[AnnieBL]

This entire thread, despite comments about it all having been said here before, should be mandatory reading for any one who has had serious thoughts about transition, in the sense of bringing the body one was born with more into accord with one's personally perceived gender. It's been nearly eight months since I had the talk (actually a carefully drafted document - please read this through to the end and then we'll talk), and it resulted in my one and only coming on board as a full partner in our transition - but I won't pretend that it hasn't been a rough ride at times - and we had special advantages such as seventeen years of close friendship prior to any physical relationship, and working together on a difficult and risky enterprise that brought her and her children to Canada and legalised their presence here. Acquiring a ready made family kept the GID under control for more than twenty years, but as the kids left home and maybe my T levels dropped the GID came back.

My mother had been determined before I was born that I was going to be Annabel, but I arrived with the wrong body - then she became determined that I was to achieve everything that my dead father might have achieved. About ten years ago I came to a sufficient appreciation of my nature to start considering transition, but it seemed that so long as my mother was alive, and in view of my family commitments, that it was not possible. I thought that maybe a little bit of feminisation such as herbally induced minor breast growth might keeop the GID at bay, but what I tried didn't work. Then I landed up in hospital for emergency abdominal surgery, during which it turned out that my blood pressure was out of control. To cut a long story short, I ended up on massive doses of beta blockers, and a trial course of spiro, at which point our doctor died suddenly and we were unable to find a replacement , so the beta blockers and spiro were continued for another 18 months admittedly with some connivance on my part. During this period I experienced some significant breast development and a complete loss of male function. When I finally got to see my cardiologist, he cancelled the beta blockers and spiro and substituted a calcium channel blocker which very effectively dealt with the blood pressure problems. For three months I tried various things to restore male function without the slightest effect, and having discovered this board started taking PM which has not only produced more breast growth and still further atrophy of my male parts but also seems at least in the long run at fairly high doses to have reduced my testosterone below measurable levels (an effect which seems to have been noted by some other people here). About one thing I was quite wrong - a little bit of feminisation was eventually not enough.

We are all different, and my perhaps most notable difference is that I have never cross dressed. When I first heard earlier this year of the Southern Comfort Conference in Atlanta , something inside me that I now know was Annabel said 'You must go' even if this more or less mandated cross dressing. I had a fanciful notion of going to the conference as a 'virgin' cross dresser but both Clara and my spouse said that I must rehearse. So on August 20 I dressed and found then and there that I was indeed Annabel. Except for the following day and for traveling down to Atlanta, I have been Annabel (or Annie as given to me by Sammie for everyday use) ever since. You can have no idea of the sense of liberation after two thirds of a century stuck in a male shell. It is not cross dressing since Annabel, that I had always so severely repressed, had to have clothes. So here I am on estradiol and spiro, though still taking PM, and looking for some rather limited surgery.