Every time a YouTuber says “What’s up guys?!” a hipster heart dies, including my own. Which makes it so ironic that I’m fighting the impulse to start this blog post by saying “What’s up bitches?! It’s ya girl!” Sorry for the gap in blog posts. I’ve been vacationing in Utah, making out with my girlfriend a lot, and I have custody of my kids all summer. A bitch is busy. However, I’m paying for the domain name on this thing so I might as well use it.

I feel like I’ve hit some kind of milestone in my transition. I’ve been getting a lot less “sir” and a lot more “ma’am” recently. Some of that is simply because I changed where I work to a more accepting part of the DFW metro and the other part is that being over two years on estrogen is really making a difference. Oh, and there’s the electrolysis and laser hair removal. So, what have I learned and experienced recently regarding my transition?

Tits are awesome. I feel like I could stop this blog post with that one sentence and you’ve already gotten quality content. My girls are still super small but push up bras are miracle workers and I get a lot of the quick downward glances from people when I’m off of work. Go ahead and look, people. I’ve waited 40 years for these fun bags. I enjoy the view, too.

Beauty is pain. My girl, Valerie, politely told me that I’m a little bitch when it comes to pain. I’m not gonna argue with a woman who has a sharp object near my face. All I know is that I needed a LOT of my –ahem– herbal supplement when I had an electrolysis session… and that it was worth the pain every time. The session that had the biggest impact, from my perspective, was the session where she went to town on the gray hair on my face. Laser hair removal didn’t get those so Valerie waved her magical pain wand around and, voila, my face looked significantly more feminine! It was a huge confidence booster for me.

Life is better when you get rid of assholes. Look, I work for a very tolerant company. There are protections for transpeople written into our employee handbook and my Store Leader at my last store had meetings with every department once I told him that I was getting “dude” and “bro” way too often from a couple of the departments. My immediate boss never misgendered me a single time. My team were saints.

But, customers are not subject to the employee handbook. I got laughed at by a lot of people, like my entire existence was a joke. I had one regular that would look at the brie section of my cheese department until I asked him if he needed help. As soon as I did, that douche would glare at me for an extended period of time and then walk off without buying anything. I got a ton of very aggressive sirs way too often. Most days I could shrug off the assholes but… it wears you down to get treated like that.

After a year of that kind of treatment from customers, I was fucking done with it. I transferred to a store that is one mile from the Gayborhood in Dallas and –overnight– the assholes vanished from my life. I’ve only had one guest call me “sir” and the pained look on his face when he realized what he’d done totally took the sting out of the experience.

What’s I’ve decided is that I’ll never work in the suburbs again, which is definitely gonna limit my upward mobility in my company, but there’s more to life than money. Getting treated with kindness is worth a hell of a lot more.