T. Day has arrived!

Hey all it has been a while since I have had time to update things. Please forgive me for that. Yesterday officially marks my T. day! I received my first prescription. I am on .5mg once a week and have to use a 22 gauge needle to inject the T into my muscle. I won't lie I was scared, the moments of drawing the Testosterone from the bottle, looking at the needle and placing it to my skin was an adventure to say the least.

My brother Blake's girlfriend was the one to give me my first shot (bonding moment wouldn't you say lol) In a room full of some of the most important people in my life, the needle pierced my skin and in an instant my life changed forever. There is no going back now, I am finally on the road I have always dreamed of taking. I am blessed to have the people in my life that I do, I am honored that they were there to experience it with me. It is truly the beginning of the rest of my life. I am excited for the changes I will go through and for the adventures ahead of me.

The changing of my name is in the works, I have learned that will cost about $200. For the most part people have begun to call me Jason on a regular basis. The only place I really have any issue is at work and some of the members of my family.

I learned today that my grandparents have pretty much "disowned" me for lack of better words. I am to them a disappointment and in their words my father would not agree with my choices. It is sad to know that they can not approve of my lifestyle or the choices that I make. As my grandparents you would think they would want me to be happy with my life but i guess that is not as easy for them as I would have hoped it would be. 

so that is my update for now. I am going to start taking pictures and voice comparisons so that we can all watch my changes together...until next time..

Love and peace

~Jason~

Journey Poem

This is a poem that I stole from my adopted mother's blog. It hit home for me today so I thought I would share it with you...please enjoy.

LIFE IS A JOURNEY 

 

Birth is a beginning
and death a destination
And life is a journey:

From childhood to maturity
and youth to age;

From innocence to awareness
and ignorance to knowing;

From foolishness to desecration
and then perhaps to wisdom.

From weakness to strength or
from strength to weakness
and often back again;

From health to sickness
and we pray to health again.

From offense to forgiveness
from loneliness to love

from joy to gratitude
from pain to compassion

from grief to understanding
from fear to faith.

From defeat to defeat to defeat
until looking backwards or ahead

We see that victory lies not
at some high point along the way

but in having made the journey
step by step

a sacred pilgrimage.

Birth is a beginning

and death a destination

And life is a journey;

A sacred journey to life everlasting.

~~ Author Unknown ~~

until next time with love and peace..

~Jason~

Thanksgiving Time and questions

Now that Thanksgiving has come and gone I thought I would stop by to talk about my experience this year. I made a video on my Youtube channel which I encourage you to check out if you have time. Just type in toralynn1986 in the search bar and you should find me....anyways back to the subject at hand.

Thanksgiving this year was pretty cool. I unfortunately didn't get to spend a whole lot of it with my girlfriend and son because of various reasons but I did get to spend some time with them. My girlfriend spent the day with her family. When I went to drop her off I encountered a rather uncomfortable situation. Now some of her family has known me since before the beginning of my transition, therefor they know me as my birth name. I cringed at the sound of hearing "hi amber how are you" but I wore a smile and was polite. I was also introduced to family members I had not met yet as "amber". It was rather uncomfortable to say the least but I was stuck in a hard spot. How do you correct people that once knew you by one name and now know you by another? How do you explain and answer the questions of "why would you change your name."

After leaving Crystal's families house. I was off to spend Thanksgiving with my best friend Blake's family


Being invited to spend the day with Blake's family was a blessing. It was the first holiday I spent in a house full of people I had never met. From the time I walked in the door til the end of the day I was known as Jason. There was no discussion about my transition, there were no questions asked about my chosen name, I was simply accepted as Jason. It was very nice.

My biological family is still coming to terms with my decision to make this transition so phone calls home where rather interesting. They are all at different places as far as their comfort levels go at this point. Some have accepted my change and call me Jason, my mother calls me A.J. and some have not even come close to being able to accept it. I respect each of their comfort levels and try not to push the issue yet, hopefully someday they will all accept it, but for now it's a working progress.

So my question is how would you have dealt with that situation, when some people are ok with calling you by your chosen name and others can't let go of your birth name? Do you correct them? Or do you simply ignore it, cope and deal and move on? I am curious to know.

Until next time....love and peace

~Jason~

What Do You See?

What do you see

when you look at me

do you see the person inside

the one screaming to be free

Do you see me as a child

who got lost along the way

or do you see me for the

simple man I am today

Do you see me as before

have I forever changed your view

or do you see me on the outside and wonder

if my inner battle is even true

Do you see me cry out

begging God to help me

or do you see what you want

and think that I am crazy

Do you see me and wonder

if I'm just confused about life

or do have you opened your eyes yet

and noticed my strife

Do you see me as the same person

I've been for so long

or do you see the path I've chosen

and decide that it's wrong

Do you see me reaching out

to help you slowly understand me

or are you blinded by your own opinion

of who and how I should be

Do you see me cringe

when someone calls me "she"

or do you close your eyes and ignore it

because that's the way is "should" be

Do you see me and fear

I am doing something wrong

or do you look at me and see

Jason Gilliam standing strong

Please tell me, what do you see?

In a Bind

Hey all,

So I thought I would stop by to update everyone on the last few days....My binder came in on Thursday. I was excited to see the name "Jason Gilliam" on the shipping label and excited to open it. My girlfriend took pictures as I ripped open the package revealing my binder inside. I was on cloud 9...After wiggling my way into my new binder I quickly realized it wasn't going to give me the result I was looking for. Now mind you I don't have a large chest but that style of binder is just not the right one of me. It doesn't do much up top and is more like a skin tight "wife beater" T~shirt then anything else. So I am back to layering clothes and wearing the maternity support belt around my chest. I will not give up though. Sooner or later I will find the right fit for me until I can save up enough to have them removed all together.


On Friday I had a conversation with someone very dear to me...She is having trouble wrapping her mind around the idea of me going from Amber to Jason....The thought of me taking hormones(testosterone) and having surgeries(top surgery and hysterectomy) scare her. Only because she loves me so much. I respect her opinion very much and wish I knew how to make this transition easier on her, the only thing I know to do is pray for her. Pray that she in her own time comes to a place where she can accept this change, embrace the person I am becoming and move forward loving me. I pray to God I don't lose her or her family, they mean more to me then I could ever put into words. I have told her and I will tell all of you following this transition, I would never do anything I haven't put thought and prayer into. This process is a long and slow one that I know, but I assure you it is a safe one.

Change is never easy for anyone to accept. As I have said before the fear of the unknown is a scary thing. I am moving forward not on my own but with many people by my side. I am well informed and have spent hours making sure that the next step I take is always the best and safest one. I have a doctors appointment set for December 8th. but I will talk more about it when it gets closer. For now things are falling into place one step at a time and I have binders to research cause I'm going to need a new one at some point lol.

until next time....love and peace

~Jason~

Breaking through

Dying just to hear the word he

Reminded constantly that he was born a she

As he looks in the mirror

The pictures in his head become clearer

That the person inside

The one screaming and crying

That voice that laughs at him, tells him he'll never be

but proudly he'll stand, a man, you'll see

~Written by Crystal~

While talking with my partner Crystal tonight she chose to share with me a piece she had written. It is short but I can feel comes from her heart as we continue on this journey to making my transition complete.When I listened to her read it and then I read it again myself, I can not help but have tear fill my eyes. I can not express enough how lucky I am to have someone standing beside me willing to understand me and help be my support in this uncertain time. 

I say uncertain only because life is full of changes, but these are big changes. With change comes fear. Fear of the unknown, of the effect it will have on me and the ones around me. But together we are facing fear head on and moving forward strong.

A few updates....

my binder was shipped today WOOT WOOT and is somewhere in between Florida and here..I am excited. 

A doctors appointment has been made, but I will talk more about that when the time gets closer.

 

Crystal also marks this day as a "breakthrough" because today while at the mall I made a decision that was almost scary in a way. We were waiting for our movie to start and I felt the need to use the restroom...now most of the time it would be like second nature to simply walk into a public restroom, claim a stall, take care of business, wash your hands and leave. For transgendered people like myself that is not always as easy as it sounds. How do you walk into a female restroom looking like a man, and how do you walk into a men's restroom knowing there may be one guy in there that pays a little more attention then all the others.  But never the less nature called and I did what I had to. Heart racing, palms sweaty I walked into the men's room, past a man standing at the sink and into a stall closest to the door (in case I had to run). Now this may seem like a funny story but it's not. It's reality. I entered the stall, did what I needed to, washed my hands and left the restroom with no problems. Upon exiting I realized how nice it is to be able to simply use the restroom without being questioned,harassed or stared at. You must realize in life some of the things that seem so natural to you, are the ones you take for granted.

until next time....love and peace

~Jason~

What Lies Beneath

Ok so in this post I would like to share a few things with you. For those that think being a FtM(female to male) transgendered person is easy..I encourage you to to look into it, research a little and you will see just how hard it truly is. Finding a good doctor you can trust is hard, being accepted in society is hard, using a public restroom is hard, and showing an ID that clearly has a different name and picture on it is even harder....

Right now I have my old DL from California...In the picture you can see me before I cut my hair off, without glasses(because they make you remove them before the picture) and my birth name of Amber. So when I show up to a bar, gas station or public establishment and swipe my card. I am almost always questioned because of the differences between me and the person shown on my license. That will soon be changed, my goal is by my 25th birthday on September 10th 2011, to have it all changed. There are a few things that need to happen first lol...one small step at a time ladies and gentle beings =0)

The second thing I would like to talk about is Binding.....yes I said binding. Which is where you stick your chesticles(yes boobs) into a very tight space and make them as flat as possible to wear under a tight shirt, or to simply "pass" as a man. It's hard to explain looking like a man with boobs (trust me not a fun conversation). Now I'm not saying I have the biggest chest in the world because clearly I do not, but hiding what I do have is a task in itself.

Up to this point I have tried;

1.) Packing tape~Yeah that hurt like a mofo to put on AND take off...I wouldn't not recommend that one

2.) Ace Bandage~ While that one wasn't as painful, the ability to breathe was completely cut off. If you want to be able to get oxygen into your lungs I would suggest not binding with an ace bandage.

3.) Sports Bra~ Not 1 but 3...in layers they seem to help with binding a little...problem with this method is laundry gets a lot more expensive for 1 and 2 wearing 5 layers of clothing (i.e 3 sports bras, under shirt, and top shirt) gets a little old.

4.) Maternity Support belt~ Now hear me out on this one!!! As odd as that may sound it WORKS...but as a temporary fix to solve your problem. I would not recommend wearing it for extended amounts of time as it does cause irritation to the back. Although it is much easier to breathe and the rang of motion is not effected, it is still only a temporary fix.

Today I ordered my first actual chest binder from www.underworks.com ....It should be coming in the mail in a few days. I spent quite some time going over reviews for the different binders that this company sells and some of the top ones were the 473,983, 997, and the 998 models. For my first binder I chose the model 473 which is very similar to the 998 tank model. So in a few days I will let you know how that goes.

So enough about binding for now!!! =P

Something else pretty awesome in my world also happened this evening. My partner Crystal and I are how do I say this.....ADDICTED to Facebook..lol....She was surfing her site this evening playing a game...The rules of the game were her friends could as her any question no matter what and she would answer it as her status....well this is a question one friend asked...

Q: Why are you dating an girl that wants to be a man, but are claiming to be gay?

and this was her answer...

Answer :All I got to say I am a little taken back by this question..a little offended..maybe its the way they worded it. Okay...First off I am NOT dating a girl who WANTS to be a man, I am dating a MAN trapped in a females body.There is a difference. Second off, Who invents these damn labels?? I don't have to be anybody but ME and I'll date who I want, whether they be a girl or a guy. Third off, I suggest you look up Transgendered, Google it. :)

When she told me about that I was in shock...first off at the question, I know I've been asked a lot of random questions up to this point and so has Crystal. That question was just very complex, which lead to my shock at her answer. I will be honest when I read her answer I grinned from ear to ear. Not only is Crystal proud to be who she is, but she is also proud to call me hers and is truly begining to understands me. Yeah we still have our moments from time to time, but the more we sit and research and learn together, the closer we become. I couldn't ask for more.

So stay tuned, when I receive my binder I will do another post just to let you know how it works out...I may even post a picture or 2 =0)...

Until next time....love and peace

~Jason~