This is a hard thread to read hearing that so many of you have dealt or are dealing with such difficult things. It makes what I'd have to contribute to the discussion seem trivial because I've never had to deal with all this interpersonal family stuff and people, friends, other relatives and jobs that didn't accept me. Sometimes it doesn't feel right to talk about this because I haven't faced many of the common challenges a lot of you have but that doesn't mean I breezed through this whole transition thing as some may think. Obviously because it has left an impression on me and although it was a long, long time ago, I had things were hard for me too. Really hard but in different ways than what I am reading from most of you.
I had never been seen as or fit into the world as a normal boy and by the time I was 15, my parents understood that I simply couldn't keep living my life being known as a boy that was too much of a girl to be ever be one but not enough girl to be one of them either. They said they had expected this my whole life but were kind of hoping I'd just be gay but they really did understand. They'd seen my struggles and knew my life and my future would have been a lot better if I
was a girl so there was never anything dramatic about it all and this was all matter of fact.
The only problem was, was that I
was only 15 and this was in 1970 in a very god-fearing conservative part of the country. There was no such thing as transition like we know it today at least not for kids. They didn't even know kids could be trans back then and heck, I didn't know what exactly was going on either other than I was a girl and that's what I needed to be and to be known as and not something in-between and neither like I had always had been.
I was always given liberties in expressing myself. My nature and personality were evident. I had long, blonde pretty hair halfway down my back when I was 15, was small, hadn't even started puberty yet and had always confused strangers about what gender I was my whole life but once my parents and I got on the same page about my future, it didn't take long and by the time I was 16, strangers no longer had any problem figuring out I was a girl. Because it became awkward in public, my folks started using she/her pronouns and calling me by the name I would have been called if I was born a girl and the rest of the extended family I had at the time, aunts, uncles and cousins all were more like "it's about time" rather than any sort of bothered. It was a little weird maybe but it just seemed like a natural sort of thing. People had seen how I grew up and nobody cared. Nothing else really made any sense even if none of it made any sense.
This was fine but going to high school as a boy that everyone else in my world saw, accepted me as and treated me like a girl were most the difficult years of my entire life and the thing that was hardest for me. Nevermind the bullying and mocking and criminal violence for looking like and acting like a girl, that had always been part of my life but being one person, the only person I knew how to be and being known as two different genders was pretty horrifically mind-bending.
I couldn't put up with for long. It was tearing my little brain to pieces. By the time I was 17, I couldn't have passed as a boy even if I had wanted to (I didn't) and all the things I was dealing with at school and with puberty finally beginning to kick in, I knew I couldn't keep doing this anymore. I struggled through my junior year with everything I had but knew I couldn't go back to finish my final year and graduate. I was darkly and suicidally depressed, withdrawn and non-functional and refused to put myself through this everyday just to go to school. I became very uncooperative. I didn't think much about it at the time because there was a lot of pain and terror in my life that was hard to see beyond but now I can only imagine what hell I was putting my parents through too? I don't know how they didn't just murder me and let me tell you, there were some screaming, door slamming battles to the death about my looks and what I had to wear to go to school. It didn't seem fair that every day I had to be something less than the other girls or the girl I was the rest of the time at home and everywhere else. It sucked quite honestly.
Fortunately, this was the time a new doctor my parents had found in another city 150 miles away came into my life. Apparently, extraordinarily rare because of my age and the times (1972), I started HRT at the beginning of summer after my junior year and was counseled heavily to stay in school and graduate. Make that coerced, bribed, cajoled and forced to stay in school. Being a boy or a girl didn't matter to my folks but getting a high school diploma sure did.
Hormones helped enough that I did go back for my senior year and clueless me finally having a name for and an understanding of why I was the way I was helped my attitude. Knowing I had a plan and what I'd be able to do once I did graduate made dealing with my situation a whole lot easier to just disassociate from and marginally tolerable. It was embarrassing to be known as a boy when everyone else in my life knew and saw me as a girl but I just held my breath and counted down the months and days I no longer had to put up with this ridiculous crap. There was a light at the end of my tunnel and I had hope. I shudder to think how differently things could have gone for me without supportive parents and family that I'm sure were from the future or another planet? There's no question in my mind I couldn't have gone much further.
My senior year wasn't quite as bad as the previous ones but still very challenging mentally. I had always been ostracized, isolated, treated like a pariah and a freak but my body started changing fast and once my breasts became noticeable, my hips got wider, my skin became finer and my hair was down to my waist, most people steered even more clear of me because I think they thought I was ill or had some kind of disease? That was fine by me. The less interaction the better. I put on my brave face and gritted my way through it to graduation to make my folks happy because they'd bent over backwards to make me happy and done so much to get my life as a young woman off to a good start. I had my new girl IDs and paperwork the week after I graduated and never had to be known as a he/him again.
This doesn't seem like much compared to the hard things others have shared here about rejection from family and loved ones and damaged marriages and interrupted careers. Because I've never really faced anything like that it seems almost hard to imagine but it is not hard to empathize. There are aspects of being trans that are hard for everyone in different ways no matter your path and these were mine. I know for me at least, things did get better and life became normal and routine and I'd like to think my story might offer some hope and encouragement to others working through their own hard times and issues even if things were different for me.
Sorry I always write so much.
