Here it is. The big "I'm confused, what am I?" post. It's not new in any way - I've heard every piece of my story somewhere on here before, but I'll tell it anyway. I apologize in advance - it's going to be a long story that you've heard before.
I feel very unusual as a member of the community because I never had really strong feelings of being transgender from an early age. I was very much a daddy's girl and would with delight wear dresses and skirts that my mother would make for me. My early choice of Halloween costumes were hardly conspicuous - a princess, a genie, a geisha, Esmeralda... I did enjoy playing with my older brother's male friends much more than any of the girls in my class, but I chalked that up to being a doting younger sibling. As I moved through elementary school, though, I became a dyed-in-the-wool tomboy. I chopped off all my hair, and it was with glee I would inherit and don all of my brothers' hand-me-downs. I think my mother was so pleased I didn't mind taking the hand-me-downs, she excused my departure from femininity for the time being.
Middle school rolled around and suddenly, tomboyishness was out of vogue. With so much pressure from the kids at school to be feminine, I started getting in fights with my mother at the store about buying new school clothes (pretty much for the first time, as I had previously been largely subsisting on hand-me-downs). I wanted to buy my new clothes from the boys section. She insisted that it was time to "grow up" and shop in the girls' section, insisting that I could find the same styles in shapes and sizes that fit my developing body. I was deeply saddened by this turn of events, and as my brother and I grew up and the hand-me-downs trickled to a halt, I finally gave in to her insistence and starting buying and wearing girls' clothes in earnest, choosing the styles I felt were most masculine (flare cargo pants were the biggest form of rebellion I could muster). After a few years, I managed to convince myself that the loss I felt at not being able to wear boys' clothes was a natural stage every tomboy went through; empirically, I had no evidence that such behavior would ever be acceptable when I was an adult.
With urging from my parents and teachers, I began dressing more and more feminine as high school progressed. I would fret about which dress I was going to wear to each dance and collected a eclectic group of friends from the outskirts of our little self-important high school society. In short order, I had set myself up as the "rock" of the group - comforting my friends, organizing celebrations of victories, and settling inter-group disputes. I was always the one they came to, boys and girls alike, as the neutral third party who would hear them out and give them advice. Somehow part of my job description was that I could never talk about my own uncertainties with them. Between this and living in a "democratic" household where maintaining the illusion of certainty was the key to getting what you wanted, I had no outlet in which to voice my growing doubts that I was "normal" in the traditional, narrow-minded sense.
By senior year, no longer having to fear rejection from potential friends and in the hurry we all managed to survive somehow, I was reduced to what I like to think of as my natural state. Without having had any education regarding transgender issues or practices, I started practicing a primitive kind of binding by wearing my old sports bras; I never did this intentionally to look like a boy, but the desire to have a flat chest was in the back of my brain at all times. I had long, curly hair that my mother was always trying to get to me to wear loose, but something about it repelled me, and I would always squirrel it away in a tight bun so it looked like I had a close crop all the time. I never wore skirts or dresses anymore (except for special occasions). While I hated camping, there was a small joy in it that I would probably get to wear my father's sweatshirts or button-downs if I intentionally packed clothes not warm enough.
By this point, I had discovered my taste in books and film, and I began to notice I (almost without fail) idolized the male characters over the female ones, and would dream of being them sometimes. I envied their masculinity and power. While all my girlfriends went to pieces wishing they could be the damsel in distress, I dreamed of being the stoic hero hugging them tight and protecting them against all comers. However, again, I wrote this off to the very male-dominated nature of these entertainment mediums. Of course I was going to like Legolas and Aragorn over Arwen... right? Also, as a writer, I began noticing all my main characters were male, and comfortably, believably so, according to my readers; in high school, I experimented successfully with writing a story starring a very loving homosexual male couple, told from a first-person point of view. But, as my friends insisted, there were a lot of straight, "normal" girls who enjoyed (and wrote) yaoi.
Nonetheless, I essentially started cross-dressing every year for Halloween and loved it. Even in high school, I would prefer to game with my brothers' friends at every opportunity than sit with the girls or the adults at parties, but the boys were more distant now, always treating me specially on account of being a girl and not really connecting with me like they had before; now I had lost my camaraderie with both them and the girls. My mother scolded me for still being in my angst stage at 16, 17, 18... she couldn't fathom I still felt lonely and confused about my identity when I was surrounded by so many loyal friends and so clearly well-adapted to being a grown woman.
After a lifetime of only liking boys, I started feeling an attraction to certain girls as well. I liked feeling like the chivalrous gentleman (opening doors, pulling out chairs), and they let me do that for them. I came out to my parents as bi in my junior year. They took the news with an unhealthy dose of skepticism - not condemning it in any way, just being very vocal in their doubt that I actually was, since this attraction had manifested so late and so rarely. They chalked it up to harmless experimentation and insisted that I not tell anyone because it would pass in a few years and I shouldn't ruin my reputation with others in my town by attaching that stigma to myself prematurely. Message received, I quietly continued to ponder my feelings while avoiding relationships and confrontation on the subject while desperately wanting to out myself to someone.
I graduated high school as a girl, and attended prom as a girl, dressed in a homemade prom dress my mother and I had spent months designing and painstakingly putting together. I had a good time, mostly because, while the other girls pranced around in $500 reminders that their parents were absent and needed to buy their childrens' love, I was showing off perfectly tailored, conclusive proof my parents loved me more than anything. I went stag, and enjoyed one last great night with my awesome group of friends.
My summer job in a bakery required that I play the part of the adoring "countergirl," short shorts, pigtails, and all, and I obliged. I despised wearing the short shorts, but the money was good, and I would change as soon as I got home. By then I was very curvy and developed - It was impossible to wear boys clothes anymore, or bind to my satisfaction. I saw college as the next great hurdle. No longer would I have a support group of friends who wouldn't question if I came to class wearing what I wanted. At college, I would have to try to wear my girly clothes once more and see if I fit in this time.
My first semester was miserable. My floormates drank five nights a week and kept me up until 4 AM regularly. My roommate was very passive-aggressive and always partied. I wouldn't have cared one way or the other if it hadn't impacted my ability to succeed. Isolated from the people I lived with, I struggled to make any friends at all. I wore girl clothes for less than two weeks before returning to my old t-shirt and jeans days in despair that the masquerade hadn't worked. I put in for a room change and prayed. My only success in connection was in attending the meetings of my campus straight-gay alliance, where I felt my weirdness would be tolerated, if not outright accepted. It was there that I learned about Female to Male trangenderism and was assigned an FTM mentor. In the course of several weeks of research and several conversations, I realized this was very likely what I had been struggling with all my life. I balked at the list of fees and complications, but even new as I was to the community, I knew this was very likely what I had been looking for all along.
I came out to my parents as questioning upon their first visit to see me at college, about a month and a half in. They returned to their previous stance of skepticism almost immediately - if I really felt this way, why had I never spoken about it before? Questions and accusations ranged from "you're just trying to explain why you don't have friends" to "you're making a big decision that is going to screw up your life, no ne will ever love you" to "you only feel this way because the only friends you have are at SGA, and you want to fit in there." I was immediately subjected to rapid-fire interrogation about everything: Did this mean I wouldn't want children? Did I want to change my name? Did I want hormones? Surgery? I had felt it was important to alert them to my questioning early, so we could discover these answers together, but they took my not knowing for sure at that juncture to mean I hadn't really thought it through, and that I was just using this as an excuse or for attention. After lots of backpedaling and halfhearted assurances I didn't really want to change myself, they bought me some boys' jeans and went home.
I secretly bought myself a binder and started wearing it occasionally. Upon their request, I started seeing a free school counselor. I had my first real relationship with a boy, which ended disastrously after an intimate encounter which was inexplicably very uncomfortable for me. I hated being treated like the woman int he relationship in all respects.
The Christmas holidays were the most devastating. While I enjoyed being home with my family, there was this unspoken subtext that something was out of joint between me and everyone else. Finally, when I confronted my mother for the first time in several months about it, she came back with her final conclusion, which was that "everybody else learns to love what they have, why can't you?" She accused me of wanting to lie to people by "passing" as a boy, yet was violently opposed to me doing hormones or surgery or changing my name. I've always been a romantic, and she insisted that I would only be making myself miserable by ensuring no one would ever love me that way. Her final word on the subject was "if you want to destroy your life, I won't stop you, because it is your life. But I don't want to hear about it if that's what you're choosing to do."
Ever since, we have talked regularly, and she continues to be proud of me and my accomplishments at school, but I never bring these doubts up to her, which is devastating to me, since I am quite used to telling her everything.
I'm not even sure what I would tell her, since there are so many doubts I do still have. I can't seem to find a new name I could imagine my family calling me, one that really fits - Charlie is a family name and the best contender so far, and the next in a long line of ambiguous names I picked out (Jaime, Jesse, Darcy, etc.) which also leads me to question what I really am. I share my mother's fear that nobody will want me if I were to go through with this. I know that it would drive a wedge between me and my family forever. I still dream of conceiving children someday, though not bearing them myself. I am terrified that living the way I want to would cost me all my job prospects (I have always wanted to be a writer and a teacher). I don't freak out when I get my period, or avoid looking at myself in the mirror; I have never felt the urge to get surgery to alter the equipment I was endowed with down below, and I don't think I ever would, though I don't want to be treated as a woman in that respect. I haven't socialized with boys casually in so long, without them sizing me up for a date, that I don't know if I could if I did end up passing; all the girls in my life treat me halfway between a tragically fashion-challenged nerd-girl (which I hate) and a gay guy (which I don't mind at all). I am very confused, and I kinda dread giving the best years of my life to either doubt, indecision, or suffering through a second puberty my family would never accept.
Sorry for rambling on. It all seems relevant to me... kinda. Hopefully I can work through some of this and start posting some cheerier stuff.
So, the one-million dollar question: has anybody else ever felt this way? Are my doubts because I fear rejection or because I'm not transgendered in the traditional sense? Any good counters to these doubts?
Thanks, everybody.
~possiblycharlie
