Hey-hey! Some of you may have seen me bumping around on the chatroom since last night, talking videogames and overusing smilies from time to time, but I figured I'd try to be a part of the community at large here, since you're all so supportive and caring, it really does feel like a family, and a crutch to keep me up if I ever have a problem.
There's really not much to say about my life story that hasn't already been told and told before. As a child, I spent kindergarten and first grade wanting to desperately hang out with the girls more than the guys, playing house and other games with my sister and her friend. They'd make me be the daddy, when I really wanted to be the daughter, even though I never spoke up out of fear of castigation.
That fear pretty much led me to being closeted up until now, especially concerning the fact I was raised in a sheltered Christian upbringing, and made the dumb decision to be baptized at the age of eight. The contrast between who I wanted to be, and what the church considered wrong, kept me absolutely frightened to stay closeted when I was younger. At the age of 12, I started stealing my sister's clothes and wearing them when no one was around. I had understood by that age that there were certain elements in our society called "crossdressers", "drag queens", and people who generally wear women's clothing for the sexual thrill of it. I took it as a bit of a make-it-or-break-it moment, and wore the first of many outfits I stole from my sister - I didn't get an erection or sexual thrill out of it, it just felt right. For the first time, I finally had an understanding of my true nature, all that confusion finally rolled up into one revelation: I'm a girl trapped in a boy's body.
But I couldn't bring myself to come to those terms with other people, especially with my family, having to go to church on Sundays, and THEN mother forcing me to go to a Christian middle school, so life was all Christ, all the time, and I could not only never be free to be who I wanted to, I was condemned to repress and deny my feelings for what I thought was for good. It got to a point where I was considering suicide as an option, for these reasons and more, but suicide being a sin, I couldn't bring myself to do it. I was literally pigeonholed into my own personal Hell.
Once middle school ended, though, things fell apart from the Christian side of my life one by one. I told my mother I didn't want to go to a Christian high school, and she didn't want to send me to a public high school, so we settled on home-schooling (which is a whole other nonrelated story that includes dropping out and getting my GED). She got into a huge fiasco with our home church over some ludicrous reason, pulled us out of church, and finally quit having her "Jesus talks". Unfortunately, my thoughts were still so repressed, I never really got to get reacquainted with them.
Fast forward to 2012, my parents have since divorced, and I'm staying with my dad to keep him company after mom moved to Cinncinatti; I had officially renounced and denied my faith, and in the beginning of the year, began to write a fantasy book - it's about a boy who offered the Devil his soul as a youth (something I'd actually tried when prayer didn't work) in return for being given a female form, a deal that happens in a manner he didn't see coming until ten years into the future when he'd forgotten all about it. I'm close to finishing it and hope to have it released in the next year. Writing this book became an exercise in catharsis for me, and writing it helped not only reinforced my newfound atheism, but also got me reacquainted with my own feelings and struggles as a young man, to the point that after researching for almost as long as I've written the book, I come to realize that, yes, I'm still a female in a man's body, that part of me has never changed. So in the past few weeks, I finally decided to do something about now that I have almost nothing to fear from family, or religion.
I did so first by coming out to another transexual friend of mine from the Internet. Her immediate reaction was to call me one of her "cubs", as she feels like she's the "den mother" of outed transexuals from an online community we both come from. It made me feel both welcomed and "initiated", so to speak, and gave me the confidence to come out to my first family member: my sister. It was a big deal for me to come out to a family member, but if anyone could have understood me, it was her. She spent all her life being a rebel, strong like a rock, not willing to be a part of some religious peanut gallery. We never got along for years, and in fact, I had publicly disowned her a year ago after a massive fight we had. She had wanted to rebuild that bridge ever since, and when I texted her (I was too scared to call) and come out to her, she had a confusion as to what transexualism was until I explained it to her. After that, she was proud, excited, and happy for me that I finally "found myself", and when I asked if she would be willing to go out on "weekends" with me as a female to start transitioning, she said she would, and said she hoped this meant we could become closer siblings. I was so happy to have someone with me as I start out my journey, I had the first good cry in a really long time.
That's where I am at this point, I'm 26 years old, I know for an absolute fact now that I am a woman, I'm going to be starting college in the fall, on a weight loss regimen with some plans to go tanning, I have a budding friendship with my sister, and while there are pieces that will fall where they may, and bridges to be crossed, my future is optimistic for the first time in my life. I feel like I have the ideal support I need, and I couldn't be happier.
My name used to be Anthony Robert, but now I prefer to be called Amy Renee. Hello! ^_^
