Dear Diary,

I haven't posted for a year, I'm not one for routine, for writing things down and checking replies, but I still find myself thinking fondly of keeping a journal. Transitioning is hard work actually, just the simple fact of trying to be what you are, and it took (and is still taking) a lot from me.

But these days I'm making short term plans for my genital surgery, shrinks finally having agreed that being a transwoman and a lesbian aren't mutually exclusive and a sign of schizophrenia. I'm active in our little lesbian group of Athens, where transphobic attitudes are lately subsiding or kept a secret, writing articles on lesbians and transgender people for lgbt magazines and newspapers, and becoming better-known as an illustrator. The greek edition of Esquire has made me a permanent contributor (I dread to read the contents of the magazine though, feminist sense is tingling). I'm still with Maria, my girlfriend of 6 years and 8 months as of tomorrow. I still have my ups and downs, but I'm happy, more and more and more, for the first time in my life have I been so happy.

Still can't get paid in my own name, and can't do practically anything legally because of the stupid laws in Greece allowing a change of legal identity only to transpeople who alter their genitals. Needless to say this is a completely transphobic and homophobic and third-world attitude but what can you do.

What else? A whole year has passed and I still can't think of much to write..
I finished a painting about rape, it got a huge number of replies and I was very very happy and moved that so many people care about social issues. I also got some personal emails from rape survivors which moved me to no end.

Maria got a job at the university, editing documents for the e-learning branch. It's a steady income and she feels useful and happy.

My dad is still not talking to me, or acknowledging my existence, and I occasionally dream of him being either physically violent and enraged with me or passive-aggressively devastated by grief and trying to pin the guilt on me. I'm afraid I will forget what he's really like and keep these dream images as real memories of him..

My mom has covered a lot of way though, she is very careful with pronouns, calls me every single day (long-distance!), occassionally sends me money, and once she even went shopping with me and bought me a skirt she didn't like at first but which has become my favorite. I dress solely in skirts, not only to avoid tucking the, er, clitoris away from prying eyes but also because I've wanted to for years and years. Plus trousers make me look less curved, and I'm NOT risking having a gender-variant appearance anytime soon.

A friend brought over a documentary about transmen a few days ago, and I helped him transcribe the text and translate it in greek. The film is called "Boy I am" and it was immaculate from a feminist standpoint, even though there still was some transphobia in it.

What else?
I'm out of ideas for surreal/symbolist paintings, and it's bugging me that this is out of my life, but I'm still hoping to recover. I look at my previous work on my website and find it of poor taste and execution. Er.. Maybe illustration is really my calling? Who knows! Medicine sure isn't though, since I've lost all drive to complete med school. Perhaps it's the fact that I have no legal support. Maybe when I get my female ID it will give me enough entitlement to go back and tell them I'm a student and a citizen and demand that I be taken seriously. On the other hand I can't think of myself studying for hours on end ever again...

Oh, also, after christmas, my shrink tried to bargain with me: his end of the bargain would be to accept I'm not psychotic, and my end of the bargain would be to be locked in a mental hospital for a month, with no ability to work, NO hormones, and (possibly but I didn't find out) in a male ward with male patients. I was tempted to accept, because things were looking amazingly bad at the time, but thankfully I was so terrified of the inhumane situation that I declined. It might have proved destructive for my self-esteem and my body-image and even my mental health, and the shrinks were too ignorant to be able to guarantee that they could rule out psychosis if I did as they said. If they thought a transwoman isn't equal to all other women and therefore has the right to be straight, bi or lesbian like everybody else, why would they believe me after a month in a mental ward?

Which reminds me of my former -also ignorant- therapist whom I quit a while after she uttered with incredible confidence the stupid dogma: "You can't call your penis a clitoris. Yyou have to love your penis and accept it, so that you will become devastated when you lose it to the surgery and therefore normal healing will follow". You stupid, ignorant, heteronormative, completely transphobic woman, if I *was* attached to a penis I'd be sad to lose it, but I'm a transWOMAN and even if I decided to keep what's down there, I'd still call it "a vagina, just different" until you were blue in the face. You fucking self-entitled, controlling, discriminating and pigeonholing ASSHOLE. HAH. I said it.

it's good to confess things. takes them off one's chest (38 B cup and growing).. and it helps me realise the reality of it all.

kisses
Christina