Out In Public For The First Time

Yesterday I finally had to reveal myself to the outside world and leave the secrecy and privacy of my house.  I'd gone through all of the food in the house that I could scrape together and staying home was no longer an option.

I'm sure I looked somewhat ridiculous with the clothes I was wearing.  I tried to find the smallest clothes I had, but they were all still too big.  So my pants had to be rolled up and cinched in with a belt.  I wore a T-shirt so I wouldn't have to worry about the length of the sleeves but it was still way too baggy.  Plus it's cold out now too, so of course I had to wear my winter coat, which was even worse than the rest since it was so big.  The worst part was the shoes though.  There was no getting around that.  I had to stuff some socks in the end of my running shoes so they wouldn't be flopping around, but it felt like I was wearing clown shoes.

I tried to convince myself that I didn't look as foolish as I thought by telling myself it probably just looked like a girl borrowing her boyfriend's clothes.  But either way, I was incredibly nervous going out in public.

Just to make sure that I didn't have any unforeseen troubles, I drove into a different part of town than I'd usually frequent as my former male self and went to a grocery store that I'd never been to before.  I loaded up with as much food as I could since I really want to minimize how frequently I'm out in public right now.

Obviously given that this was the first time out with people seeing my new female body, I was certainly more than a little self-conscious.  However I know that I was getting a lot of looks, from both men and women.  Understandably, at least some of those would have been because of my crazy outfit.  But it definitely went beyond that.  I caught at least a couple of men looking me up and down and it wasn't because of my wardrobe -- it was in spite of it.  Speaking from my personal male experience, I know that men will go after almost anything that's female, but these guys were checking me out like I was hot.  Part of me felt uncomfortable with that kind of attention.  However in the spirit of honesty, in the back of my mind there's a small thought that's saying "Well at least if I've become a woman, I turned out to be an attractive one". 

Since my credit card has my actual name of "Lee" on it, I was able to get away with using it to pay for my groceries without having to get into any difficult conversations about whose card it was.

Once I was home, I felt much better about the whole outing.  Before going out, I was a nervous wreck and thought that everyone would be staring and realizing that I was an impostor of a woman.  But after being out in public for a bit, that tension eased up as I realized that people just saw me as an actual woman with nothing unusual, besides maybe my clothes.  The next outing will be much easier, I think.