Quote from: kalt on October 03, 2007, 05:26:15 PM
Will do.
If you see anyone you connect with, don't hesitate to follow your intuition.
Why don't you share a bit about what it was life for you, growing up as a transsexual?
QuoteAs to the olders, I'm amazed at what I read so far on your journeys, in fact to some of you respected members of the community, I'm speechless as to what you went through.
Yeah.
It must've been like Vietnam back then.
We should come up with the National Transsexual Medal of Honor, bestowed by Lady Shabli and Susan:-)
QuoteAs for me, I have no mentor or forum-adoptive parents 
Well, I here Kate is charging $10,000 a year to be a forum-mother. 
Much of my life is in my blog, Sandy's Transition. Growing up I always knew something was wrong. Really wrong. Like having your shoes on the wrong feet, but all over.
I didn't have feelings at that time, about 8 years old, that I had the wrong gender, but I never felt comfortable in my skin.
As I grew older I read about transsexuals like Christine Jorgensen and was fascinated. I could not get them out of my mind. I kept wondering what it would be like to become a woman, to live as a female.
I felt I never could, though. All the stories I read always showed the transsexual giving up everything in their life, being stripped of their livelihood and having to become strippers or whores in order to live.
For most of my life, I felt I was just a crossdresser. But I never really got a sexual thrill about dressing up. Early on there was an erotic thrill of doing something naughty, but after a bit I would just feel "normal".
I could never speak of this to anyone. I thought I was some sort of pervert. My parents were uneducated and had very straight beliefs about sexuality. In other words anything that wasn't strictly heterosexual was queer and wrong, and sinful.
I could not speak of my feelings to my friends since they were very heterosexual and felt perverts who dressed up in womans clothing were ->-bleeped-<-ots.
Because of this I internalized my feelings. I learned how to act like a man. It was a difficult learning process for me. In school, I would be ostracized because I had natural feminine mannerism and I had to actively learn to suppress them. I had to think about every gesture I made, every word I spoke so that it wasn't "queer".
I was called queer quite a bit. I could never figure out why. I liked girls, I still do. I never had many friends as a result.
As I grew older I kept my true feelings hidden from everyone. Including myself. I never admitted to myself that I was a transsexual. I called myself a crossdresser. I felt it was just a hobby. A bit outrageous but nothing to worry about. I could never come out to myself. All the nightmare stories of transsexuals that had lost everything haunted me. I was not a transsexual, no way!
Because of this dichotomy between my feelings and my beliefs, I suffered from very severe depressive moods. I would have these feelings of normalcy when I felt feminine or if I called myself a girl. But then I would hate myself for those feelings because they weren't "manly". I never knew what being manly was all about, but I knew I was wrong to have those feelings of femininity. This would lead me down the rabbit hole of depression.
As a result of this I never appreciated anything I would do. I loathed myself and so anything I did was worthless. I never had any pride in myself or any self esteem. Sure, I could look and act happy, but that was all a mask. A character I created to deal with the world that acted the way society expected him to act.
As a result, I actually did become an actor on stage. I was very effective at it on stage. I knew how to act because I had been doing it all of my life. It was fun in one respect, it took all my powers of concentration to act, remember the lines, move on stage. During those times I had to forget who I was on the inside, I had no time to think about anything except my character on stage. Also my fellow actors were fun to be with and very witty and smart. A joy to be around. They never knew that I never came off stage. I just exchanged one character for another.
I kept this facade up through two marriages. I did tell my wives about my little hobby. I never kept those kind of secrets from them. But I told them the same lie I was telling myself. I was just a crossdresser. I never wanted to take it any farther than that. Just an outrageous, occasional hobby.
During the intervening decades, my depressive cycles came more frequently and became deeper and more bleak. Eventually my thoughts of suicide became very realistic and I eventually started playing suicide games with myself. I would attempt suicide but then stop. Then call myself a coward because I didn't have the courage to actually kill myself.
At my second wifes encouragement (now my stbew) I was asked to seek therapy. I said I would also seek therapy for my gender problems. My wife just wanted to not come home and find me hanging in the cellar. I agreed.
Therapy for my depression went hand in hand with my feelings of gender identity. It brought in focus for me what my real problems were. I still couldn't admit that I was a transsexual though.
Then something earth shattering happened to me. Probably like many of you, I had taken many of those online gender identity tests. I discounted all of them though because to me, there was always an obvious transsexual answer to the question. So I felt these tests were biased. It didn't matter that I could never get any of these tests to even score me even marginally masculine.
Then I found one test that was heuristic in nature. Basically it had no pre-conceived idea of who was male or who was female. I had random questions like "If you ship a package overseas would you use a plane or a ship?". At the end of the quiz it would make a prediction of gender. The person being tested would then respond whether or not the prediction was true. Over a period of time, the test became a fairly accurate predictor of gender.
I took the test several times and was always read as female. I sat back after that and said to myself: "But what if you *are* a transsexual?"
At that moment the world changed. Never before had any answer felt so right. All of a sudden the world became a place of beauty and color. I finally came out to myself. I came out of denial. For the first time in my life I finally knew who I was. I was a woman.
From there the therapy became much easier, and following that was HRT then FFS and transition to 24/7. The dissolution of my marriage also occurred. Very few relationships can survive a gender transition. Most spouses never expected to become homosexual to the person they married. Most women married men and had no intension of becoming a lesbian when her "man" becomes a woman. I can understand that completely. In a very great respect I lied to my wife and myself. The marriage was founded on a lie that I maintained. When I stopped living the lie, the marriage collapsed. In that respect I feel I was a heel, a cheat. I was not honest to myself or my wife. And that devastated her. If I have any real regrets about transitioning, it was that. I am sorry for that. And if there was a way to make that better I would do that. No one deserves to be treated like that.
To you youngers here, I hope your transition is easier. There is the great equalizer that I never had growing up, the Internet. If I had someone to talk to when I was younger, online or in person, I may never have had those feelings of guilt and self loathing. I may have changed much earlier. Though in the end I really appreciate where I am right now and if I had done it earlier in my life I may have not really appreciated it. I certainly would not have had two wonderful daughters and a granddaughter who love me unconditionally and accept me completely.
If someone want me for their mentor drop me a line. I don't know about being a mommy though. My kittens are quite a handful and take all the mommying I can give them.
That, in a nutshell, is who I am.
Who are you?
-Sandy (I talk a lot too)
