Hello,
I've been on this sight for a while now.. I don't think i've posted until recently because of how crappy I feel about myself.
Anyways, I've been asked to make an intro thingy so I hope this is the right place for that. I copied this from my bio thing in my profile:
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I've been very uncomfortable with myself for pretty much my whole life. I grew more and more uncomfortable starting around age 12. I felt uglier and uglier as I grew up (even though I'm pretty sure I don't appear ugly to others). I never knew why I felt the way I did.
Throughout my life I would have moments where I felt like I would rather be a girl (even when I was under 10 years old). But I never took those thoughts seriously. I also thought that people would think less of me if they knew I felt that way. My parents (and other people) would make stupid jokes about feminine guys or masculine girls; hearing that kind of crap when I was young made me think subconsciously that there was something wrong with people like that. I didn't know anything about this gender stuff when I was young. All I 'knew' then was, having a male body = boy, boys don't want to be girls, and they don't act like them. So I never told anyone. I subconsciously went into some pretty serious denial about myself. ...subconsciouslinesssszzz...
Even though I've always been pretty open-minded and accepting of different people (or so I thought), I had a long way to go (And I'm still learning). I couldn't accept being 'different' myself.
For most of my life I thought I wanted to be some super rich and famous actor dude that everyone liked.. lol
Starting around 12yrs old, I began to Reallly care if girls liked me or not. Looking back now, it seems it was different than how the average guy would feel. I was also Verrry interested in how girls looked. Yes I found them sexually attractive, but that was a fairly small part of what the attraction was (though I didn't realize that then). I'm sure I found girls so interesting because I unknowingly wanted to be one. Oh if you're wondering, I guess I consider myself Bisexual though I find most guys physically unattractive and I still feel I prefer women. I wonder though, had I been born in a female body and always had a strong female identity, if I not had to feel so ugly seeing a guy in the mirror for so long, I probably would have always been more comfortable with liking guys in that way (damn society making people feel like ->-bleeped-<- for not being average) and would then find them more attractive than I do now. In my teens I did do a lot of suppressing of any sexual thoughts I had about guys. I didn't want to be that way (again, because of how this immature world had me feeling about it then). So yeah, I'm still more comfortable with the idea of being with a girl, but the idea of being with a guy seems to be getting less weird to me the more I figure myself out and accept myself. Oh, and just to be clear, I'm not 'trying' to like guys at all. I don't think that girls have to like guys or that liking guys makes you more of a girl or some ->-bleeped-<- like that. From now on, if something works for me, fine. If something doesn't work for me, I'll get rid of/stop it.
Anywayzz, all this stuff, low self-esteem/self-confidence, not knowing myself/ fake identity etcetera for so long, has caused me a lot of crap; social problems for sure. I've had trouble gaining independence, and still live with my parents uuhg. ..Oh, and if you're wondering about how my parents are about this, well, not that great. My mom acted perfect when I first told her (and telling her was really hard to do), but then she told my dad, and they both gave me a lot of crap for over a year (Which did NOT help me in figuring myself out at all). They seem to be getting better now, but I'm not sure I'm done hearing crappy things from them. Ah well, in the end it was definitely a good thing telling them. I think it pretty likely that I would have gone back into denial for several more years had I not told someone. Also, now that my parents know, I don't feel I have to hide it from them. I don't care now if I act a little more feminine around them. Anyways, the parent situation definitely could've been worse. I've heard of some parents being a lot worse than mine, those must be the hateful bigoted sorts out there.
It took me until I was 23 to finally realize I was transgender. I wish I could've realized that much sooner, but I guess it could've taken me even longer (some don't really figure themselves out until they're much older. I guess some people probably never figure themselves out). The past 2 years have been Torture. Trying to reallly figure out who the hell I really am now. What I really want. What I'm going to do. I can't adequately explain how hard it's been, so I won't try. And as hard as it's been for me to deal with this; for some it's MUCH worse. I'm not sure I'd be alive right now if things had been much worse for me. On top of all this crap to deal with, trans people have to deal with how ignorant most of the world is about this, and how hateful many people are. Anyone who thinks being trans is a choice is completely wrong. Gender Identity is no more of a choice than the sex of the body you're born into is. You have no say in it. If your identity doesn't match your body, you can only decide what you do about it. You have to do what will make 'you' happiest. There's no way I'd go through all this if I didn't have to. It seems like it would've been easier if I could've liked being a guy (but that would mean I'd have to have been a different person). Being a guy wasn't alll bad I guess, I didn't hate everything about it. But something's always felt wrong. It didn't feel like I was really being all of myself. I was only showing part of me, and a fair amount of 'fakeness'. And like I've said, I feel ugly like this, to a pretty extreme extent. I've felt reallly ugly for too long. It seems now that it would be easiest for me to just be me, and that's a girl.
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Soooo, there's a little bit about me. At the end there it may sound like I'm pretty sure of what I'm going to do about all this, but I'm still not quite sure. I had been feeling extremely confused about myself for the past 1-2 years after I started to deal with being this way. Feeling that way was really miserable for me, especially with my parents saying bad things about this and trying to paint a scary picture of what they thought my life would be like if I were to transition. I've had a lot of really bad days and suicidal moments.
Even with the miserablenesss i've been going through so far, this hasn't gone away at all, and for the past certain amount of months I've been feeling more and more like I know what I really want (maybe being on Spiro has helped with that)... I am going to talk to a doctor about hormones near the end of the month. I think what's bothering me the most now is I'm scared that I won't come out looking very good if I transition.. I wonder how I'll be able to get some of the surgeries I feel I would need.. and how well will HRT work for me.. will I end up with odd looking breasts I'm not comfortable with?..... anyways, that's what's bothering me most now. I still have confused moments, but not nearly as bad as I used to have.
Oh... I have seen a gender therapist person... I haven't been able to go that many times (it's expensive and kind of far away from me).. I'm not sure it's helped a whole lot with figuring myself out.. I guess I have to do that myself
