The Journey So Far...

This journal is going to be a little meandering, and difficult at points, but ultimately I think it ends on a very positive note.  It is a processing journal because I think I process best when I can write things down. This journal is for me, but I am posting it publicly so maybe others may learn something of my experience, learn something of me, and maybe if something resonates with them, learn something of themself. I had an encounter with a friend a few days ago, and it has done so many things for me that I don’t know how to proceed.  So I shall write and think and process and maybe come out the other side with some growth. But first some history. I will never say transition was not good for me.  I will never say I shouldn’t have transitioned or that I will ever go back to the old way I was living.  But, despite how much I have said I was very lucky in how well my transition had gone and continues to go, it has not been a perfectly smooth and entirely positive experience

and, * = maybe? I have always had some amount of social anxiety.  "I don't people well" is the colloquialism I most often use. That, along with being an introvert, meant I didn't get out much.  And when I did, so many things would press in on me in social settings that I would find it hard to make any kind of connection.  So, asking people out from the few connections I had made was extra fraught with anxiety and fear.  Therefore I rarely did. Then I transitioned and embraced the true me that I had been hiding for so long.  With that transition, I was much more able to relax in social settings and go along with the flow.  I added other fears, but they were never quite as large as the constant self-policing that I needed to navigate the world from within many different closets.  I am still an introvert, but with the shedding of all my closets, the mental overhead of maintaining them was gone and so my ability to enjoy social occasions with a much slower drain r