Oh hey guys, it's me. Long time, no see. How's it going? I love what you've done with the place, are those new curtains?

Ahem.

So I haven't been round here in a while. I've kinda changed to place in my life where geeky stuff isn't so much my thing anymore so I stopped coming. But well, I've had a rough few months and I want to vent about it somewhere and there's no-one on my facebook right now which brings me here, to you guys. So just to warn you, this is mostly me getting all emo and stuff, though hopefully for decent reasons.

By the by, I figured when I left that I'd see everyone important on facebook anyway but there's so many of you that it wouldn't surprise me I forgot someone. If we're not facebook friends and you think we should be, just drop me an add.

Anyways, me. I'm still waiting on the operation. I've been getting hair removal for 16 months (it's supposed to take 9 months on average) and I still don't have a firm end date. It stinks so hard. Everything else is ready, the money is there, I'm just waiting on this one thing. And cause it's so near and all I've got left, it's becoming such a huge deal.

A lot of you already know this but I don't think I said it on this site, last autumn I got assaulted. I met a guy in a club, was drunk enough to head outside for some smooching and such and then he realised I was trans and beat the crap out of me. Most importantly, the police caught him and dealt with the matter so that part's ok. And on the whole I'm fine with it. Shit happened, it's in the past, whatever. But it has messed my life up one way which I'll come back to.

I'm unemployed, have been since I came back from Europe in October. At the moment I'm living with my parents to save cash and using a small amount of my savings to cover costs. The main problem with finding a job is the operation. I know that in a few months I'm going to need a long chunk of time off-work, and no-one's going to hire me with that in consideration. To make matters worse, my mum's just been hit with risk of redundancy, so there's a fairly good chance that by July everyone in the house will be out of work.

What really gets to me though is that I have almost no life. For the last 5 months, the only people I have spent time with have been my parents. Ok, so I'm doing a short dance course at the moment and it's awesome but it hasn't helped my social life.

And here's where the assault comes in, I used to go out to bars every now and again. It was nice to feel like part of things, even if it was just going on around me. And sometimes guys would hit on me and even if I wasn't interested it was cool, it made me feel like a part of life. But since the assault I've been much more aware of guys not thinking I'm trans, so now I turn guys down even if I'd be interested. Like I don't even get a choice in it. And so the one time I went out for a drink after the assault, it was more depressing than staying at home.

Oh, and the last month or so I've had major skin problems (this bit's gross, feel free to skip). I got eczema on my neck and face, it got infected, then it got crusty, then it got cracked, then it got scabby. It hurt to eat, it hurt to breathe, it hurt to smile. I finally saw a doctor about it last week and it's cleared up quite a lot, but not all the way yet.

And there we have it. I'm sorry for the NSSPiest of NSSP posts but I really needed to say this somewhere and I didn't really know where else to go. Thanks for listening (assuming you did)