Uh, okay then, where to start? First, the short version I guess. I'm 26 years old, currently leaning toward MTF, but maybe not quite there yet. I live in an undisclosed location in the state of Minnesota. I've been a lurker for some time now, but I just now finally managed to build up enough courage to make an account and introduce myself. I decided to sign up with the name Miyuki because it has some personal meaning, although I'm not Japanese or anything, and it's unlikely that's the name I'd use if I were to fully transition.
Now for the long version. I was never what you would call a masculine person. When I was very young I used to have blond curly hair, and I always insisted on wearing it long. Pretty much everyone who didn't know me thought I was a girl. My parents apparently decided to cut it before I started school, but I really don't remember that well. From there on out things got a little complicated. Growing up I wasn't ever so overtly feminine that I was singled out for it. But, in retrospect there were a lot of signs I wasn't a typical boy either. When I was younger I used to love watching things like the Little Mermaid and Rainbow Brite. Who am I kidding, I used to pretend I was Rainbow Brite. At day care when no one was looking I used to play with the dolls and other girl's toys. When it was time to shop for school supplies a lot of the stuff I used to get was from Lisa Frank.
But, as I got older I sort of started to repress that side of myself. It didn't help that I went to a Catholic school and stuff like that wasn't exactly encouraged there. But it may actually surprise you to know that at the school I went to, none of the teachers ever really confronted me about it. I just ended up having a hard time socially, and hardly had any friends. So as I got older I gravitated to things like Power Rangers, and started to act more like I thought people wanted me to. Or at least how I had to act to keep from being picked on. Eventually the stress of the whole environment started to get to me, and I started overeating. By the time I was in third grade, I was severely overweight, and had developed some serious self-esteem issues.
Things kept going on at that rate, and when I got into middle school my grades started to slip as well. I was in the 99% percentile on standardized tests, but I was also depressed and unmotivated. Whenever I got home I would just escape into watching TV, playing video games, or later, surfing the internet. I wasn't interested in any extracurricular activities (though my parents forced me to play baseball in the summer, which I hated). Externally I was in most respects staying within the normal realm of behavior for a boy my age, but internally I was an emotional mess.
When I hit puberty, a few things changed. For one, I realized I was not gay. I was attracted to girls, and that fact alone made it easier to socialize with other boys. At least we had something in common now. I definitely started to act more like a boy, and feel like one too. And yet, my sense of self esteem did not improve. I was attracted to girls, but I felt really uncomfortable with the idea of asking one out. I guess more than anything, I feared they would judge me as harshly as I judged myself. So if you're wondering how that aspect fit into my life, the answer is, it didn't. To this day I have never gone farther with a girl than casual conversation. Even later in life when I found out a girl I liked had been wanting me to ask her out, I just felt too internally conflicted to do it. I think it might have hurt her feeling too, because we started to drift apart a short time later...
Anyway, even as I began to work myself into a more masculine person, I still wasn't by any means comfortable with the whole thing. Whenever I played a video game that gave me the choice, I would always play a girl character. Whenever asked about it, I just used used the excuse that if I had to stare at a character the entire time I played, it might as well be one that was pleasant to look at. The truth was, the thought of playing as a male character by choice sort of repulsed me.
It was around this time I also started watching a lot of anime and things of that nature, and got pretty into Japanese culture. One of my favorite shows was Ranma 1/2. If you've never seen the show, the basic premise is that the main character changes from a boy to girl if cold water is poured on him, and a girl to boy if hot water is poured on him. I liked the show because it was funny and entertaining, but... I couldn't deny that I was horribly jealous of his ability. I guess what with the testosterone and all, I convinced myself the only reason I was attracted to the idea of being a girl was so that I could look at myself naked any time I wanted to. But it retrospect, I'm pretty sure there was more to it than that.
It was also around this time that I started to develop a serious sleep disorder. I was starting to lose the ability to sleep on a regular 24 hour cycle. I was never really a morning person, but things were getting worse. Even if I did manage to get up on time, I'd spend the entire day as a zombie, completely disconnected from what I was doing. Getting to the end of the day was my only motivation, but then when I finally did, I still couldn't sleep, and the cycle started over again. Eventually I learned that the condition I had was called non-24 hour sleep wake disorder, and it was extremely rare. It mostly only happens to blind people who lose their ability to maintain a circadian rhythm due to lack of expose to normal light cycles. But in my case, it was probably caused by an unexplained cyst in my penile gland that showed up on an MRI. Unfortunately, because the penile gland is located deep inside your brain, there wasn't much they could do for me. I tried sleep medication, and it worked for about a week until I built up a tolerance. Taking melatonin supplements was somewhat effective. I couldn't have made it through high school without them, but eventually even they weren't effective enough to keep me on a 24 hour cycle.
I did start college, which lasted all of one semester. I could never have gotten in with my high school grades, but my ACT scores were high enough than many schools were willing to overlook them. After that, well, I've been living with my parents and just trying various things to get my life moving forward. Some more successful than others. For example, thanks to the decreased stress in my life, I finally managed to finally get my weight down to a normal level. But to my surprise, it didn't help my self esteem levels or depression nearly as much as I had hoped. Nor did much of anything else I did.
I think the real point when things took a turn is when I started to notice I was experiencing some hair loss. It wasn't particularly fast or aggressive, but I still panicked pretty hard. And strangely enough, I wasn't even sure why I was panicking. I mean, I don't think anyone likes to lose their hair, but it's normal for a guy. You can hardly find an example of a male person who has a completely full head of hair by the time they hit 60. Why should it bother me so much? But it did. It bothered me so much I looked on the internet for anything I could find that would help me stop it. Of course I read about the usual suspects like minoxidil and finasteride, but neither option seemed sufficiently drastic. They did work for many/most people, but they weren't 100% effective, and I wanted to find something better.
Then I stumbled upon a discussion about a transgender person who had been successful in reversing a massive amount of hair loss through hormone therapy/minoxidil. I think that was the first point in my life that I had ever seriously looked at the subject of being transgender, and what it involved. To be honest, the extent of my knowledge on the subject was that MTF transgender people dressed up like girls and had surgery to turn their penises inside out. I really wasn't aware of the details of hormone replacement therapy or all the other things transitioning entailed.
That was a really eye opening experience for me. At first I guess I was more upset than anything, because in the back of my mind I knew that if I'd ever known this was an option when I was 12 years old, I would have done it in a second. On the other hand, I was not 12 years old anymore, I was 24. I really wasn't sure if I was ready to deal with something like this at this point in my life. Plus, I didn't have a lot of money to work with, and had no readily available employment opportunities.
I started by taking a combination of finasteride and a low dose of testosterone blocker (I believe the rules state that you're not supposed to talk specifics on HRT regimens, correct?).
So my first regimen went pretty well, and I actually started to feel better in ways that I didn't expect. I was less depressed and my outlook on life was generally improving. Unfortunately the anti-androgen was giving me issues with low blood pressure. It got bad enough that I had to switch to another medication, but worked great for me. I had very few side effects, and my testosterone levels hit the floor within a few months. It also required that I take a low dose of estrogen to prevent bone density loss, which I have to say wasn't the worst thing in the world, although I didn't experience any major body changes at the dose I was taking.
So here I am, having been on this regimen for about 2 years, and being pretty darn happy with it. My hair loss has stopped, and with minoxidil I got a decent amount of regrowth (though my hairline is still a little on the high side). Overall I am the least depressed and most at peace with myself that I can even remember being. And yet... I can't help but feel like I could still go further. I really don't like being male or being masculine in any way, and I could definitely see myself pushing things more toward the feminine side. Right now I'm already leaning pretty androgynous in terms of appearance. Despite being 26, people often confuse me for the younger brother when I'm around my 15 year old brother (he does look old for his age though, and he's taller than me). I've never been mistaken for a girl that I'm aware, but I think I could probably pull it off with the right clothes/hair/makeup combination. However, that's not an immediate priority.
The reason I decided to make this account now, is that I am starting to get the pieces together to at least look a little harder at fully transitioning. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act and the Medicaid expansion, I should be able to get insurance now that will allow me to go somewhere that I had been wanting to go for a while where I should be able to get good counseling and possibly get on the fast track to an orchiectomy so I don't have to take as much medication. Then maybe some discussions toward a full transition will start, although I'm pretty sure I will need some way of making money to be able to get it done. Or, I may just decide that being androgynous works well enough for me and completely transitioning wouldn't necessarily make me any happier. At the moment I'm going back and forth on the subject a lot. Part of me says just do it and you'll feel 100% better. The other part tells me you're already happier than you've been in a long time so why risk doing something that could screw it up? Well, at the very least I want to do something to get rid of my body hair because the anti-androgens haven't done enough in that department and I really think it's gross.
Okay, I guess that's more or less all I had to say. I'm not really sure how much I'm going to post on here in the immediate future, but I'll definitely be around.
