Thank you Pepper.

I was born in 1958, so I was even more unfamiliar with all of this than you.

Post 1995 I lived as a woman, “passing”,(meaning no one knew that I was AMAB, or assigned male at birth), until my daughter, at age 14, wanted to come live with me, from San Diego to North Carolina. She wanted, needed, her daddy… she moved back to San Diego at age 26, and is 34 now.

I stopped taking estrogens and lived as a man for about 12 years. I didn’t take testosterone because I had a dr liscense that said “female”, and I planned to go back to my real self at some point.

I nearly drank myself to death during that time. Living a lie was always very difficult, leave it at that for now…

So…until I got sober and clean in September of 2018, I didn’t have the mental capacity, the functional intellect, to delve into all of the information to be found online these days.

I was diagnosed, in 1998, with “Major Depressive Disorder with suicide attempts, Major Anxiety Disorder with panic attacks, Borderline Personality Disorder and Alcoholism. The SSA judges determined that I was “Totally and Permanently Disabled Unemployable”.

Since then I’ve also been diagnosed with ADHD, though I was still drinking and drugging at the time, so…

I 'came out’, locally and online about three years ago, having learned about the explosion of things queer and trans.(when I got sober my daughter had bought me a smart phone online. I just had to go to the store and pick it up).

I’m definitely fully lesbian now. I’ve always only been able to be 'in love' with a woman. With so many years of estrogen therapy my body doesn’t respond like a man’s. It hasn’t for nearly thirty years.

Personally, I don’t try to fit in to a particular identity or sexuality anymore. I do try to keep up with most of what’s going on though, and the people I know in real life speak to me and relate to me as though I’m a woman, even the ones that know that I’m transgender…they simply forget about that little nugget of knowledge…I don’t have any struggle to maintain any particular appearance or personna these days. I’m finally free to just be myself.

I’m more than happy to share with you whatever I know from my personal experience. And I don’t mind at all answering questions…in fact, as I usually do, I’ve gone on much too long and will have to look at your response again to be sure that I’ve actually answered some of what you asked 🙄😴😂.

It’s 12:30 now and I have a meeting at 1:00. I’ll come back to you after, when I get home. If I forget, just nudge me 😉🦄🙏💜🙏