Cliff/Tori: Who does this make me?

First off, I checked my e-mail this morning to find a link sent to me by Mae with the comment, "Hey sis, saw this pic, was reminded of you. Have a great day." I have to admit I got a chuckle out of it since Mae and I have had a number of run-ins since she got out of school, where she comes downstairs in the morning to find me sitting half-dressed eating a bowl of cereal. That said, I've never been that "half-dressed," and I may be a decent-looking girl, but I don't look that good.

It also made me wonder what she was doing looking at that site, especially since the e-mail was sent after 3 AM.

It's funny what a year does to you, because while I would've considered Tori a goddess in my old life, now I just think of myself as "decent looking." Maybe it's because of changing tastes or standards. Then again, I've definitely seen the reaction I get from the other sex when I go out in public, whether I've made an effort or not. Most of those guys just like my boobs, which is forgivable... they're pretty nice, even after a year.

The responses to my last few posts have been overwhelming, and I hope you'll forgive me if I don't exactly address every little matter here, because I tried to tackle every post in an earlier draft of this entry, and it got really messy. I just want to say again how amazed I am by the support some of you have shown me, or event the interest. Coming from a someone who hasn't always been the best at putting things into words, this has all been very comforting.

It was pretty amazing to see the explosion of discussion in the last couple posts. I felt timid about joining in because I've only been a girl for about a year, and I felt awkward about being all "super-feminist," because I still don't know what any of it means.

One commenter asked whether I felt like I was being treated differently by society. Of course. The weird thing is, a lot of the quirks that made me less successful as a guy seem to be working for me as a girl. I don't draw a lot of attention to myself. I don't dress provocatively (my "Torification" period notwithstanding) I don't try too hard to impress members of the opposite sex. My ability to go months on end (aka my entire lifetime) without sex seems to be working for me. As a guy, virginity was a source of shame, as a girl, abstinence is lauded. It's a weird double-standard, and it works in my favour. Even though we apparently live in an age where it's okay for a woman to want sex, Sara and Raine think it's cool that I'm just not into it.

Of course -- and this is where things get weird, what I was talking about last time -- I kind of am into it.

It's probably never going to happen with a girl. I don't feel right about it. I came this close with Buddy, but what stopped me was the knowledge that I'd still have those memories when I went back to being Cliff, and the fact that it would've apparently screwed things up for the "real" Tori.

Now? Now I guess I am the "real" Tori. And I might never be Cliff again. It puts a new spin on the whole situation for me. I certainly get along with guys, like Buddy, and my friends' boyfriends. But the Buddy thing was messed up, and I don't feel like I can be close to an unattached guy, because there will always be the idea in the back of my head that he just wants to get with me. If I ever give in, it will take some serious signal that it's the right time.

There was a lot of talk about "finding my place as a woman" in the comments. I don't think I'll ever have a "normal" woman's life. I think my Cliffness will always be part of me. I'll always have the life of a girl who used to be a guy, albeit not the manliest of guys. As I've gotten more and more comfortable as Tori, I've morphed my presentation of her from helpless young beauty to tomboyish sci-fi loving geek girl. You can't tell it from looking at me, of course, which is a problem for those a-holes that sometimes try to chat me up like I'm some bimbo.

It's up to me now to figure out how I want to live the next year of my life. Thinking about the whole Willie situation, I've made my peace with it, but it doesn't mean he wasn't an asshole. "Karen" has never explained what, if any, contact she's had with the original Karen, which leads me to believe she's either beyond reach, or that the old Tori just flat-out stole some poor woman's life.

Someone in the comments suggested that "Pygmalion" may be responsible for Willie's "opportunity," which kept me up at night. To think someone might be manipulating my life that way is... unsettling.

The way I look at it, this is my life. It's permanent. If Willie offers my old body back to me next year, it's mine to take or leave, but I shouldn't count on it. I don't trust him anymore, and there are a million worse things in the world than being a good-looking 23-year-old girl. As one commenter noted, I just need to figure out my next step. What do I want to do with this life? I'm working on it.

At this point, a lot of other blog writers dropped their former names from their ID's, but personally I'm still attached to mine, so... I don't know.

If you have any more questions, please don't hesitate to ask, and I'll try to cover them in my next post!