After medically transitioning, I started to experience menopause-like symptoms
London but I didn’t feel ‘flamboyant’ enough.I’m not sure what I wanted to accomplish by doing it but I know it felt good.Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling there was something missing and it was then that I started to think about the possibility of transitioning.Back then, it wasn’t something that was talked about or that I could access information on, so I suppressed those feelings.In the late 90s, when I was in my late 40s, I moved to Madrid, having separated from my wife.
In the eight years I was there, I lived a double life. I went to work as a man, dashed home to change, and went out as Francine – a woman.I fell in love with a beautiful Spanish woman who identified as lesbian, but it didn’t work.
She knew me as Francine but she couldn’t cope with me still being male.It was then that I realised that I wanted to be Francine all the time.
That I’d always wanted to be a woman.I came back to London and had a conversation with friends, who encouraged me to look into gender confirmation surgery – and after six years, I had the operation.Paid for privately, it took place in 2015, when I was 62.
