Ughhhhh who wants to post a before photo.

Nobody. And yet here we are.

A friend of mine recently welcomed a new baby into their world.

They are in their 40’s and it’s their first. They are Ivy League educated, have thriving careers and are all around wonderfully, delightful, amazing humans! They come from a different world than me though. They went to all the right schools, learned all the right skills, have all the right pedigrees.

The sun shines in through the curtains, we wake slowly. I roll over in bed and put my arm around my love, and kiss her cheek. “It’s time to get up love,” I whisper and she nuzzles into the crevice in my neck between my jaw and my shoulder. She is soft and warm and sleepy.

I realized something when a pal slid into my DM’s this afternoon.

(Yes, I know all the cool kids like @Lizzobeeating use “slid into my DM’s” to talk about sexy times, flirty talk, but I’m a 34 year old Dad of 5, I use it when talking about my pal Charlie. Deal with It!)

Ever find yourself scrolling through the gram on a Friday afternoon loosing more minutes hiding in the bathroom avoiding work on your phone than you care to admit when all of a sudden a post smacks you in the face.

You know the smack. It’s the one of deep shame and guilt that “I’m not more evolved… “

“And now what?” I wonder sometimes.

“Is this it? Am I here? Did I do the thing? Am I happy?” I think so.

As happy as most anyway. 

But is happy even really the point? 

Katherine is the love of my life. 

No doubt about it. .

But not that long ago she was my far away best friend who I was secretly so very in love with.

Katherine and I had a fight about parenting the other night.

In the bath. Super romantic I know. It was a good one.

My body and I have been at odds for as long as I can remember.

“At odds”. 

That’s a gentle way of putting it. 

As a kid I had chronic pain. And asthma. And this thing where I would wake up in the middle of the night throwing up only to have nothing wrong with me. In the 6th grade I had my legs put in 45 degree angle casts to “fix” my leg…

Last night this kid threw himself down a very high up bike ramp thing towards mounds of dirt he would ride over, with zero preparation.  And I let him! 

I THOUGHT I WAS BROKEN. As a kid I knew I was different. I knew I didn’t fit right, I didn’t fit into the world everyone wanted me to fit into. I spent most of my childhood wondering what was so wrong with me.

Katherine is the one that makes my heart go pitter patter. She is the peanut butter to my jelly. She is the love of all my lives, always and forever and even after that, as our matching tattoos profess. Here’s the thing though. MARRIAGE IS A TOUGH MOTHERFUCKER

I knew that telling my kids my truth, about who I am was the only option! That showing the world that it really isn’t that complicated. That when someone tells you their truth you believe them and love them, because their truth has always been there, now you just get to know it.

When do you tell people you don't know well that you're trans? Do you just let them notice on their own that you now have a beard?

This Vitamin T as people in the trans world affectionately call it is a fucking beast.  

An awesome beast don't get me wrong.  Everyday I look in the mirror and am pumped at the changes I see looking back at me but I gotta say guys--  the muscle growth, it's crazy.

I have a moustache now.  

Well sort of.  It's more like dark peach fuzz.  It's slightly embarrassing to look like a teenaged boy.  I'm rocking this 14 going on 32 thing hard.

"You've lived a very full life,"  he says to me, while looking down at my chart and simultaneously peering up over his glasses the way doctors do.  

"I'm very interested," he carries on.

I deflect the awkwardness of the fact that until the age of 31 I've lived my life as a woman by making a joke: "What, not all transmen have birthed 4 kids?"  

Once upon a time there was a little boy full of curiosity and questions, like all little boys. He loved roly-poly bugs and grasshoppers and skateboards and GI Joes. 

He wanted Ninja Turtle underwear more than anything. 

But there was a terrible misunderstanding. 

The grownups made him wear pink underwear. And dresses. They made him grow his hair long. All the adults told the little boy that he wasn’t a boy, he was a GIRL.