I’ve thought about it, and I think I will be staying just plain old, “Carol Es.” At least for now. Just because Hannah changed her name from Michael to Hannah doesn’t mean everyone’s gotta do a name change too, right? Right.
As for the pronouns, you can call me Ray, or you can call me Jay, he, her, them, theirs, thee, whatever, whenever. It’s all fine by me. I’ll just start introducing myself around town like this: “Hi, my name is Carol, and my pronouns are ‘it,’ ‘that,’ and ‘whaaaat?'”
I haven’t been doing any painting–at all. I’ve been a bit overwhelmed for obvious reasons and have been taking up my brain time by doing a lot of research on the Internet. Research about trans people, non-binary people, and what to expect in regards to my surgery. Then there’s how to find a surgeon that will take my insurance, weight loss, and possible transportation. I’m planning this at least six to eight months in advance. I don’t want to have to pay it out of pocket, but I also don’t want to wind up with some shit pick of a surgeon either. There’s a lot of leg work to do.
In the meantime, I haven’t even heard back from my insurance company, and all I want to do is ask them a couple of simple questions, like which surgeons are in the network? They keep saying they’ll get back to me, but they haven’t despite several requests to speak with someone. If they keep dragging their feet, I don’t know…trans people have certain rights to healthcare, ya know?
Well, I guess I’m impatient. An impatient patient. I’ll keep waiting it out.
I’ve been on a couple of trans/non-binary forums and transgender chats, which have been helpful. Talking to close friends and my therapist has been helpful too, but communicating with Hannah is the most helpful of all. Our relationship is only getting better. It’s definitely changing, that is for sure, but it’s getting stronger I think.
That’s it for this minute in time. Thanks for staying with me!