I'm not sure if I should introduce myself as Allen, who I've been or Ashley, who I want to become. I started asking questions about a month ago. Questions I had been to afraid to ask before. I suspect this journey started about 16 years ago when I decided to grow my hair out and reached a major turning point when I tried on a skirt for the first time around the beginning of June.
Since then I've realized there were indications going back a lot longer than 16 years ago. I also believe that I'm bi-gendered, which is part of the confusion of introducing myself. I feel that parts of my personality are female, parts male, and some where its a mix of the two. Ashley seems to be the part of myself that wants to interact with the outside world including things like sexuality. However since admitting who I am to myself I realized sometimes I'm attracted to girls as a girl, sometimes as a guy, and sometimes both but for different reasons. It can be very confusing.
I came out to my parents and one of my sisters who all acted about as expected. My mom accepts it, but is struggling the most. My dad seems to be ok with it, doesn't get it, but is trying to figure it out. He even made it to a pflag meeting, when ironically I missed the one around here. My sister was the most accepting of it and reacted positively so fast it shocked me a bit. Unfortunately my other 2 sisters are a problem. One claims to be tolerant but not accepting of gays and lesbians (she never mentioned trans) and the other tries to beet me over the head with a bible every time I post anything pro LGBT on Facebook. To make things worse her husband told me all gay people should be stoned. (rocks not drugs)
I've been working on expanding my wardrobe. Assuming I was comfortable going out in public as Ashley (which I'm not quite ready to yet) I don't have anything I would feel comfortable wearing yet. I have ordered a few things I'm hoping would change that. I've also reached out the a therapist that mentioned LGBT issues, but haven't gotten a response yet. There is another one available if this one doesn't work out for any reason.
As for transitioning, I think I'm going to have to. I've always been grossed out by my own genitals and its only gotten worse since I found out. One day for no reason I can explain I got angry and said out loud I wanted to cut it off but couldn't knowing its a requirement for the surgery.
That's mostly everything going on with me in the past month. I'm still learning what this all means. I'm not quite sure what to expect.
