From the time I was a toddler until I the summer between the 6th and 7th grade when I was 12 going on 13 I was just a kid. I was the oldest and there would not be another girl for six years. I didn't think about being a boy or a girl and since I had a boy's body I did boy things because as far as I knew that's the way things were.
Looking back through the years I can see how in many ways I was a timid tomboy more than anything else. I wasn't adventuresome and was more of a homebody. I never played with other kids inside their house nor my house much. Mostly, I played outside. I was nearsighted and extremely shy. I basically was just walking through simple electric trains cub scouts, boy scouts, paper route, and softball. I wasn't good at either boys or girls sports. My friend were sometimes boys and sometimes girls. When I see my picture in my elementary class pictures, I see someone who is just there. In movies and tv shows, I was intrigued by the dance hall girls and I wished that I was one of them. Also, I felt more like I could be more like Dale Evans than her husband Roy Rodgers. Sometime in the 1950s I became aware of Christine Jorgensen. More and more in my imagination I identified with being a girl, but I was too afraid to do anything about it except daydream. One time I found one of my mother's dresses in the large walk-in closet in my bedroom and I put it on and wearing it stuck in my head. So did putting on lipstick from a used up tube she left in the bathroom. Otherwise, her personal stuff was in my folk's bedroom which was strictly off limits.
In my generation staying within your limits was a force that was a live and well. I was too much of a timid shy girl to test my limits. I lived in small towns in the Dakotas where everyone knew everyone and their business. My fears set the boundaries of my life and over time more and more of the walls of fears would fall. When wet dreams started, I felt more shame and depression when I masturbated than, wow that's great. I was extremely ignorant of the facts of life and remained so for years. In my family we were doers and not thinkers. Alcohol usage also influenced the emotional climate in my family all of my life. I hid in a daily routine which included school, paper route, sports, church, being a friend's house in high school. Exploring my femininity was only safe for me in my imagination and would be until adulthood.
The extreme winters in the Dakotas and moving every five years and living with our extra family members Budweiser and Jack Daniels and Johnny Walker and the death of my dad, and my new stepdad were all the stress I could deal with so Michelle stayed hidden.
Getting my education and my dealing with my feeling of inadequacies came first. I just buried myself in life and finished high school and then it was college or the military and Vietnam. So I struggled to finish college. I was a conscientious objector and had to find a job for two years for alternative service, and then there came marriage and teaching and my family and kids. When this world fell apart when I was 53 I found Michelle. All but one of my five kids were grown up and I found myself alone for three years.
I had no one to take care of and for the first time I had privacy to be Michelle at home and since my job was 30 miles away, I had some expectation of being Michelle at home would not reach me at work. Five years later would come the end of my fulltime teaching career.
I found a new family who knew me as Michelle and at least accepted me as a crossdresser and I had one more child. When I reached 62 and was of Social Security age, work was over and Michelle went public. I chose to see my life as a unity and be Michelle to everyone past and present that had a presences online. So I came out on social media.
Everything else has not worked itself out because all I can is be Michelle emotionally and in how I dress. Maybe my Medicare Advantage Plan will change and pay for transitioning, but until it does, there has been no hormones, very little counselling, and no hope of surgery. I am Michelle and tell people that is how I pronounce Michael. The price you pay for not transitioning early is that you have some 60 years of legal records with your male name and a male gender designation which means lots of years of teacher's contracts and college records. Most don't make any difference unless the government looses your Social Security records and you have to prove your employment over the years and your income.
I guess even though I am public as Michelle and I know I am a woman and I need to have breasts and a vagina, there are still wall to bring down. At 68 years old, I hope I haven't waited too long. All my male dyke clothes are gone. I can only be Michelle for the rest of eternity, no matter what anyone thinks of me or what any councillor says. I have gone public as Michelle in every aspect of my life. I will never beable to pass 100% of the time and sometimes I don't even know if I do or not. I get called Mr. and Ms. and at school my son appears to have either two mothers or I am his grandma or I am his dad who is a crossdresser or a woman.
When you transition later in life it's not so simple having so much past with the wrong gender identity legally and physically.
When you transition early in life you have the possibility of acceptance, but there are complications when you are a female who can never give birth to a baby or have a period, so that it can get awkward when you are out with the other ladies and your talk about life. And you have to explain it to your man and their is a fear that a childhood friend or friend of your family or a family member lets it slip that you were not born with a woman's body. When you have been a female from the time you are a child you hope it never comes out, but there is the fear it could. Then as a young person you have to find a job and a profession and keep a roof over your head and create a family as yourself and even get involved in the sex trade to survive. But that time working in the sex trade could come when you are elderly too because your pension or Social Security just isn't enough to live off of or you fall deeply into debt. Then as a woman there is always the cattiness of other woman and the way woman emotionally deal with others emotionally and some have to keep up appearances and the fear of what people will think about the way you dress or carry yourself and your masculine characteristics or not being ladylike enough.
Finally as a woman you are always the target of the male sex drive and the violent way men react when if they discover you are not ladylike enough or have the wrong private parts. Me personally with my partner there is no sex because she can't take birth control and there is no way I can raise another kid. It's all the more reason to have a vagina or take female hormones. I don't cheat ever. And if I found myself alone again, I have decided to let sex with another person to take care of itself. I don't function as a man except maybe at the last minute if then which makes birth control for me difficult. I also do not connect with other people in a sexual manner. Other individuals just do not come on to me, or I am too dense to notice and they figure its not worth it.
I am not sure if I answered the question of why I transitioned so late in life or not. For the most part I was too sensitive and afraid and growing up in the Dakotas and living on the Reservation in Arizona and New Mexico and now Florida, I have not lived in places where transitioning has been remotely possible and I have never had the means to do it. I also take care of others before I take care of myself and most often get no thanks for it and little understanding. Some of this is my fault and some of it is just life and some of it is these and some of it is just being awkward and very guarded with my life even when I appear to be open and friendly. A lot of it is just never being in the right place at the right time to do more than I have. A lot of it is that live goes this way and I go that way and miss out on a lot of good times and bad times and just plain ugly times. I am just one of those people who are no place when life happens that could lead to lots of personal issues.
