2012 : A year in Review

Hello all

At the end of every year I look back at the previous twelve months of my life and reflect on some of the major incidents, and now it's that time. In this article you will see some very familiar subjects, and quite early on is dominated by one of the people I have talked about most on this blog, Jodi. To put Jodi into context. she was one of my best friends of the last ten or so years, despite that we rarely spoke, but then in August 2011 we got talking on a very regular basis and I thought we were close friends at the turn of the year.

It's been a year where life goals suddenly started happening, there were ups and downs and all in all, it was probably one of the most memorable years to date for numerous reasons.

At the end of each month I am going to include a song I heard for the first time that month that I love.

January


I started the New Year with a goal, to lose a lot of weight. I had ballooned up to nearly 19 stone by the start of the year and pictures from a weekend in Leeds convinced me it was time, plus Jodi was going on a diet of her own too, meaning we were helping each other in a way.  To say I lost a lot of weight quickly would be an understatement. Within two weeks I had lost a stone (14 pounds) and by the end of February I was down at 16 stone, a total weight loss of three stone in two months, I had changed my diet and exercise routine to include biking to work (up to 1 hr 15 minutes a day of constant riding), eating healthier food, and so on, and it worked.

How I looked at the beginning of the year
It's safe to say I've changed quite a bit
since this picture was taken.

It was around this time that I also realised I had fallen in love with Jodi, and I told her this. At this point Jodi was a key part of my life, we had been friends for a long time (ten or so years) but five/six months of regular talking had made me realise how much I cared for her. She let me down nicely, but to be fair I don't even know what I was expecting to happen as she lives in Canada. Although things seemed normal at first, I think that was the beginning of the end, but more of that later.

At this point I am also really struggling for motivation in a lot of aspects of the rest of my life. I had become pretty set on moving to either Canada or America and I became pretty dry in terms of personality in the other aspects of my life. I still went to watch football but wasn't overly bothered by results anymore......even when we lost 3-1 to Carshalton, a team three divisions below us, I wasn't particularly upset. I was just stood there, 3-0 down to a side who we should have walked all over, and I couldn't have really given much less of a fuck if I had tried.

I was offered a job in America at one point during January but I turned it down as it would have been a case where I would have been no better off financially, and if there's one thing I'm not going to do, it's fuck myself over financially.....at least not on purpose anyway.

February

The way that February started was a false dawn as it turned out to be a horrible month.

Me (as Nathan) with Mike Sparks, joint-lead singer of Canterbury

It started with me going to watch my favourite band (Canterbury) in Leeds. Afterwards, whilst me and my friends were talking, I got to meet three of the four members of the band, and it was just a great experience to meet people who you really respect as artists and people. They are all down to earth as well, so it was a pleasure to spend an evening not only watching my favourite band, but also meeting them.

A few days later and I'm in Nottingham to watch Steve Hughes, one of my favourite comedians. Unfortunately it's all old material so I'm just sat there not really finding it funny because I've heard each joke about 15 times before, and jokes very quickly lose their value if you've heard them too many times before. The drive back was interesting as it was in the middle of England's little snow storm. It was quite bizarre seeing a line of cars driving back down the dual carriageway of the A46 without any of them trying to overtake another one. Quite bizarre indeed.

The next morning I'm having a conversation with Jodi about something pretty pointless before she then exits the conversation without even saying goodbye. Little did I know that would be the last time we would have a conversation as friends.

A few days later came a major turning point in my year as I woke up on Monday morning, saw a conversation on Facebook between Jodi and her mum on Facebook that made me chuckle, I commented and Nolan, one of Jodi's friends, then just starts hurling abuse at me and makes it sound like Jodi agrees with what he is saying but hasn't got the guts to tell me. I ignore it at first but it eats away at me and try to get Jodi to tell me what's going on. After four days of no answers I am feeling pretty shitty, I've tried asking her how she actually feels and she only makes the situation worse by not saying anything. She could have easily said something pretty soon afterwards, but she didn't, and it was at that point I started seriously questioning the friendship.

I hit a slump at that moment and over the course of several weeks I really struggled for a while.

Away from Jodi related issues and things are pretty quiet overall, not a lot is really happening, which was probably a good thing given that I wasn't exactly having a great time.

March

After almost a month of feeling like she had treated me like shit by not responding to my message asking for a proper conversation so we can sort our issues out, I remove Jodi as a friend from Facebook......but not before letting rip about what a shit friend she had been in the previous weeks. It's amazing how friendships take years and years to build, but then someone's actions, or in this case lack of actions, ruins everything. I may have used one or two choice words that probably shouldn't have said, but fuck it, the friendship was over as far as I was concerned.....and the funny thing was that it was only at that moment that she showed her true colours and proved what I had thought about her for some time, that was two-faced. She had spent time telling me about her private conversations with her other friends and she obviously did the same to me.

Although at first I was a little sad to lose her as a friend, even though I had been pretty pissed off with her.  Infact, thinking about it, it wasn't losing her as a friend that really upset me, it was that I found her life kind of interesting in a way, she had a lot of interesting people in her life that she would tell me about and I think it was just weird that I wouldn't get the updates on someone else's life that I didn't know, it's kind of strange in that way. However, within days I quickly realised that I was so much better off without her in my life, especially when someone who is a mutual friend points out to me that she has been posting shit about me on Twitter, and the funniest thing about it was that not a single bit of what she was saying was true. It was fucking funny in one sense that in her trying to disprove what I had said about her being a shit friend, she proved what type of person she was, but you know what, fuck it.

I decide to move on with various aspects of my life. Suddenly all desire to go to Canada or America disappears, but I still need to move to a new chapter in my life and it was at this time that I decided it was time to start the sex change that I had wanted for years. It was something I had always wanted to do but never thought I would actually come around to doing, and in what was a quiet month other than the Jodi thing, I started preparing for starting to become a woman.

Being female is something I have always wanted to do, I don't know why and I don't know when I realised, it's just something that I have always known. I had always been putting it off for whatever reason, but what had happened with Jodi had convinced me that it was time. It made me realise I had been focusing on others far too much and not looking after my own interests. I did it with Faye, Maz and then Jodi, it was becoming an unwelcome common theme, so I decided to move on and start my life's goal.

April

I am slowly preparing for life as a woman. I've finally settled on my new name, Kate, and I tell my manager at work what is happening. Throughout the entire process to date she has been fantastic regarding the change and I can't fault her at all with it. Although I'll get onto it more later, I probably wouldn't have been able to do it as easily without her.



The first flat in Nottingham. I liked it, although it would turn out that I wouldn't be there for long

To become female and move on to the next stage in my life, I needed to move from Lincoln and decided to uproot and move to be closer to work in Newark. I take the first flat I see and it's right in the town centre with a view of a park, not bad, not bad at all really. It took a while to get used to living in Newark and completely on my own. I had never been completely on my own before, so that was a bit strange. I found that I was talking to myself quite a bit, not in a psychotic sort of way, just talking my way through things, such as what I was going to do the next day. It's hard to explain really.

Even now I'm still not entirely sure if I even like Newark. It's niceish, don't get me wrong, but it's just a small town with not a lot to do unfortunately. It's not a bad place to live and not nearly as rough as I was expecting, but I don't know, it just lacks that something that makes it feel like an actual home.

I gained a friendship back again with a woman called Beata. Our friendship had ended in the previous September in bizarre circumstances, but thankfully we put that behind us and moved on and although we don't talk that often anymore, I still consider her a good friend and it would be good to see her again one day :)

Other than that everything is a bit quiet really, it's kind of strange that your life goes a bit quiet but only when you're anticipating the biggest moment of your life.....

May

May was a bit of a nothing month for the most part as I started adapting to life in Newark and became quite familiar with the Atrium bar as I would spend a lot of free time in there watching football, eating their nice food, etc. I don't drink for those who don't know me, so don't assume I was in there drinking away. I'm not actually spending a lot of time at my flat, but meh.


The Lord Ted

I soon start looking for another job to supplement wages from my day job, just to help out with rent, bills, etc, and I apply to various places, including the Lord Ted pub on the outskirts of Newark. After several interviews and a trial shift, I am taken on as a member of the bar staff. It took a while for me to adapt and as I don't drink, I often got things that most people who do drink wouldn't, such as not knowing the different between a lager and a bitter.

Despite my struggles at first, I make some good friends but pretty soon I start to get frustrated with a colleague called Connor (not the one who works there now). Connor was one of the worst people I have ever worked with. He knew his stuff, I'm not debating that part at all, but he was just such a lazy fucker. He wouldn't really do anything and would often just spend time talking to his friends who would come to the bar. Towards the end of the month the European Championships in football started, and he was often walking off of the bar, even when we were busy, to watch the football. It became highly frustrating. He got sacked several months later.....I was not sad.

Away from the Lord Ted came a rather embarrassing moment. I am preparing for life as female and am starting to do "girly" things such as shaving my legs, then I try veet and it works fantastically.....so I decide to try it on my face.......I discovered one thing that night....I have a very sensitive face. It got my facial hair off without any trouble whatsoever, it also got rid of some skin and left a lot of red marks on my face for several weeks. It looked like I had a case of very bad acne.

Other than that it was a pretty quiet month really.

June

June was a month dominated by the early stages of becoming Kate to the rest of the world, but it all started on board of a boat. One of my colleagues at work organised a party on a boat for the department and it was an excellent night. It's surprisingly peaceful when it's summer, you're going down a calm river on a boat and in the background all you can hear is "You've Got to Fight for Your Right (to Party)" by the Beastie Boys in the background. Out of all the social events I spent with people from work during the year, this was my favourite.

Later on in the month I told my manager at my day job about my plans to come in at the beginning of the following month as a woman for the first time. By this time we had known each other for about 18 months, so you can probably appreciate how surprised she was, but it all worked out very well and she was awesome throughout the whole period.

Towards the end of the month people at work are starting to get told about what is happening and as you can imagine, I got quite a few differing reactions, but none were negative and that’s always good.

I also join a trans group on the outskirts of Nottingham called “Chameleons”, a social gathering for all members of the spectrum. The first meeting was also the first time that my half-sister (Sarah) saw me as Kate, and it was also the first time I had seen her in a few years, so it was a special moment in many ways. I think she enjoyed the evening more than I did to be honest, I am always nervous about new people and that night was no exception, especially as I was nervous as I had never been Kate outside of my home before.

It took a while to get ready but when I finally got ready I walked downstairs to then see about 20 people just sat there staring at me. I am terrified to say the least, however, the night progresses and I soon find myself getting comfortable with the surroundings, although I think Sarah is enjoying it far more than I am, although amusing everyone thinks that me and her are a couple, not noticing that we look reasonably similar. It wasn’t until later than people realised that we were related.

Despite a mixed first night, I decided to go on a regular basis, although it doesn’t work out that way. Other than the group leader (Lynn), I don’t make a connection with any of the people in the group. To date I have only been to three of the bi-weekly meetings, the last of which was the day after my birthday in September. It’s not that I don’t like socialising with other trans people, I just find it difficult to properly connect with people in general, and strangely, despite being one, I find it very hard to connect with members of the trans community. I think if I still had a car then I would go on a more regular basis, but one night in July was the time that I decided that I couldn’t attend regularly, but more on that in a bit.

One of the last pictures ever taken of me
as Nathan, seems an age ago now. Taken in June.

An evening with Sarah loosely leads me into arguably one of the major points of my year. For those who don’t know me, or don’t know me well, I am adopted, and at the end of the month I was sent a letter from my mother, as in my original one, Janice. I really don’t know how to process it if I’m honest, I had never had an intention of ever getting in contact with her and could have happily lived out my life without ever having any communications from her.

Sarah was very different though. Sarah and Janice got on very well and saw each other on a regular basis, and early on in the letters it was obvious that Janice was very keen to meet up. I wasn’t keen on it then and in all honesty, I’m still largely disinterested now, however, times change and you never know, when I write one of these at the end of next year then it could all be very different and we could be very good friends. I know one thing though, I am only ever going to refer to her as Janice, because despite her being my mother biologically, the woman who raised me (Sue Jackson) is the woman I consider to be my mother.

Throughout the month I also have some difficulties with a girl called Michelle. When I saw difficulties, I don’t mean as in difficulties like the ones I had with Jodi, no, the difficulties I had with Michelle was that she wasn’t reliable. On consecutive Saturday afternoons I was supposed to go shopping with her, but on both occasions she doesn’t show up and I get, for lack of a better word, quite angry with her, although things do quickly go back to what they were and we become decent enough friends throughout the year.

Towards the end of the month is her birthday and she invites me on a night out with all of her friends to celebrate. Michelle turned 18, and all the other people there were still in their teens as far as I am aware, so at 27 (at the time) I was by far the oldest. There was even a moment before we left for the night out when one of her friends (Amy) refused to believe I was 27 until I showed her my driving licence. The first thing she says after that is “Wow, you’re almost 30!” ……yeah, thanks for that, Amy :P.

July

So, July 2^nd came around and fell on a Monday morning. It was the first day I would be openly transgendered to the world and living as a woman. I wake up at 6am but life is made very difficult by the fact that I had gained a bad injury to my hand the day before, meaning it takes nearly an hour simply to get dressed, put my make up on in a very dodgy way, and put my even dodgier wig on.

That first walk to work as Kate was easily the most nerve-wracking experience of my life to date. It’s only a 20-25 minute walk to work, but I am terrified, there’s not even anyone about. I feel strange for the entire day, even not wanting to go to the canteen as I sit at the exact opposite end of the building to where it was located, it would mean having to go through everyone. Fortunately Amy (not the one from the previous month), who sits opposite me, helps me through my fears and I can eventually enjoy my first Pepsi Max of the day.

Of course, as only my department have been told, I get quite a lot of strange looks and a lot of people asking questions, it was very strange indeed, but no-one gave me abuse so it was all good. Throughout the week I get random people coming up to me at work saying that they had read my blog and praising me, it was all very surreal given that I am still quite an introvert.


By the end of the week I am not really having any difficulties at Vodafone, but the first time I turn up at the part time job doesn’t go well, and for the first few weeks I am forced to return to dressing in a male fashion, and even though I had only been living as female for four/five days at this point, it felt very weird returning to being male, even if only for a few hours at a time. Fortunately it doesn’t last long as they eventually allowed me to be Kate there.

Soon my initial fears of being out in public as Kate disappear and I attend a concert in Nottingham watching Blink 182....the below is my video from the night.

Meanwhile, a few days afterwards, I need to tell my parents. After 27 years I still hadn’t figured out how to do it, so I just decide to just write them a letter and tell them that way. I think it’s safe to say that they are still relatively struggling to deal with it, although it’s understandable.

In what was a memorable month in many ways, the revelation that I wanted to change gender all of a sudden sparked texts and Facebook messages from a lot of old friends, and lots of new people. Infact, the amount of people who tried to add me on Facebook purely on the back of this was really bizarre. I did enjoy talking to old friends again though, and even got the chance to see my old friend Debbie for the first time since school as me, her and her husband went to Meadowhall, although it didn’t go quite according to plan after getting lost a few times, not really buying many things and various other small things, but other than that it was a good day.

August

I start getting into a lot of new music as I want to expand my horizons, although it isn’t helped by Kerrang Radio suddenly refusing to work on the computers at work. In the mornings it wasn’t too bad because Kerrang in the mornings is shite, but in the late-morning and afternoon it turns very good all of a sudden.

One thing I realised in August was that I could no longer really afford to live in the flat. It’s coming up to the end of the contract and I decide to move out. I look at a website and see a place that is not only cheaper per month than I am paying, but is also all bills inclusive, a perfect mix. I see the property and confirm that I want it on the spot. They spend a lot of time fucking about though and all in all it takes some time for me to actually get the keys. I enjoyed the house thoroughly at first, but then Dan came.

I’ve spoken about Dan a few times in this blog so don’t want to repeat myself too much, but it’s not a nice environment to live in because of him. He’s a nice guy, don’t get me wrong, he wouldn’t hurt a fly, but the annoying bit is that he is just very keen on having conversations with people. For example, whenever you ever the house, he bursts out of his room like a jack-in-the-box to try and talk to you. I have often pretended that I am on the phone just because I can’t be bothered, it does work and I do find it funny that he then pretends that he’s there to do something else…..such as washing up.

Dan never does any fucking washing. He is regularly leaving his pots and pans for days on end and at various points has left food in the sink that has gone mouldy quite quickly, and yet  he still doesn’t clean it. “Why don’t you get rid of it?” I hear you  ask……..why the fuck should I? He’s not a child, he should be able to do it himself. He’s 21 (I think), my 5, he should be more than capable of doing stuff himself.

The other two housemates (Jim and Andy) are fine, but none of us particularly like Dan and all for pretty much the same reasons.

At the bar job some issues come to an end as a guy called Connor is sacked. Me and Connor didn’t see eye to eye, mainly because he was a lazy fucker. It’s hard to put a finger on it as he clearly knew his stuff, but he was just bone idle and whenever the football was on the TV, he was particularly impossible to get some work out of. The day he got sacked was quite a relief to put it nicely.

My favourite memory of my time working with him was that me, him and a girl called Helen were all on the close together and he was contributing nothing. He was expecting to go home early, but instead the manager sent me and Helen home and force him to do the close on his own….in other words, he had contributed nothing to his own close and paid for it as neither me or Helen had had a chance to do anything before he left that night.

Anyway, away from people who I dislike to arguably my best friend, Charlie, whom I mentioned earlier in the blog. I’ve known Charlie since 2005 and she has always known about me wanting to be female, so when I turned up for the first time as Kate at her new house, she got quite the surprise. She knew I was turning up as Kate but had never actually seen me in full on Kate mode, and when she hugged me she made a comment about it being strange hugging me and feeling breasts. Got to love Charlie.

September

September was a big month in terms of me becoming Kate as I finally started the process properly.

I initially had an appointment booked in for my birthday, the 12^th, but when I turned up they said I had gone at the wrong time. Apparently my appointment was at 11:30, whereas I had turned up for 3, which was the time that I had agreed with the receptionist over the phone. I was sent away to come back two weeks later. At a later visit I subsequently saw that this receptionist had left and the new person and the doctor were commenting about a lot of errors in the diary, confirming that I had been given that correct time.

Anyway, I turned up again on the 24^th and this time got started along the whole process. It was really weird to finally be on my way.

After both times I met up with my friend Catherine, who lives in London. The first time she was excellent at picking me up after feeling quite flat, and the second time was even better with regards to how I felt, and we enjoyed a good meal at a restaurant called Garfunkel’s. There was also a strange busker on the street who I can’t really describe, so I’ve recorded a video instead…..

The month ended quite strangely as well with me reflecting on a lost friendship as I think I saw Maz on the London Underground. I can’t be bothered to go into who Maz is and our history, but let’s put it this way, despite all that happened, she still has a special place in my heart. Anyway, yeah, I saw her on the London Underground, I didn’t say hello or anything and I don’t think she recognised me, but as I say, I just spent the next few days reflecting on both her, and a few other friendships and how they had all gone wrong.

One such friendship was the one that had dominated the early part of the year, the one with Jodi. It was now six months since we had stopped being friends and I was still struggling with the confliction of whether I was upset or not that I didn’t have her as a friend. I was pissed off at her still for how I felt she treated me during the final few months, and yet there was always something about her that made her likeable.

I don’t really get it myself but I think the fact that we’re now both members on an internet forum and occasionally have conversations in there shows that although we’re not friends anymore and probably never will be, at least we can have a reasonably civil discussion/debate, even if it is only for a post or two on this forum.

October

October was a bit of a quiet month in general but something happened during this month that changed my opinion of something for the worse. I can’t mention it what it is as I am still heavily involved with what this thing is, but as soon as I stop being involved then I will write a very long blog about it.

Other than that it’s a generally quiet month in most aspects of my life with the exception of the bar job. A new guy called Jake started and he was even worse than the Connor I mentioned earlier, this guy was just beyond shocking. When he could be bothered, Connor at least tried, but Jake was just awful. He would regularly phone in sick, and when he was actually there he never did anything. I got to the point where one of the managers said to me that if there are three people on the bar and one of them was him, there might as well only be two people there.

I really couldn’t stand the guy, he was just a lazy fuck. Thankfully again he didn’t last long and after what I believe was his fifth time of phoning in sick in a two week period, he was too sacked. Pity that :D

November

November was similar to the rest of the last few months in terms of most things, life was generally quite quiet.

This month mainly saw things progress in terms of football as the Imps were finally starting to progress on the pitch and went unbeaten in the month, including an incredibly performance away at Walsall in the FA Cup that eventually saw the Imps beat a team from two divisions above them in that competition for the first time in their history. It was a good month to be an Imp.

In November I am also really starting to get back into wrestling. I hadn’t been that into wrestling for a few years and had fallen out of love with it when John Cena was constantly given the Championship over and over again, but I’ve gradually started to get back into it. I’m not even close to the level of commitment I had before, but a least they have some interesting characters again, such as CM Punk and The Shield.

Other than that not a lot really happens in November. It was a pretty boring month to be me.

December

December started with me having a week off……yes, some time off from both jobs, what I needed. Although I like having two jobs and it gives me extra money, I am shattered for most of the time, and before this week off I hadn’t had a weekend in ages, never really having two or more days in a row.

How I now look at the end of the year, although
my hair is now slightly longer. Compare this to
the picture at the very beginning of this article

My week off is quite eventful, it starts with me and an old school friend meeting up for a drink, and the next day I travel down to London and I am finally given my hormones to start the process of changing sex. I was told that there would be several symptoms throughout my time of changing, such as constant headaches, and as soon as I applied for the first patch, all I got was a headache for two days, it was not fun….but worth it.

At the time of writing it’s a month to the day since I started on the hormones and I’ve already noticed a few changes. I won’t go into them but you get the idea.

The next day and I travel to Manchester, stopping in Leeds overnight, to watch Manchester United lose to Cluj in the Champions League. The hotel room was strange as you had to put your room access card into a slot within the room to get the lights to work for any substantial amount of time….it took me until four hours of being in the room to figure that out.

The rest of the week sees me just chill out and do precisely nothing, but it was nice to have a week off from doing nothing.

When I get back to working at the bar, the third person who I had a major issue with started working there. His name was Sam and although he was a nice lad, he was a bit rubbish. You know the term “absorbs information like a sponge”…..imagine the exact opposite. He never remembered anything. Towards the end of the month he just stopped turning up to shifts and I was subsequently left to serve on the bar on my own on New Years, yes, on my own on the busiest night of the year, although thankfully the managers did chip in and help. I’m glad Sam has subsequently left.

And that’s about it for my 2012.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this war and peace effort.