Hi all. I thought writing this intro would be a lot easier than it's turning out to be, but I'll do my best. I apologize in advance if I ramble, which I might, and if it is long, which it certainly will be.
My name is Elias, I'm a FtM from Rhode Island (...tiny state, represent? haha) going on 20 years old this year, and only very recently have admitted to myself/ come to terms with the fact that I can't continue going through life as a female.
As a kid, I was never very concerned with gender. Granted, I was never exceptionally "girly" as a child, but I didn't insist on playing with other boys or demand that I get toys or clothing meant for boys. I had an older sister, whom I love very much and get along well with, but to this day have never been particularly close to (the kind of close where you can tell each other anything and everything, bare your soul and feelings to).
It wasn't until hitting puberty that I felt any real negativity toward my appearance and gender. As I went through late elementary school, middle school, and high school, I felt increasingly uncomfortable with myself. I had few friends, and those I had were rather shallow, schoolyard friendships.
I couldn't be with people the way I wanted to.
I couldn't make friends with the boys or else I'd appear to be have a crush on them.
I couldn't be close to the girls without being uncomfortable, feeling out of place, or fearing they would think I am gay.
Art was always my channel of expression and it was easy to isolate myself from my peers.
Through my high school years I consistently dressed non-female, though rather flamboyantly for a male (I was very much influenced by my favorite musical genre, Visual kei; a very male-dominated Japanese music and fashion scene where cross-dressing, flamboyance, and theatricality is the norm).
I bound my chest often.
My artwork always featured beautiful males. Perfect face and bodies, saints of some sort; I'd never admit in those days that these men were just surrogates and that every work was an idealized self portrait.
In my sophomore year of high school I made the first real friend I had made in years ( arguably, ever.) and within months, I came to see that I couldn't stand being only her friend.
Sometime around 3am on New Year's Day I asked her to be my girlfriend, and she's been unwaveringly by my side ever since.
I graduated high school discontent, an insomniac, empty despite having earned an impressive amount of awards and recognition for my academic and artistic work, and having been accepted to my first choice college; what is likely the top art school in the USA and well known internationally as well.
Things should have been perfect and lovely, but it felt a shell. It was all things to distract me and push aside whatever I felt lurking in me that just felt wrong.
I attended most of my first year at the Rhode Island School of Design. It was trying, exhausting, and emotionally draining. I figured it was that way for everyone.
But was everyone hyper-calculating of every move they made?
Did everyone crawl in their skin whenever their name was spoken because it just felt so wrongly attached to them?
Without realizing it, I slowly regressed to being entirely withdrawn from my peer group, hardly spoke to family except when necessary and prompted to, wept daily and nightly, ate little, took to self harm (not for reasons of any suicidal feelings, only for the sake of distraction), and began to fall behind in the quality of my schoolwork and art.
One day in early March, hardly a month into my second semester of school, I took a city bus off the campus to my girlfriends home. The next day I was filing my voluntary leave of absence from the school.
And with an email to my professors and immediate classmates, and some questions and confusion from a few school officials, I was gone from the school.
Fast forward to today, June 5th, 2014. I am employed at a local grocery store as well as at a theatrical/living art company (a dream of mine). I am engaged to my aforementioned girlfriend of several years. I am sleepless on a couch as I type these words which only weeks ago I would have never written:
I am transgendered. I always have been and always have lied to myself, pushed it away, avoided the thought as if it would wither and die like a plant refused sunlight.
But it grew, and like a weed strangled everything else until its existence was regarded solid, irrefutable, an unwavering fact.
I've found solace and acceptance in the person I love; found confidence in her support and understanding.
Together we're taking this long journey of my transition.
Together we christened me with the name I'll now carry in life.
And together we'll face every challenge that coming out, therapy, legal documentation, and physical transition will entail.
Never have I felt the level of completeness, wholeness, and honesty with myself until now.
I'm now in your hands, and I look forward to talking here with you all. I'll have many questions, and I have a very long way to go from here.
But for now I thank you for taking the time to read all this; what feels like my life story.
It's taken me years to get to the point where I can say all these things with certainty and without guilt or self-hatred.
But here I am, and everyone starts somewhere, right?
Again, I thank you.
-Elias
