Hello all. I am Megan Ashley...or at least, that's who I *should* be.
The name, merely a place holder as I have a long journey ahead of me before deciding on that but the names Meaghan and Ashleigh have always resounded within me.
So there is my introduction. Now let us on to my story.
At a very young age, I knew I was different. I didn't want to play ball with the boys. I didn't like Tonka trucks and being dirty just always seemed so gross to me. I loved wearing my grandmother's shoes and hats. She was a very glamorous woman. Straight out of the pin-up generation, she always wore beautiful dresses with crinoline skirts, kitten heels, back-seemed stockings, garters, gloves and gorgeous hats with little veils or flowers. She was a definitive pin-up in a lot of ways.
I was always a creative and imaginative soul. I loved to make things, pretend, had imaginary friends. But I grew up with 2 brothers who were definitive manly men. They both worked on cars at my dad's car dealership. They both played football and baseball. I, on the other hand, always felt forced into sports. Sure, I was good at them. I played on a state championship little league team as a catcher. I played Pop Warner football. I still love football today but as a spectator, not a player.
In junior high, I used some of my birthday money and allowance money to buy bras and panties and stockings. And I slept in them at night. And I was eventually caught...multiple times...by my parents.
I remember sitting at a restaurant with my parents, my aunt and uncle and my grandparents. The only one besides me who didn't talk about this as a "phase" and as some kind of psychological problem was my grandmother. She was very understanding but kept silent throughout this whole "conversation". The rest of my family just kept asking me over and over what was wrong with me, why was I doing this to them, was it a phase, was I going to grow out of it, was I destined to be gay...
Needless to say, after that, I bottled ALL of it up inside and hid it away from the world.
My junior year of high school, I went to work at one of the local malls at a clothing store. It was a men's clothing store but we had a sister store that was women's clothing and we shared store managers. One of the managers was a drag queen. The other was a very outspoken lesbian. Never before in my life had I ever felt more...comfortable. These people didn't judge me. They knew I was different but they never questioned me or asked me questions they knew I either couldn't or wouldn't answer.
The two times in my life that I presented as a female in public were during this time. We did a lot of fashion shows at local clubs and one of them was at the local drag queen showcase. My manager (the drag queen)convinced me (by this time, both managers knew that I was trans or suspected myself to be) to do one of the fashion shows a femme. He did my makeup (he was also a makeup artist at Merle Norman in the same mall), loan me some breast forms and helped me with them...he even helped me tuck as I was going to be wearing some pretty feminine and revealing clothes in the show. Apparently, it worked pretty well because 2 of our coworkers who were straight guys were both amazed at the transformation and said if they hadn't known, they would have hit on me as a woman. Even more reinforcing was one of our other coworkers at the women's store didn't recognize me and she even introduced herself to me...when she found out I was me, she hugged me and said I was an absolutely gorgeous woman.
That moment sent butterflies through my entire body. It wasn't excitement. It wasn't sexual tension or anything like that...it was complete and utter relief. It was this absolutely joyous feeling that I was exactly who I was meant to be at that moment. A complete and total revelation.
The next time was a company holiday outing. We decided to ALL go out dressed as the opposite sex. And we had an absolutely amazing time. A couple of guys bought me roses. I had never been more happy or content in my life. But I digress. For me, it wasn't the sexual validation of a guy finding me attractive. It was that a guy looked at me as a woman. Everything felt right with the world.
And suddenly, it all came crashing down around me. My parents found out about both of these CD adventures and as the saying goes, "flipped the eff out". A family friend outed me as he had heard a conversation between my managers and myself and passed this on to them.
Threats of disowning me. Threats of kicking me out. Being forced to see my pastor at my church to discuss my sexual deviancy. Being forced into psychiatric care with a very religion-centric therapist who did nothing but try and convince me that what I was going through was a natural pubescent sexual exploration and that I would be "normal" when my hormones leveled out. I was forced to quit my job and get a "normal" job at a convenience store.
Enter my senior year of high school. Offers of art scholarships to design programs. But my dad put his foot down and said he would not assist with my college expenses unless I went into a "less gay" major. So I tried to compromise. I got a baseball scholarship to a local private university. They also happened to have a fantastic graphic design program. 1.5 years later I was dropping out because of alcoholism, depression, very self-destructive behaviors all brought about by this mentality that I was somehow broken.
So I did what any good young man would do who is seeking his father's approval...I joined the Army. And this was probably the best and worst thing that could have ever happened to me.
First, the worst thing because it forced me into a role that I didn't want to live. I got married to the girl I dated throughout high school. We had 2 children together and I suffered in silence while being away from those who I thought were there to support me (HA! My family...).
The best thing because I met a drill instructor, one Sergeant First Class John Slaughter (no bull...I had a DI named Sgt Slaughter!) who taught me a ton about myself and to be who *I* wanted to be and damn anyone who tried to sway me differently.
This of course was on a more professional level as I was still trying to deny the woman in me. But it did give me the motivation to seek out a career and a life that I wanted to lead.
Unfortunately, my marriage fell apart. I was never one to initiate sex with my wife. I am very submissive sexually and she took this as me not being interested in her.
So let's pause a moment here and clarify my sexuality a little bit. I know this doesn't determine gender but it does come into play in the grand scheme of things. If anything, I am bisexual. But I am a bisexual woman. My attraction to men is from a feminine point of view. Homosexual acts in a male on male role do not appeal to me. I have actually discussed this with a gay friend of mine who is probably the most understanding of what I am going through of anyone I know...but more on that later.
Anyway, my sexual submissiveness was misinterpreted by my wife as lack of interest. So she found...other means. I found out, we got divorced. It was messy because she always used our 2 daughters as leverage. She found someone new and moved out of state. I made every effort to see my children as often as possible which wasn't as often as I liked but was more than a lot of estranged fathers.
After the divorce, I found myself returning more and more frequently to cross dressing in private (remember, the only 2 times in my life I ever publicly presented as female was during my junior year of HS). I would wear women's clothing around my apartment, sleep in nightgowns, wear wigs and breastforms, etc. In public I was a "regular" guy.
I started chatting with a girl from over 1000 miles away online via a game we played together. We fell madly in love with one another...and loved each other in spite of (or because of?) our baggage. She knew about my trans tendencies and cross dressing and I knew about her intimacy issues and self-destructive behaviors. And things went well for several years. Eventually, she moved out here and in with me. We reveled in each other and our different ways of viewing life. Plus she LOVED shopping with me because I helped her get over her horrible dressing habits. Hehe.
But she was younger than I by quite a bit. I also took her for granted more often than not and eventually we went our separate ways. We are friends to this day and she knows who I am and accepts me for me. This has helped me more than I ever thought it would.
After that, I returned to my dressing in private. There was never a sexual aspect to it. It was just that when I looked at myself in the mirror, dressed as a man, everything looked wrong. When I looked at myself in the mirror when naked, again, everything looked wrong. But when I was dressed as a woman, I felt at peace. When I was in nothing but bra and panties, tucked and with breast forms, I felt like THIS is what I was meant to be. It looked right to me.
But I still felt like there was something not right with me. That I wasn't who I was meant to be and I needed to find that out before moving forward in any more relationships.
Unfortunately, I shot myself in the proverbial foot. I returned to the church based counseling service that my parents had forced me into. Thinking, this time, I am going into this on my own terms so they will help me the way I need to be helped and not the way that someone else thinks I should be.
Boy was I wrong. The therapist and I had a pretty comfortable relationship...right up until I came out as a cross dresser with trans tendencies. And that's when the proverbial crap hit the fan. Little did I know that this therapist was out to attempt to destroy everything I thought I knew about myself and confuse me even more than I already was. She managed to convince me that what I was experiencing was nothing more than fetishism and if I looked for help and guidance from God, then I would get through "this".
I was confused, looking for answers and didn't know where to turn/look so I felt like she might be on to something. So I took her advice and started going to church.
I ended up meeting a woman through a mutual friend at church and we really hit it off. She was very spiritual but had a bit of a wild side that made me comfortable with her. For 7 years we were together. She knew I was sexually submissive which worked out well as she was more dominant. We also enjoyed a lot of the same hobbies and her young son and I were pretty inseparable.
At one point, she was diagnosed bi-polar and was put on medication to help with that. A year or so after that, she had her gall bladder removed and had to go off her medication for it. When she was recovered, she refused to get back on her medication and our relationship really went haywire. I couldn't be sure of the girl I was going to encounter when I got home from work each day. It was very stressful and we ended up in counseling together...with the therapist above...
And the worst thing that could possibly happen, happened. The therapist brought up my CD/trans in a session and that was that. My now fiance became increasingly abusive to the point where I finally packed everything I could carry in 2 suitcases and tried to leave. It got so bad that the neighbors called the sheriff's dept. When they arrived, they tried to arrest me because...obviously, I was the man...so I was clearly the aggressor /sarcasm. The neighbors came out and said that she was the one physically assaulting me. They put her in handcuffs and asked me if I wanted to press charges. I absolutely did not. I just wanted to leave. So they kept her in custody while I gather my stuff and left.
I tried to maintain a friendly relationship with her considering I had been the only father figure in her son's life from age 1 to age 9. But she became verbally abusive and didn't want her son having anything to do with me because she didn't want him to turn out like me...as if what I "had" was contagious. *facepalm*
Anyway, I convinced myself at that point that I should remain single. I should be who I felt I should be and I should focus on me.
For a couple of years, I maintained a very solitary life. I rented half of a friend's house and she was incredibly understanding of who I was. She didn't get freaked out when I hung out around the house in yoga pants and tank tops and a bra/breast forms. She was married but separated and we really became better friends during this time. She would hold me when I was so sad that I could do nothing more than lie in bed and cry. I felt like she understood me more than anyone had in a long time.
Eventually, she encouraged me to start dating again. She directed me to an open dating site and I tried my hand at online dating for the first time in my life (officially since I had met an ex online).
Through this site, I met the woman who ultimately became my wife. We dated for a couple of years. We moved in together and eventually got married on a Friday the 13th a few years ago.
My wife is an amazing woman. She has a very diverse past and while I haven't come out to her as of yet, she knows that I "used to" CD and that I am a sexually submissive person. She knows I have this deep "dark" secret but that I am not yet ready to come out with it. I know she has her suspicions. And if I am completely honest with myself, I don't think she will be surprised at all. In fact, she made an appointment for us to get manis/pedis tonight for our anniversary. Of course, she knows I love to be pampered...massages, manis/pedis, spa days...but it has always been as a male.
I have made the decision...a new year's resolution if you will...to seek out a gender therapist and begin my journey to become the me I am supposed to be.
To be sure, I have experienced dysphoria extensively. There are times when suicide had seemed like the only option left to me. But I have friends who helped me through those low points in my life. The thing I do know is that when I look at my naked body in the mirror, I hate what I see. Not from a "I'm too fat" (had gastric sleeve surgery last April and am down 110lbs so far! Yay me and my self-image!) perspective but from a "What is THAT thing doing there and where are my breasts??!!" perspective.
I have reproduced...passed on my seed as it were. I have 3 daughters and my oldest and youngest (youngest is 18) both know that I feel this way and are incredibly supportive. They don't care what gender I am as long as I love them and continue spoiling them rotten. I keed! I keed! But they want nothing more or less than for me to be happy with who and what I am.
My parents are another story...as is the rest of my family. My sisters may be willing to accept me for what I am. They are the most likely. My step-mom passed away a couple of years ago but she would have ultimately accepted me even though she was one of those who sent me down the path of self-loathing. My grandma is late stage Alzheimer's now and barely remembers me even though I visit her almost every day. She would have been the one right beside me, helping me pick out outfits for pin-up and boudoir photo shoots.
My brothers...their wives will accept me. Them, not so much. They are stereotypical Midwestern gun-totin' good ol' boys who would much rather bottle up or completely hide their own feelings. My younger brother is always posting up anti-LGBT stuff on Facebook and my father is about as racist, sexist and homophobic as they come. I have a sinking feeling that me coming out would pretty much be the end of my relationship with at least some of my family.
So here I am...out here on the raggedy edge...and I aim to misbehave.
And I am so happy that this resource exists to help me and those like (a relative term to be sure as we all have our own journeys) me.
P.S. The site avatar at the top of the screen is so scary like my self-mental female image it is almost eerie. Hehe.
