Finding my Warmth

"As the summer comes to an end, write a story about what you've learned, what you experienced, and what you hope for in the coming seasons."

For me, the summer is not ending … but the winter. This winter brought with it many new experiences and discoveries for me, some I will treasure always, some I wish to forget, and some I hold onto like how when one eats a delicious meal when you have a cut to the lip, wanting to keep the wound open as long as possible … for fear if you ever let it heal, the memory of that fine meal would be gone forever.

A few quick lessons / Events of the Winter (I'm willing to share here) for me … (not doing the sad stuff)

In short, dating apps are not for me! I had the worst time and experience on them! Although, almost annoyingly as life does sometime, we get that tiny diamond in the rough moment, and I made a new friend I met on the apps.

I've made some incredible friends online over the Winter, from a new Bestie, who I just adore and was a soul-bonding friendship from the get-go! To a whole new Faceboook group of people struggling with the same thing and coming together to support each other, and of course my wonderful writing community here, and at Queer Vocal Voices!

I also felt cold for the first time this winter … proper ‘I’m inside and wearing a jumper, but I’m still shaking’ type of cold. Now, it was a particularly cold Winter here in Australia this year … but I have been in very cold places and been fine before. So my main theory is it is a combination of some (hard earned) weight loss and my hormone shifts from HRT. So that was another odd and new experience for the year.

Now … looking to the future.

Spring is starting to unveil itself now in Australia, and I am trying to use it as a springboard into thinking more optimistically and positively as the year starts to wind down. Then the summer will come and with it the burning heat and fire seasons … but I’m trying not to focus on that. I want to focus on some goals for the last few months of this year, helped by the thoughts and senses that the new life of spring brings merging with the new life I have now.

As much as I would love to find my forever person by the end of this year … I honestly struggle to hold firm in my belief this is ever coming, and don’t want to set myself up for failure or spiralling into darker thoughts if it doesn’t happen - would I love to find the person I very may well spend the rest of my life with (finally) before the years end? Absolutely! Will I be open to it if it comes along? Sure. Will I actively search it out? No … I still can’t do that, and I think I need it to be pretty clear that whoever this person is, they enter my life because God (or the universe if you prefer) put them there, at the right place, at the right time … for me, and me for them.

"So what are your goals, you lovelorn chronically single lass?" I hear you ask …

Well I want to keep them simple, I want to really get more on top of my weight loss journey and be healthier overall, not because I feel or think I need to look a certain way for anyone else, but because I want to for me! I just want my belly to be a bit trimmer, that’s all, I like being a bigger girl and I know I’ll never be super thin, I don’t need to be, I’m happy in who I am regardless of how I look! I just want that small adjustment … for me.

Which ties into the other goals I have for Spring and Summer … wearing more dresses in public, and wearing them places I haven’t yet. Most of the dresses I’ve worn in public have been fairly long and modest ones (which is my style anyway) and the vast majority of times I’ve worn a dress in public so far has been to church, which (some will find surprising) is one of the places I feel safest to do so and to wear what I want to wear without worry. (I could and should do a whole story/post about my church and how amazing they have been since I came out there)

But I want to wear dresses more, just day to day and to casual things, and out in public more - but it’s sometimes scary when going somewhere and arriving alone, say a pub to meet a friend, until I meet them I feel super guarded and self-conscious. So I want to make a pledge here to myself … that I will wear a dress to at least two public outings that aren’t church by then end of Spring … and in summer I will wear a dress to any and all events I am invited to (chances are that could be zero) and at least five time over the summer to non church outings!

So I guess that’s it in short, there’s a lot of other things I plan and hope to achieve over the next few months, but to me those are the ones closest to my heart … well, at least the ones I'm happy to share. The goals and aims that are linked with feeling better about myself and more confident as the real me as I keep taking steps in this incredible, amazing journey.

Oh! I nearly forgot - I also hope and plan (time and money permitting) to finally get my first tattoo over the Spring! It will be the chemical symbol for estrodial (feminising hormone) with blooming flowers, and butterflys all to represent new life and the new me - it will have my HRT start date incorporated, and a bible verse I like about 'putting on the new self' (Ephesians 4:24) - and I'm getting it designed by my new bestie! So it will have extra meaning to me!

Winter made me cold, and afraid to get hurt again … but Spring reveals there’s always new life, and new hope to come … and summer … Summer gives me hope for a new warmth to finally enter my life …

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This was an interesting challenge, I had to essentially do the polar (or hemisphere) opposite of the challenge in some ways ... living in Australia, Summer has not just finished, but Winter! It became more of a journal entry than a story ... But it was interesting to reflect back and decide what to share about the Winter, and what to share of hopes for the Spring and Summer.

This story is for the final challenge in James and Oneg's August Summer Writing Extrav-again-za! The challenge this time: "As the summer comes to an end, write a story about what you've learned, what you experienced, and what you hope for in the coming seasons."

You can find out more about the Summer Writing Challenge Extrav-again-za below: