Growing up stories

[NickSister]

Many of us have had rough childhoods, some heartbreakingly so. I thought I would share some of mine with you all. Please feel free to share yours.

I think my childhood was dominated by instinctively just wanting to act a certain way, but often feeling the need to temper my desires. It was painful. I could see I was born a boy and was aware of the rules, but how I hated those rules. At the same time I did not think of myself as a girl. I guess on some level I thought everyone was like me and that I was just better at ignoring the 'rules', everyone else were just being sheep or lemmings. Funnily enough I felt this way untill my early 20's before I finally clicked that I was actually different.

Some of my earliest memories of feeling dysphoric were when I was 5 or so. I would find a corner to hide behind at school and watch the girls play 'elastics', wishing I could join in. I still remember one time when I was loitering outside of my school unit during class time and I saw a little girl accross the way at the entrance of another unit squat down and pee. She went away and came back with some toilet paper to mop it up. For some reason that image burned in my memory. It was like the coolest thing ever. I was their to witness this really private act in this amazingly public place. It seemed incredibly intimate. I still marvel at the memory. Why did she do that? Why there? Who was she? Why couldn't I be her?

My father is manic depressive and was often irrationaly violent. When I was little I would just go away and shutdown somewhere, and my siblings would come crying and sobing and hysterical. I was like ice. I'm still great at hiding my feelings, I don't even realise I do it. When I got older I would try to help mum oppose dad even though I was dreadfully scared and probably half his size. I'm still smaller than he is. One night I threatened him with a hocky stick. This is one of my most awful memories. Though we get along well now and his meds are good and he has mellowed and is more stable and I know it was his mental illness, his words from that night still hurt today, "it is over between us".

To cope with everything I was often lost in my own fantasy world, and often felt like I was missing something. Everyone else seem to know what to do, how to live, how to act, where to go. They all wanted the same things and knew the steps to get it. I did not understand it. I was lost in the clouds. I still feel like this sometimes, like I'm missing a piece of the puzzle. I would often get punished for inatentiveness, forgetting homework, permission slips. I am dyslexic and my handwriting is really bad so I guess this did not help their impressions of me. The teachers considered me dumb and told my mum I was cheating because I blitzed the national competency tests. They told me I had to read '3 blind mice' at 7 ( a book with about 30 words in it), yet at that time I was reading Lord of the Rings in my own time. I just wanted to fade away.

[Tristen Cox]

Growing up? I wonder sometimes if I ever really did grow up.

Early on when I was a few years old I found myself playing withwhat were considered girly things. My mother thought it was just cute at the time. My father never seemed to have an opinion or kept to himself. I was about four or five. When my mother would be sewing things, she'd let me dig through her jewelry and materials. I'd wear some of these things and we laughed a lot but I don't think this was ever taken seriously.

I can relate totally to the last paragraph posted above. I created an escape world in my head over the next few years. Got as far from reality as possible. My parents weren't doing so hot, and additionally the older I got the further the genders got separated. I didn't understand why someone said "you're acting like a girl" was so wrong. I'd watch them at school. Talked to them daily. And all the while I had male friends that seemed so opposite from me. That was the only word I could come up with 'opposite'.

When I was around 8 years old I tried on a few of mom's things when no one was home. Stockings, shoes, dresses... I did that a few times and it felt great. But before I could really get into enjoying it I made a bad choice. I put on some of her stockings while my parents were home and I was in the bedroom watching TV. My father came in and pulled back the blanket to discover my secret. My heart jumped into my throat, I was busted. He then proceeded to explain why it was wrong, but I didn't want to hear it. He was the kind of father that pretty much only talked to me to punish me and tell me I was wrong. He never laughed or seemed to take being a father very seriously. We hardly went anywhere together and it was usually in silence if we did. I won't bother trying to figure him out. I learned later he had completely changed once he knew my mother was pregnant.

Anyhoo, growing up was difficult since it was just me and my mother that actually shared a relationship. I never talked to her about my feelings though. I was scared and I regret it now. For years I wondered why I wasn't born a girl. Why it was wrong to want to be even remotely 'girly'. The male thing just didn't fit, I didn't understand it, and at times I hated it. But there wasn't much information available at the time to get an understanding of what was going on, and I was prolly too young to comphrehend it anyways. I stayed isolated and alone.

Through my teens I acted like the typical boy but in private I had started a little CDing collection of clothes. I didn't know why, it just felt better to dress up and be girly. I figured I was trying to escape still.

Many times I thought I had been caught and tried to throw everything away. Yet there were feelings inside I couldn't discard so easily. These would not go away. All sorts of other things went wrong on top of that. I lost friends for no reason I could figure(or they turned against me??), I lost girlfriends, and was hit on by boys...which confused me even more. A lot of my friends turned out to be gay. You have to understand that back then gay was something I'd been trained was also wrong. I know now that it isn't, but at the time it was an unknown thing. I didn't react poorly to them telling me they were gay, but I didn't know enough to reason out why is was okay for people to be themselves. I couldn't even except myself. This just made me feel even worse. All I wanted to be was normal.

By the time I finally figured out what I was truely I'd all but given up hope. To me finding out I was a TS was like a light switch getting flipped on after a lifetime of darkness. Everything that had happened started to make sense. It wasn't just clothes that I liked to wear, or that I acted a certain way. It was the whole set of feelings and thoughts I had inside. I desperately wanted to be a different person, I wanted to be female. I realised this had been the problem all along. That if I had known what was inside perhaps life would have been very different. 

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

[LostInTime]

I lived in a happy household with two parents who loved me and due to my height, I was barely picked on while in school. The TS thing has always been there and it was difficult to deal with and I felt I could not approach my parents about it. Of course that led to depression and thoughts of suicide. Managed to not do that and eventually sought out help within 18 months of moving out of the house.