day one

4/21/17            Personas

I haven’t gotten dolled up in a Long Time…

            Ok, by dolled up, I mean head to toe female persona… this definition has changed for me over the last couple of years… months… days…  Let me start my saying I love leggings… love them. I would wear them every day if I could, and as is, I wear them every day I can. I have more leggings than could fit in your standard chest of drawers, drawer. Though most are standard run of the mill $4 Walmart leggings and mostly black.

            I don’t just wear leggings around the house, I am not completely ashamed to wear them out around town (Tallahassee FL) if I am fairly certain I am not going to run into someone I know from work.  In the winter months, I will wear slouch boots or riding boots with my leggings and sweater or long sleeve, but always in ‘guy’ mode… I am not fond of that phrasing. At all. Guy mode. I am always in guy mode… and this is what brings me back around to female persona…    

Lynn

            I am supposing that there are certain mannerisms that come along with wearing short skirts and high heels. A certain swing in your hips, a saunter in your step, a way of holding your chin just above level. But it is more than that. More than the way one must cross their legs, or sit just so in a chair or bar stool. There is that flutter of the eye, the eye brows raising with your smile. That feeling of sunshine… is that what a persona is built on… I am still me heart and soul. Same values, same beliefs, same sense of humor though in heels I admit I am more shy with my wit.

            My love’s issue with me is this… She isn’t gay, she doesn’t like women… So, she doesn’t like when I get dolled up. (I miss acrylic nails and the way they feel) When she was pregnant she drew a line in the sand…

            When I met Jane, I had been at my current job for about 6 months… Let’s go back a little further… a lot further.

            In 2009 my wife of all of 10 months divorced me. Late 2009 or early 2010 I was 33 or 34, I decided to start a blog to help me come to grips with who I am, to help me accept me for me. I soon found out I had an amazing amount of support. It was unbelievable how incredible my friends were/are. By 2013 when I accepted a job in my home town, I could get dolled up, go to my favorite local hole in the wall bar, I occasionally had lady’s nights with my friends. It was a total dream…

 Then Things Change.

I began work at a chemical plant in 2013 and moved to Bainbridge. I moved in with my parents and lived in the garage. (imagine a big boom, lighting bolts) Now I am working about 50 60 hours a week, making great money, I am close to my family and get to hang out with my brother and his family. My niece just being over a year old. Things were good… and they weren’t.

I was depressed. My friends and all my support were 90 miles away, I felt alone and lonely. (lonely is another mess unto itself) I found a gay bar in Tallahassee and met a few people but no one that I could hang out with, I wasn’t making any friends and my new jobs work schedule didn’t help.

October of that year, I met Jane.

She was amazing! We had so much fun… and best of all she was very supportive of my female (ugg I truly hate using that word) persona. We went out to eat, we went to local bars and clubs, we even went shopping at Walmart. Then she began to get over whelmed I suppose is a way to put it. I was coming back into my own and she missed ‘Luther’… The breaking point was a trip we made to St. Augustine. I was looking forward to it and treated it as a girl’s weekend with my love, and she had not had this in mind. We began to fight about it and we would make up, I began cutting back.

In April, we found out she was pregnant with Lily and a few months later is when she drew the line in the sand.

This page has been very difficult for me to write. And the next part is going to be harder to openly admit.