2020 A Year To Forget ?? Maybe Not ……………
Wow, I think we can all safely say that 2020 can be the year we would probably think we would most like to forget, although as I look back on it now, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Yes, I’ve not seen friends as much as I’d have liked, socialising has been tough, and I’ve needed to plan creatively to do anything when the rules have made it possible. But, I’ve also been lucky, because being in a key employment role, has meant I have continued working and my kids have been in school. However, things that are important to me more personally, like celebrating birthdays and Christmas, my plans for the Pride season and for Transgender Day of Remembrance were halted, in as much as the physical events were all cancelled, and these and many other things being stopped does have an impact. That said, I have still tried to increase my visibility, I’ve worked hard to be seen and accepted and still done as much as I can to maintain my personal efforts towards general trans visibility, understanding and acceptance. Some reading will know that there was a huge negative experience for my late last year, but I'm keeping this post on positives, there will be another time for me to discuss that. I have to say that even the Covid curve ball, combined with having a greed driven and inept government headed up by, and this is my personal opinion and not necessarily fact, a bumbling pube covered lard ball. In fact, I’d go so far as to say, again in my opinion, he, and his little club of out of touch loons, really cocked the year up for so many people, because all the decisions they made were based on their own self interests and not on what was really the best thing for the population. That aside, for me, it’s actually been a much better year than it first seemed. So, despite everything that 2020 threw at me, and not being content to let this stall my progress, I’ve been determined that as per the blog I wrote exactly a year ago, I would continue moving on with life, never looking back. Determination is a powerful thing as well, especially if you can maintain focus. I, however, am very easily distracted and I have a terrible habit of dwelling on things, over analysing everything and allowing things to get to me. This is partly because I see most of my own life as one continuous cycle of failings, partly because I have multiple metal health conditions and partly because I constantly feel I need to prove that I am in every way equal and valid in this world and that I’m just the same as any of you who are reading this, in order to be accepted. So what’s been happening then ?? Well, I seem to have achieved a better balance in my life, I don’t have that same consistent mind struggle that had plagued me for so long, the last time brought on by the final failure of my second marriage. I just kept going over and over the ‘Why did it happen’. I never really got to the bottom of this and the truth is, that the why no longer matters, its history, I can’t change it and now …… it isn’t really important or relevant anymore. There is no going back, and this little revelation seemed to hit me like a flash of lightening about 8 months ago, shortly after that divorce was made absolute. What mattered more, and what has worked out pretty well, is that my ex and I can talk, we can co parent and we still have the same ideas and expectations for our children that we always had, and that is a massive win, because some split couples seem unable to communicate or put the past to bed, but this is one thing that I think we do well. Along side that was the inevitable divorce settlement, this was a huge stress because added into this mix was my work contract, which had only 1 year to run, that’s now sorted and has another year as well, this makes me very happy as it’s the biggest thing I need for security. Now, although there were a few arguments along the way, it actually went pretty well, and in the end I was able to release equity and buy my home and keep the roof over mine and the kids heads. Obviously my ex-wife has moved out, and although she did move slightly further away we’ve established sound and stable routines that have again maintained consistency for the children, and they get an equal split of both of us through 50/50 shared custody. Getting to this point wasn’t a complete walk in the park and there were a few ‘heated debates’ along the way, but actually, there were mostly externally influenced and generally caused by delays in processes ‘Due to Covid’. OMG if ever there was an excuse for businesses to use for delays, 2020 gave them the ultimate get out of jail free card !!! So, what else, oh yes, Lockdown 1 (The hot sunny one), Lockdown 2 (The fucked up one) and Lockdown 3 (The one that they must get right). So, 2 weeks before the government decided to shut the whole country down, and this shows how they dithered to make the call, my workplace had already moved to 50% manning on site, 2 weeks working and 2 weeks at home on call, along with distance working wherever possible, if we didn’t have a job on, then go home and be at 30 mins recall. This didn’t change all year, apart from 6 weeks in November and December, and that was down to a high workload and needing everyone in to provide the required support. This really was helpful for me. It gave me plenty of time to reflect, plenty of time to get my life on track and time to discover who mattered and was there for me, and who was deadwood that I could cut away because they brought nothing to my life anymore. It really was a refreshing and liberating experience, in many ways it made a cleaner break for moving on with life as a single parent, and as a bonus, alongside this, I was able to start redecorating areas of the house, clear and sort all the stuff I didn’t need, and spend loads of time with the kids. When the first lockdown was eased it became possible to see limited numbers of friends. The strangest thing that came from that was that I discovered that I don’t really have many friends that align with my male life, literally 4 or 5 people, this is not for any reason other than I don’t agree with a lot of the still existent ‘Male Attitudes’ towards women and the LGBTQ community. I have a solid group of 10 or so people that know me as both male and female, and an ever-growing number of friends who only know me as female. This has not been intentional, but It does seem that when we have been allowed to go ‘out out’ it’s been with female friends, guys are not allowed out with their single friends to have drinks. But most people I encounter, just seem to both accept and get along with me, this was something I never experienced in the same way as a guy. I genuinely don’t know what the reason is but friends who first met me, and have only known me as a woman, just see me as another female friend. Those who have known me for a while and as both male and female, seem to be of the opinion that as a woman I am much better company (my ex-wife agrees with them), again, don’t ask me why, I think I’m much the same person I’ve always been, aside to how I look. Then the few that are left, are a loyal and decent, small group of male friends, all married work colleagues, and I really don’t know how they would cope or react to discovering that I am transgender. Maybe some know and choose to just stay quiet about it, I don’t really do anything to hide the clues, like nails, brows, belly button piercing and no body hair, and if one of them were to say something or question me, I would be open, and just say ‘I thought everyone knew’. I mean I have video clips across social media that have gone viral. Anyone can see these. We then saw the mass cancelling of major public events which obviously included local Pride events, I did manage to attend 2 different private Pride parties on the same night that would have been Southampton Pride, and I kind of just about managed to pull off the ‘Gay Icons’ theme by going as Kylie Minogue in the white hooded jump suit with the splits, from the ‘Can’t get you outta my head’ Video. Both were great parties even with the rule of 6 in play. I also had a couple of days/nights out in Brighton, and managed to visit some friends that I hadn’t seen in about a year. I made a real effort to shift some weight over early summer as well. I did Herbalife, now before you say anything, I have to have absolute strict rules and no deviations at all to succeed with things like this, nothing else works. Result !!! I managed to shift 1 Stone 7 Lbs in 21 days. Which I am amazed to say that in the 8 months since then, I have fluctuated a little but have maintained that loss within a couple of Lbs. I have also just bought a load of protein drink mixes, vitamin and fibre tablets, and I am going to do another 21 days, I really want to shift another stone before this summer, if I can do that, I should actually have a flat tummy for the first time in about 20 years. Another highlight last year was a Halloween break to Butlins during the October half term, there was 6 of us went, we were a support bubble at the time, and it was really for the kids as they hadn’t had anything really exciting to do since mid-summer and it was obvious that we were imminently about to lockdown again. It quite amused me when we arrived and I went to the booking in point and the girl staffing it asked for the surname booked under, then told me that I didn’t have a booking, this confused me somewhat so I just gave her to printout and asked her to check again, which she did, and then immediately said, ‘Oh, should this have the name changed as I was looking for a Miss or Ms ??’ I had been booked in my male name as the site insisted the details matched the bank card I was paying with. I just said, ‘No, its fine’ ‘Thanks but there’s no need’. She did reply again to say it really wasn’t a problem, and she could get it all changed now for me. If I’m honest, it was raining and I just wanted to get into our accommodation and dump the bags, so I just reassured her it really wasn’t a problem. To which she replied ‘well, I think you look amazing, and absolutely love your outfit and boots, and to come back if there were any problems at all’. That really put a smile on my face for the rest of the day, it hasn’t really been something that happened that often in the past, and let’s face it, we all love a compliment. We should all expect customer service to be good everywhere, but I can assure you that as a trans woman, that is definitely not always the case. Over September and October, I set up a new online but secret support group, for trans women and men living along the south coast areas and supportive allies, this was going quite well, and we were building a growing number of members. People were stepping up to come out in small groups on some evenings to support those who were feeling isolated or just alone, or just bored and needed company. It is my plan to reinvigorate this when we eventually come out of Lockdown 3 and start to make more group events and meets available to people, not sure how that will work or what the limits in place will be, but I’ll suss that out at the time. Sadly, for me and many others, Lockdown 2 saw a stop to being able to attend any vigils for TDoR (Transgender Day of Remembrance) which is held globally on 20th November each year. This is something that is important to me to attend not only for personal reasons, but mostly because so many trans women are murdered, raped or beaten to a pulp, and have one of the highest rates of suicide globally for any single group of people. The published figures for deaths each year are shocking enough without the unaccounted disappearances, brutal sex crimes, and ever increasing numbers of hate crimes being reported, and the UK and Europe are not excluded, numbers of all these are increasing here as well. On a brighter note my efforts in promoting acceptance and normality and trying to be a positive example for other trans women has really taken off, I have this Blog and website, which I plan to update and improve. I’d like to find ways to link into other areas, maybe collaborate and work with some small businesses to promote their products and give them a boost. I need to do some research into that as it’s not something I’ve done before. But fashion, health and beauty and lifestyle are all things that interest me and I think it would be fun to do as well. I also decided to rationalise my life and become more focused, so I have reduced the numbers on my personal Facebook account so I see more from friends with whom I wish to share content, my Facebook Page linked to this Blog is growing again, which is great news and alongside that I need to reinvigorate my Twitter feed. I stopped using that and It’s almost ground to a total halt. That said, as I start to write more, it’s a great platform to share from. I have finally got round to understanding TikTok and hope to use that to make new content this year as well and even made my first lipsync video using Tiffany’s 80’s hit ‘I think we’re alone now’ which has proved quite popular and a transition before and after makeover clip which from nowhere went viral, now that was a shock !!! Another surprise was with Instagram which just took off over he summer, going from 2000 to over 5000 followers in about 4 months, who’d have thought people wanted to see pics of little old me …… Oh, and I almost forgot to add, that I finally got the pics back from my boudoir photo shoot. What a total blast that was to do, and such a massive self confidence booster, after getting over the initial fear. I would really, really recommend doing something like this to anyone who wants to get the biggest self confidence boost ever. If anyone wants to talk about this or is thinking of doing one, but isn’t totally sure, give me a shout and let’s talk, I can honestly say you will love doing it, and you will love the results at the end as well. What you do need, are deep pockets before you go, because there would be nothing worse than not being able to get the photos at the end, and be prepared for the hard sell !! Anyway, as usual I’ve ended up scripting another essay, but to be fair, I hadn’t realised just how much I’ve crammed into what should have been the worst year on record. I’ll also add that I have avoided returning to any dating sites and unless someone comes along in person who would like to spend time with me, I’m just going stay as another 40 something single pringle for the foreseeable future. Finally, this still stands true, I will keep moving forward, and never looking back, just living the life I want and sharing it with people I love. All that’s left is for me to say, thanks so much for taking the time to read this and I would be happy to receive any comments or feedback that you may have. There are lots more posts on here as well. Just check out the archives and, if you would like to follow me, that would make me very happy. Just click on the social media links below to add, follow and like my feeds and pages. Thanks again, love and hugs to all. Sophie xxxx Facebook www.facebook.com/beingsophie Twitter www.twitter.com/sophietgirl Bloglovin www.bloglovin.com/blogs/being-sophie-17676297 Instagram www.instagram.com/sophie.smallman TikTok www.tiktok.com/@sophies045
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AuthorHi, I'm Sophie. I hope you enjoy reading my blog. Please leave some comments on what you think of my blog x Archives
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