So after that last quickie post, I took a look at the front page and then wandered back to the single post from December of 2007.

I made that post just a few days after moving into the original TIH residence.

It was just a few days later that I walked up the stairs that were there and saw one of the most beautiful sights I’d seen in years — a Christmas Tree.

That post was also written just after I met the gal that became my first “T” relative. Not up for trying to explain the way that works, but she was essentially my daughter in spirit for a the time, and it was a few years later that she passed on, breaking my heart about halfway through it.

But that was my first post after I became involved with TIH.  By the time my next post happened, I was House Manager.

I tried to escape. Really, I did.  Now I’m stuck, I think, until I reach the limits of my capabilities, which, it looks like I’ll do in another year or so. Probably December 15th of 2013.  And I’ll hang on for another six months.

That’s a lot of changes.  Both in me, and in the organization…

That post — advents — was me trying to put into terms the misery of the several weeks that preceded it. I think back to that time period now and compare it to where I am, and I know that it is not just do to my pushing forward.  I was, at one point, ready to simply give up, and head out into the streets, because that’s what was left in my mind.

I had lost all faith in my Self, in my own ability to do pretty much anything. Fear gripped me, I felt as if I had no family, no friends, no future.

In other words, I knew, all too well, that yeah, it was going to be that kind of thing.  And it takes posts like that sometimes to remind me of how far I have come. From a person for whom the term “Ego” would have been foreign in reality but not visibly so to one whose ego threatens to disrupt the celestial mechanics. From a girl still half trapped being a boy to a woman who is known for standing up to bullies and who puts way too much effort into winning over allies.

Others may have seen this future for me, but I certainly did not.  It was about as far from possible as I could have imagined, and the journey here was full of ups and downs that I would never have imagined.

When I talk to people about transition, I use a train in a tunnel analogy, a metaphor of a sort that seems to help in about 60% of the cases. Not all, but enough. And I speak about a point in that journey where the train is going to hit you.

The post way back when that I look at — now, with this new look, found below in the little link called The Past — was written basically moments after I was hit by that train, and it was then that I found hands reaching out to me to help me move on further into the darkness.

Further into the learning and the growing and the mistake making process that surrounds that hell called striving to live authentically.

It has been a long journey.

I wouldn’t trade it for anything. The person I am today is stronger, wiser, and a hell of a lot more content, more joyful and comfortable at the same time, in their life than ever before.

Everything I lost I gained back tenfold.

Of course, I gained a few thing I wasn’t expecting. Like a slew of people who were kind enough to provide me with all the information I needed to create one of perhaps the most hilarious and horrifying profiles ever.

No doubt I still have a ways to go to get back to where I was in the late 90′s and early 00′s, but I will get there, and this time it will be on terms I’m much happier with.

After all, I do have the cutest poodle ever to accompany me.

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