... but I realized something tonight and I've just got to tell someone.
I've had an account here for a while, but until now haven't posted. I've looked around some, and it seems like a gentle place. I like that, a lot.
I'll post more about myself in the future. Right now, I'm at work and things are about to get busy. But this couldn't wait.
I came out to myself about six months ago at the age of 59. I don't know if you'd call me one of the lucky ones, in that I never experienced gender dysphoria *as* gender dysphoria. In my case, it masqueraded as something else. Since coming out, I *have* experienced it as such, once the way some of you girls have had to live with it. OMG, it was terrifying. At any rate, I never made the connection. I've lived my entire life functioning at a level far below my innate capacity. I always put this down to low self-esteem; but I was wrong. Realizing that I'm a woman was like turning on a light switch I never knew was there. I'm alive.
I've looked back, trying to spot indications in my childhood, without much success. I grew up in an abusive household; my childhood was hell, and I don't remember it well. However, I thought of something tonight that suddenly made sense; and that's what I had to post. I have to tell someone.
When I was 12, I thought I was going crazy, and I was terrified. I couldn't be more specific; there wasn't any reason at the time. That was just the way I felt and how I expressed it. My parents used to have terrible arguments, and I've always theorized that this feeling had come from internalizing their conflict, probably because I remember feeling it when I would hear them arguing. This made some sense to me. But why did it happen at that time? My parents had never gotten along.
I didn't think even this far at the time. I just told them in a panic that I thought was going crazy. As educated people, they did what educated people do: they sent me to a child psychiatrist. I spent the summer seeing him once a week; and that was that. I don't remember the experience, or how my panic was ameliorated.
It hit me tonight. Puberty. Testosterone. My body was flooding my brain with a hostile hormone, and I was experiencing disorientation -- dysphoria -- on an unprecedented scale. I just never connected it with gender.
Wow. "Sokath, his eyes open."
