Describe your experience growing up

[cryan91]

Hi everyone,
So as most of you know I'm an undergrad art & design student. I'm looking to do some performance video work. Usually I work behind the camera but I want to turn it on myself for a video class. I want to explore my own experience but I find it a bit difficult to come up with ideas. I want to work with experiences we face from birth to our mid-20s. The period of self-exploration that everyone must go through but narrowing it down to severe issues in relation to sexuality and gender identity. What we transfolk have dealt with. If youre feeling helpful I'd love it if you could give me 10-20 words describing yourself or how you felt/feel during this age and describe in detail what was most challenging for you (outside of the most obvious trans-related issues, yet still very much associated with the fact that you're trans...if that makes sense).
It's almost 2am and I just got back from the studio & am tired and covered in clay. But I hope that I sound articulate enough for you to understand what I'm asking for
THANKS!

[Alainaluvsu]

I hated having to play like a boy, knowing if I didn't, I would get beaten up by my peers and "corrected" by my family.

I taught myself how to be pretty good with makeup, thanks to my mom being an applications cosmetologist. She had a desk full of makeup to experiment with.

I had to learn how to look tough, while not doing tough stuff in high school to keep from getting thrown in the trash (literally).

I passed on learning so many typically girlish stuff in trying to look tough. This has set me back.

My biggest regret of my life will always be that I was not honest with everybody about my GID. I would gladly take a beating every day to have the past 25 years back and be seen as a girl.

[spacial]

Can't really add too much to Alainaluvsu.

Being beaten up, by family and outsiders. Learning to be discrete, Always thinking that, one day, I might make it, but never actually did.

Thinking back, the worst part were the fears I had. Those that held me back. Being beaten is nothing really, the fear that goes with it is what really hurts.

Hope that helps. Sorry, it isn't particularly startling or particularly different. I think most of us have lived through a similar hell.

If those preposterus happy clappy religious types are right and we all do end up in hell, I can see all of us standing there thinking, is this the best you can do? 

[Naturally Blonde]

I grew up near London, U.K. I was sent to a very rough local comprehensive all boys school at 11, called 'girl' and beaten up everyday! usually had 8 pairs or Doc Martin boots kicking me in the head! used to go home with my face bleeding and bruises but my parents didn't care. Left school at 16 with no qualifications drifted into dead end jobs, got picked on again at work for being different and because I looked feminine!  Growing up was probably the worst and darkest days of my life!

[Constance]

In my early school years, between 5 and 7 years old, I thought something like "Oh, well, I was born a boy I'll just have to be a boy." I would learn early on to avoid anything that would label me a sissy.

During puberty I'd wish and even pray that I'd get some strange disease for which the only possible cure would have been a "sex-change." Through most of my teen years and early adulthood I'd think I just had some bizarre kink where I thought females were so attractive I wanted to be one sometimes. I wrote it off as a fetish.

[MacKenzie]

  One word....awkward. 

[Agent_J]

  One word....awkward. 

Seconded.  I grew-up in a home environment that was abusive in several ways (about the only one missed was sexual - physical, mental/emotional, and control aspects were all present.) I was also in a region that was definitely not LGBT friendly. I knew that if I did anything other than keep it totally bottled up the hell that was my home life would go to 11. Honestly, I believe my parents would have put me in one of the infamous "Jesus Camps" for it.

[NikkiJ]

Born to people old enough to be my grandparents. Picked on for being precocious. Aware I was different.

[Naturally Blonde]

Born to people old enough to be my grandparents. Picked on for being precocious. Aware I was different.

I was given up as a baby by my mother for adoption and adopted by people old enough to be my grandparents!   

[NikkiJ]

Nat Blonde: So you know what it's like. It's hard to communicate that to others who don't know what that's like.

I got called "ballerina".

[Lily]

No life, no friends.

I just sat indoors and played with my legos by myself, and later in my teens started playing video games. I didn't have a real friend until last year, just shortly before coming out but after admitting to myself who and what I was.

[pretty]

A struggle between what I wanted and what my environment allowed.

Unfortunately a struggle that I consistently lost in childhood. Religious immediate family and very "upright", traditional extended family. I learned to not go after the things I wanted. Became an avoidant, paranoid doormat.

Unfortunately I had to spend my teen years waiting for transition without the support to do it, but now as I start adulthood, thanks to having the best boyfriend in the world, my future is finally looking happy.

[AbraCadabra]

Really... done that too often by now already.
How about just moving on...?

It can become to some like "The Lord's Prayer"...

Though it will help one to become a good activist, um.

That, I can see...

Axélle

[Joelene9]

  I was a short, thin kid.  I was teased and beaten up for that and my sensitivity.  Jr. High was the downright worst experience I had.  My wanting to be a girl was suppressed during childhood because they did put people away for that.  I even denied that such as protesting when my mom put a dress on me for Hallowe'en once.  I wore it and liked it even though I was denying that to others.  I made a good haul that night.  Unlike some others here I did go for the boys' toys over my sisters' Barbies.  I am no different from the tomboys I grew up with. 
  I slowly grew taller than most in my class in High School and most of those teasings stopped, even though I was still quite thin.  I went through a complete denial through my enlistment in the Navy, but the GID returned afterward.  I saw my first shrink for that at around age 25. 
  I still have some struggles stemming from my childhood, but I am still fighting those.  I am still here!
  Joelene

[Trans Truth]

I would gladly take a beating every day to have the past 25 years back and be seen as a girl.

Same here, although I transitioned well before 25.

[sophia001]

Grew up in an emotionally & physically abusive household, neglected for most of my childhood

School was pretty tough - bulled for not fitting in with boys my own age and called 'gay' for my femme mannerisms. Never could really identify with boys but wanted to be around and play with the girls instead.

Feel like there wasn't much of a chance to develop a healthy identity, never mind a gender identity, because most of my time was trying to figure out how to be someone that wouldn't be beaten up and could blend in better. A lot of my youth was trying to "fit in", I guess it's only recently that I've realised that its OK to be myself (whoever that is)

Thats kind of why I feel like I could be trans or maybe I just haven't found my 'true self' yet, and that it may be some kind of escapism *shrug*
That's what therapy is for I guess 

[~RoadToTrista~]

Happy childhood, bad teen years.

[jennifer6]

Seeing my female friends/classmates do "girly" things like get their periods, shave their legs, buy bras and wear makeup.  I spent a lot of years jealous of femininity, and now regret I didn't have the courage to take the leap earlier.

[peky]

I am from the deep south, that is south of the border. I grew up with them, but was never one of them, my parents come from Germany after the war.

From birth to 6YO I was utterly convinced that my penis would fall anytime. 6 to 12 is my "dark ages:" unable to concentrate, constantly day dreaming, no friends, periodic beatens by teachers and peers, neglected by parents, supported by sisters. Constanly hungry, full of shame and pain.

With puberty come enormous strength and athletic prowess, my mind expanded and learning was exponential, become self reliant rugged individual, totally accepted and embraced my own femalehood, "come out" to everybody. Become very popular with peers ans superiors, had many girlfriends. By my mid twenties I had completed my doctoral degree and was living in America, and married (she married me fully knowing my TS status).

[Ms. OBrien CVT]

I was always picked on and bullied through out school.. partly because I was the odd duck.  Preferred my studies to sports.  Most of the girls in school would become my friends.  I guess they saw me as a kindred spirit.

I had very few friends except for the geeks.  I was one of them.  I never did tell Mom and Dad about the bullying.