Honoring My Experiences

So as much as I want to have my month Long Amazon experience,  I would be doing myself a very big injustice. There is so much to do in Peru and South America, that to limit my first adventure in the richness that will be surrounding me on my first trip to such a country will really create a disappointing experience, as I remember my Maui trip the first time I went to Hawaii.  January 18 is the celebration of Lima's founding, as my nurse shared. I fly in on the 16th into Lima, and I want to be able to explore and not start my trip off feeling rushed. This will also allow me to get any shots and immunizations that I will need when I'm in Peru, a lot cheaper than what I can get here. I was given, by my nurse practitioner, the name of a clinic in Lima that has at least one person who speaks English fairly well; the clinic should I need its services, provides excellent care with reasonable and affordable clinic fees available even to foreigners.  To pay what I need for the Amazon upfront has become more difficult as I've been playing catch up since surgery and and with the car being broken into. We will be mailing all my meds (ART, inhalers, estrogen pills-I've been weaning down from the injections) to the closest U.S Embassy to where my journey will be projected to be every 90 days; first Embassy will be in England toward end of March before crossing over to the continent. As of January 31st, my doctor will no longer be with Ward 86 as a PCP; however he will return on main that my doctor until I return from my trip abroad sometime in 2017. I will be in contact with my care team during my whole trip via email with my nurse practitioner, doctor & social worker.

Grrr. I lost the "See how long I could go without hearing the Little Drummer Boy" game as of 620p on 14DEC15.

I really dislike drivers who will speed up when they see you signaling and trying to move into right line for the off ramp, and after forcing you to barely or actually miss the exit, then puts on their signal to speed off into the other lanes of traffic.

This morning I received an email from the U.S Dept of State regardng my Passport, even though they have my birth certificate that has been changed with both name and gender;  they want a letter from my doctor I they signed with an original statement on office letterhead that either stated whether or not I was in the middle of transition and if that was still the case then they would only give me a two year passport. If everything has been completely done, in order to issue a full validity Passport reflecting a gender different from the one on some or all of my citizenship and/or identity evidence, Dr Dan needed to write a letter stating how long i have been under his care, and whether or not he feels I have had the appropriate clinical treatment for transition to the new gender and while him having to say/write "I declare under penalty of perjury under the laws of the United States that the foregoing is true and correct." Im grateful this email came on the day of my appointment.

I made love for the first time in my life last night after coming home from Saratoga Springs and Honoring Our Experiences Retreat (No it wasn't anyone from the retreat). I have never been able to equate sex and love together, and to those I found or I believed that I loved, and made it hard for me to connect sexually in any way it was someone who I genuinely cared about. for me sex has always been a weapon, a means to provide, a means to escape, or means to degrade to be little myself. For the first time in over 10 months, since the moment with tears in my eyes I felt I had just woken up from a bad dream and feeling for the first time "Normal," I allowed myself to be touched, to be intimate, and to honor what my friend Jody G. calls a magic vagina.

Since I was a kid far back at least 5, I was tucking before I knew what that was underneath my little sisters lace ruffle on the butt pink panties that I'd sneak from their room or the laundry and wore them to school; or I was trying to perform my own surgery, because all I knew was that the little thing dangling between my legs was not supposed to be there. Neither of my two younger sisters had anything down there & it was unfair that my they got to wear dresses and cute clothes; I just did not know how to vocalize how I felt. I never thought the day would come that I could finally be like my sisters, and this year has been amazing validation for me but vaginal sex scared me at yet I yearned for it growing up, then became someone who hadn't care much for sex and stopped dilating. Just more recently I've found myself eager to dilated for some reason and then last night I made love to someone and while I did not have an orgasm, having his cock inside of me with no condom (they knew I was positive and they were okay with that, as there is little risk for a top) as my virginity was taken was for its maiden voyage. He was a gentleman,  took ot slow, knew how to kiss, and we connected and made love, for my first time. And it was beautiful, and engulfed in a spiritual, mental, physical, emotion, and sexual interconnectedness.

This weekend resonated and vibrated so passionately and intensely within me, that all I could do was just be, & the strived to be present. I flew my flags several times this weekend, and they are in the colors of the Trans* flag. A gentleman at the the retreat came up to me and said I would have never known you will trans* identified or intersex as you are absolutely beautiful.  I got me thinking I have a choice to either share the duality and my journey, and I could easily go back and just try to be unclocked and under the radar. But I do not have the right to not share, or to hide as I have been given so much from the community, the tax payers, the many services in San Francisco that afforded me the life I have today. The more I share the harder it becomes to hide, as all one has to do is google my name to find more and more things about my work and community involvement.  So I thought about what he said, and for the Talent/No Talent Show I decided to step out of my comfort and I did my first burlesque piece, and written on my chest above each breast where the word tranny and trans, with underneath the breasts the word HIV positive, and in big letters underneath that across the stomach in capital letters is said ME. After the mirror broke I changed how I was going to show how I could not accept myself by the hood of my cloak over my face, and I started going back in for flight I could engage the group as Gloria Gaynor's I am what I am started to play. And when do we hit the refrain I am what I am the hood came off, the clothes came off, revealing couple taped up breasts over the nipples and with scats showimg and I let the flags fly with pride, beauty, and the feeling of being absolutely safe for the first time doing performance. After Gloria Gaynor, we moved into Israel's Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

Today I share openly my duality because of my grandmother, before she passed away,  taught me the importance of embracing Andrew & Katerina when she started to call me AndyKat, which became my tailsman as I switched it to KatAndi, letting it become not only a nickname or profile name, but the name of my media company, "Katandi Media & Entertainment."

I feel so alive and This weekend was absolutely what I needed to allow my heartsong to sing in the gratitude chorus. I was able to be present for others this weekend, and it was amazing I love myself to be loved, cherished, and even more deeply allowed my heart to be held by every single person in the circle. I allowed love to heal me

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