10:15 pm - Tuesday 15th August 2000

I'm back from the second singing workshop. My back hurts, I think I may need to go up a size in my sports bra's.

Tonight I discovered the chink in my armor. Tonight in the singing workshop, there was just 8 women (myself included). Being unable to reach the high notes for obvious physical reasons, the teacher singled me out for a few attempts. The more she said "Try this" and I failed, the more self-conscious I got. By the time she moved on, my voice was trembling and I was hitting the near edge of tears. This was a novel experience for me, fortunately after a break, I was somewhat more composed.
But anyway, like wow! Over 2 years without a single tear seems to be coming slowly to an end, maybe one day crying will even annoy me!?!
(I submitted this to the Anti-Jen list…)

Anyway, the rest of the day was very painful, with me being over at Laser Physics running more samples for analysis. I say painful, because it's really bad on my upper back and neck area bending over little sample jars and doing fine hand work. I could probably have handled one day on, one day off, but my supervisors daughter was sick, so his wife had to go home, leaving me with the time available. Anyway, suffice to say it was really tedious.
Hopefully tomorrow, Peta and I will do lunch, and this will be a nice rescue for me.

5:37 am - Can't sleep. Clowns will eat me…

There's something else which has been messing with the back of my head recently too. A few nights ago, I got chatting to this guy on ICQ. This is something I virtually never do, simply because I'm trying to relax when I get home, not spend more time chatting. Anyway, he seems nice enough but of course, he doesn't know that I am TS. So, he lives in Canberra and asks during the second conversation whether I want to do coffee sometime soon. To this suggestion I somewhat freak out, but I certainly didn't let him know that and I declined politely.
I suppose the reason why I had to decline was that I didn't know whether I could deal with the consequences if he were to a) discover I was TS, and b) have a bad reaction because of this. The other girls in the singing workshop are perhaps the first group of people who specifically don't know (in theory) that I am TS, and there has been no problem there. But when you're playing with intimate emotions like desire and possible affection with an individual, I would say that that is a different ball-game altogether.

Apart from not being sure who I'm attracted to, and not being sure who is attracted to me, I have to completely rethink where I draw the lines of necessity of disclosure. At work I believe there may be some positive value in "outing myself", I don't think this is the same for where I live.
I suppose it comes down in the end to a variety of things including "Do I pass?" For people who never knew the "old me", then yes it seems that I do. I know that it comes down to being "confidant and consistent" and people seem willing to go along with me. Of course, I don't want to people just to "go along with me", I want them to unequivocally say "Ah, female" when they see me. This requires a lot more time on hormones, some plastic surgery, more electrolysis, etc, etc, you get the idea… I'm grateful that people seem willing to accept me as female from my appearance, but I don't want to stop yet. And of course , the ultimate passing is "passing in bed", something only GRS can really help you with.

I'm rambling, back to bed I think…

1