New chapters, my face and a girl from Norway

Hello all

I trust everyone is well?

Firstly, a song for you all to enjoy. I know, I'm generous aren't I?

Well it's been an interesting few days to say the least. To cut a long story short I got a new job, yay me. After four years of working for Vodafone, I got offered a job at British Telecommunications and I accepted. Not only is it a new chapter in terms of job, but in terms of location. The BT centre is located in Accrington, over 100 miles away, meaning that I will be moving to the area and it's the first time in my life that I will be living outside of the East Midlands, so just that on it's own is a scary prospect, but it's a good kind of scary. I could sit here and whine and bitch about my time at Vodafone, and believe me, part of me really wants to, but I won't.

Accrington - One of a few places to choose from.

It will be nice to live in an area where no-one knows me, it's effectively a clean slate. No-one there knew me as Nathan and therefore very few people could refer back to stuff I use to do and question it. I have wanted to get a new life for a while and whilst I wouldn't necessarily have chosen Lancashire, it's a good place to start relatively.

There are a few places of where to choose to live, I could choose the easy option and say Accrington, but I've been to Accrington many times and there isn't a lot to do. Nearby are also Preston, Burnley and Blackburn, which the latter of the three being the most likely choice and I do have some views of houses booked for in the near future.

Then we get onto the gender change. Things are moving slowly in terms of physical changes, however, I am told that hormones really start to kick in after a year, so I won't worry about it until it reaches December, which will be a year on hormones. I'm really struggling with the voice therapy and after three sessions I am no closer to having a feminine voice than before I started, which is frustrating. It's not that I can't get my voice to a higher pitch, but the difficulty is proving to be getting it like that whilst still breathing normally. I can't really stress enough how difficult it is.

My face continues to show no development so on Friday I went to a facial surgery consultation in London and the real life simulations were interesting. I don't think that I looked that different but it's something to consider and as they say, every little helps....whether I will be able to afford it or not is another matter, however, as I will be getting paid considerably more at BT than I was at Vodafone, that will certainly help.

Miriam's before/after shots
Taken from http://www.thehiddenwoman.com/

However, the most memorable part of the trip came afterwards, I had time to kill so ended up talking to two women called Jenny and Miriam, the latter of which had been through the facial survey herself and I was absolutely amazed, I would never have guessed that she was trans. After seeing her before/after pictures, I was convinced that FFS was a good thing to be considering, and if I can financially commit then I'm going to go for it, although I don't know how much it will cost at this point (a lot I imagine).

As you can tell from the pictures on the right, Miriam's facial transformation as a result of the surgery was absolutely incredible. I am still struggling to believe it now.

But yeah, anyway, I spoke to Jenny and Miriam for a while and it was the first time that I have had felt like I have had a genuine connections with new people that I have met, it feels quite strange in many ways, but all of them good.

I stayed for three hours after my appointment just talking and what we have established is that I have been mispronouncing Tromso for many years (apparently it's not said like it's spelt), that at some point I will go over to Norway and Miriam will teach me how to snowboard, I will take her to a Manchester United game at some point....and I owe her a drink.

I must say that although I am nervous, I am really looking forward to the new parts of my life.