accept. embrace. live.

I scheduled a meeting with HR a week from this coming Monday, to tell them what's going on with me, to begin planning my work transition.  The past month or two, I am getting increasingly withdrawn at work. Each week I get a little more depressed putting on those male clothes and those ugly ugly shoes... I feel like it is as the point where it is affecting things both inside and outside of work.  I talked it over with my therapist and we decided that it's time.  I'm not nervous about disclosing, or afraid, but I am stressed.  Exactly what it is that I am stressed about, I can't tell you.. but it's palpable.  I've felt a little on edge the past couple days.  Friday was awful.  I was depressed all day, left the office, and cried all the way to my ex-wife's house to pick the kids up for the weekend.

The reason I am stressed, is not because of anything going on in my life, or any real evidence that going full-time isn't the right thing for me, or that I think anything bad is going to happen.  I don't.  I think it is going to be justfinethankyou.  I am stressed because I spend too much time reading from others how much of a paradigm shift going full-time is.   How things will get so different, and how you cannot comprehend how different it will be.  I remember reading a blog on PE where a full timer wrote about some issue she was facing.  In it, there was this gem: "YOU CANNOT COMPREHEND THIS SO IF YOU ARE NOT FULL-TIME JUST SHUT UP DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME??"  Sheesh.  

Anyway, I started overdoing it in my thoughts... I had all these visions of writing an overly-dramatic "Tomorrow, I go full-time." post, with a hand over my heart, my eyes gazing towards the heavens, as tears streamed down my face. I've read how TG women lament the death of their old selves, and I let all that get to me.  That's ridiculous.  Not their feelings... but the fact that I let their feelings impact how I feel about myself.  Get a grip, indeed.  Stop reading so much, and live.

So far, everything has come easily.  I don't have any real reason to expect otherwise, just because I am adding going to work as myself.  My electrologist asked me this past week, "do you really think things will be much different?"  and I answered, "no, I don't really feel that way."  I have stressed and agonized about each step in this process... and each step in this process has ended up being much more of a non-event than I thought.  Not the cause for concern that I thought it was.  There is so much emphasis in the TG world put on going "full-time."  You get to change your status on your PE profile.  You're in a new circle.  You can change your name, legally.  The clock starts ticking for GRS.  You are allowed to respond to that all-caps thread I mentioned above ;).  So much fanfare accompanies this blessed event.  Perhaps that shouldn't be the case.  It's just another step in a process, really.  Granted, a big step, but if you are where I am, full-time everywhere else, maybe it isn't *that* huge.

Perhaps I need not be so stressed about it.  After all, this is what I've always wanted.  I need to learn from my past experience and remember that 99% 100% of the things I have worried about so far, weren't worthy of said worrying.  I'm going full-time soon.  I'm very excited and happy about it.  I am going to do my best to let the stress go.  I recall a comment on a blog entry on accepting myself; a comment which stood out in my mind.  From a post-op woman who, IMHO, has and had the right attitude about all this.  The comment was something like, "good for you!  you'll do fine."  It stuck in my mind because of its' simplicity.  I'm a big fan of Occam's Razor, and there was some synergy there, another reason I liked the comment.

So, good for me!  I'll do fine!

Right?

P.S.: There is one other reason I am grumpy.  I had laser on my upper lip on Thursday, and usually for 4 days after laser, I can't get a good shave.  So I have noticeable hair on my upper lip that I can't get off.  Hate that!!