile was out of order..) just the normal stuff, telling the babysitter I was the whore from Hell, swearing in front of the kids and making false accusations of prostitution and parental neglect, she also foolishly insulted Angela over the phone (who she thinks of as a boy and who she has not yet met), She has a Ph.D in Martyrdom and self-flagellation and like most sociopaths is a good Catholic Woman filled with a forever burning Fire and Brimstone- Poor Johnny Animal was so traumatised that in the course of his later afternoon nap, taken after quaffing too much cocoa and caffeine that my Mother in a Cape Fear-esque type scenario appeared in a nightmare as a female Michael Ryan with a sawn off shotgun in hand and was stalking him in the name of The Lord! Her intent to make Johnny beg forgiveness for his role in my moral degradation. Waking with a jolt poor Johnnie was truly quite alarmed!

Angela was so annoyed by my mothers profanities and threats that unbeknownst to me, she got in the car and was driving down to Cheshire to confront her get an apology and face to face and to tell her She was transsexual and Tillie and her good self where planning a lesbian Wedding that would be on the front page of the local Chronicle! The shock would hopefully render my mother permanently speechless. Luckily I managed to dissuade Angela from her confrontation, but I suspect storm clouds are gathering over my mother's bijoux Bungalow of Hate.

Dull Days and self encouragement

"once again, can't figure out how to post a comment on your blog without signing up for another account of some sort. So, here is my comment to your blog:

Thanks, Tillie. You've pulled back the curtains to your very intimate boudoir, and allowed me to witness willingly but using mindfulness and without a sense of empty voyeurism. Teaching and enlightenment. You have a gift. love A (in Canada).

It is comments like this that make me think that writing the blog is of use and will help others make sense of what is in essence the nonsense of life. It is of importance to me to let people know that my queer love is very very normal whilst I know seemingly very exceptional.

The snow fell heavily again last night, it makes the carless Tillie in me reluctant to leave the house, as I only own footwear of a frivolous or chilly kind. I spent the entire day in bed. Ignoring all the practical and domestic jobs I need to attend to. The harsh weather a cold symbol for my insularity and lack of outward expression. Stuck in a cold stasis. I need to get tough and get out there. The book business is slow right now, and my role as sole provider is lacking a glow of warm and loving domesticity as the bills fall through the door and all three children crave the gadgets and designer clothing of their wealthier peers. Just as Angela tired of going through the motions of acting like a man, I need to become the energetic, creative woman I used to enjoy being. I feel like a half a person and I want to buck myself up. Being maudlin and miserable are characteristics I detest in my self and it is going to stop!
I have been tired and in the doldrums for weeks and need to seriously galvanise myself into action, my only focus at time seems to be Angela's tran-journey and the kids. I am insular and feeling horribly drained... I've been hitting the bottle late at night and I'm all run down again. A plan of great intent and magnitude is called for... it will involve seriously getting my finger out.I need an external focus outside of the home. Other people.

Lets face the major issues here:
Issue: Tillie is bored and wishes she was apple pie Mom... but she never will be.
Action: Go to the job centre and check out the local college website / Go utterly mad and contact Keele University about doing her Ph.d (Continuing her interest in Gender and sexuality).

Issue: You drink too much too often:
Action.... stop again...and again? I know Iam in the company of numerous other women who drink way too much but they won't articulate that or like me struggle to resist that most delicioous of coshes. I think i need to go into rehab (as my GP suggested) to be honest but who will look after my kids. This a real tough one for me and some real support and soul searching needs to be done and probably over a large class of Pinot Grigio when all the kids are safely asleep. The wine late at night is making me fat- this could be a real morivator to stop or seriouosly cut down.

Make a list of your priorities and do a to do list. These actions work. Focus and look to your blessings.

An internet comnnection will be taking me for walk in The Peak District on Sunday and this feels like a good oppurtunity to blow the cobwebs off and recall how fucking beautiful this planet is and to be here seems as good a reason as any to love others and be true unto myself.

The alcohol abuse really makes my writing dull, the words cloying and tacky, I know my full potential is being severly hampered by my own exhaustion and sluggishness.
I'll bounce back.

Good times in the Penthouse

... look through my magic telescope, Angela has just collected Tillie from Newcastle railway station, they have been apart for ten days, they live 198 miles apart. See them, there! They look like two hippy chicks. Tall aren't they? They are returning to Angela's penthouse flat, they are an attractive and very striking pair of women. "


In the lift Tillie is deliberately body echoing Angela's aloof unaffectionate body language. It is a process that Tillie learnt from studying NLP, Till leans again the wall with her hands behind her back, copying Angela's stance, she looks away from her, Angela looks a little nervous and by the 6th floor grabs Tillie, she does not like her being even slightly stand offish, Tillie has shown her silently what others feel when they experience her, she grabs Tillie and embraces "It's so good to see you Till" Three months ago Angela would not have been so loving. But she is learning.

Entering the flat, there are large cardboard boxes, unhung pictures, stacks of china, she has never properly unpacked with the exception of her girl apparel which is beautifully arranged and carefully hanging in the huge mirrored wardrobe that Angela built to protect her hundreds of beautiful feminine dresses. Her boy clothes are unkempt and unironed thrown about the place- there is a complete disregard and disinterest in what she deems to be her Drab. The flat is total chaos, TIllie gave up trying to tidy it months ago, "Welcome home Hun" Angela pushes Tillie up against the sink, her pelvis squared to Tillie, hse feels Angela's cock stiffening beneath the blue satin of her skirt, an anticipatory frission of lust, swells within "It's so mega to have you back" She feels small and owned within Angela's long smooth warm limbs. They look into each others heavily made up eyes and scan each others faces, She adores Angela's perfect features and large, long lashed blue eyes. They are both looking to remember what may have been forgotten of each other in their absence "I need to zap your 'tache Tillster" They both laugh "Your 'orrible sometimes Meanie pants" in mock offence says Tillie.
Angela earns herself a playful slap on the arm. They will stand and hold each other just smiling.
The sink is filled with unwashed pots and pans, every surface in the flat is dirty and covered with make up costume jewellery, odd stockings, bills, receipts, an assortment of jazzy expensive handbags. It is a complete example of Angela's ability to only focus on what she enjoys doing. Tidying and being orderly are an alien concept it would seem.

"Now you sit down, I'll pour you a drink, you know you want one Subby" she mocks, she moves a pile of crumpled laundry and places it precariously on a pile of what is hopefully clean ladies lingerie and underwear. "Let me show you what i bought" Together they love to look at Angela's new clothes fresh from that endless shopping Mecca Ebay, Angela will give a TIllie a fashion show, much to Tillie's obvious glee......They say they are not in love but I think they are.

After dinner they will put on their matching red satin nighties and snuggle under a duvet watching Battlestar Gallactica and they will be in their favourite most treasured zone... two girls cuddled up on the sofa just happy to be together. Tillie's dipsomania disappears when she is in her caccoon with Angela,