I wish. I had the misfortune of being born into a family where everyone thinks that everything that isnt a physical illness, is a phase.. EVERYTHING. My mom and dad were more liberal with me than the rest of my family, but they always got heat from everyone else about how they were "bad parents", and with the pressure of working ungodly hours to keep us going, they never realized anything. So to put it clearly, 80% of my family thought everything i did was a phase, and 20% (my parents) never even had time to process any of it and would often just try to avoid family drama by just shutting them up and treating it like it was a phase...
No one ever questioned why I bought the spice girls diary, sneakers, CDs, movies, idolized baby-spice and wanted to BE LIKE HER. No one ever wondered why I happily played with my best friend's barbie or baby dolls, why I could have a perfectly fun time being with my female friends and just talk for hours, no one ever questioned my desire to wear feminine things or express feminine attitudes... hell, they didn't even assume I was gay... seeing as thats a common thing to assume when you have a very effeminate son. Everyone in my family just ignored it like it was a phase. It wasn't until highschool that my "male" persona started developing out of survival... i went through hell in elementary and middle school, bullied day in and day out because I was sensitive, because i was fragile, because i was kind, and because i didn't like anything that "normal boys" liked... no one ever bothered to ask why I wanted to wear swimsuits instead of swim shorts... or why i would walk around in "mommy's" clothes and not "daddy's"...
Seriously; just talking about it kind of gets me riled up... all the signs were there... and no one paid any freakin' attention.. so much so that I developed suicidal depression, anxiety, explosive rage and extreme denial, as well as living a sheltered life where i was afraid to do anything... I would always just tell people in my family "no one is listening to me, no one cares!" and I never understood what I meant exactly, i just knew that I felt like no one was listening, like no one was paying attention to me, like no one was bothering to understand me.
It wasn't until my bell went off that it all made perfect clear sense. My family didn't even so much as mention my very feminine habits and interests whenever it came time to see a psychologist... and even the incompetent morons i saw as a kid couldn't see it either... they said I had ADD, ADHD, Autism, Daddy issues, etc. all of which were completely wrong.
When I was a kid, i felt like i was girl and behaved as such.., then i grew up and buried it deep inside until the day that it almost killed me... I often wish i would've transitioned sooner... but not for the idea that I would look better now... simply for the fact that my life would have been so much happier if people had just paid attention to me... but i guess thats what I get for being in a hispanic family, in a hispanic city, run by hispanic ideals... people in south america still cant so much as grasp the concept of someone being gay, let alone being trans. I don't blame my parents, they were constantly working and didnt even know that being trans was a thing at the time.. but i do have a bit of resentment to the rest of my family just for being so blatantly closed off to the idea that anyone can actually suffer in their head and not just on their body.
On a side note: at some point in my highly feminine childhood, my family was beginning to actually deny me anything that can be percieved as feminine... I wanted an easy bake oven so bad... and not because it was a girl thing, i just wanted to bake cookies and brownies LOL, but they said "no! don't get him that! he'll come out gay!". From that point on it was pretty much "guy" music, "guy" colors, and male-driven conversations about ass and p***y -_- jokes on them though, because now I'm not only trans, but a lesbian too xD
