Guarded? or Guarding?

She's "baaaaack!" from the trip to Maine and yes it was beautiful. I now refer to myself as a "Lobstah-Snobsta."

On the trip of course I ran into all kind of peeps in the group who accepted me for who I am, or quite frankly didn't. They got over it. We did meet a woman who was traveling alone whom we became close to and along the way I committed my number one sin-I outed myself to her.

My excuse is once I start adding in my two cents (or more) to a conversation about my previous life, it's tough to separate the gender aspect of it. As I was spending so much time and energy being macho. As a point of reference, she didn't seem to care much but was more surprised and had no idea. (I was flattered.)

All of this carried indirectly into a conversation with a dear friend I call my "muse" Sunday night. She asked several of us what the one word we would use to describe ourselves would be. I thought for a moment and said "guarded."

For some reason I never got back in the conversation enough to say I'm not guarded with her. With the general public though I am. I let them make the first move towards acceptance, or not and go from there.

I suppose it comes from years of early rejection before the public has become more aware of the transgender community. Aware we won't bite and have had our shots for the most part. Plus there is the minority of peeps who flat out find us interesting.

So, I just haven't gotten to the point of merging two distinct lifestyles to let my guard down totally and perhaps I never will.

Thanks though, to all who have encouraged me to do it. It means more than I can ever say!