It's been a while, hasn't it?

When I needed it most, this site, you wonderful people who make it what it is were here for me. I don't know how I could have gotten through what I needed to get through without that support. I know this is first and foremost a fiction site, a place for readers and writers of TG fiction in particular to come together in a safe environment, but Erin and her elves run it in a way that ensures it is so much more than that. I feel like I found a family here, and even though I've always been close with my own family and they have turned out to be incredibly supportive, I might never have had the courage to find that out if I hadn't felt--known--you'd be there to catch me if they hadn't.

Now... well, thanks in large part to that support, I've embarked on a new, better life. I can't begin to tell you how much better. I know some who have gone before me will know exactly what I'm talking about.

The thing is, I've been so wrapped up in living that life that I feel like I've been neglecting my surrogate family here. I've barely posted a word in six months, the story I had been posting here that poured from my heart has languished incomplete for over two years now, I haven't even been blogging regularly about my transition as I had assured a few people I would.

My muse and I have crossed paths a few times, but haven't been able to do so when I didn't have other, more pressing priorities. And to be honest, even once my divorce is final, with kids to raise, a full-time job I want to keep, and now a serious relationship (more on that in a bit), all on top of my ongoing transition (more on that as well), I can't begin to guess when that won't be the case.

I do have a bit of a breather here, though, so I thought I'd take a few minutes out and check in.

So. Where did I leave off? Oh, yes--I was lamenting that I would be alone for Christmas, for the first time in my life.

Well, I was, and then again I wasn't. Here in Seattle we have the "world-famous" (I wonder how many of you have even heard of it) Ingersoll Gender Center, which has weekly "support" meetings every Wednesday evening. A few months earlier I had started attending these meetings semi-regularly, not really feeling I needed additional support, but hoping to meet some people in real life in similar situations, and maybe make a friend or two who could really "get" what I was going through in ways that my family and existing non-trans friends couldn't, quite, no matter how much they might want to.

It worked out better than I could have hoped; they've become like yet another family to me. And when I mentioned being alone for the holidays at the meeting the day before Christmas eve, one of the "old-timers" invited me to join her, her new fiancé, and a group of friends for their Christmas eve/engagement dinner and hot tub party.

I did, ended up having a fantastic evening, and wore a women's bathing suit in "public" for the first time when we used the apartment complex's hot tub. (I was flattered and delighted to learn later that her fiancé had wondered where she knew me from, and upon hearing she'd met me at Ingersoll, asked if I were attending the meetings to support a loved one.)

While I was technically "alone" Christmas day, I did have a nice chat with my parents on the phone, and then spent much of the afternoon on Skype with a friend I'd met here. So I was only alone in the physical sense.

Not quite a month later, the woman who invited me to that Christmas eve party was being taken out to dinner by another Ingersoll attendee, named Becky, in repayment for having cat-sat for her while she was away for the holidays, and for reasons that are still unclear to me, invited me to tag along. I'd chatted with Becky briefly at a previous meeting, and had been delighted to learn that we were in similar lines of work and that she was the author of a TG webcomic I enjoyed reading, so I at least knew I would probably enjoy her company, and we were Facebook friends, but we hadn't socialized outside the meetings at all.

I was tired from a long day of work, so I felt I wasn't particularly scintillating that evening, but I was impressed with what I saw of Becky. I thought we could be good friends, and as she was something of a "mover and shaker" in the local trans community, that I might be in a better position to do some good if I hung out with her.

The following Friday evening, as I was signing off from a Facebook chat with the aforementioned fiancé, getting ready to shut down my browser and go curl up in bed with a good book, another FB chat window popped up. It was Becky. She was bored and wanted to go out and do something fun, none of her "usual suspects" were answering her texts and emails, and she saw me on Facebook and thought, "what the heck." (BTW if anyone wants to friend me on Facebook, feel free!)

One thing led to another and we wound up head over heels and inseparable. I'll leave the details for a short story (a thinly-fictionalized account) I've been writing based on that magical evening, which I will post here hopefully before too much longer. She moved in with me ("U-Hauled") within a few weeks, a few weeks after that we moved out of my old house (which was going up for a short sale) and rented a nice place together, and as the movers were loading up the truck and we were enjoying the unseasonable warmth on the front porch swing, she proposed to me. I squealed in delight, said "Yes!" immediately and without hesitation, threw my arms around her, and we held each other and cried tears of joy for a good ten or fifteen minutes.

I did tell her I wanted to wait until I'd had my SRS, because I wanted to be married as *me* this time, and wanted to be "fully functional" on our wedding night. Legally, we could marry now in any state in the union, as she's post-op and has had all her paperwork updated, and the marriage would remain valid in all states even after I get my birth certificate changed; but to me that would be cheating, a marriage based on a lie, so we're going to have to do it the hard way and fight for legal recognition of same-sex marriage like any other lesbian or gay couple.

Waiting for my SRS is not as big an obstacle as it could have been; through her (now former) employer, we have health insurance (which covers me, as her domestic partner, and my children) that actually provides some coverage for trans health care, including partial reimbursement for SRS, so I've got a date scheduled with Dr. Suporn in Thailand next February.

My ex, of course, went off the deep end when Becky moved in with me, and sicced her lawyer on us, lying about the effect our relationship was having on the children (they adore Becky and I think that's part of what set her off), trying to intimidate Becky into moving back out and threatening to go to court over it. My lawyer assured us there was no precedent for such a thing and she had no legal leg to stand on, so we just basically ignored her empty threats until she backed down.

Now, of course, she's standing firmly in the way of us taking the kids with us to Thailand next winter, but since I have de facto full custody of my 13-year-old son (she emotionally and psychologically abused him, Nurse Ratched/Mommy Dearest style, manipulated and used him to generate the drama she so craves, and he now hates her and refuses to ever see her), I don't think she will be able to prevent at least him from coming with us. My 9-year-old daughter is still an open question, and we do need to get either her permission or a court order to get their passports and take them out of the country. We'll be resolving that issue in front of a judge if she doesn't change her mind in mediation in just over a week.

Thankfully the short sale on the house closed a few weeks ago, so we have one less thing to deal with in the divorce settlement.

I love my job, and my being TS and in a committed lesbian relationship are not issues there at all. In fact, while I may be the only TS at the company (as far as I know anyway), based on the couples photos from the recent company annual party I'd say that as much as a third or even half the employees may be gay or lesbian. Nobody even batted an eye when Becky dropped in to visit one day and I introduced her as my partner. I'm on a month-to-month contract so I don't know how much longer the job will last, but I'm enjoying it while it does.

Meanwhile, Becky was offered, and accepted, an amazing job opportunity in New York City, so our relationship has become (at least temporarily) a long-distance one. So far we miss each other like crazy, but are managing, and we will be seeing each other at least every couple of weeks. And maybe if the wifi in her new apartment is better than in her hotel, we'll be able to see each other on Skype a lot more often. :)

Becky left for New York just over a week ago, right after we marched in the Seattle Pride 2010 parade. We ended up carrying the banner for Ingersoll in the parade. It was an amazing event, to see all those people packing the parade route and cheering us as we passed, to arrive at the Seattle Center and see it more filled with people than I've ever seen it, and to see the rainbow Pride flag flying atop the Space Needle for the first time in its 48-year history.

Becky will be back next weekend; the woman who invited me to her engagement party is getting married, and we've been invited to her bachelorette party. Then she'll be back again the following weekend, for the actual wedding. My daughter is very excited that she will be a flower girl.

Anyway, for those who care, that's my life in a nutshell for the moment. Oh, I forgot to mention that I've nearly "graduated" from my voice feminization lessons, and something wonderful happened the other day that I think is at least partly due to my success with that.

I called my dad and chatted with him about this and that for a while, catching up on each other's lives since we'd last talked a few weeks earlier. At the end of the call, after I'd said "I love you" and "Bye," just as we hung up, he said, "Bye bye, babe."

I wasn't expecting it. He's been nothing but supportive since the day I came out to them, but it felt like that indicated a whole new level of acceptance from him. It brought tears to my eyes. Happy tears. I wanted to call him right back and say, "Thank you, Daddy! Thank you, thank you, thank you!" But I didn't want to embarrass him or try to explain coherently just why that meant so much to me, because I wasn't sure I could, so I didn't. I just savored it for what it was.