Hey Everyone :-)
I'm Carmen, 25 years of age and currently in preoperative state. I live in Toronto Canada and have a great boyfriend as well whose very supportive of my transition.
About My Gender Identity - At the age of 7 I had known that there was something very off about myself. I assumed that I was simply gay because of my attraction to boys. As life progressed, I found at the age of 19 that there still wasn't something quite right about myself. Having seen some documentaries and a bit of research I had found that I was clearly TG. That was a major changing point in my life as I wasn't sure what to do. Starting to transition isn't an easy thing at least not for me. I was lost and had no clue of who to talk to or how to go about things.
I eventually figured out a rough plan of what I wanted to do and so I had contacted clinics about HRT. I found a transman who had told me about a trans friendly clinic here that would help me out with this aspect of my transition and I got in touch with them. It took me about a year before I could obtain any meds because they needed to do a psychiatric evaluation to be sure that I had the gender dysphoric symptoms. Over the course of my 5 yrs in transition I have done countless hours of electrolysis which is still not done because I can't seem to find someone whose going to do it without screwing me over. I did some brief voice work training and took it from there and came out at my job last May.
The most difficult aspect of transition I think is to be open at your job. At least for me anyways, I find that the ignorances of others really comes out when your showing your TRUE self. But in the end I am confident enough to still go to my job as me and to face the BS head first.
Hopefully in 2013/2014 I will be undergoing the final aspect of transition which will include ' gender reassignment surgery '.
Sometimes I ask myself, would I do it again ?. I think I would because this is a pretty incredible opportunity to be able to do something so brave as to come out and transition and to be confident ect.
Anyways, I hope to make new friends here :-)
~ Carmen ~
