Elwood, let me first just say that reading your posts on this thread is agony and ecstasy for me. I feel incredible empathy for the pain that you're going through, but I also feel envious. You're still so young, and yet you know so much. When I was your age, I barely knew that there were gay people in the world, and although I was vaguely aware of a few well-publicized MTFs like Christine Jorgensen, I had no idea that GID was so common, nor that there was such a thing as FTMs. In addition, I was attracted to men, which seemed to indicate that I was just a normal hetero girl with some really sick fantasies. I would spend hours playing out these scenarios in which I was a guy with another guy. When I started having sex for real with my first long-term partner--I was your age--the reality was so far removed from how I saw myself that I used to have attacks of...frigidity, I guess you would call it. It must have been frustrating for him, but I eventually adapted and was able to have hetero sex. And I pretended to be a hetero female. But I really didn't consciously understand what the heck was going on in my head when I tried to cope with these attacks, or with my fantasies, for that matter. I had no vocabulary or referents for describing this stuff. It might as well have been alien territory.
Only recently did I figure out what these attacks really were. And only years later did I read about FTMs and think, "Maybe that's me. But if it is, shouldn't I be attracted to women?" The one FTM book that I owned indicated that I should be, which confused me even more. I mean, if the experts said so...
In college, I actually met a young woman who confessed to a fascination with gay men--I suppose she was a ->-bleeped-<- hag--and I was so convinced that she was normal and I was a freak that I couldn't even tell her about my own confusion. Because I kept thinking, "Does she know? Is she just saying this because she KNOWS what my kink is? Why do I always fantasize that I'm a man with other men? I must be sick, sick sick."
Your posts have a peculiar effect on me. I identify with you now, even though I'm much older than you. And I look back to what I buried as a young adult because there was so little information to be had and I didn't know anything. And I wish that I had had the knowledge and the courage that you have now at the same age.
Remember what Winston Churchill once said: "If you are going through hell, keep going." I guess you don't need this reminder because you're already doing it. You're tough, you're brave, you're tenacious.
I admire the hell out of you.
