I want to take you on a journey back in time to late summer early autumn of 1963. A young mother of one is pregnant with her 2nd child. The baby wasn't due for another few months but on a mild day in September she went into labor. She and her husband arrived at Elmhurst hospital with great anticipation of the child soon to be born. This young mother was brought onto the labor and delivery floor. Her excitement was hard to contain. Everyone she met she was telling then to think pink. Back in those days there weren't ultrasounds to determine the gender of the child beforehand. So going on the old wife's tale of trying to determine the gender of a child by the way she was carrying the baby in the womb, she was convinced she was having a girl. Think pink! She would tell the nurse's taking care of her. As the doctor came into the room for the delivery she exclaimed THINK PINK!!!!
Finally on a mild September morning in 1963 at 11:15 I arrived into this world but I wasn't the little girl my mom was expecting. I was assigned male at birth. I came into the world early, a small baby with very translucent skin but healthy. The one thing that stood out for my mom was my strong set of lungs. I screamed and cried all the time.
This is where I wish I could say that I grew up just like all the other boys around me. Although outwardly it appeared that way at first. Gender roles in society are very clear. Boys are supposed to do boy things and girls do girl things and back in the sixties those roles were being forced upon you everywhere. So I played with the boy's and did boy things but always felt that I didn't belong. I always felt different. Like so many others that are transgender. Of course at that time I had no idea what transgender was.
I was always looking at what the girls around the neighborhood and at school were wearing. I loved the way their dresses and skirts looked and wished with all my heart that I could wear what they were. I truly longed to know the feeling of what they were wearing and this left me confused. I was probably around 7-8 years old when I was going to bed praying the in the middle of the night God would change me into a girl. Every night as I laid in bed I was praying. I would pray myself to sleep but always hiding what I was feeling. At that young of an age I had never heard of transgender or even knew that it was possible.
One afternoon in the early summer, it must have been around 1973-74 when I came across a box in the laundry room in our basement. Being curious I opened the box. It was full of cloths, women's cloths, my mom's to be exact. I went through the box pulling out the dresses, skirts slacks and tops that were in the box. Feeling the material, I sat there in amazement at how perfect they seemed. This got me wondering, for the longest time I wanted to know just what it was like to wear a skirt. To know what it was like to have the skirt moving back and forth as I walked. But I was too scared to do anything about it. So I carefully packed everything pack up and put the box back where I found it.
That night I went to bad saying the same prayers. God please change me into a girl while I sleep, let me wake up a girl! Night after night it was the same thing when I went to bed. I got so desperate that when in the news there were reports of UFO abductions that when I went to bed I would open my window in hopes that I would be abducted and changed into a girl by the aliens. This was my routine every night till I fell asleep.
On night in the middle of the night I woke up. As I laid there trying to fall back asleep and saying my nightly prayer, I remembered that box of cloths. So I got up and went and dug the box out being ever so quite with my flashlight. I opened it up and pulled out a skirt that I had remembered thinking was pretty. I took the skirt over to the seating area in the basement where there was a couch. I laid down on my back and laid the skirt over me like I had it on. I was so nervous and scared, even though no one else was up my heart was racing. Every little sound made jump. I about hit the ceiling when the air conditioner went on and I pulled the skirt of the top of me and put it back in the box. So close to putting it on but to petrified to do so. I went back to bed and after a little while drifted off to sleep with the thoughts of what it was really like to be the girl I so desperately wanted the world to know I am.
The very next night, again waking up in the middle of the night I quietly went to that box again. Pulling out the same skirt and going over to the couch and laying it over top of me like I was wearing it. This repeated over and over again every night for the next few weeks. Each night I would lay there and bask in my secret little world praying that God saw what a perfect girl I really was and would change me. I started to pull out more cloths from the box and decided to pull out a suit case and pack the cloths I liked into it and stashed it away making it easier to get too.
I started to see my world open up in a way even though I was still hiding to the rest of the world especially my family how I felt. When I would go to the store shopping with my mom and she looked through the women's or girls department I would walk through running my hands through all the cloths so I could experience all the different materials that boys didn't get to wear.
After a few months of my nightly excursions to the suitcase, I finally got up the courage to actually try on the skirt for the first time. My heart was pounding and I was trembling with fear and anticipation at the same time. Here was this white short skirt with pleats all around it that had first caught my eye and now I'm about to try it on.
As I put it on, there was a strange feeling coming over me. It wasn't excitement or anything sexual about it at all. It was something much different and something I never felt before. There was a sense that washed over me and just like that all my fears, nerves and anguish were gone. That was the first time in my young live that the world felt right. I never really realized just how much dysphoria I was in till that moment. The feeling that this is what I am. I really am a girl! These cloths are really what I should be wearing.
It was that moment that sent me on a journey into myself. But it was short lived. Not long after that night my parents found the suitcase and I was pulled into their room and asked to explain what I was doing with the cloths. I told my parents that I was just pretending to be going on a trip. The next thing I knew I was sitting in the office of a psychologist and was being asked if I thought I was a boy or a girl. I distinctly remember telling him I'm a girl. "NO YOU'RE A BOY" he said. We went back and forth on that issue for the next few weeks. I always told him I was a girl. (I often wonder how much different my life would have been if he listened to what I said). His diagnosis was that I was going through a phase and that's exactly what he told my parents.
That was my first collection and purge of cloths and items to come. By time I was in high school it was a little harder for me to find cloths until I started working for a store called Venture. I was a cashier for them and I was happy to be working in a department at the time that was all female other than myself. I worked my way up to working the service desk and my desperation and dysphoria finally got the better of me and I did something that was out of character for me. I started stealing women's cloths by putting them in a bag and putting a seal on it so I could take them out of the store. It didn't take long before I was caught because I wasn't very good at it. So I had to go home and tell my parents why I was fired. My mom went through my dresser and found my stash of cloths and made me get rid of them.
In high school we had a dance group and I joined the production side of the group. I helped with the lighting and sound for them. It was a way for me to be around the girls without them wondering why I was there. I use to admire the outfits they got to wear. Everything looked so soft airy and just beautiful. After every rehearsal, I would be there later putting away equipment and I would get the chance to wonder through the girls dressing area and run my hands through all the costumes dreaming that someday I would be able to wear something like them. I did permanently barrow a few items from the girls when they left them laying around and every chance I got I would put them on and try to dance around but I was never very graceful.
It didn't take long before a pattern emerged, a pattern of collecting women's cloths. Different types of skirts and dresses all sorts of colors and materials. I became obsessed with the cloths. But I would get caught and purge everything. This pattern continued into my adult life and because I was working fulltime I was able to afford things that I was able to afford when I was younger. Now I was able to not only buy cloths but shoes, makeup and wigs.
To me all the gathering and purging along with the dressing was a learning experience. How so? I always knew I was different than other boy's. I never fit in and always dreamed of being a girl. When I was young being transgender and transitioning was never talked about and I didn't think it was possible. From a young age I learned to suppress what I was feeling because of the responses towards myself from adults in my life. I started to realize who I was the more I collected and dressed. The realization that the world felt right when I was wearing dresses or skits. Being fully dressed as myself calmed my dysphoria even though at the time I didn't know just what dysphoria was yet. I just know that there was a huge disconnect between my body and my brain.
As time went on and I learned just what transgender is, I started to slowly come to terms with the fact that I'm not a crossdresser but transgender. It took a most of my life to understand just who I am. The cloths were a big part of that understanding. It was the cloths that first relieved my dysphoria. It was the cloths that gave me hope. It was the cloths that gave me peace. It was the cloths that gave me self-worth. When I understood all of that I understood I need to stop hiding who I am and started my transition.
