Mutterings of a contemplating mind.

Well I finally went and did it. After a few years of struggling and doing it in little drips and drabs I finally finished my book. It's funny how I have that same odd sense I had 9 months ago after surgery of there being no climax where I expected one. Life did not change much after surgery, there were no fireworks, nothing out of the ordinary other than pain and a quieting of "the voices." It is such with the book, I have been working so hard on it driven by some unseen force almost to get my story out, like I was supposed to do it to help someone. Now that I'm done I see I have indeed helped someone, myself. Putting down my emotions, my close calls with death and tragedy and going back to revisit them, even though they are painfull at times, is good for my mental well being. I have survived much and am still here, I can look back on what I've done and gain strength from lessons learned and continue to do more. I can hopefully take some of my knowledge and help those who will surely come on this journey after.

This was no fun trip, it is nothing to be celebrated or to take much joy in. Other than the fact I was able to get through it somehow with the help of love and friendship. Much has been lost and will never be the same, but much has been learned at the same time. While I don't wish this trip on anyone I know that there are more out there like myself, and I'm sure some of them are alone and are wishing and praying for help. I can't open myself right now, maybe ever again to trying to save the world. I've been hurt too much by letting the wrong people in too close. Maybe my way of helping others is the book? But I risk everything in publishing it, I value my privacy believe it or not. I merely want to be known as Ashley the person, not the tranny. I am not ashamed of being a tranny mind you, it's just when you say that you are to the general public they get this picture of you that is not kind. I know it sounds cowardly, and how are people's minds going to change if they don't see us trannies who aren't like the ones they see on Springer or sitcoms? I don't have the balls to be an activist though (trust me they're in some medical testing lab right now) I don't want to be in the spotlight, hell I don't even want to be on the stage. Yet there is some sense of duty, or some force driving me that way. What if Christine Jorgenson never took the courage to tell the world what she had done? What if Harry Benjamin just told the trannies they were nuts instead of having the courage to try and help them? I know I'm no where near as significant as these two go in the realm of T'ville, but then comes the another question. What if Jan Morris hadn't published her book, or Calpernia hers? What would my path had been if I had not had these books intersect my life at times when I had given up hope and was ready to throw it all away? What if I had not been saved by these words of comfort by other people? Maybe there is another in the same boat waiting for my story to enter their life at the right time, maybe they are the next big thing to help our community down the road, and they themselves need a little help right now. I'm not trying to recruit people into this, just merely let them know there are others feeling what they've felt, a comfort to bring them back from thinking it's better to kill oneself than to be a tranny.

You see it has occurred to me that we are all connected and not just in our community. Each of us touches others around us in ways we don't even know. Each of us has a job to do to either leave this world a little better place, or a worse one if we don't care. I still haven't figured out my job yet, maybe I already did it and I'm just supposed to coast through life, maybe I failed and it's too late. It's funny not knowing what your job in the world is, you keep looking for it not knowing if you've done it, or if the it's you've already done were the right or wrong ones. I'm not sure yet what I'm going to do, we'll see how my 2 test readers react to the book and go from there. I've written the thing, it was helpfull to me in doing it, so at the very worse I saved some money on therapy.

After writing so many pages of my own thoughts and words I felt it was time to read someone elses, so I read the 5th book in the Harry Potter series "Order of the Phoenix." It was very good for a kids book, I'd see all 4 movies leading up to this book, but never read the books. I was glad I decided to try one out, I found myself totally imersed in it, and with my addictive personality read it front to back Starting Sat afternoon and finishing it off at 3am this morning. I would have liked to read it faster but I had to work all the days I was reading and was only to do my reading before and after work along with my lunch hour. I don't know what kind of spell Rowling put on that book, but for me to read 870 pages in that short amount of time impresses me. She is truly a gifted writer, or knows how to cast a real spell herself on her readers. Anyway it was cleansing for my mind to be imersed in a world of muggles and wizards, murder and magic. I also have a new kinship with Harry. There is this reluctant way to him that he didn't ask for all this to happen to him, but for some reason it was just destined to be. He wants nothing more than to be normal, to not be so special. He feels like he is from another race altogether from his clasmates and such, and knows that no matter what he does his path is nothing he can change. This is exactly as I feel. I wish so often I could have just been normal like everyone else, but for some reason I was chosen for this path. Maybe next life I could be chosen for a path of being a hot blonde who wins the lottery a couple times and never gets fat no matter what she eats, that would be a nice path indeed.

I'll let you know what I decide to do on the book if I do decide to publish it, I'm sure I'm going to have to do allot of reaching out to get the word out there, don't want to miss that person that might just need it..... Super Ashley, UP, UP AND AWAY!!..... (just kidding)

Love to all and of course take care...

Just checking in...

Not much going on lately, been working, playing softball, working on the house and when I can I spend a little time working on the book as well. I'm almost done, I'm actually almost up to 2 years ago in the computer, and 1 year ago on paper. At one point I had actually finished the entire part of putting in on paper, but then my dreams had to come true, I had to get my surgery and totally changed the last chapter of the book which I had finished in fall of 2005.

For the most part work has been uneventfully busy. We've been down a person or two in my department so I've been too busy to get into any trouble. I'm still missing one of my best friends at work who left us awhile back. She got her job in the therapist field and hasn't looked back yet. I'm so glad for her, yet so sad that I don't get to have stimulating conversations on level we had. Hopefully I'll get to see her soon outside of work. We keep trying to connect to go blading but it never works out. Speaking of blading I did a 10 mile trex a few weeks back and it felt good. I'm thinking I'd like to try and work my way up to doing a 26.5 mile excursion by the end of summer, but first need to do something to my skates so I don't blister as bad after doing so. I've been working my way up from 4 to 6 and now 10 miles so I don't see why 26.5 should be a problem. It's merely a number, a number that is the distance of a marathon, but still just a number. I got such a high from doing 10 that I'm looking forward to see what I get after doing more mileage, I'll keep you up to date.

As for softball, it was as I expected, I'm an average player. Ok I'm a little bit better than average defensively, it's my past experience as a hockey goalie. I tend to suck up everything hit my way, I just need to work on my throwing. At the plate, I hit average, maybe less than. I don't have a big muscular body, never did, so I can't hit for power. I just try to hit the ball towards where they aren't and then run like hell. So far I'm 2 for 5 or .400 with an on base percentage of .600 and 3 RBIs. Nothing stellar, it's just slow pitch softball after all. Last game I pulled my groin pretty bad but expect to be playing soon. Court got hurt worse and I had to take her to the er over at Middlesex to be looked at. It sounded like the start of a bad joke, 3 trannies walk into Middlesex hospital..... Haven't figured out the punchline yet on that one though. She's ok but will take more time to heal. We are both enjoying playing though. To me it's another rite of passage, playing women's sports. There's something about sports I've always loved, I think it's the thought of a group of individuals working towards a common goal that I love. These girls may or may not know about me but they treat me as one of their own, which after all is all I ever wanted in life, to be "normal" and fit in. There is something so lesbian though about softball. You pick up this phallic looking bat, which is kept before the game in a bag with other bats, like they're some kind of harvest ripped from the groins of the male oppressors. You then take the aforementioned bats and try like hell to smack a ball that has all these stitches over it to hold it together in some gruesome Frankenstein way. It's like along with the phallus they took the teste's, stitched them together and decided to show the men what should be done with their equipment. Odd analogy but it really fits considering most of the gals playing would love to do such a thing. Or maybe it's the pain meds I've been taking for the groin pull.

Oh well going to try and get some stuff done on my day off, maybe write some more of the book. Until next time be good.

Love to all and of course take care.