All I Want In life is to be Happy

It seems funny to me

How fucked things can be

Every time I get ahead

I feel more dead

Lightning!!

It's been weird. We've been having thunder and lightning for 4 days in a row. Yesterdays was so intense that I was tempted to take a photo of it. I took 3000 photos and this was the best I got.

Queers be ambitious

This took a while to take. I wanted me, the message and the word "愛" to be in the photo.

My Family Is AWESOME!!!!!!!!!

I told my parents about the name change. My dad said "Yes, your name is super inappropriate for someone with your condition." They are the best! So now we are going to move towards changing my name legally to Shane. I'm so happy.

I sent the speech contest scrip to my grandma some months ago. It needed courage because I thought she was a "traditional" person who always wanted me to be girly wen we visited her and I didn't know how she would react to a script that says "I am a bisexual transgender."

I got a reply from her the other day.

Every time I get a letter from you I think "my, she writes a jolly good letter." Thank you so much and for enclosing your speech. You will notice I have put "she writes." It is automatic for me to do that. I do admire you for being so open about how you feel. It must be difficult for you, as it is for your family.You can be quite sure that we love you just the same and will always stand by you.

...I love my grandma.

The Pix Of This Beautiful Planet...

These are photos I took on the 18th. I am so attracted to beautiful nature and like to keep it. I hope you can appreciate beauty too. :-)

Festival!!!!!

The 18th was a big day for me. There was a local Summer festival and many of my old friends were there. Me and my friend Manju were so excited that we were hanging around from 10:00 when the ikada race began It was really hot and I was sun burnt. No one we knew was at the park where the festival was going on, so we walked to the elementary school we used to go.
There were some minor changes since we were there.

We were hot so we drank water there...

...But that wasn't enough so we went back to a cafe near the park and had a cold Maccha drink and cooled down. Manju drew a manga picture there for a friend there to kill time.
This is a photo I took then. It's a dirty old hedgehog toy that Manju has had since goodness knows when! She said that it sometimes has a "bad smell day" and that day was unfortunately that day!


After we cooled down, we went outside to wait for anyone we knew. The actual festival was supposed to start at 4:00 and we spent an hour waiting!!


I had a nice time admiring the beautiful sunshine and the summer breeze. I will post the photos I took then later.



Manju loves her hedgehog! :-)



There were goldfishes in a big bag ready to be caught! I wonder any animal rights groups will be offended by this photo!?

The festival started and we ate unhealthy stuff and waited for people...

Finally people started to appear at around 5 or 6. I took many pics of friends because I don't know if I will ever see them again... And I doubt I will ever have a friend who looks like Paris Hilton(see below)! She's so nice. She's like the only person who gives me an intimate hug!!! I always love it when she hugs me! I was thinking about it before I went to bed. I thought it would be nice if someone would love me so much that that person would tie me up with their love. I guess that was what I did to my ex-girlfriend. I'm sorry.

Anyway, I had an awesome time. I wanted to post more pics here of my friends but I can't get their permissions so I won't.

Consequences

I cannot find a way to describe it. It's there inside. All I do is hide. I wish that it would just go away. What would you do if you knew what would happen after you do something?

All the pain, I thought I knew. All the thoughts lead back to me. Back to what is never said. Back and forth inside my head.

I can't handle this confusion. I'm unable come and take me away.

I feel like I'm all alone. All by myself, I need to get around this.
My words are cold. I don't want them to heart you.
If I show you I don't think you'd understand because no one understands.

I'm getting nowhere....


That was Avril Lavigne's song "Take Me Away" lyrics with a little re-writing.

I decided to tell my parents today about the name change but couldn't.
When I think about what will really happen if I changed my name, it's a really big thing.

First of all, it means I will have to come out to all my relatives and that will be, I think, very stressful. It wasn't easy to come out as a tranny. I mean, actually saying to my mum that I'm not happy as a girl didn't go too well. I kind of screamed at her. That was in 2008 when I was talking with my former class teacher about not staying in the same room with the girls during the school trip to Kyoto. Because we were talking for a long time and I came home at 6 (that was "late" then), my mum, who is mimsy and worries all the time just like me, became worried. One day when I came home at 6, she was crying. I was about to explode of stress...and did. I screamed "why can't you do something!? You know there's something wrong with me!!" of something of that sort. I know it was totally unfair that I suddenly screamed out of the blue and left her to figure out for herself what the problem was. She managed to figure it out really fast. Like, just after I said that, she said "What? About gender identity disorder?" I didn't say anything. I don't remember what I did after that. Dark times....
Anyway, I don't like "coming out" to some people. There are times when I'm like "yea I'm a tranny." but that's mostly online.

Another thing about the name change is what people who call me by my real name will call me after I change it. I think I'm quite good at pretending. I don't act (at least I think I do) like one of the guys at school. If I have to, I call my self by my real name and my parents also do. I use polite words because my parents raised me as a polite little girl.
All my relatives will be confused as well. I can't imagine how they can change what they are used to calling me.
Not only that, I don't know if I can stop my pretending.

I DIDN'T SEND THE NAME CHANGING THING YESTERDAY.

THE MORE I THOUGHT ABOUT IT, THE MORE I BECAME STRESSED AND DEPRESSED.

WHAT DID I DO TO DESERVE THIS?

FUCK GENDER.

I WISH I COULD JUST DISAPPEAR...

LINKIN PARK'S SONG "GIVEN UP" PERFECTLY DESCRIBES THIS EMOTION.


I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO TAKE
THOUGHT I WAS FOCUSED BUT I'M SCARED
I'M NOT PREPARED

I'M MY OWN WORST ENEMY

I'VE GIVEN UP
I'M SICK OF FEELING
IS THERE NOTHING YOU CAN SAY
TAKE THIS ALL AWAY
I'M SUFFOCATING
TELL ME WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH ME

PUT ME OUT OF MY MISERY

Name

I was writing this to show my family.
____________________________

Declaration
As I am going to go to the UK and you mentioned about opening my own bank account when I become 18, I feel that it is time I bring up my transition.
I will write this so that I can say what I want to say without being interrupted and forgetting to say something.

I will make this short and simple.

I need to change my name from A*** to Shane.

This is because:
a) I will feel so much comfortable being called by a unisex name that will not scream out that I am a girl.
b) it is essential when I try to start the hormone treatment.

@I would like to point out that this is not something I just thought up and will change my mind in a week. I've disliked my current name in public for a long time. As far as I can remember, I felt uncomfortable since I was less than 10 years old.
@I feel sorry that I need to change the name you lovingly chose but I simply cannot live my life trying to hide my name. I even don't write my full name on the sheets of paper at school unless it is really necessary.
@You may think it will not matter if I was called A*** when in England for nobody will know it is a girl's name. That isn't the point. It's about how I feel, not about what others think.
@I chose the name Shane because:
It sounds very nice and I feel very comfortable with it.
It's a unisex name.
It's the name of a character from a certain drama (which I will not identify for now) who is a very considerate, kind, and loving person which is the kind of person I want to be.

How to change the name.
In order to change my name legally, I need to submit a form to a family court and provide evidence that I have been using the new name for a considerable period of time and a convincing reason why I should change my name. From what I have read, it is not a very hard process. The only problem is that I don't have evidence that I've been using the new name because I've only been using it on the Internet. There's only evidence that I HAVEN'T been using my current name for a long time.
The nearest family court is in Mito.

___________________________


I came to this point to realize that I got it the process the wrong way round.
The name change doesn't come first.
Actually using the name is the important thing.
I also got scared by the thought that something that I have been living with for all my life could disappear just like that.
Another thing is that it would be weird if I was called by an English name here in Japan. I came to the conclusion that I just want to start be called Shane when I start my new life in England. Changing my name in Japan wouldn't make much sense.

So I decided that instead of the How To part above, I would just put the link to this http://ftm.org.uk/node/54
and say I want to change it in the UK.
I will sent it by e-mail to mum and dad now. Geez. Why do we have to go through this... *sigh*

Making myself useful...

World Vision Japan is short of translators for the letters to and from the sponsors and children. So, naturally, I decided to volunteer. I'll do it during the summer holidays when I have time. But before I'm given a job, I have to take a test (which I just finished doing) to make sure I have the right ability to do it. It wasn't that hard but some of the parts were hard to read.

I think this is better than spending useless time listening to the teacher trying to teach us English for going into university. I'm actually doing something useful...

28

That was what I got for Maths in the end of term test. The average was 41 I think and if I had gotten less than 25, it means I failed the test. I'm so relieved that I passed!! I really thought I would fail this one.
I heard that if you fail twice on the same subject, you can't graduate. Some of my friends were told they are in the "danger zone."

There are some students including me that are crappy but some students are a genius. I don't have a clue how they do it but somehow they figure out those problems.

New Shoes

A few weeks ago (I think a week before the end of term test), the sole on my shoe came right off while I was walking. So I bought a new one yesterday. (Yesterday was a holiday.) I usually get sporty sneakers but this time, I wanted to change my style and got converse shoes. It's very comfy and fits my big (size 9) feet. Not only are my feet big but it's wide and I often struggle finding the best fitting one. Converse shoes were just right!! I now know why it's very popular!

This is a photo of it with my mum's cute little feet.
I love my mum's feet very much. It's vainy but looks really cute when she has socks on. I'm a feet fetish.

Although With Much Effort, Nothing Came Out

This is kind of a response to Sensei’s comment on my last post "When an Invisible Tranny Becomes Visible." I have time to write because I'm free from the end of term test! Yey! :)

Take a look at this clip from The L Word Season 3 episode 9. Kit talks about Max's transition.

My last post may have misled you to the idea that:

a) I want to be a man for social benefits.
b) I want to transition because of what other people think of me.

Both of these are not true.


If a person wants to go through a transition for the reason a), that person is a fake tranny. Those fake trannies would not be diagnosed as Gender Identity Disorder (the medical term for transgender) because it clearly says in DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) that "This cross-gender identification must not merely be a desire for any perceived cultural advantages of being the other sex."

Besides, there will be more disadvantages to be a tranny because of the emotional and financial burden. Also, I don’t want to be prejudice but being a woman is obviously better. Duh!! If I had the choice, I would choose being a woman! : P


As for b)….
Transpeople have the need to transition because they feel uncomfortable with their bodies. Like Max said, trannies don't feel "whole" in their original bodies.

If you're a cisgender person (not a tranny), just imagine. How would you feel if you had the physical characteristics of the opposite sex?

Maybe you will think "Uuuuummmm... That's sexy...." or maybe think "Ew! That's gross!" The truth is, the latter describes what you will feel more accurately. I mean, trannies wouldn’t exist if they were comfortable about it! You will feel the same.



Hmmm… Explaining b) isn’t going too well….



Yeah, come to think about it, what other people think actually does matter.
We have to communicate with people when living a social life and most people will recognize you as either male or female and treat you like one.
If nobody considers other people’s gender, there wouldn’t be any problems. However, in real life, men and women have a different pronoun, they use different toilets, they wear different uniforms etc. The work sometimes differs too. Men are expected to act “manly.” Women are expected to act “feminine.” It must have been worse in the past but society still thinks that way.
It might be the same even if you are cisgendered but for transpeople, the stress is more intense.

That’s the problem of what other people think of me. It’s not just that.

Even when I’m alone, I’m irritated by my chest not being flat and my voice being high. It’s not about what others think of me, but what I think of myself.

The stress comes from our bodies and from society.
So we transition to solve both problems.
After we transition, we will feel comfortable both physically and socially. People will start treating you the way you want to be treated.


*What I mean by “Transition” is
1) Being treated the way I want to be.
2) Changing physically (hormones and surgery)

Transpeople have different comfort zones and some just need 1) and some need as much as hormones and some need it “all the way.” Some fortunate trannies are fine with living “part-time.”



I tried my best to describe what it’s like to be trans but I don’t think I succeeded.

One short and silly and probably inaccurate metaphor…

You are wearing your shoes the wrong way round.
Everyone is treating you like a silly person.
Your feet are uncomfortable.

OK that one was really wierd... :-(