Hello everyone the names Allen (or at least i hope it will be one day anyway) I've been lurking around this place for quite a while and finally decided to join. I'm a FtM I just recently came out to s few of my close friends, who were very supportive and not at all surprised.
I always knew that I was a little off even when I was younger. Up until age 9 I use to wear nothing but dresses but it wasn't because I liked them. My mom made all of them for me and I didn't want to make her sad by telling her that I didn't want to wear them and I has always been indirectly told I was a little girl and little girls wore dresses. Wearing dresses never stopped me from playing with the boys in my nieghborhood, i played football and hockey with them and every summer I would go back into the creek behind my house with them and we would all get in the water and look for frogs and tadpoles. It wasn't until I was around 8 that I got my first pair of jeans from the girl next door and hand-me-downs and it made a huge difference. I never knew just how out of place I really felt in dresses until I started wearing jeans. I never said anything to my mom though because I felt like it would be a weird thing to say and i didn't want her to thing I wasn't happy that she cared about me enough to make clothes for me. Instead i told her that I only wanted to wear pants from now on because they were easier to run around in.
I continued like this until one day when I was playing with a few of my girl friends, we were all bored and I suggested that we go back into the creek thinking we might find some tadpoles and frogs. One of my friends (who has always been a huge brat) Immediately yelled that "going in the creek was something only boys did." I asked her "whats wrong with being a boy?" and she told me " Nothing is wrong with it except we were girls and unless I started acting like I was one I would never have any friends" and then the and the other girls left me. I was never very good at making friends so when she said that I began to freak out and told myself from that point on I was going to start acting the "right" way and be a girl.
I tried really hard to be like all the "normal girls". I use to pretend to be in love with members of the big boy bands like the Backstreet Boys and Nsync. I quit hanging out with boys and tried to make friends with girls even though it didn't work out very well. I still only wore boys jeans and T-shirts until I moved in with my dad and step mom. By that time I was starting to begin going through puberty. My step-mom bought me my first training bra, which I refused to wear until she eventually would stand in my room and watch me put it on every morning. This had to be one of the most confusing times in my life. Things about my body were changing that didn't feel right, worst of all I felt like something was wrong and i had know idea there was even a name for what i was going through. I was to scared to tell anyone about it because i knew it wasn't normal and I was afraid that people would avoid me even more.
Eventually it got to the point where I would wait until the summer when I would spend a few weeks with my grandma in KY and ask her to take me to Goodwill for new clothes. I would go to the men racks by "acedent" and find clothes that fit me and I liked. My grandma didn't care as long as I wore them. For a few years that was enough and I pushed everything a felt about my body to the back of my mind and ignored it. I when most of my Jr. High years as being androgynous without knowing it until someone said it while making fun of me. I looked the word up on google and found out about other things like being transgendered. I read a few articles on people being transgendered, in a way I was relived and frightened. Relieved because I finally had a name for what I was feeling and frightened because I knew this wasn't I was going to grow out of and it wasn't "normal". I continued to push everything to the back of my head and ignore it. It wasn't until my girlfriend told me she identified with being androgynous and asked me if I would still love her that I ever thought about it again. I had a very long talk with my girlfriend and started lurking around websites like Susan's that I finally came to terms with who I really am. I have since come out to a few of my close friends who were not very shocked by my confession and very supportive. I still have yet to come out to my mother, father, and step-mother.
Wow... I'm sorry if that was really to long. I hope to do less lurking and more posting here in the future
P.S. I apologize if I made a lot of spelling and grammar mistakes in my introduction. I think things faster than I type them and sometimes my fingers miss works trying to keep up >.< dyslexia doesn't help that problem either.
