The first time I stepped out of the door, i was 14 and so scared I was shaking. I thought some one might see me or call the police, who knows. I was so scared in fact I only had enough courage to sneak out of the house under complete darkness and rarely ventured farther than the yard. In my mind though there was always this need to go more. Call it whatever you wish, but I wanted the world to see me as I was, not what some ID papers said. The only thing I had to wear were my mothers clothes since I didn't own anything for myself. By about 16 I was getting getting brave enough to find something for myself like one of those bra/panty sets. I paced around for a 1/2 hour in a store looking from 5-10 feet away but never gutsy enough to pick something off the rack. In a sudden moment I picked something off the rack not even knowing if it would fit. The big challenge was once I had something I wanted to wear it, especially to high school. I don't know why I wanted to wear it, or what purpose it served, I just did and I didn't know why. I had no idea of why I was the way I was. My mom called it perverted so I figured it was something bad. I was lucky that I had a really good hiding spot at my house and was able to keep my mom from findng anything. She did a few times and I got all kinds of threats and usually anything I bought was tossed right into the garbage. Eventually I found the one spot where I could hide stuff without getting caught. By the age of 18, I had a whole other wardrobe that no one ever saw but nowhere to wear it except the backyard at midnight.
I want to say I was about 18 or maybe 19 by the time I was able to get out of the house all done up, in a dress, nylons, borrowed makeup and all. At first I just got into the car and drove around, I didn't know where to go or what was safe. I felt if I got out of the car, someone would kill me. But it didn't happen. Most people aren't paying attention. They aren't looking, they see 1+1 and I know it adds up to 3, but they see 2. That's when I started to become more comfortable being out. It was just little things, pumping gas, buying a pack of gum or can of soda, a few times some clothes but hey I was out and I survived each outing. I have no idea of what people thought or if they knew, but somehow I just didn't care. Being out outweighed the fear by 1000:1. I found my favorite shopping ground was Marshalls. No one ever said anything so I started to feel okay shopping there.
I joined a cross dressing club, the tiffany club, and that's when I discovered very quickly that I didn't quite fit in. These were heterosexual guys, usually scared out of thier wits to be outside in a skirt, sitting around talking about sports and cars and smoking cigars. I wasn't meant for that world, but it made things even that much more complicated because what the hell was I? They hid in the club and I wanted to be out and about. I found a few people who also wanted be out, 1 very soon transitioned and that was basically my introduction to transsexualism. That scared the crap out of me so much, I didn't know what to do. Hartford CT has a TS support group called the twenty club (XX club). I have no idea if it's even around anymore. I paced for hours every time they had a session but I was too chicken to go to one. So I gave up temporarily.
Then I went through a few rounds of purges (throw everything out, feel guilty about it 5 minutes later, and then I was out shopping the next day). When I had my first apartment is when I started to feel more comfortable. By then I had a wig, I used to come home from work, get all dolled up and then sit around and watch TV. I didn't have to purge anymore. I wanted to be a girl more and more. Sitting around the house wasn't good enough for me. I wanted to be out. I don't know why I just did. Thankfully I did pick up a few pointers from the CDers club about speaking very quietly and some basic rules for being out, so out I went. That's when my gender started taking over my life and I knew what I had to do.
