Mya Taylor

 Mya Taylor (above) is an American transgender actress and singer. She is best known for her role in "Tangerine" in 2015 when she won the Independent Spirit Award for Best supporting Female.

Inspiration is Fleeting

Or is it? Every morning when I wake up, I do a quick self examination of my body to see what hurts the most, or at all. Very quickly I then move on to thinking about the blog and what I have written about in the past. Every now and then, I come up with a former experience from years ago in my past.

Plus every once in a while, I am able to find a picture to aid in the story. An example is this picture from a decade ago in 2010.  Somehow, I was able to come up with my own version of primitive photo shopping on my cell phone. I did it by taking my picture in a mirror so I could see myself as I did it. My goal was to take a picture to add to my profile on the multiple dating sites I was exploring. 

The hair in the photo was a wig of course. Ironically my hair currently is as long and nearly as wavy if I add a liberal amount of mousse after I wash it. 

It's also taken me nearly a decade to grow my own breasts which were comparable to the forms I wore back then. Of course I am fortunate to have been able to undergo hormone replacement therapy at my age.

So, inspiration for a blog post is fleeting when I am well over 6,000 posts written for Cyrsti's Condo.

One good thing about the picture is, it is the one my partner Liz saw and decided to respond to me because I had "sad eyes". At that point in time I did. 

It was taken before I found a circle of accepting friends who helped me transition and gain a whole new level of inspiration.
 

Be Careful What you Wish For

 Lately here in Cyrsti's Condo, we have been discussing a few of the ramifications of life insurance and to a differing degree, changing your legal gender markers.

Here in Ohio, it was not too difficult or expensive to change my legal name, gender on my driver's license, my name/gender in my Veterans Administration paperwork and my name on my social security card. (not my gender) Also, I still cannot change my birth certificate gender here in Ohio.

It turns out, not being able to change my Social Security gender at the moment turned out to be a good thing after I heard this from Connie:

"When I applied for Social Security and Medicare, I did so in person with the proper documentation with my legal name change. I did not, however, change my gender marker, as I felt it wasn't worth opening that can of worms. I guess I should have been more aware, though, because the person on the other side of the glass partition checked off the Female box for me. It ended up being a pain in the ass to get it changed back when I later had trouble getting Medicare to pay on a doctor bill. Health insurance considers the differences in male and female rates, as well as does life insurance (or did, then). Social Security tried to blame me for the "mistake," even though it would have required a specific application and documentation from me to make that change - which, of course, I did not provide, and they could not have had on file). Maybe I was just passing so well to the woman that day, I don't know. Sometimes, though, there are more important things than passing.

It behooves us to be diligent as we make changes throughout transitioning. In the case of life insurance, we won't be around to clean up any messes that our beneficiaries may be left to endure."

I guess it was obvious to the guy at Social Security that I didn't "pass" or then again, I don't remember if I "outed" myself by telling him I was transgender. It was five years ago now and on some days, I have a difficult time remembering last week. I just remember him saying he could change my name, not my gender. 

Of course too, I am under a different health system with Veteran's Administration health.  Under which if I ever experience problems with being transgender, there is a person/persons to call. 

So once again, there are many steps to consider when you are considering changing your legal gender markers.