This is Miss Placed, this is my proper 'introduction' to these forums.
I am changing my board name to 'Lyn-Jean' as of this post ,
The male name my parents gave me at birth starts with 'Lyn', which now seems very convenient. My middle name is John, and John in French is Jean. My family name remains private for now.
I think I am suffering from gender dysphoria, and may very well be a transgender.
My story is very long, but I am going to try to keep this introduction short (honest!).
I am a 43 year old straight English male, ever since my youth I have felt different, out of place, like I didn't fit, like there was someone else inside of me trying to get out, but I just got on with things, boxed away in my head everything I couldn't understand about myself.
I just 'got by' and carried on, got married, fathered three beautiful daughters (the eldest is 18 in Dec! omg I cant be THAT old!), worked my way up into a very good job. Even then at times I felt the person inside trying to get out. I remember once laying in bed and telling my wife that I thought I was going mad... alas (or luckily) she was asleep.
Then in January 2001 I fell ill with stress related illness due to work, shortly after my marriage fell apart, as I discovered my wife was having an affair with my so-called 'best friend' (i.e. he fancied my wife, so pretended to be my friend), our marriage rapidly descended into a bitter hate filled divorce, as they used my illness as a cover to tell all our friends and families that I had 'gone mad' to think they were having an affair (he was married too). Alas everyone believed them (till they slipped up one day several months later).
All this sent me over the edge, I moved into a shared house with two other straight guys and have basically just spent the last four years getting up late in the day, logging on to online computer games for 12 to 18 hours to escape reality, and going to bed in the middle of the night, rinse and repeat.
I am agoraphobic, social phobic, have learning difficulties and just feel 'burnt out' on life, I rarely go out and even rarer alone.
In late 2002 I heard about the murder of Gwen Araujo in the US, her death hit me really hard, I grieved for her as if she was a close family member of friend, but I couldn't work out exactly why I took it so personal. At the time I was going through a very rough patch (which is a story in itself), so I put it down to the loss of her youth and beauty and the fact that like me, she felt lost, unsure of her path in life, felt out of place... a freak.
As time went by I got over it... life, or rather, existence, continued much the same as before.
In August of this year I travelled 300 miles to trial living with my parents, I knew I couldn't carry on living the way I was, especially as I wasn't getting on with my housemates/roomies (both of which are painfully typical selfish, intolerable, quick tempered 'males').
Things went really well up here, I spent a lot more time out of games and more in real world, this also allowed me to think more, but it certainly didn't help my agoraphobia and social phobia. Luckily my family are very understanding and supportive.
Then the second trail of Gwen Araujo's murderers hit the headlines and brought everything I'd felt in 2002 back. This time I have been better equipped to deal with it. I was grieving again, so decided to go find out more.
In doing so I started to realise a lot of things about myself, and I started to wonder if I wasn't the person I thought I was, I wondered if in fact I was female deep inside.
Whilst waking up to all these things I found myself exclaiming "I can't be gay!"... and stopped short in horror, as this was something one of Gwen Araujo's murders had said. I was disgusted with myself, so I decided to do more research, to find out more about the issues Transgenders face.
Of course I soon discovered that many Transgenders are not gay... this was a major leap forward in understanding for me, I felt as if the roof had fallen on my head.
I contacted the webmaster of Gwen Araujo Memorial Website, and over the next few days we exchanged some wondrous mails, she never led me along or put thoughts into my head, but reading each one was like putting a pair of spectacles on. However, she has been very busy lately, so our communication has slacked off a bit.
I started to wonder if my agoraphobia and social phobia was caused because I am an 'actor' playing a badly hammed up male role, and that in fact the female in me is the real 'me'. I have also considered that I could be totally wrong about this, it's too easy to latch onto something that may explain or 'cure' the issues I have.
In desperation for someone to talk to I searched around the web for transgender communities, and thus found "Susan' Place", and the wonderful people therein. They pull no punches, they don't make things sound easy just to make you feel better, because life as a TG is not easy by any stretch of the imagination. I cherish their utter bluntness, they wont tell me that black is grey just to make me feel better, black is soooo black that it hurts, and you better get used to it girl!
Even so I feel desperately alone, my emotions are on a rollercoaster, I feel short bursts of excitement and motivation over what I think I am, followed by depression because I may be wrong, or may not be able to transition if that is what I need to do.
My father is an ex Relate Counsellor (large well known charitable counselling organisation here in the UK) of 25+ years, I have told him what I think is going on, but obviously he can't help me, he is too close.
I do now have a doctor's appointment to seek a referral for counselling, so am starting to make steps.
I am fully aware that the woman in me is a child, I have always been very 'immature' anyway (I mean mentally), maybe the male me is stuck because he has met his limits, maybe its time now for the woman to take over and take my life onwards.
For now I don't know, hopefully therapy will answer these questions for me.
I can say right now without a doubt, that if someone said to me 'I will wave a magic wand, and your penis will disappear tomorrow,, but in 3 to 4 years time you will have Vagina... do you want to proceed?' then I would say 'YES!', without a doubt, but I have yet to work out if that is a good thing or not.
There is more, much more, but that will have wait till another time.
