Hi, All!
A little bit about me...
I'm a 31 year old MTF.
Wow! If I would have told myself a year ago that I would have ever been able to come out and said that so simply, even in an anonymous forum, I would have never believed myself!
I know my story isn't all that unique, so I'll try to be short... I've know who I was meant to be since as long as I can remember. My earliest memory is from when I was 6, and it revolves around the awareness that I should have been born a girl. Sadly, but not surprisingly, because of shame and disapproval both from myself and my parent, I tried to bury it all away, and by my teenage years doing so lead to depression, which lead to cutting, and ultimately suicide attempts. Even in the aftermath of those attempts, when I was hospitalized, I had come to hate myself so much, I still couldn't come to be open or honest about who I was.
After that, the only way I went through life was to entirely cut myself off from the world. I just sort of became a mirror, being whoever people wanted me to be in whatever situation I was in, not allowing myself to feel or experience anything. I was just numb, sort of like I was sleep walking through life.
A little more than a year ago, I hit a crisis. I felt so stuck, and so tired, that I realized I either had to turn and face who I was, or end it for good. Luckily, I had enough left for one last push, and found a great gender therapist, and began climbing out. It has been lots of hard work, and ups and downs, but finally feel like I'm waking up, and I'm experiencing life again, and my world is starting to have colour and a future again.
I'm in the early stages of my transition, I've come out to my family, to varying degrees of acceptance, my close friends, and some of people at work. I'm lucky enough to have a few close and really supportive friends, a wonderful boss who seems almost more excited about this then I am, and a wonderful girlfriend whose helping me realize I can love and be loved again (she's actually the one who found this place, and signed up for herself long before I'm writing this).
I'm just about to start HRT in a month or so, and thought, in light of that, it might be a good idea to try to make some connections with a community of people who know and understand what I am and will be going through.
I look forward to hopefully meeting and sharing with some of you.
Thanks,
Giselle Marie
