Take to flight, like a foolish angel!

(Lines from Yuki Kajiura's "Fiction", title song of the album that "Open Your Heart" is contained on.)

Today was an eventful day. Chose my new name this morning - Abigail Drew - shared it with my older brother at work, and towards the end of the day I finally got up the nerve to do something real major: Talk to my bishop. By the end of my meeting with him, I'd worked up the nerve to do something even more major: Set a date for telling the family.

I wasn't kidding when I posted a short time ago that I'm done living the lies. Done suppressing who I am to such a degree that even I didn't know what I was doing, or that it was the underlying cause for my cyclic depressions. Full disclosure. That's what I said. I never lie intentionally.

Once I'd realized I was living a lie of my own fashioning, there was nothing for it but to stop lying. First, was my older brother who I'd been more hopeful for acceptance, though not the amount of understanding that he's been showing. I am grateful to him for his support, it made it easier for me to face the next step, which was facing my ecclesiastical leader.

I originally intended on talking to him at church yesterday, but events decreed otherwise. Perhaps that was for the best. When it's so obvious that you're walking into the bishops office in front of all the other membership of the ward, as an LDS, you become very self conscious, at least I do. Members are not SUPPOSED to gossip, but they do, I've always fought the gossip bug something fierce myself, so I do not begrudge people for being unable to contain the viper.

As it is, I almost didn't make the call during work to set up meeting him afterwards. I'd made a bargain with myself, and if a certain event had not occurred to send me somewhere private enough that I wasn't worried about getting in trouble for using my phone for private business... I wouldn't make the call. The event occurred.

You all should well know by now I do not believe in such hogwash as "luck", or "coincidence". Everything in this world is linked. And not just physically. Everything. I also don't believe in the word "try". Yoda really was right when he said there's only "do, or do not". Sure, sometimes you don't quite succeed at do at first, but if you keep WORKING at it, you will do.

Anyways, so I called my bishop and asked if it were possible for me to meet him immediately after work and before his family home evening with his wife. His kids are grown and gone, so it's just him and his wife now... And there I go meandering again, please, bear with me. He said yes, and so the meeting was set.

Around about 5pm, I'm in front of his door, ringing the bell, getting really nervous. He welcomed me in, offered me a (easy to wash) seat. Hey, I don't blame him, I get seriously filthy at work most of the time. And began asking me what was wrong.

My bishop tends to be extremely oblivious and had never even really heard of transgender. He knew about the op, of course, but he didn't know any of the why's or anything. So I attempted to explain it.

We get about halfway into him reading junk from the handbook on homosexuality when I suddenly realize we hadn't opened with prayer. I gently reminded my bishop of this, and then offered prayer.

Now. You already know I don't believe in coincidence, right? As soon as we finished praying and lifted our heads, you could literally see the light bulb go off in his head. It was really pretty cool.

He found that there really is some policy regarding us, though for reasons I cannot explain here, I cannot divulge what any of that is. Please. Don't ask me to. You won't get anywhere.

To make a long story short, my Bishop was accepting, tolerant, and as supportive as he could be given the circumstances. As we were getting close to finishing our chat, he asked if I had any immediate concerns, and brought up the difficulty I was going to have in telling my family. He was compassionate, but not really understanding the issue. His compassion, however, emboldened me to ask him to be present when I drop the bombshell. He graciously agreed.

He asked when I'd like to do this, and I replied, of course, "as soon as possible."

My bishop can be quite eccentric, and he took this quite literally. He was like, well, have FHE tonight, something about a presidency meeting tomorrow night, could do Wednesday or Thursday. Thursday might be better... Is Thursday good? At first, I was like sure! Then remembered that most of us are rather busy on Thursday nights. Especially the most important two! My parents! I mentioned this, and he was like, well, Saturday around... Some early hour or such because of another meeting he had in the evening. Then he offered Sunday after church, we further discussed that option, and the result was that around 8:20-8:30, he'd come.

I'm thinking I'll call for a family meeting at 9pm, he'll turn up at 8:30, visit for a while, and then join the family meeting, where I'll finally find out if there's any way I can make this happen, and still hang on to my family in the process. It'll be easier for me to do it all at once like this, for those who live there.

Oh, and also at work I got talking with two of the office ladies, about my weight loss and cyclic depressions et all (but not my TG status - though hints were dropped), and apparently I share my present size with the slimmer of the two and she might be bringing me some old castoff pants to wear. Will save me some money if they're in good shape, and it allows me to start prepping the work place for my coming out there.

I also stopped on the way home at a clothing store after the bishops and bought a reasonably nice pair of womens dress slacks. When I got home, my mom about blew a gasket and insisted we were going to a mens store to get me fitted. I tried explaining you're not fitting any mens pants on 37" hips and a 28" slightly high waist. Well, not without getting it custom tailored. She insisted on measuring me. Through my heavy work clothing, at what she thought was my waist, when I have like 4 layers of clothing and a lot bunched up at my real waist to help disguise my figure... I do worry about her...

For anyone who managed to read this entire rambling, boring, wall of text...
Bless you for your patience,

Abigail Drew.