The only thing I got I didn't ask for and always hated getting for Christmas was boys clothes but what kid ever really wanted clothes for Christmas anyway, right?
I don't remember ever really wanting something I didn't get because it was for the wrong gender and that's one of the things I don't really understand about my life when I was little?
I've posted this picture before and it's handy so let me use it as an example:
I have always known, felt myself to be and understood myself as a girl. I have no knowledge or recollection of ever thinking something different but what I don't get is how that was perceived, understood and acknowledged by my family? Was it just so evident that I wasn't a boy in nature and spirit? Was I that demanding and insistent? Was I just a spoiled rotten only child who's peculiarities were indulged? I have no clues. Maybe it was all of that?
I'm guessing this picture is from 1959 or 1960? What parents of the era would let their son get dolls from Santa or tea party sets for playing house? When I got older I got Barbies and Barbie stuff for a couple of years. One year I asked for and got an Easy Bake Oven even though I could make real cakes and spent a lot of time in the kitchen cooking and baking with my mom and grandma. One year when I was in junior high, I got my own set of wooden hoops and a bunch of stuff for needlepoint and cross stitch from my grandmother because we did a lot of that together and she knew what I would like. This goes against every imaginable social of the convention of the times. How or why did this happen? I have some ideas but this was so long ago I'm not sure if my memories have been reconstructed to fit the pieces together with how the rest of my life turned out or what? It's one of those things I'll never be sure of. There's no one around to ask or give me a different perspective other than that from my point of view.
I've said in other threads when talking about my childhood that I was certainly encouraged to be like other boys and to try and fit in but that was simply not in my nature and something that couldn't be forced so it never was. Other than how I looked that I didn't have enough agency to have any say in until after the 2nd grade and demanded to have long hair, I was treated like a girl and was allowed to have and do many typical "girl" things. From an outside perspective, one could say the girl me was not only accepted but nurtured as well and while I'm eternally grateful for it, I still don't understand it. Were my folks
that intuitive and understanding into and of my personality and nature to go against everything that seemed right or normal or was it something so obvious and irrepressible that it couldn't be denied? Did they just feel sorry for me and tried to do what made me happy? When I say I just grew up to be a girl, I'm not sure many of you get it or can relate or understand how this could even be possible. I don't even understand it either, it just was. I wasn't encouraged to be this way but I wasn't dissuaded either and all I can think as to the why of this was is that I couldn't be? I've never really thought much about this until the last few years of my life. It just all seemed natural at the time.
Without knowing anything about being trans or even words to talk about it, when I told my folks at 15 that I couldn't keep living as a boy that no one ever saw me as anyway, this was something they had seen coming my whole life and not the least bit surprising or unexpected. In a way, I'm kind of fodder for the nature vs. nurture debate enthusiasts. The way I see it though, whatever "nurture" I received was simply in alignment with my nature and by some miracle, karmic fate or unconditional love, my folks and family just got that. The way I was treated and the freedom I had to just be me didn't make me a girl but were that way because I always have been. Seems plausible, right?
It wasn't really until I was 16/17 and started getting things too girly to wear to school that I stopped minding getting clothes for Christmas! By then, all my clothes came from the girl's department anyway but they had to be marginally passable for boys or unisex because I was supposed to be a boy for school so getting stuff I couldn't wear to school or jewelry or makeup made my last couple Christmases at home the best. I was no longer living with my folks then but the Christmas after I got out of high school and went "full time" when I was 18, I was showered with nothing but clothes from my folks and that year, I got a necklace from my mom I still wear to this day. In fact, just last week I wore it and told my man friend about its sentimental value because I'd had it for 46 years and was a gift from my long deceased mother. There's a lot of stuff I can talk about from my childhood and adolescence that's pretty normal without revealing the trans part of my history like the kind of things I got for Christmas as just one example.
I'm sorry for those of you that wanted a pony and got a toy truck. I don't think I ever have had a toy truck?
Sorry to ramble yet again. The holidays stir up a lot of emotions and memories. Things were so different for me than most folks here and that is strange sometimes.
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Haha! @Kylo, I just read what you posted while I was writing. I'm sorry, but I loved my baby dolls and as amazing as it is, I still have the one in the picture above stashed away in a box somewhere. I had other ones before that too when I was even younger but apparently I wasn't very gentle and they didn't survive? (see strangulation below!) Coincidentally taken at Christmastime, that's boy me on the right just being one of the girls with my two favorite cousins. Damn I was a weird child! Explains a lot though, doesn't it?
