Stirring the "Hot Mess."

Most certainly if you have been around Cyrsti's Condo for any length of time, you know of Connie's name and regardless of what I write, my respect for her. If you wonder why read on:

"Transgender women of our age (and I'm going to stick with the three years that separate us for a few more weeks until I hit the big 6-5), grew up so clueless as to what and who we may have been. As you say, there was no internet to access, but the proper information wasn't available anywhere. What you call a "hot mess" was what I found to be an insidious "vicious circle", where acting out by cross dressing brought a temporary relief that carried with it a guilt that was equal to - or greater than - the amount of thrill of seeing the feminine self I felt to be inside. Soon, the required lying and deception became as much the thrill as dressing up was. All of the scheming, planning, and deception began taking up as much of my time as the actual act of cross dressing did. More importantly, it exhausted me on an emotional level and caused me to be a lesser spouse and parent than I wanted to be. Thus, more guilt and depression. I wasn't just an unhappy transgender(?) woman, I was a miserable excuse for a human being. 

I remember when we became "friends" on that unnamed "TransNazi" site. If I remember correctly, you put in a friend request to me, siting my cynicism and love of blues music as your reasons. I don't think either of us had a lot of "friends" on that site, but we did have our fun being smart asses - for me, mostly in my comments on others' blog posts, including yours. We've both changed so much, yet here I am, still being a smart ass on your blog. At any rate, I believe that we both benefited from each other's misery, which eventually allowed us to step away from the "hot mess" or "vicious circle" we'd been in individually for so long. My cynical take on that would be that I learned I wasn't, at least, as screwed up as that Cyrsti chick. Truthfully, though, it was the knowledge that someone else had been going through much of the same shit for so many years that made it easier for me to move on. I've found that to be more of a moving off the stage than the moving on to a new one. I had thought myself to be such a good actor until I'd discovered that I was really a bad one."

See what you have done, I'm tearing up. Damn hormones!!!!

On another level though, my lack of a father figure guilt trip didn't seem to work on my kid, so all turned out better than I could have ever expected. 

Maybe we could do a "bicoastal" weekly Podcast between Seattle and Cincinnati? :)