The Name is Lily

There are a couple of things readers of this blog need to know about me.  The first is that Lily is my name, but not the one I'm known by in my daily life.  I am transgendered.  I have some flavor of gender dysphoria, a disjunction between my biological sex -- i.e., that dictated by my chromosomes -- and my inner workings, my inner sense of who I am.  This is commonly referred to as being transgendered.

The second thing is that I have no idea about what flavor of TG I am.  I thought I knew, I thought I was "just" a heterosexual crossdresser, but now ... in middle age (in my late fifties), I find that I don't.  I have no sure notion about either (a) where my TG-ness (transgenderosity?) falls within the great unwashed masses of the gender dysphoric, or  (b) where I fall amongst those of humanity as a whole.

Both uncertainties frighten me.  I have spent years working on my persona, to use Jungian language, so that it conforms to what society expects.  But I have been trangendered as long as I remember, and shall remain so until I die.

Recently, I have felt a growing need to come to grips all of this, and began moving to being more intentional about my expression of  my "female side."  Thus, after a long-ago interment of my feelings, I have begun to re-excavate them once again.  Somewhat to my surprise, I no longer yearn to present as a young, good-looking woman, who can wear miniskirts and size 8 dresses (well, not much, anyway!), but I would like to be able to freely move about as my chosen gender.  So, I am aiming toward a dignified, middle-age image, and have begun to accumulate a wardrobe again.  Also, I am gathering things I never had in earlier forays into the CD world: breast forms, for instance, and decent wigs.  My aim is, as I said, to be able to present as a woman with dignity and honor, and to not be crucified for doing so.

But wait!  There's more!  I have come to the realization that for my own psychological health, and that of my family, I need to see about integrating the feminine and masculine within me into a more coherent whole.  One that is present in whatever mode I choose to be.  I recently discovered the psychology of Carl Jung, and have begun to study and hopefully internalize it, and that is the direction in which this blog leans.  I hope it will be a serious--though not without humor!--exploration of these issues.  Further, I hope that as I work these issues out for myself in these electronic pages, that they may be of some small value to anyone who may choose to read them.