Hi there
I'm 53 going on 21 and assigned male a very long time ago! The thoughts for-which-I-never-had-words began to crystallise about 18mths ago and since then I've been through the familiar pattern of denials. You know the ones: the 'it's just a fanciful thought' 'it's somehow a sexual thing (guilt)' 'it'll just be my testosterone dropping' 'I'm sure everyone has thoughts like this' need I go on?
I started to piece together thoughts from over the years and asking why I never quite felt right about marrying (twice). I realised that my sexual thoughts were not actually gay because that didn't sit right either. Clinchers were praying hard as a boy that I would wake up as a girl... dressing when around the same age... and being horrified whenever my mother spoke of her hopes that I would play rugby for England and had legs like tree-trunks. I bloody well didn't have legs like that and I abhorred team games preferring swimming and athletics.
If those are a couple of clinchers that spring to mind, there have to be all the other less obvious signs that are too many to be coincidence. The final acid test is of course how one feels inside and I have only little doubt there now.
My mother was someone I wanted to please, my background was very conservative and old-fashioned, but in a very loving large family. There was however a lot of pressure to succeed - to make my family proud, so for the better part of my life I did that: burying myself in what was expected. Since her passing ten years ago I had a third major relationship with a woman but that too ended in stalemate.
I've had to bore you with the family background because I use it to explain to myself why it has taken me so damned long to realise and conclude that Yup, there's a woman inside here who's been shut up so long. Her voice is subdued but insistent and she's been there all along. She is me but she's a very good actress!
I've only come out to one person - a lifelong friend and one-time fiancee. I'm not sure where this journey is going to end. I had thought that exploring my trans would make me happier but it hasn't. As Morpheus said in the Matrix "Come with me and I'll show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes". Thanks for reading and I look forward to meeting you on the forum. Jane
