Ding dong that I can be sometimes, I got the date wrong, it was June 20th, 1977, not the 19th.
Quote from: KatieP on January 28, 2019, 11:18:23 PM
OMG, Lisa. Just OMG...
Just so you know, I am SOOOOO in awe of you, to fight through all of that, back then, and to come out the other side.
Soooooo in awe...
Thanks but no, please!
I am appreciative of what you're saying but please don't be in awe of my life or think I've "fought through" anything. My childhood is more of a matter of something I managed to blindly scrape through primarily due to the intuition and insight of my mother, the step-dad that came into my life when I was ten and my grandparents from my earliest years up until my tweens. These people and the environment and the attitudes I was raised with are solely responsible for the opportunities I had and are the only real reason to explain how I did somehow get through those years of my life. Please don't romanticize my story or give me any credit for doing something special.
It all looks good and neat and tidy on paper but make no mistake, I was a very troubled, distressed special needs child that was seen as emotionally and behaviorally disturbed and my life was filled with ongoing chaos and upheaval so these things I've listed as milestones are not things I did but rather things that just happened that were often unsettling or traumatic. I simply did not have a normal childhood and the lack of my ability to socially integrate into the world as a boy was something no one had ever seen or dealt with before and this only became more difficult and caused more problems the older I got. I started seeing psychiatrists and counselors when I was ten not to try and make me different or normal but to help with my social problems and the way I was treated.
Without being new age-y or metaphysical about it, I've never been able to figure this out except to wonder if I gave off some unconscious magic energy or an aura or a vibe or something as a girl that people just picked up on and I think it's something other than just femininity but I'm pretty clueless about things like this? It's been that way throughout my entire lifetime but whatever it is, it didn't work so well for me when I was a boy and it wasn't something I could or knew how to turn off.
None of us knew anything about trans or had language to define what was going on but I didn't leave my folks a whole lot of choices. They could have abandoned me, institutionalized me or tried to beat the girl out of me but they decided to love and support me instead which is where any awe or accolades should be directed because they had no examples or guidelines suggesting this approach and just went with their gut feelings and with what helped to make me happy.
Certainly by the time I entered high school it had become clear there was no way I was ever going to survive or be successful in life as a male person and then after I was assaulted, it became even more clear that life and the world wasn't going to beat the girl out of me either and once we all got on the same page about that, my folks were all on board with trying to give me the best shot at life they could. This was 49 years ago and it simply doesn't seem possible.
What is hard to convey is that all this just happened organically and more or less in a bubble. There was no concept of transitioning as a planned and calculated thing as it is now or maybe it's just because I simply grew up to be a girl as that's how I understood myself to be so there was never any real starting point to transition from or before and after. None of this was even labeled, at least not by me because I still didn't have the words or really understood the implications of what was happening.
This is hard to explain so it makes any sense because many here speak about some point or a milestone of recognizing they were trans but I never had a eureka moment like that or understood things within that framework because I didn't know anything about it. All I knew and never really questioned was that I was a girl even though my parts were different and I wanted other people to understand me the same way that I did.
I also didn't realize being successfully accepted into the world and by family as a girl and doing nothing different to stay in school as a he/him would take such a toll on me. The 1971/72 school year when I was a 16/17 y/o junior was nearly the end of me. I was depressed, isolated, withdrawn and suicidal and wanted to drop out of school because I just didn't want to be around people that knew I wasn't a real girl when in all other aspects of my life, that's what I was seen as being but to my folks, staying in school was hella more important than if I was a boy or a girl which had long since become irrelevant.
My folks found me another doctor to talk with but I didn't want to because I'd been talking to stupid doctors and being poked and prodded since I was ten. This was different though and I didn't stonewall. He sent me to a psychiatrist and a psychologist and they all agreed on the diagnosis of primary transsexualism but were extra cautious because trans youth weren't really a recognized or documented thing at the time but nevertheless, I started on HRT at the beginning of summer vacation before my senior year on the condition I just suck it up and try to make it through my last year and graduate and so I did a year later with hair to my waist and body changes way to obvious to miss and I never looked back.
I really didn't have any sort of fight or conflict with my family accepting, understanding and nurturing me as a girl even before I remember and while growing up but
they fought hard, did unbelievable things and put up with a lot of grief and hassle to help me deal with my problems and protected me as much as possible because I
was considered emotionally and behaviorally "special needs" I can hardly even imagine it now with all the different schools I had to go to or what they must have gone through socially supporting a kid like me when such things still today are considered outrageous and akin to child abuse by some.
So I'm not the one that had to fight any battles. All I had to do was survive and put up with a lot of crap which is hardly noteworthy. The rest of my life has been exceptionally average.
