I started the world's first transgender support web site in 1994, and kept it (on and off) ever since.  But when I started this blog several months ago, it was part of an attempt to put the whole transition experience behind me.  Two years previously I had undergone Feminizing Facial Surgery.  Yep, that's right - eighteen years after transition I had facial surgery to pass as a woman.

Why?  I'll speak on this more in future entries, but in a nutshell, the more you age, the more your cartiledge and bones also age.  They masculinize, even if you are continually on hormones, just as they would if you were a natal woman.  Add to that the loss of facial fat, and skin that becomes less elastic with age, and you start to get "read" all over again after having successfully lived in your chosen role for years.

It got so bad I was actually getting laughed at by counter clerks in liquor stores.  Why just twenty years earlier, I had actually been hoisted across the counter at a 7-11 by the clerk and kissed passionately.  I didn't even know this guy!  My what a difference two decades of aging can make!

So I had facial surgery.  And I discovered that there is much more to that game than just "passing".  In fact, the minor differences of the facial bone structures of men and women strike a primal brain pattern recognition. It gives each of us an energy signature.  When you have facial surgery, you change that energy signature in ways FAR more profound than sex reassignment surgery.

People, both men and women, treat you differently at some subliminal level of which you weren't even aware before facial surgery.  But afterwards, after the healing, man you sure can feel the difference!

In addition, you sense that same energy signature difference in yourself as well, when you look in the mirror.  All of a sudden you realize you had always "read" yourself as having male facial energy, even if you passed really well and were very pretty in your youth.  And that energy feedback caused you to alter your behavior subconsciously so that how you acted and even the thoughts you allowed yourself to ponder stayed in line with that male (not I did not say "mascuiine" but "male") energy.

Takes about two years to come to terms with all that - discover and dismantle all the unknown limitations and habits you've built up since Kindergarten, and then get on with building a new set appropriate to the "you" that has finally emerged behind your new face.

Okay.  so I did all that.  And quite naturally, I figured, hey, I'm FINALLY DONE with this crap!  After twenty years of confusion, elation, outward successes, and inner doubts I'm FINALLY THROUGH WITH THIS CRAP!

Think again.  In my delusions of completion I set about capping the whole thing off with a grand project - a reading of my 1200 page transition diary from today's perspective.  I thought, what a wonderful to say goodbye to the whole thing - to offer one last parting service to the community - to put those words I had written beginning in 1989 into the context when all was said and done - youthful enthusiasm bracketed by the wisdom born of experience.

So I did that for a few entries (you'll find the first ones below this entry in the blog here).  And then I did nothing for a while.  It just seemed so silly.  But I wasn't sure why....

I'm not sure I yet know why it seemed silly.  Perhaps I'll do a few more from time to time.  (If I do one page of the diary per week, I'll be finished in 24 years!)

Instead of doing another one right now, I just had this urge to start blogging about whatever.  Well, not just whatever whatever but the whatever that touched on transgender issues in some way.  You see, the one thing I do know is that you never stop thinking about transgender issues.  You are born with the desire to change sex, go into transition, change sex, integrate into society, build a new life, honor what you should from the old, and exapnd your heart and mind to all kinds of new interests and activities.  And yet, every single day of your life you still keep thinking about the transgender experience - even when there's nothing left to learn about it, nothing left to do about it.

You know, I don't think any single blog entry can capture an accurate picture of what it is like twenty years after transition.  But hopefully, the more I add to this blog the more clear the picture will become.  One thing I do know is that I can already tell that these words about the whole shebang are quite different in tone from all that I previously wrote in my diary.  In that book, my focus was on myself - what it was like to go through the whole thing.  But now, I find myself looking outward toward the world in which I live.

I don't really know what I'll be writing about, but I'm sure it won't be quite like anything else I've ever written.and just perhaps not like anything you've ever read.