Coming Out

     I've been so blessed as of late. My five year anniversary of becoming a Christian was on Sunday, and it's been so beautiful to see Him working in my life lately. The service dog thing has been wonderful; my trainer has already found me a dog who, through no fault of his own, washed out of a service dog training organization up north after completely nearly the entire program. As of Thursday night, he will be officially mine. His name is Shadow, he'll turn 3 in May, and he's a Golden Retriever/Lab mix. He's the cutest thing to ever walk the Earth (no, seriously, he is; I'm not even a dog person and he's freaking precious!) and apparently is already very well trained. I can't wait to meet him.

    Not only has all of the service dog things worked out crazily well, but my trans*ness hasn't awful lately. I've been coming out in my classes (why do college professors insist on making us introduce ourselves and tell something interesting?) and it's gone well. I've got 6 classes this semester and I'm out in three and working on coming out in the fourth (ironically, the only classes I'm not out in are the two taught by The Professor; I figure he's got enough to deal with from me with all of my disability accommodations and rape issues, poor guy). It hasn't been a problem at all; while I wasn't expecting it to be, it never becomes less scary. This is the first time I've ever introduced myself by my chosen name, which was definitely a trip. The first time I did it was in the class that is taught by the professor who really supported me through a lot of this; the look of pride he had on his face when I was brave enough to do it made it worth it. The last class I came out to is taught by a brand-new emergency hire; when he realized that I'm trans* and he wouldn't find me on the roster by my name, he asked me for my last name rather than my birth name. While it doesn't seem like that big a deal, especially given that I knew many people in my class when I still went by my birth name, it was a really sweet and much appreciate gesture.

There's another trans* guy (not, thankfully, the one I tried to date for a couple of weeks; I very purposefully ignore him now) in my Monday class. I had to make a concerted effort not to stare and be creepy; there's just that feeling of instant community, you know? I desperately want to befriend him now, hopefully sans the creepy staring.