Quote from: openheart on December 16, 2011, 05:56:20 AM
I think that's a pretty close description of where I am (though a little earlier in my thirties). And the funny thing is, I'll sometimes think of things from my past, when I would get so close, "feeling like a girl," and things like that, and... I think, growing up in a small town, I assumed that this was so rare that of course it couldn't be me. And also the fact that it hasn't made me suicidal... I'd think "it has to be worse" to do something about it.
I can remember even in elementary school hearing the usual "sex change" jokes, but it never really impacted on my consciousness that switching from one to the other was actually a real possibility. I spent most of my life feeling that there was something not quite right with me, but I could never put a name to it. As I got older, I just chalked it up to being a geek. It wasn't until much later in life that various circumstances brought transgender/transsexualism into my active awareness, as I've discussed elsewhere.
Now that I understand better, I think back on things like building a kit dollhouse for my sister one Christmas and how much I wished I could have one (not permitted), or the many times my sister and I would dress up in my grandmother's outfits when we were little (I never seemed to feel any interest whatsoever in raiding my grandfather's closet in similar fashion), and so much about my early life makes sooo much more sense in a transgender context.
Of course, the real clincher was when I started being aware of myself as female in my dreams and how calm and happy I felt after those dreams. I'm not always aware of my gender in my dreams, but when I do I am invariably a woman.
Sometimes, I feel a real sense of loss that I was not able to grow up as a girl and experience high school and college as a young woman. Those doors are forever closed to me (in this lifetime, anyhoo). Even if I were to transition and go back to college for another degree as a woman, it would be a very different experience.
