Chopek

It's that time of the year again

2007-04-03T16:27:18Z

Unlike most people, I dread the onset of spring. April is always a long month for me as the beginning of May is the anniversary of one of the worst things i have ever had happen to me. It tends to be a time i nwhich i get a little withdrawn and stand-offish with people because I am pre-occupied with what the past.

Most of the time i don't allow the sort of things i have in my past to drag me down in the present but the death of a loved one is not an easy thing to deal with, especially someone quite that close.

Thoughts and feeling on feelings

2007-04-02T08:39:01Z

When I saw D last we had a small spat over issues of feelings and the demonstration of such. In some respects it was a conversation i didn't want to have (especially given the situation) and in others it is one i think was necessary to have had.

We talked a bit about stuff between us and then moved on to stuff about me personally. It seems to me that D thinks i am suffering from GID but in denial about it. I honestly don't think that that is the case and that my natural reserve leads her to think that based on her own experience. While i can certainly see where she is coming from, I am most definitely not transgendered. She suggested i try takin hormones for two weeks and see what difference that makes.

While i can see how that would have helped her overcome what she sees as the same problems in me, my emotions are not held in check through an imbalance of hormones or the worng sort of thinking, they are held in check out of fear. I find it very hard to cope with my emotions if i let them run free. I grew up being forced to be very distant from my emotions as a matter of survival and reconnecting with them is a long slow process. I am not unhappy, I am just not like everyone else. I don't have the emotional cntrol and maturity that other adults take for granted.

I hate the clock change!

2007-03-28T07:33:29Z

I really do hate this time of the year. The change in the clocks always leaves me exhausted. I get precious little sleep as it is and the suden change tends to put me out of kilter for about three weeks while my routine adapts.

Still, we persevere! I am feeling a little better about things in general although my eyesight is beginning to suffer a little now. Mind you i'm not sure if that is really the case or if it is just psychosomatic...

sigh

2007-03-27T08:23:53Z

Feel strange today. I feel badly like i have let D down - she's had a tough time of ito ver the lasy week or so and Sunday night i was snappy with her over somethin because i am having a tough time of my own and it leaked out. I feel lousy about it becasue i shouldn't take stuff out on her when really what it is is a knee-jerk about my on issues. I apologised but i don;t think she realyl forgave me for it, which i understand perfectly.

I alos feel bad because, due entirely to the vagaries of the medical system and their casual relationship with time, i was unable to be with her to support her through somethign she had to go through, despite makign a special journey just to be there with her. I wish I had had more money left at the time, if i had i would have said "sod it" to my planned journey and taken a later train. The only way i could do that though would have been to had got into more debt than i can reasonably afford at the moment given that I am goign to have to spend a lot on new glasses in the near future, i just couldn't do it.

I felt crap all the way home and all of last night when i lay awake unable to sleep. I don;t know what to do about it either :(

scared

2007-03-19T08:31:45Z

I was told on Saturday that the medication i have to take from time to time to stabilise my conditionhas given me cataracts in both eyes. One eye is admittedly worse than the other but I am now facing the fact that in the not hugely distance future i am going to have to have surgery to remove the cataracts.

I'm not easily scared or oried by anythign but I don;t mind admitting that this scares the shit out of me. Firstly the idea of anyone cutting into my eyeball is just terrifying let alone the fact that i will probably be conscious when they do it and just under a local anaesthetic. Secondly, the opreration itself is pretty scary when you look at it. Proceedurally, they cut open the eye, fish out the damaged lends and replace it with a new artificial one. All well and good but they will be poking around inside my eye with sharp objects!! Thirdly, and probably most errfiying are the post-op complications. Now Some of them are fairly benign and some of them affect only a very small percentage of people (around 0.01%) but there are honest to gods risks of my losing my sight as a result.

Franky, the only thing that makes the risk wothwhile in my opinion is that without the operation i am pretty much guaranteed to lose the sight in both eyes anyway. Talk about being caught between Cylla and Carribdis...

Rambling on

2007-03-14T08:56:55Z

I still care about the woman who has absorbed the content of my journal for the last few days but it is not anything that most poeple would recognise as love. I wish her every possible happiness in her life and i sincerely hope that she gets everythign she wants from it. I equally sincerely hope that that all happens very far away from me.

With her and her husband i made the very unusual step of actually telling them both that I never wanted to hear from them again. I can think of only 2 other occassions in life when I have felt that way about someone and cut them off like that. It is not something i find pleasant to do and somethign i hope not to have to do again. I don't give up on people, it is not in my nature.

Continued from yesterday

2007-03-13T09:14:45Z

My memories were somethin os a bittersweet occassion really For a short time said lady and I meant a great deal to one another. We spent a lot of time together, went away together several times, generally nejoyed the closeness that grew between us. Trouble iis that after a while it became clear that what we meant to each other was vastly different to what we thought we meant.

To me, she was important, she is someone i love, she is someone i care for and someone i wanted to see happy. To her i was a pet project to be changed and moulded and "fixed" in her image of what i should be. At first, i resisted this gently and tried to explain that this is not who i wanted to be but as time passed and she did not let up things got worse. In the end our relationship became very difficult as the conflict over her desire to change me to what she perceived as the better and my desire to grow and change according to my choices spilled over and poisoned the rest of it. After a motnh of tryin everything i could to explain what was happening, how i was feeling and seeign her basically lay the blame on me, i was forced to end the relationship which was somethign i *really* didn't want.

I was unhappy for a long time afterwards and a distance grew between us that was compounded when no more than two weeks after we separated in terms of our romanitc lives (we still remained friends)she blithely told me about a new man she was seeing and that she was the happiest she had been in her life. I think it was at that point that i truly came to resent her. We continued to talk and she wouls tell me about her new lover and his very strange behavuiour (that is another story for another time) and did actually listen to me when i warned her to be careful with him. While i was proved to be right, I think she hated me for that.

We no longer speak and that is a tough thing for me. I miss her and her husband but I don't miss the heart-ache that thye put me throguh with their "when it suits them" idea of friendship.

Long and thoughtful

2007-03-12T10:03:34Z

Had a pretty good weekend in many respects but there were the odd moments when things happend that provoked thoguhts and feelings from the past and about the present.

Saturday night, i heard the sound of foxes mating. If you've never heard that particular sound before it's nothign like you might imagine. The closest thing i can think of to describe it is that it is a cross between the sound of a cat fight and the sound of a horse in terrible pain. As you might have thought from reading this, this is not the first time i have heard it and the sound took me back to the last time.

Several years ago a mutual friend introduced me to the male half of a married couple. Unusually for me (and as i understand for him as well) we made a fairly instant connection. As time passed i met his wife and we too made a swift connection. Over the following year we would meet fairly frequently and spend time staying at one another's homes. While i felt that the connection to him remained at it's initial level, my connection to her deepened rapidlyand we would spend time together talking a lot, even going so far as to take walks of an evening to continue our conversations.

We disagreed on things, as friends do, but on the whole we respected each other enoguhthat the disagreements didn't matter. Then one evening things changed. They didn't change precisely at that moment but it was then that the change was first crystallised. We were out walking in the late evening, it was not cold but far from warm either and we stopped for a while to sit and talk throguh a particularly important point. We were sat on a low wall talking and i noticed she was shivering so I reach over o wrap the edge of my coat (i have some bi coats) around her shoulders. She shuffled in closer and we carried on talking. She shuffled in closer still and i adjusted myself to allow her nearer me without thinking about it. We got physially closer and closer and we both became aware of the "charge" that was building up between us. Then just as i think we were about to kiss, the sound of the foxes filled the air.

Now, neither of us twigged it for the sound of foxes and assumed that there was a horse in pain. I knew there was a stables nearby and we headed of towards it. While nothing happened that evening, it showed us both that there was the potential for it to happen and things between us weren't the same ever again.

Slight improvement

2007-03-08T09:07:15Z

Things seem to have improved a little bit with the situation between D and I. We've talked a lot over the last few days and while i don;t think things are quie back on an even keel, they are more or less ok. She still very hesitant in her affection towards me i think but i can understand that.

Overdue post

2007-03-05T17:29:43Z

Been too long since i last posted here. I think it is more to do with being ridiculously busy than not having anything to say.

I've been caught up in a number of things both in and out of work that haven't really left me with much inclination to sit and type up and entry. I find myself not really wanting to type this now but I am doing so out of a sense of obligation to me and a desire to get the thoughts out of my head.

I am not happy with the situation i find myself in at the moment. i am not sleeping well because of the pills i hae to take currently and that probably colours a lot of what i am thinking but I think the best way to describe what is going on is that i feel unloved.

D went away and i really did miss her while she was gone. I got a few texts and a coupel of emails from her while she was away and while they were nice, some were a little worrying. Since she came back however, things have not been very good. I feel like I have been sidelined a lot. I know that while she was away (entirely with my approval) she entered into a relationship with another woman but since then, she doesn;t really make any effort to get in touch with me, she doesn't really make any effort when i get in touch with her. it's almost like now that there is a woman in her life, i'm not really so important any more.

Afterglow

2007-01-16T17:05:35Z

Seems to be an apt description of the current situation.

I took Diamond away for the weekend to a little hotel i know owned by a cousin of a friend. It was a great weekend. While the hotel room itself could have been better, the compnay was intoxicating, the food excellent and the drink flowed freely.

We managed to get the "L" word out in the open and it was to my great relief mutually felt. I later realised exactly how bad I have got it when we were sat watching a DVD at her place on Sunday. She'd curled up on the sofa with her head in my lap and i'm afraid i spent a lot my time watching her doze than i did watching the DVD :)

I think we both really enjoyed the weekend, i know I did. it was nice to spend some time with her away from the day to day grind of our lives and be somewhere where all that mattered was the other person. One thing I really did like was being introduced to people D had got talking to in a bar one evening as her partner. It gave a warm feeling inside :)

We went back to her place on Sunday and I stayed the night there. We got into a discussion at one point about her living arrangements and she "hinted" (read "outright suggested") that she wasn't sure what to do when her lease ran out on her flat and asked my opinion. She basically wanted to know what i thought of the idea of moving in together. While i think this is still too early in the whole thing to even be thinking about that, i am not completely against it. On the other hand, she has feelings for a couple of other people and while i have no issue with that in the slightest, more than once she has said that basically if one of the others were in a position to enter into a full time relationship with her, I'd be out on my ear. This is particularly true where one particular oung lady is concerned. Said lady is in another country but has said she plans to visit here later this year. D said that if they found that the relationship in person was as strong as it looks to be from the phone calls and emails etc they have shared up to now then there would be "no room for anyone else".

While I am not asking for any guarantees in life or from D, i am really not sure i want to expose myself to a situation like that where the best i can expect is to be the "consolation prize."

wry smile

2007-01-08T17:34:52Z

I think i am just fooling myself with the situation with Diamond. In a good way i think. I find myself being cautious of commiting what i feel in writing let alone verbally. Too often in the past i have allowed myself to go the distance on this, given voice to my heart and had my heart not just stepped on, but ground into the dirt for my troubles. I'm a little scared that this might happen again and while i don't think D is the type to do that, i thoguht that those other times as well....

Having said all that, it is not easy to deny what i feel and I'm not really making any attempt to do so, i am just not saying it. Maybe that's foolish but it's what i feel is the thing i've felt i needed to do at the moment. Mind you i am reminded of a line from a song in the Disney Hercules film "At least out loud I won't say I'm...."

Aftermath

2007-01-02T13:47:23Z

Well the "big visit" went really well. We didn't do a great deal in terms of going out or anything as we were both really tired and in need of rest. It meant that we did spend lots of time talking and snuggling up and generally being quite close and soppy. :)

All in all it was a really great time and I think we both enjoyed it immensly. D had the chance to fill me in on a lot of questions i had about her choices and her options. There was also time for us to explore things between us a lot more both emotionally and physically. There were a number of surprises during the time we were together, a few things i think neither of us really expected but none of the surprises were bad in any way, shape or form.

Emotionally, i'm not sure whether either of us is succeeding in fooling the other or ourselves on where we stand on the "L" word. I know my heart crossed several lines that I hadn't expected it to cross quite this quickly...

Slightly nervous

2006-12-20T09:30:54Z

Getting a little bit nervous now. I'm going to pick Diamond up after work tonight and while i'm not quite at the finger nail biting stage i am starting to get a little bit jumpy.

She's got a doctors appointment this morning for an injecton that is scaring her quite a bit and i think I will be doing a lot of giving support and hugs and comfort later on as a result.

Update

Well she's had the injection and is in a lot of pain as a result. Definitely need to go that extra step to cheer her up and make her feel better.

shattered

2006-12-18T17:32:48Z

Am absolutley knackered today. Really didn't sleep well last night and ended up being awake at 3:30.

Am really looking forward to seeing Diamond this week. It's going to be really nice to have her company for 4 days. She and i seem to be getting very close and while at the stage i am not sure whether this is jusr NRE or not, i am enjoying it and I think she is too. I'm still mulling over the question she asked of what i feel for her and find myself wondering what it is she feels for me.

Hmmmm

2006-12-13T13:19:31Z

Life continues apace. Many things going on.

Have spoken to Diamond about meeting up again and she is going to come and stay with me for the 4 or 5 days leading up to Christmas which i am really looking forward to. I am going to go pick her up on the 20th in the evening and I'm off work from the 21st so we'll have lots of time.

In a completely different tack, I'm getting a little worried about someone who has been a freind in the past but currently i'm not sure we could be classed as friends She's poly and involved in a relationship with the OSO of my best friend. This in itself is all fine except she's reacting very badly to said man and my friend going out to places, meeting with people etc. So much so that last weekend when they were out with mutual friends of hers, she phoned the guy and gave him hell, then later was really slating them to another friend of mine who simply didn't know what to do. I'm trying to decide whether I should do something about it or just ignore it and wiat for the explosion.

Better

2006-12-12T09:35:03Z

Had a long talk on the phone with Diamond last night followed by many text messages. It looks very much like we are both on the same page as far as our relationship goes.

She told me that she misses me which while on one hand I was not pleased to hear because it means she is lonely etc, on the other hand she misses me :) Now that probably only makes sense to me but as this is for me not anyone else, i don't much care :D

She texted me later on and asked what I was thinking about us and my response boiled down to "it's really good and we need to wait and see what happens with it". She feels exactly the same way and said it much more precisely than i did. This is good. Very good.

Aftermath

2006-12-11T09:15:21Z

Well things went both better and worse than I expected.

I arrived *much* earlier than i had hoped. Despite travelling throguh rush hour, I hit *no* traffic at all and did the whole journey in one of the fastest times possible!

I was right and she did wear that little balck dress and she did look fantastic. She also seemed to like the white shirt/velvet jacket combo i went for which is good. Dinner was excellent althoguh she was very nervous especially when she realised I had booked a table at what she said was "the poshest place" in town. Oops :D

We had three courses, a bottle of wine and a glass of port each and then, slightly drunk, we made our way back to her place. I offered, quite seriously to sleep on the floor in the front room but we did end up in her bed togheter. We lay in the dark talking for hours and while i can't say that our conversation was all happy and light, i think it was important. There was a lot of honesty between us.

I didn't want to leave on Saturday and I think she didn't want me to leave. What I don't know is whether she didn't want me to leave because she was enjoying my company and wanted me to stay as opposed to the idea that she didn't want to be alone.

At one point in the early hours of Saturday morning she asked me if i loved her. I answered honestly and said that at this stage i wasn't willing to answer that with yes. i explained that love is not a word i use lightly and that when i do use it I really mean it and until i can be sure i really mean it, i would not cheapen it or her by saying it.

However, in the silence of my heart and mind the question has been playing itself over and over. Do I love her... I'm a little bit afraid the answer is probably yes i do. Why am i afraid? Because i am not sure she feels anything like that for me, or that she ever will. I'm not sure i can take the pain that that will cause...

We've made plans to be together in the week running up to Christmas. I have a couple of days off and I have asked her to come stay with me. I think that will be the "crunch".

The countdown...

2006-12-08T13:05:47Z

Not long to go now until dinner. Got a table booked for two at 9:15 to give me plenty of time to get there. Hoping to get away at around 6.

I think she's goign to wear that gorgeous little black dress she treated herself to that just looks fantastic on her. I think i'm going to wear a white shirt and velvet jacket that should strike the right note between formal and casual.

Really feeling nervous about it, more because i have never eaten at this place before and it might be awful.

At least that's why i'm telling myself i am nervous....

:(

2006-12-07T14:16:56Z

Gods i feel lousy this afternoon. I'm all over the place meotionally. I'm about ready to tee off on anyone in the workplace who comes close to pushing me and I haven't a clue why.

Very odd. Maybe it's a carry over from the nervousness i was talking about earlier but i am not so sure.

In at the deep end

2006-12-07T09:46:59Z

Well I guess it's crunch time. I've asked Diamond to go out to dinner with me tomorrow night and asked her if I can crash at her place afterwards.

I'm happy to sleep on the floor (really i am happy to sleep on the floor) if that is what she wants me to do but I'd prefer to spend the night with her. I guess we'll see what happens.

I'm not the most confident of people although i do a good job of looking like I am. Part of me wants to beleive that she really does have feelings from me, although i am certainly not going to try to push her into putting any names to anything or to trying to commit to anything but part of me wonders if i am just something of a "trial run". I know that that is probably not fair to her and i know that a lot of it is my own paranoia talking but I'm a little scared about what might happen here. I feel like i am walking in the dark down a tunnel where at the other end is something really quite special but along the way are some bloody great pits i could fall into that i can't see.

Still nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Transgendered

2006-12-06T13:57:10Z

While I have been aware of the transgendered for a long time now (it's hardly a new phenomenon (doo-doo-da-doo-doo) after all). i have nt really had much in the way of contact on a personal level with the situation. Nor have I ever read about gender dysphoria. With the advent of Diamond in my life and the mutual attraction and reciprocated feelings we seem to have, i have been trying to do my best to understand what she is going through.

She's lent me a copy of "True Selves" which I am about halfway through. TBH i am finding it a bit of a disturbing read, not because I am finding the ideas difficult to deal with bt because of the amount of myself I see in the pages. I try not to make too much of a issue of it but growing up my life was unpleasant and while i don't use the term other would certainly refer to me as an abused child.

Perhaps because of my life, and the deep hatred of one man in particular and general distrust of all men, i have never really thoguht of myself as male. Diamond tells me that she sees a lot of feminine traits in my, in my behaviour, my expressions etc but i have never thoguth of myself as a woman either. I identify with the section in "True Selves" that talks about kids growing up thinkng of themselves as a third gender, neither man or woman but somewhere inbetween.

In many respects i still think of myself that way and i suspect i always will. I simply can't find commonality between me and the majority of men in anything more than the most minor of ways but then I also don't find commonality with women. I am actually quiet content to be "sat in the middle" finding my way between yin and yang and carving out my own place in the world. It's lonely sometimes to be surrounded by people and yet be so very alone in the experience of my life.

The current situation

2006-12-06T09:58:31Z

Well i guess the first thing i need to write about is why i set this journal up. I needed a place to splurge my thoughts about situations and one situation in particular. Late September I was at a weekend event and someone I'd met before was there having undergone so major changes, the most major of these was that he had become she.

Now, when i first saw her, i knew that i recognised her but couldn't place her at all. What I did know was that she was absolutely stunning. I kept glancing over at her as i tried to work it out and after a half hour of furtive glances the penny dropped. My initial reaction was one of "That's why! Wow, it really works for her."

Since then we have seen one another several times, althoguh mostly in the company of others. I find myself (for the sake of simplicity and in order to protect the innocent I'll refer to her as Diamond from now on) and wanting to get to know D a lot better.

We had lunch, just the two of us, a few weeks back and it was a real thrill to go out with her on my arm looking so gorgeous, even if all it was was a trip to the local pub. We flirted a little and tbh I had no idea whether we wre having lunch as friends or if it was something more. I decided to try my luck and placed my hand, palm up on the table as a invitation to hold her hand. She took it and we sat talking and laughing holding hands and it felt really comfortable.

Afterwards we went back to her place and spent the afternoon together. It was really good and I wished that it hadn't been a Sunday because when she asked me to stay over, i *really* wanted to but work the following day would have been a proble with a 2+ hour commute first thing in the morning.

Hello world!

2006-12-05T17:06:42Z

This journal is here to give me somewhere to write about things that are inmportant to me, things i need to think through, things I am trying to deal with and to give some people a place to go and look and see what it is i am thinking even though they aren't interested in LJ themselves.

I'm not sure how long this will remain an "active" journal but it's here now :)

Chopek

It's that time of the year again

Thoughts and feeling on feelings

I hate the clock change!

*sigh*

*scared*

Rambling on

Continued from yesterday

Long and thoughtful

Slight improvement

Overdue post

Afterglow

*wry smile*

Aftermath

Slightly nervous

*shattered*

Hmmmm

Better

Aftermath

The countdown...

:(

In at the deep end

Transgendered

The current situation

Hello world!

sigh

scared

wry smile

shattered