Anxious feelings after France

I mentioned in my last blog that on the last day of my France trip I was feeling rather anxious.
The feeling seemed to be with me all day but got worse as the day went on. At first I thought it was due to the fact I would be going through immigration and passport control on both sides of the journey as a woman with a male passport.
But that was not it to be honest. I was not really that nervous of doing this. If challenged I would have happily gone through to a private room and explained things. I am a very experienced traveller and have travelled extensively all over the East and Far East many years ago. This caused me to be in some interesting situations in various corrupt places and I kind of feel fairly comfortable travelling and adapting.
The feelings of dread and stress stayed with me all the way home and into this week. In fact on the journey home from the airport on Monday night I just had to let the emotion out and cried for 10 minutes or so on the drive home.
I have spent time this week trying to work out why I felt so down. My thoughts have primarily been around a few reasons.
The first is fear. I am ready to go full time but the major hurdle of work and the associated risk to my family if I was to lose my job looms large. In my mind I kind of put that of till after my trip. Now I am back it is imminent and in front of me. Now is the time and I am terrified.
The second reason is that I spent 4 days as me. No pretence, no stress not even a thought about gender until that last day when I knew it was coming to an end. The reality of going back to part time was 1 day away and all the reminders of the stress associated with doing this came flooding back.
The third was related to missing my family. I haven’t spent any time away from them for years other than an occasional night for work. I had spoken to them on the phone and could tell my wife was struggling. When I got home we hugged and then my wife was a little distant.
We talked on Tuesday night and she had clearly found me being away difficult. It had given her a lot of time to think about things and she has been worrying about my transition. She had so many concerns in her mind. These ranged from the impact on the kids, impact on her, the fact she felt guilty for me delaying my transition thus far for her and also anger at me for doing this.
It really is difficult for us all and I completely understand her feelings. In fact she is quite right to have them.
Please don’t think she is trying to stop me but she now sees the imminence of it all. She has seen me go away for a weekend and gain in confidence. She sees me moving on in life and she seems to be stuck where she is.
We have spoken a lot over the last few days trying to find a way through that works for us all. We are still talking now.
Since I got back and we have talked she seems a bit happier. I on the other hand am still tense. I have felt close to tears quite a few times. I am struggling to handle the day to day stresses at the minute. A little close to the edge sometimes it has to be said.
A couple of runs have helped but not really solved anything.
I have been looking at what jobs are available as I am really dreading transitioning at my work. I really feel this is the thing that is causing most of my problems. I am dreading doing this in my company. I would rather start afresh with no history, much like I am at university.
I am struggling with my level of confidence to succeed doing this at work and indeed with the hundreds of customers I and my sales team deal with in a face to face basis daily.
The final thing I am trying to balance is to get a couple of major orders out of the way. In a sales environment it can be easy to create a reason for someone to be sacked. If a couple of these projects happen when they should, then in the next 8 weeks I will be in a position that it would be difficult for them to create a reason of lack of sales until May next year when our next year starts.
On the other hand the time will never quite be right to transition and I know that. I should really just do it now and not wait.