Feeling better

Yesterday was the happiest I've been in a long time.  I spent the day feeling ok with myself, and allowing myself to enjoy things I like, feminine or not.  I went grocery shopping and picked up face wash for my wife, and walked past the makeup and was happy because I felt like I could stop and look and covertly pick something up and not be ashamed later.  I didn't, because the store was busy, and don't currently feel the need to dress, but it was great that I felt like I could.  I know it's baby steps, but I'm super happy.

My sister in law just had a baby, and my wife has been excited about being able to buy girl toys for our niece.  She got an American Girl catalog, and it was nice to be able to look through it together and not feel dismissive or embarrassed.  I could just look through it and be happy.   I feel like I'm finding some balance.

I read through the Standards of Care for the first time last night.  I hadn't understood that there was middle ground between having Gender Confirmation Surgery and repressing everything.  At first when I was coming to terms with my feelings, I had felt like they weren't strong enough and pervasive enough that I wanted to go through difficulty of GCS, and so I must just be male and that was that.  Which made my feminine feelings that much stronger.  Now, I see there's people that are satisfied by episodic cross dressing, or by other things 'in the middle'.  Which I knew, but just never really considered may be a final state.

So I'm reconsidering therapy.  I didn't want to see someone that wanted to 'fix me' so I was male (i.e., repress everything), and I didn't want to see someone that said 'hormones and surgery', because that's not a path that I'm ready to permanently go down either.  If a therapist can help me find something in the middle so that I and my family and can be happy, then that's a good thing.