Hi,
This post started as an intro but it's turned into autobiography. Feel free to read as much or as little as you like, just please say hello.
I'm Janet and I'm a pre-transition MTF TS, still living in the world as my boyself but working hard on getting to transition. I'm also a sober alcoholic (a bit over 2 1/2 years now - since 1/11/04) and a compulsive overeater (just at the beginning of that journey). I got sober because I was in such a hole that I thought I would never be able to transition unless I cleaned up, and I see my overeating as an obstacle to transition as well.
I've been on hormones for 7 years now, and I've been working on electrolysis off and on (when finances have permitted it) for 8 years. I even did my
own electrolysis for about 2 1/2 years to keep going during a period when the money wasn't there - and I did a pretty good first clearing of my chin. I'm getting my electro done by a pro again, and we've gotten to the point where I don't shave below the chin anymore. It's not quite to the passable level down there, but it's OK for boydrag and she doesn't have to spend the whole session clearing that area, so we're starting to move up to the cheeks and sideburns.
I knew that I was different from age 4 and through my pre-teen years I knew that I fit in much better with girls, but I didn't have a burning desire to become Janet until I discovered crossdressing at age 11. I cross-dressed every time that I could in my early teen years, with the unfortunate consequence that I was caught several times by my mother and then lectured by my father. I still haven't quite gotten over my father telling me that I was just "doing it to hurt my mother", even though it's about 40 years since those scenes and I've shared it in therapy, with AA sponsors and in TG circles.
After one too many of those scenes with my father, I pretty much stuffed my transgender feelings and pretended to be a boy. I didn't do boy very well and I got harrassed a lot in high school, but I put on my boy face, went to Boy Scouts and even got into ROTC in my first year of college. I realized after a year of ROTC that I couldn't do an acceptable job of faking manhood for them, so I got out before that phase of my life had gone too far. Oh, and I totally blew that first year of college, partly due to my conflict over the ROTC and mostly due to my drinking and drugging.
I attempted to make a life as a gay man but it always felt odd, and I slipped back into the closet when I was going back to school. I continued to fill the void with alcohol and drugs and still went to gay bars for a while, but I found myself experiencing more gender envy and less attraction to men.
In '87 (at age 33) I had a traumatic experience and quit grass at the same time, and my transgender feelings came back with overwhelming intensity. I had a car accident in which the other party died (a motorcyclist who had a 0.21 BAC), but I had gotten high earlier that day and I felt that my drug use may have contributed to the accident - so I quit grass. About a month later, I was in intense gender envy and I remember thinking "If I wasn't bald I would be a transsexual." I didn't think I could ever transition because of my baldness, but I wanted to live as a woman.
By 95 I was convinced that I would someday transition and I knew my name, but I didn't know how I would get there. I had never been out the door as Janet, I was broke and out of work and I had slipped to a place of total isolation. I moved from the totally isolated area to which my last professional job had taken me to the nearest mid-size city and got a survival job. I had started going out to the gay bars again, and shortly after I move to * I was leaning against a jukebox and my now partner C sent her friend over to ask me to dance. Shortly after that I began spending time with C, who was and still is non-op / TG - and was at that time sober.
In 96 I finally got out the door dressed as Janet. I needed help to get over the barrier and I didn't get it from my partner but I did get it. The circumstances are really part of my alcoholism story (you see, there was this one gay bar in town that was really an alkie bar and that's where I met the TG who helped me out the door), but the important part is that I finally got out the door dressed. From there I began to get dressed on a fairly regular basis, getting out to the bars as Janet on most weekends. In some ways it was a wonderful period in my life - I was finally seen by people as Janet, I was at least half-way passable and I at least learned a bit from my peers even though we drank too much and I began to get high again.
During this period I got back into a professional position and I began to make some tangible progress now that I wasn't broke. The tangible progress that I made was that I got myself an evaluation with the local gatekeeper psychiatrist and got my GID letter, I got started on hormones in January 99, and I started electrolysis.
I moved in with my partner in 99, and after I moved in with her I began to lose touch with my TG bar friends. I still got out dressed when my partner and I went out dancing together, but that ended when my partner's arthritis reached a point where she couldn't dance and she didn't want to go out anymore. Our lives began to revolve around visiting with friends on our porch with pretty much daily drinking and drugging.
In that period my weight went up again (I had lost about 50 pounds in the 94-96 period) and I found myself without any girl clothes which fit and hating to see myself in the mirror - and not feeling much better looking at myself dressed in the mirror. I really began to hate my body again. We also had a financial bottom due at least partly to my partner's drinking, lost the house and moved into a rental and went through a period in 02-03 of just surviving.
I reached a real emotional bottom in 2003 in which I thought I would never transition and that my life was going nowhere fast. In fact, I felt that my partner would live another 20 years hating every minute and that I would be dead in 5 years. I remember that my doctor asked me how things were going, and I told him that not only was the glass
half-empty but that the water was
dirty.
I had been to Alanon before when my partner and I hit bottom financially and lost the house, and I went back there not having any idea what else I could do. I've been in recovery now for three years (first Alanon, then AA, then DA, and now OA
), and I've faced my alcholism, my financial unmanageability (19 years of unfiled tax returns - now resolved) and now I'm facing my obesity and compulsive eating (I got up to 234 pounds on a 5' 7" frame this time and I loathe my body).
I've only been out the door dressed once in the past two years, but I'm back to paying an electrologist and I've been helping a transgender youth group as a volunteer facilitator. I don't see a TS specific therapist, but I've been seeing a therapist for my *ism issues for the past 2 and 1/2 years, and I've shared everything with her. She alternates between seeing not transitioning as absolutely life threatening and challenging what she sees as my ambivalence about transitioning - I guess she's doing her job, and one by one I'm trying to address my barriers to transitioning. I dress informally at home (my nightgown in the morning) but I don't know when I'll be ready to transition (G-d only knows!); I'm putting one foot in front of the other and I hope to have my weight down to a point where I'm willing to be seen in a dress again in a few months.
That's my story and it's sticking to me!
Thanks for reading this far,
Janet
