I like stories, personal stories. For me there is something wonderfully evocative in engaging another's tale of how they came to be. There is also something tremendously affirming, deeply healing in sharing stories of my own.
Over the last couple weeks, I have been reading a lot of 'Introductions' and getting much out of each and every one. The bravery! The difficulty! The nakedness! And the side by side existence of similarity and difference. It really has been stunning. Many thanks to all!
In the process of doing this, I have become very curious about people's 'moments' - those instants in which you knew you were... What, exactly? Transgender? Female? Male? Neither? Both? Different? Let's just leave it at this: I am curious to know when you knew you were...and you can fill in this blank. I would love to read these stories!
For me the moment came when I was eight. I had found a Playboy magazine somewhere. Secreted away in the downstairs bathroom, I stripped off all my clothing, opened up the centrefold, and turned both of us toward the mirror. The issue was May 1973. The Playmate was Anulka Dziubinska. She had long blonde hair and a curvaceous figure. Her hands rested one on each thigh as she stood on her knees, eyes to the camera. She seemed surrounded in the shot by a world of colour and depth and warmth and rightness. I can feel and smell it even now; it is delicious.
For several minutes I let my gaze move side to side on the mirror before me. From her to me to her to me... I was shivering slightly; I must have been cold. I still remember the feeling of my chest sinking when the realization erupted. It was like a weight had been suddenly placed right in the very centre, right over my heart. My ribs seemed to collapse beneath the pressure. Breathing became difficult. Blood pounded in my ears. I felt such longing and such despair. We seemed so different, the two of us. Her so full and rich; me so pale and thin and not.
This was when I knew: On that day, in that bathroom, standing naked before that mirror.
And this is what I knew: I wasn't her. And yet, in some strange way, I was.
Hello Tanya!
Thanks for a very well written story!
I will guess that many of us had more than one moment of certainty and for me it was a series of clues and emerging awareness, sometimes without benefit of language. I am told that as a 3 yo my older sister "adopted" me as her sister and renamed me Tessa. My older brother confirms this and apparently warned me if I kept at it I would be a girl. I had no real recollection of these events but was told I did keep at it for years. I found that out after coming out to my older sister last year. She had teased me about that throughout adulthood but i could strangely never remember that name until I finally accepted myself as transgender. Hmmm, repression is a powerful force? My fecund mother had 15 children and my most loving memory was of helping her breast feed. I somehow had this "crazy idea" that I would grow up to be a mom and take care of babies too. Gender confirmation training the hard school yard way ensued and puberty caused me to give it up and become an early cynic about life. I did my best to be what was somehow expected of me.
Your story did remind me of one pivotal event as a 11 yo when I fell in love with Lee Remick, a popular actress of the 60's. She was playing a tearful and tragic role and I was both alarmed and thrilled to acknowledge i was just like her or somehow I was her. ??? Again there were no words or any references to help me sort this impossibility out. But I knew it and feared it at once and locked myself in a bedroom so I could hug her magazine picture to my chest and just feel her/us. I have never been able to tell that last story in person to anyone and even as i type this tears are full on. It's a good cry. Thanks again for an evocative invitation to tell our true story.
My life was rather odd in this regard because I started life with a strong sense of gender it seems. I am told that even as an infant I was greatly disturbed by my genitals and used to hide myself with a washcloth and not let my mother bathe me there. As a child I played with neighbourhood girls and was definitely on the feminine side, even for a girl. I had chosen my female name by age 4 (because the other one wasn't "right") and when I started school at 5 and encountered gender-specific washrooms is caused quite a stir because I would not use the boys room and the teachers tried to stop me from using the girls room.
At age 8 I realized that the problem was my genitals, that my body didn't match ME! It was VERY confusing because in the 1950s there wasn't even a term for it. Puberty was a bit of a split (breasts and some facial hair) and I became desperate for things to be made right - I totally rejected being "a boy" and stole birth control pills (estrogen) whenever I could. The offending bits were so despised that they were in danger of being cut off (at my own hand). When I first heard the term transsexual in about 1965, I figured that must be it, that must be what I was. Even if that wasn't quite right, it was close enough and I began fighting for medical help.
For most of my teens it was a fine line between pushing for medical help and being institutionalized for the "delusion" that I was or should have been a girl but by 16 I was diagnosed as transsexual and by 17 I found a doctor to begin HRT. IT was 7 more years before SRS became available but when it did, I had NO hesitation.
There was no "ah-ha!" moment for me, just a waffling back and forth between absolute certainty and not being so sure.
SRS/transition just proved that I was right all along. Life post-transition was a piece of cake and nobody would have believed that I wasn't a normal girl from birth. It wasn't until my late 50s that I found out I have a uterus and that made me laugh. I thought "See! I told you!" 8)
(Warning: Possible triggers)
I knew other people thought I acted atypical when my sister and cousins got My Little Ponies and I cried (and then had a tantrum - i have Asperger's Syndrome, so I did that a lot) because I didn't get one, too. My parents tried explaining (kindly, they were sweet like that) that they were girls' toys. I kept crying, so they bought me one anyway :) . I knew my teachers were worried about something when I kept insisting on jumping ropes, hopscotch and playing family with the girls instead of pretend fighting with the boys - I couldn't understand why they kept telling me to join the boys, though. I also think my friends knew something was off when I had tantrums because I never got to play the mother or daughter roles.
I knew something was wrong when nothing worked as I thought it would during puberty. I had read everything about puberty - but just female puberty. I knew I was biologically male, but it never occurred to me there was a real difference. I thought I was completely crazy when I tried building the courage to castrate myself at age 14-15. And I knew the doctor thought I was a hypochondriac when I kept visiting him because I was convinced something was wrong with my genitals.
I knew exactly what I was when I first read about SRS at age 15-16. But I realized that was "bad" before even completing the article - people around me commented how "sick" that was, and that it "should be illegal". So I kept my mouth shut, and went into denial for a decade. I still kept visiting doctors to find out what was wrong with my body, though. Most of the tests came back negative. I also knew people didn't view me as completely male when a female friend of mine told me I should start looking for bisexual girls, since women instinctively see me as female and hence aren't attracted to me if they're straight. That's a cruel thing to say of course, but it's probably the most helpful word of advice I've ever received - I don't think she realized exactly what she was saying, though :) . Around that time (two to three years ago), the feelings started to resurface. I still tried to stay in denial, but with decreasing success. Until less than two weeks ago, when I decided to acknowledge the obvious, since the only other option was suicide, which I was dangerously close to committing less than two months ago. Most of my problems (eating disorder, suicide contemplation, depression) were gone virtually overnight.
Instead I have anxiety related to coming out to close friends and family, but the list is getting shorter, and the reactions so far have been better than I could have ever imagined. I still have my family left though - my sister, in-law and niece (who doesn't understand "adult talk" yet, thankfully - I hope to transition soon enough that she never will have a memory of me as anything other than her aunt) are coming to visit tomorrow, and my parents next weekend. I'm actually starting to look forward to it - I initially planned on not telling them until I start HRT, but I see now that waiting that long would be torture.
When I was 14 one of the older boys at school rode past a friend and me on a BSA motorbike with his girlfriend on the pillion.My friend wished he was the boy on the bike,I wished I was the girl with her arms around his waist,long blonde hair flying out behind.
I'm sure I can't remember the actual time... I can remember my first inkling of it.
I still have the book that clued me in. My name is written inside in red crayon and I can't possibly be older than 8, based on the scribble (maybe 10... maybe). The book isn't a good one. It's called "Wish Come True" by Mary Q. Steele and it's about a boy, Joe, and his sister, Meg, who find a wishing ring. Early on in the book it's revealed that Meg's greatest wish is to be her brother. I remember thinking she's crazy... and that I'd happily change places with her. I think I read the book 20 times (again, it's NOT a very good book -- even for a 6-12 year old).
(https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fecx.images-amazon.com%2Fimages%2FI%2F61CQYTOLDwL._AA160_.jpg&hash=cb22546308f680e1ee9cf178c17b8bf760895317)
I really wish I knew exactly how old I was... 6-12 is definitely the range... I taught myself to read by age 3 - so god knows where in that age range I fell.
While I've always wished I had been born female, I didn't actually know this meant I was transgender until a little more than a year ago at age 51. Over the past several years, I've been coming to the conclusion that "part of me is female", but it wasn't until after I found Susan's and did a lot of exploring that I understood that I'm MtF.
It started out because I was tired of not fitting in socially, and I had an inkling that it had to do with the fact that I didn't relate to males, only females. A parade of therapists had all kinds of theories (my relationship with my father, fear of being gay, not wanting to compete...) Oddly, none of them considered transgender. It was only when I coupled that with other aspects of myself (love of media and books intended for women, fascination with all issues having to do with women, etc.) that I began to think of myself as "part man part woman".
I googled that phrase one day, and that led me to Susan's.
Which in turn led by to me becoming who I really am.
One of my earliest childhood memories is me wearing my mother's shoes, declaring I wanted to be a mother when I grew up.
From puberty onwards I spent 20 years telling myself I wasn't trans-anything; surely everyone wished they were born as someone else, right?
In my early thirties, after a suicide attempt I felt forced to take time to think about life and who I am. And when I started peeling away all the layers I'd added over the years I was somewhat surprised to find at the core a scared 12 year old girl who never got to grow up.
After a few years of trying to find my place along the trans spectrum I found the answer on YouTube. While watching Eddie Izzard videos I couldn't understand why someone as wealthy as him wouldn't have surgery. And that made me realize that I'd always seen surgery as something obvious, and that my childhood dreams of being born with a different body could, to a certain extent, be realized.
And today my driver's license says Emma, my friends accept me for who I am, and I've started HRT. And I've never felt better :)
I've been thinking about how to answer this.
The truth is, I've always known. I was three, in a head start pilot program when I realized that no one else knew. They were taking pictures to show how successful the program was. they told us to grab our favorite toy for the picture. I grabbed a big tonka firetruck. They took it away and gave me a doll that I had never played with. I just kept looking at it and wondered what the heck was i doing with this doll. their comments clarified their thinking, however erroneous it was. That was my first clue that how I saw myself was not how I was perceived by others.
It took me a long time to realize I wasn't a man.
It's not easy to realize you are a lesbian, if you're in a male form eh.
All those years liking women, and well of course I like women, I'm a lesbian.
But then you get cis female lesbians pissed off sometimes when you say you are one of them, but you don't need the strap on.
Well it's not all easy eh. I don't need the strap on, but at least their breasts are real. And most lesbians don't have their hair fall out either.
So it took me a long time to finally realize all my preferences all my actions, everything about me, isn't actually male.
I have some male parts, but the person running this show isn't a man.
What a wonderful way to start the day - reading people's stories! I have been laughing and crying, my heart soaring and sinking.
I love how for some of us there's an 'always knew' quality evident, for others a gradual awakening. For some a clear sense of moment, for others something else. I love all the similarities, all the differences. Many of the images and experiences are so striking - that book! Seeing it right here in front of me, I can feel it being held in tiny hands, read over and over again... And some of the words! I can hear then being thought: 'What the heck am I doing with this doll!?!'
So much power in this, for me at least.
Many thanks for posting, all!
Around 3 or 4 years old. I was watching a Marilyn Monroe movie on TV and thought, huh, I should look like that and dress like that. I think I may have mentioned it to my mom and in a manner of speaking, she said that is not the way to be. :-\
Speaking of Playboy, from the time I saw one around the age of 10, I thought as I did before, "hmm, I should look like the women on those pictures." I did and still, of course, appreciate the beauty of the female form. ;)
It was slow and subtle and not all that exciting for me.
I never felt like anything. Puberty and genitals annoyed me. I wanted to grow up to be a dragon, a wolf, a pokemon, a cat... anything, really, but an adult human. I had my first experience of intense and psychologically crippling dysphoria a few years ago with a pregnancy scare. I realized that I hated the word "mother" being used in reference to myself, even if just calling me a "kitty mommy". Sometime thereafter I realized I didn't like being called a "woman" either. I was already at the AVEN forums at the time, but decided one day, for the hell of it, to go check out the gender forum. As I read some people's explanations of what being nonbinary felt like, it seemed to match my experience pretty well.
Now I know why I couldn't imagine myself being a grown-up as a kid; or at least, a grown-up human: because being a grown-up meant being a man or a woman with such an intensity that I couldn't even grasp the concept. Aging, adulthood, and responsibility, it felt like, were going to be withheld from me for some reason.
I've been having some repressed memories surface lately since I've become more accepting of who I am. I don't know the exact moment I realized something was different about me but I do recall a lot of moments in early childhood where I felt very discontented with my body and wished I were/felt more like I should have been a girl. It wasn't until this year, age 37, that I learned what transgender and transsexual even meant, and it obviously struck a cord and brought me here.
The repressed memories are interesting to me because I was very much the opposite of what one might assume a TS preteen/teen would be like, (the key word being "assume.") I was rebellious and angry and very, very male! Although even then I had trouble with those unwanted thoughts and feelings, but I didn't put two and two together back then. I was too busy overcompensating. The fact that my brain would go as far as blocking certain memories is terrible. No child should ever be made to feel such shame about themselves.
Just this week in therapy I remembered something I hadn't thought about in probably 20+ years. I used to steal my mom's underwear out of her dresser and lock myself in the bathroom and try them on. I'd be so afraid of getting caught I'd make a mental note of exactly how they looked in the drawer, so when I put them back there was no evidence that they'd been removed. Wearing her underwear felt good but I never got into dressing fully. I remember staring at my girlfriend's clothes in her closet and wishing I could try them on, but hating myself for having such unacceptable desires. The few times I did try on women's clothes it didn't make me feel good at all. It just reinforced my hatred for my body, and left me feeling like a pervert.
When I was little (age 3-7) I played with girls mostly, and we'd often take off our clothes for one reason or another. Just innocent childhood curiosity, but it was so confusing for me. I couldn't understand why I had to have this thing instead of the thing she has. Why does mine stick out? It's gross! Hers makes so much more sense! I doubt I had those thoughts verbatim, but the feeling was the same. I felt like my boy parts were a mistake. I saw both of my parents naked fairly often as a child and I distinctly remember feeling like my dad's anatomy was NOT what I was supposed to have! It was shocking and scary to me. But my mom's was just what moms look like. She just looked normal to me. Of course I had no way of making any sense of any of those feelings, and even at that age I knew to keep thoughts like that to myself.
When I was about 5 or 6 I was at day camp at a community center/club, changing into my swimsuit in the boy's locker room. I remember looking around at all the naked boys and feeling so awkward! I can't really describe the feeling other than it just felt wrong. Like I was in the wrong place. Like I was invading their privacy or something. I knew in my head that I was a boy so this is where I'm supposed to change, but it just felt all wrong. Of course I knew I couldn't change in the girls locker room either, so it was just another taste of a feeling that would become very familiar as I grew up: feeling like I don't belong anywhere. Not with the boys, not with the girls. Always feeling different.
I think the first time I ever actually wished (upon a star, prayed to God, etc) that I could be a girl was when I was playing house with the girl across the street and dreading her brother coming home and catching me playing girly games with his little sister. I was supposed to be his friend but I always wanted to play with her. It made me so jealous that she could be so overtly girlish and I had to pretend I thought that stuff was stupid girl stuff, which is exactly what I did once her brother showed up. I'd act like I was just killing time until he arrived, but inside I was sad that I couldn't keep playing with her.
I always struggled with the shame. Boys aren't supposed to want to be girls! Being a boy is better, so they tell us. Maybe not in so many words, but that's the message they send. At least that's the lesson I learned. So it wasn't until my early twenties that I finally admitted to myself that I really do want to be a girl. And it wasn't until age 37 that I finally told someone.
(Warning: Possible triggers and really long...)
I'm not really sure where to start. I think, for me, it was the clues I left for myself over the years. I don't really remember much of my childhood, a lot of it is in a fog and I try not to remember the parts that seem to be locked away since I believe there is a reason for that.
When I was turning six years old, I did not really mind playing with dolls, but I wanted much more to be outside, climbing trees, fighting pirates and digging for gold. So, due to that, I ended up playing with the boys more then the girls and it was not till I started the first grade, that I realized I was not a boy. I remembered just how hurt I felt. Later on, I just told myself it had most likely been the fact that I was in a new country, and that I just had felt hurt because the boys did not want to play with me anymore because I was a girl.
It was about two months or so into the first grade, my mom became really ill and was diagnosed with cancer. So, every other weekend we spent time with our dad, and the other weekends we would go to a farm, since some places take in children like that to ether help out in cases like mine, or take in children full time. At that farm were mostly boys, and I spent the days doing what any farmer would. Milk cows, chase chickens, collect eggs and so forth. But, there was another boy there, somewhere between the age of 16-18 that I looked very much up to and I wanted to become just like him. It did not take him long to notice that, and he took advantage of that.
Long and not such a fun story short. He reminded me every other weekend for about a year, that no matter what I wished to be, I was born a girl. After that, I tried my best to leave those times behind, and everything that came with it. But, when I was about eight years old I seem to have fallen into the same thing. I got hand me down clothes from a cousin of mine who was about a year or two younger then me, but because he was a boy he grew faster then I did. That was when Dennis was born....
I got dragged into playing house, but I only did with one exception. That I could be the boy, the dad or anything that was not a girl, and my name would be Dennis. Which was not often... I spent most of my time I spent climbing trees and up to roof tops, and running away from older guys who bullied me. Somehow, the fact that they always mistook me for a boy still felt great. But, going to school was the hardest. That time I started to pretend to be sick so I would not have to go to school. I was bullied for being different, for being strange and that I just could not be one of the girls.
Around that time, my mom became really ill, and her cancer was getting worse and we ended up moving again. This time, I tried really hard to be one of the girls. I pretended to love, listen to and know who the spice girls were, tried going to school in a dress (which I shall add was only once) and I suppressed everything once again. Now, today, I wish I could have told my mom that I was always a boy since I can't today. When I was nine years old, my whole world crashed and my mom passed away after a long fight with cancer.
Well, a few months after my mom passes away we move in with another family since my dad met this woman with six kids. The two dated for about three and a half years, and long story short, not a very pretty time. But, when I was not in school and not at home, I sometimes used to go to a friend of mine for a visit, which was about 45 min bus ride from where I lived. And there, I was Devon, a crazy little dude who was not scared of getting hurt. Did stupid crazy stunts, once again started climbing stuff... Jumping off things, close to breaking a few bones, but always landed really well. I never went to the pool in a swimsuit, I always just went in shorts. Which I did till I was almost 13 years old or so, I was a really late bloomer. But then again, when I lived in that house hold I was pretty much starved so I did not go past 30 kilos (66 pounds) til after 13 years old. So, even in girls clothes, strangers always mistook me as a boy (which I loved, and got mad at my friend when she used to correct it...)
And yet another time skip! This was when my dad moved us to the states, and on my thirteenth birthday his friend had taken him shopping for my birthday gift. According to her, I was a girl and I needed to become one. So! I got a lot of make up, a short skirt and a cute top for my birthday, which I had to use and wear the day after to school. I felt like a clown.... But, that was when I once again started to repress everything, and tried very hard to be a girl (which, most of the time I failed at...)
Oddly enough, perhaps the biggest clue, is one dream I have always had. In the dream I would ether start out as a boy or a girl until I would open a door and walk into a new room. And the dream went on like that, something seeming to always chase me out and into a new room. But each time, I would try to stay as long as I could in the room that I was a boy in. Strange dream, but I have not had that dream since I came out to myself.
But! I have not seen a gender therapist yet, and my one of my friends still likes to claim I am just a confused female. So, we will see where I go :)
Quote from: Lo on November 15, 2013, 04:43:12 PM
Now I know why I couldn't imagine myself being a grown-up as a kid; or at least, a grown-up human: because being a grown-up meant being a man or a woman with such an intensity that I couldn't even grasp the concept. Aging, adulthood, and responsibility, it felt like, were going to be withheld from me for some reason.
This is definitely something I have struggled with also; I wonder if it is common? I feel like, at some point in my life, some part of me just stopped growing. As a result, adulthood and aging - and all that comes with these territories - seem strangely remote to me. I cannot imagine them in some ways. I often feel like I am doing more painting by numbers than actual living.
For a while I have thought this was because I had addiction issues arise around twelve. A common recovery maxim is that aspects of our development stop when the addiction starts. True enough, methinks, but this is not quite everything for me. Twelve was also the age at which many of the girls around me began to develop. That I did not was so confusing. I felt left behind and, to some extent, feel like I'm still back there waiting for the next phase of my life to kick in.
Quote from: Jillian on November 15, 2013, 05:39:46 PM
I've been having some repressed memories surface lately since I've become more accepting of who I am. .
I, too, have experienced this as I have become more accepting of my addiction, abuse, and gender sense over the last five years. I suspect this is part of the power of this thread for me and of story telling more generally. This gives me a chance to revisit, explore, and express memories/experiences that have never seen the light of day. It seems not to matter whether I am telling (i.e.: the never before shared 'Playboy' in the mirror) or receiving the story (i.e.: KAT's Tonka truck), there is a sense of healing in the process, of wholeness being rediscovered.
Finally, I want to thank you specifically, Dalex, for your post. Here's an embarrassing admission: I have long scratched my head when considering the male-identified among us. I mean, you would give up
that for
this? Reading your words I again and again felt this head scratching stop. You have showed me something I have never seen before: our experience is way more similar than different. You have helped me grow a bit with your offering, helped me see beyond my limited sense of how things are. I am moved and humbled - still more than a little embarrassed - and so appreciative.
Quote from: Lo on November 15, 2013, 04:43:12 PM
It was slow and subtle and not all that exciting for me.
I never felt like anything. Puberty and genitals annoyed me. I wanted to grow up to be a dragon, a wolf, a pokemon, a cat... anything, really, but an adult human. I had my first experience of intense and psychologically crippling dysphoria a few years ago with a pregnancy scare. I realized that I hated the word "mother" being used in reference to myself, even if just calling me a "kitty mommy". Sometime thereafter I realized I didn't like being called a "woman" either. I was already at the AVEN forums at the time, but decided one day, for the hell of it, to go check out the gender forum. As I read some people's explanations of what being nonbinary felt like, it seemed to match my experience pretty well.
Now I know why I couldn't imagine myself being a grown-up as a kid; or at least, a grown-up human: because being a grown-up meant being a man or a woman with such an intensity that I couldn't even grasp the concept. Aging, adulthood, and responsibility, it felt like, were going to be withheld from me for some reason.
Oh wow... thank you :)
I kind of remember pretending to be a cat for my sister... but I did not remember cocooning myself in blankets and pretending to change into something else (anything else... I think there were a lot of different fantasies) until I read your story. These were when I was very young. I think it was that sense of wrongness that I couldn't pin down specifically.
Quote from: Dalex on November 15, 2013, 05:59:09 PM
(Warning: Possible triggers and really long...)
This whole thread is trigger happy!! It's the good kind, though... the sort of dysphoria triggers that are self affirming and help me explore my own past.
Quote from: Tanya W on November 15, 2013, 06:41:03 PM
I, too, have experienced this as I have become more accepting of my addiction, abuse, and gender sense over the last five years. I suspect this is part of the power of this thread for me and of story telling more generally. This gives me a chance to revisit, explore, and express memories/experiences that have never seen the light of day. It seems not to matter whether I am telling (i.e.: the never before shared 'Playboy' in the mirror) or receiving the story (i.e.: KAT's Tonka truck), there is a sense of healing in the process, of wholeness being rediscovered.
This is exactly what happened to me too... coming out of the closet brings up all the repressed memories that were hidden
because I was in the closet!! They are fuzzy memories, though... and one of them got denied categorically by my parents (their own denial... I am 100% certain about my coming out back then... because YES it happened and hiss to them!)
Quote from: Tanya WFinally, I want to thank you specifically, Dalex, for your post. Here's an embarrassing admission: I have long scratched my head when considering the male-identified among us. I mean, you would give up that for this? Reading your words I again and again felt this head scratching stop. You have showed me something I have never seen before: our experience is way more similar than different. You have helped me grow a bit with your offering, helped me see beyond my limited sense of how things are. I am moved and humbled - still more than a little embarrassed - and so appreciative.
I like this... it's not unlike how I felt when reading that book (Meg wanted to be Joe... weird to me and good for her... she can be me, happily).
I doubt I'll ever fully understand it... I certainly understand it more than any cisgender would, but at the same time I could never ever want to be male. :( I now think I finally hit the critical mass of wishes. Every birthday wish (literally as far back as I can remember... single digit ages, probably). Every 11:11 wish. Every first star... has been to be a girl - whether I was naive, closeted, or knew who I was (again... ~15yo and now at 35). Eventually that wish had to come true... and now it has a chance.
♥ My love goes out to all of you -- our stories are all different, yet we've had such similar experiences.
Thank you all for opening this up to me. I've had such limited imagery from before age 12 or so... and I think I might be able to see more of it now.
I first started realizing I was trans a couple years ago, but I have a lot of memories that make me wonder how it could have taken me so long.
Right before I started puberty, I remember thinking that I would somehow turn out to be a boy. I didn't know it was possible at the time, but I still thought that somehow it would happen.
There's also the fact that, when I think of myself (in terms of personality and who I want to be), I always think of someone male. I know very well that a female can be all I am and do all I want to do. I just can't imagine myself as female without feeling upset.
Quote from: Tanya W on November 15, 2013, 06:41:03 PM
I, too, have experienced this as I have become more accepting of my addiction, abuse, and gender sense over the last five years. I suspect this is part of the power of this thread for me and of story telling more generally. This gives me a chance to revisit, explore, and express memories/experiences that have never seen the light of day. It seems not to matter whether I am telling (i.e.: the never before shared 'Playboy' in the mirror) or receiving the story (i.e.: KAT's Tonka truck), there is a sense of healing in the process, of wholeness being rediscovered.
I feel bad now for leaving something out because I was embarrassed. Of course there's so much more that I could have shared -- look around in your closet and you'll always find more boxed away. But I did second guess myself in sharing one particular story. But you're absolutely right about the power of opening up and sharing our experiences with one another. It really does help!
So...
When I *ahem*
discovered myself at age 11, I was a girl in my very first sex fantasy. And pretty much every other time thereafter. And I didn't learn the "right" way to do it for a long time. I did it like a girl. I won't describe the mechanics of that, but if you use your imagination I'm sure you can figure it out! ::) Whether I was using my
hands fingers (seriously) or a pillow or whatever, I was always in a distinctly receptive position. An odd habit for a "straight male." Especially considering I had no real concept of what I was doing. I certainly didn't know how girls do it! It just sorta came naturally to me that way, I guess. My copulation instinct (masturbation instinct?!) seemed to be pretty clearly tuned to the female channel right from the start.
When I was questioning whether I'm really trans or not, I'd remember those days with a facepalm and think, "oh yeah. That."
I'd point to that as the first time I knew, but I really didn't know. I was only doing what felt good, the way it felt natural to do it. (It still does feel more comfortable that way.) It didn't clue me in to my gender issue until years later.
TBH, even at 23 when I was curled up in a ball sulking over the fact that I was forced to be male and wishing I could get a "sex change" I STILL didn't know! My own ignorance was literally killing me, and probably would have eventually if I hadn't gotten curious and googled the difference between transsexual and transgender, only to discover that I had googled my own salvation.
Wow. I hadn't thought about it like that before! O.O
I can maybe trace it back to when I was 5. I had 'damsel in distress' fantasies, which is pretty amazing because that's a big part of my sexuality now. I'm very submissive and into BDSM. I like being captured and restrained. So I say maybe 5 because you have to buy into gender stereotypes. It's certainly something that is more attributed to women but not exclusively.
6-8: I was learning things. Anatomy especially, but slowly absorbed the awareness of the behavioral differences between boys and girls as they became more obvious. Still, I'd sometimes be the 'pink power ranger' when playing with a male friend of mine, and I'd sometimes be in a situation where he had to rescue me.
9-11/12: Developed a certain lucidity about my situation. I was somewhat submissive around my guy friends. 'Experimented' with some of them. More roleplay stuff where I'd assume the female role. But then a lot of frustration came about. I remember putting stickers on my earlobes, pretending they were earrings, and my dad told me to take them off. Little things like that would happen and contribute to my depression/tantrums. I also recall being in school one day, and this one guy was fooling around and twisting my nipples. I freaked out at him and started crying, saying that he wouldn't dare do that to any of the girls there and pointed to one rather well-endowed girl standing near us. Teacher came in at the wrong time and misunderstood what was going on and scolded me for something like sexual harassment. I was crying so much I don't think I could even try to explain what had happened. And finally when I was 10 I was hanging out with one or two of my guy friends and some girls. Something triggered me, probably some teasing or some gender/sex-related comment. I ran home crying and went into the kitchen, grabbed a knife, and went out to the garage. I wanted to just gut myself and be done with it but my sister ran out there, yelled at me, and took the knife away. Can't say I had a desire to kill myself after that, but for the next few years I cried myself to sleep a lot. I wished, prayed, and hoped that I would wake up as a girl. I felt like being a boy was so hard for me. Like I just didn't 'get it' and being a girl would be so right for me. I'd go clothes shopping for school and stare longingly at the girls clothes. I'd spend a lot of time imagining what it would be like if I really did just wake up as a girl. What would I wear? How would people treat me? How would I decorate my room?
Then all that waned as I realized it was never going to happen. I knew my parents wouldn't understand so I never said anything to them. My friends and anyone else probably wouldn't get it either, and I didn't want to seem like even more of a freak than I already was. I even thought I was an alien at one point. There had to be SOME reason I felt so different from everyone. Why wasn't I playing sports with the boys? Why did I get along with and relate with the girls more? But I eventually pushed all this out of my head. I was smart enough to know that this kind of thinking was dangerous and counterproductive. So I started bottling it up and assumed a more masculine persona. I practically studied the boys around me and on TV. Tried to find things I could relate to. And my longing to be a girl was pushed off onto a longing to have a sister near my age. Then at 13 I started smoking pot, hung out with more people, and socializing became easier. I got into music more, found new interests, and developed a more agreeable persona. I used to plan out what kind of a look I should have to seem more 'cool' and less weird. I ended up becoming this stoner/slacker/rocker type and it worked great for me. But by this point I had repressed my issues. Between 13 and 19 I doubt I ever thought about my childhood. All my struggles had been put in a box and buried and I never even realized it.
So I would say 5 is when I started feeling 'girly' and certainly by 9 or 10 I knew I desperately wanted to be a girl.
Quote from: Tanya W on November 15, 2013, 06:41:03 PM
This is definitely something I have struggled with also; I wonder if it is common? I feel like, at some point in my life, some part of me just stopped growing. As a result, adulthood and aging - and all that comes with these territories - seem strangely remote to me. I cannot imagine them in some ways. I often feel like I am doing more painting by numbers than actual living.
For a while I have thought this was because I had addiction issues arise around twelve. A common recovery maxim is that aspects of our development stop when the addiction starts. True enough, methinks, but this is not quite everything for me. Twelve was also the age at which many of the girls around me began to develop. That I did not was so confusing. I felt left behind and, to some extent, feel like I'm still back there waiting for the next phase of my life to kick in.
I feel similar for other reasons-- I don't have a "normal" sexuality, but rather a paraphilic one, and it emotionally stunted me in a way. People that have intense fetishes and who are completely unable to relate to normal sex are stuck in a child-like mindset in a way, perpetually and shamelessly fascinated by whatever the fetish is.
I read a book, though, called
Denial: My 25 Years Without a Soul about a gay man who went his entire childhood and young adult years not even being able to understand that he was gay. And one of his memories that really struck me (so much so that it brought tears to my eyes) was one from the beginning of the book, where he relates being a kid and just having this very concrete sense of KNOWING that he would never get married and have a family. He didn't know why, he just knew that having a wife and kids wasn't in his future, and it was devastating to him. That's what clued me into remembering that I had the exact same feeling... I imagined growing up to be an animal or a monster because deep down I knew I wasn't going to grow up to be a man or a woman.
In my case, things were rather... confused when I was growing up. Here are a few examples that illustrate the problem.
When I was little I had long, curly, blond hair. Whenever my parents used to take me out, I remember people always commented on what a beautiful little girl I was. I would of course always correct them, that as a matter of fact, I was actually a boy. But I was never offended by being called beautiful all the time. I cried for hours when my parents decided to cut my hair short before I started school.
Sometimes one of my mom's friends would bring over his daughter to play with me, since we were about the same age. We'd always play house, only I would be the one to play the female role (cooking, cleaning, etc.), and she would be the one to pretend to go to work and then come home. However, because I had a stay at home dad, to me that was normal for a boy. She always thought it was funny though, that I wanted to play that way though.
Growing up I had a lot of cousins, mostly girls, who I would play with. The one I spent the most time with was a girl who was a year older than me. We usually got along pretty well, unless she decided to use her advanced age to play tricks on me (trying to convince me I was adopted, for example...). However, she never liked to do girly things, and as it turns out she ended up being a lesbian. :-X
Growing up, I never really felt compelled to wear girl's clothes. But because I went to a Catholic school with a progressive stance on girl's uniforms, the clothes I had to wear were technically the exact same clothes the girls wore. And I didn't like them anyway (they were really uncomfortable).
So yea, when did I figure out for sure I was transgender? About a year after I started taking testosterone blockers... ::)
I didn't realize I was transgender until a few months back, sometime last year. In fact I'm still jumping between certainty and uncertainty. But the more I look back at things, it's like how did I not know?
I was a tomboy as a kid, lots of girls are. I played with the boys, got angry when they kicked me out for being a girl, I even got accepted as an honorary boy in the boys only club in second grade. I threw a fit whenever I had to wear dresses, had a tantrum when I had to make a cut out of myself with a yellow dress, they finally let me have yellow pants, but no blue. I played with all sorts of toys, boys and girls. Though imaginary games were always my favorite.
When fifth and sixth grade hit and girls started growing up, I didn't. I still just wanted to play games and be a kid, I didn't understand the rush. Seventh and eighth grade were also like that. I was mature for my age mentally, but physically I looked like a 4th grader, I always have. Girls were wearing makeup and I tried but never liked it. I just didn't want to stand around and gossip I wanted to run around, be active. Freshman year though I wore a real bra for the first time and started acing more feminine. I didn't feel like I was forcing it, but it didn't feel natural either. It felt like I was playing a role, the cute tiny pixie girl.
It wasn't until half way through junior year that I had my ah ha moment. I had always heard about transgender people, but it was never positive. Words like ->-bleeped-<- and it were what I heard, so for me the thought of being transgender just never occurred to me, after all while I always wished I was a boy I didn't think I was one. I think I even read some stuff about it when I was looking up genderqueer things because I was having a tough time with my sexuality and thought maybe I just have dysphoria but I'm not actually transgender. It wasn't until I saw a dude's video though about how he figured it out that I went oh my god. I had a total freak out, messaged my very accepting best friend and basically had a sob fest. I just couldn't believe it was true, even now I can't.
A lot of it has been hard because I never had a clear sense of my gender as a child. I liked to play with girls and guys, I was always very androgynous looking, and really I just didn't lean one way or another. I did get very upset when I was treated as a girl though, never when I was treated as a boy. I remember having dysphoria now though. Whenever I took a bath, went swimming, etc this feeling of wrongness would wash over me, there's no other way to put. It just feels icky and wrong and I never knew what it was until recently.
Wow that was kind of a jumbled mess, sorry.
Sorry for double-posting, I just read through everything.
@Jillian: I'm amazed how much our stories are alike! I mean, they're still different but some things really stood out, like that feeling of not belonging anywhere and wishing upon stars. I must have dimmed the sky a bit with all the wishes I made! Even the masturbation bit made me smirk. My first orgasm was from a vibrator (technically one of those 'squiggle pens'). xD It's nice to know I'm not alone in a lot of these things. :) *hugs*
Also, I realized I hadn't finished my story. Sorry for the length...
In high school, being the rebellious stoner/slacker/rockstar-wannabe that I was, I was mostly comfortable with myself but some things did start creeping in. I grew my hair out. Big deal, a lot of rockstars had long hair. But having long hair, sometimes my dad said I looked like a girl. I'm not sure what effect that had on me. I didn't mind it so much but generally I just shrugged it off. I liked having long hair. Then a friend of mine put it in pigtails at school one day. Shrugged it off. It was silly. But, I think I felt a bit of a tingling deep down... Then I pierced my ears. Big deal. Some eyeliner now and then? Rockstars do it. Then I'd also slip in some black hair clips or bobby-pins to 'keep the hair out of my eyes'. I'd tuck them behind my ears so they wouldn't stand out. Still... I kinda wished I didn't have to... In retrospect, it's kinda funny realizing all this and what it meant. I repressed everything so well, I had no comprehension of why I was doing all this. All I knew was I liked pushing boundaries but didn't want to be teased for being girly or looking like a girl. So it was a weird balancing act without knowing why I was doing it.
Sexually, I was also oblivious. At 10 I developed an anal fixation. 'Normal' masturbation had gotten boring quickly so I tried different ways of getting off. I was a bit ashamed but I didn't stop, I just made sure it stayed my dirty lil secret. Never once thought it made me 'gay' or anything. I loved being penetrated, but I never thought about being penetrated by a guy. I dated women throughout high school, and had plenty of sexual experiences, but I never once used my penis. I loved women but just couldn't stay physically aroused, which was very embarrassing and I think it contributed to a lot of my relationships failing. And yes, I used the headache excuse once or twice. xD But I didn't know what was wrong with me! I loved women, but I just never had a typical straight male sex drive. When I was 20 though, I think I started admitting a lot of things to myself. I got into a conversation with my friends about how as a straight guy I could appreciate attractive men. I guess that conversation stuck with me and I realized I wasn't being totally honest with myself. So I came out to my friends as bisexual. This made a whole lot more sense to me, and I felt like the pieces of the puzzle were finally coming together. I relaxed more and felt excited. As if being bi could explain everything lol. But my best friend at the time kept the enthusiasm going as she showed me all these pictures of different guys trying to find my 'type'.
Then, a few months later, my best friend gets out this dress from the back of her closet and laughs. She's very punky/gothy so she never wears anything like that. I tried making a deal with her that if she wore it, I'd wear one too. Well... she didn't, and I did. It was like a switch had been flipped and everything that I had repressed came flooding out. In a sense THAT was the missing piece of the puzzle. I can't even remember exactly how I felt or what happened because it all came at me so quickly. I could remember my childhood, and that feeling of wanting to be a girl. It was so clear and tangible that I couldn't understand how I had forgotten! Soon after dressing up a bit more I knew I couldn't just put it back in the bottle, and this time I knew there were things I could do about it. So I sat with my friends and made a pro's and con's list of transitioning. Glad to say the pro's won out. :)
Quote from: Tanya W on November 15, 2013, 06:41:03 PM
Finally, I want to thank you specifically, Dalex, for your post. Here's an embarrassing admission: I have long scratched my head when considering the male-identified among us. I mean, you would give up that for this? Reading your words I again and again felt this head scratching stop. You have showed me something I have never seen before: our experience is way more similar than different. You have helped me grow a bit with your offering, helped me see beyond my limited sense of how things are. I am moved and humbled - still more than a little embarrassed - and so appreciative.
There's no need to thank me, but I am glad. It actually too me a while to think of what to reply, and honestly I still don't really know how. Though, I do understand where you are coming from when you talking about that head scratching. I think everyone has that moment at least once, just a moment where we wonder why someone would want something that you yourself has, yet always felt dysphoric and out of place having it our selfs. Heck, I even thought for a very long time if the medical teams could come together and see which two people were compatible with one another so they could switch, like in a sense; a heart transplant and so forth. I think I scratched my head around that more, if anything.
When I think about it, I suppose I have always been rather good at putting myself in others shoes and try my best to see things from their point of view. It's one of the reasons why I can't give others pity or sympathy, but what I can offer is empathy, but I feel I'm getting a bit off topic here.
What my point about all of this rambling was, we are all human and it is very human to not always able to understand why someone would want something you don't. And that's what we are at the end of the day, we are all just very much human :)
I hope what I wrote made any sense, English is my second language so I do understand why sometimes my view's and points don't always come out as I intended them to. And last but not least, I love you all here. Everyone here has shown me what true strength and bravery is. I want to steal a bit from Robins poem, and write it a bit in my own words, so the last bit all belongs to her but I feel like it's a good message to everyone.
Everyone has wings and many will want to shoot you down for having the ability to fly. But remember, we all fly together, even though some of us are pretty far from one another. I have seen when one of our wings seem to get a bullet wound, many are willing to come sweeping in to help mend the wing back together and help us to fly once again. Hey, it's what family and friends are for, right? :)
Quote from: ♡ Emily ♡ on November 16, 2013, 07:58:53 AM
Oh key... It was really comforting for me to read this ;). I do wonder where does that come from, cause kids at that age are not supposed to know... well, I guess we will never know.
And, btw, when we still had the Sexuality subsection open for everyone, not just for subscribers, we had a wonderful thread on masturbation, which actually showed that really a lot of transwomen had the same experience - not being really sure what we are supposed to do downthere and instead going for the female pattern "behaviour" instinctively.
Yeah, and some of Your memories in that second post made me blush too...
Before I subscribed... I made a similar thread outside. It walked the line, but didn't get moved. ;D https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,148434.msg1225040.html#msg1225040
Well, I suppose I'll throw my two cents in here as well!
I didn't really start accepting or acknowledging the fact until these past couple months... but in a way, I think I always knew. There's always been that feeling in the back of my mind that something was just off. And I never liked being called a girl or a woman. Every time someone has referred to me as a girl or a woman in my life, I get this sharp twinge of severe discomfort. I'm not sure how to describe it, but I'm sure you all know what I'm talking about. I could describe it as a punch in the gut, or like someone plunging a syringe full of a hefty dose of self-loathing into the back of my chest. It always left me with a bitter taste in my mouth. But, anyway....
I think the earliest memory of realizing how much I despised being a girl was when I was about 5. I remember it quite clearly actually, which is strange because I really don't have a lot of clear memories before the age of 12. My brother, cousin (male cousin), and I were in our bedroom racing 2 player on Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (which I am a boss at, btw X3) and my brother and I were racing. My cousin said something to the effect of, "She's gonna beat you!" I remember wanting to snap back at him and shout, "Who are you calling a she!" But then I stopped, realizing, oh yeah... I AM a "she". And after coming to that sudden realization, I felt a crushing sense of despair come over me. After just a moment ago, having fun without a care in the world, just feeling like one of the guys, that was the first time I realized that something was really wrong.
I started refusing dresses and girls clothing at about 5 or 6, probably right after that incident stated above, and demanded not to be given girls toys anymore on my birthday or for Christmas. Of course I always was, and every time I got a girl toy I would either give it to my little sister or trash it. In school, I didn't have a lot of friends, because I never really fit anywhere. I wasn't girly enough for the girls and the simple fact that I was female made me an outcast among the boys, so I was pretty much alone. On top of that, I've always had bad social anxiety. And even though I know it's probably mainly caused by other experiences in my life, I have started to wonder if the dysphoria had a lot to do with it. The only other kids I really had to play with were my brother and sisters friends, and given the choice, I would always play with my brother and his friends. In fact, given the choice between playing with my sister and their friends and just staying in my room alone, I would usually just stay in my room.
As I got older, the angry dysphoric feelings subsided, as everyone pretty much came to accept that I was a tomboy. But then, puberty hit, and things started to get bad again. My mom had explained to me about the what to expect. I think I wanted to throw myself against a wall, but I just did the only thing I could do, cringe and hope by some miracle it didnt happen. But of course, it did. And I, for some reason, hit puberty faster than most of the other girls in my class. To my horror, I developed exceptionally large breasts. I was one of the first girls who had to start wearing a bra. Other kids would comment and it made me so uncomfortable I started to wear nothing but t-shirts and sweatshirts to try to make them less noticeable. I still do, because I can't stand them. I often feel more like they are a couple of tumors on my chest that need to be removed, rather than a part of my body.
In middle and high school, I had a few friends. They were kind of girly girls, but they were pretty awesome because they were funny nerds like me, and they accepted me for who I was. High school was rough for me though. I still didn't fit in anywhere, and always got crap from the other kids. I never went to proms or dances. The idea of putting on a dress and dancing a ball having to try to act like a woman made me sick to my stomach. After a while, I couldn't take it anymore. I dropped out and pretty much became a shut-in for a while.
When I was 19, I decided I needed to stop hiding from the world and go do something with my life. So, I went and got my GED and started college. I decided that I had to accept the fact that I was a girl, because if I was going to go back into the world I had to learn to "fit in". So, I started doing something every morning I never had before.... hair and make up. Luckily, my sister was going with me, so she helped me get ready, because I had no idea what I was doing. I'd put on some girly clothes and go to class feeling like a clown. I never really knew how to act like a girl, and never felt comfortable being myself, but I made the best of what I could work with. My social anxiety wasn't as bad as it was in grade school, so I managed to make some friends, had a pretty good time, typical college life, did well in class. Still, dating, parties, things like that, were still difficult. I was 20 at this point and had yet to have experienced a relationship. I didn't even like dating. It wasn't that I didn't want one, it was just that, I didn't want to be the "girlfriend". I've always had the deep desire to be the boyfriend in the relationship, whether that relationship be with a man or woman. I would often find myself avoiding any kind of flirty or romantic situation, because I realized, girls flirted one way, guys flirted another way. I just couldn't see myself flirting like I saw other girls flirting. I couldn't understand how I could be expected to behave that way.
Then eventually, I did find myself in my first relationship. I remember, even though I wasn't all that excited about the idea of penetrative sex, I was extremely excited to finally see what a penis was like in person. XP I remember both of my ex boyfriends had commented at some point in our relationship that they thought it was strange how fascinated I was with their penis. XP And to make it even more strange, penetrative sex was a huge issue for me. Through two relationships, one lasting 4 years and the other 1 year, I was only able to bring myself to do it a hand full of times, because every time it felt so wrong. Painful, and at times intensely nauseating, and always left me feeling kind of violated. This caused problems in my relationships, needless to say. My first ex would often get angry and tell me I wasn't a real woman, adding to my already strong feelings of inadequacy. I would often wonder if there was something medically wrong with me, but upon a check up, everything was perfectly fine... (physically anyway) But of course, that didn't make it any easier. On top of that, my body dysphoria made it impossible for me to feel comfortable in the nude. I always felt rather disgusted by my body, especially my breasts. Even though I've always been a little overweight, I've never really been heavy, but I always kinda felt like Jabba the Hut without clothes on. XP
And of course, the desire to have a penis has always been very strong. Even when I was very young, I always felt like it was missing. Even though I knew I was a "girl" and wasn't supposed to have one. I have had many, many dreams throughout my life about having a penis, and being a boy, and then feeling the crushing, dysphoria and disappointment upon waking up. Another things is, when I imagine myself in my head, I have always imagined myself as a man. Say if I were thinking about my future or dreaming about being a celebrity or something like that (we all do that at some point, don't we? XP) I would always be a man. And in my head, my inner voice when I'm thinking to myself is often male. Sometimes its female, but a lot of the times its male.
But, its pretty remarkable the changes that I have felt over these past few months, finally realizing who I am. So much has changed in my mind. The dysphoria can be worse at times, now that I am more aware of it, but at the same time I feel like I can handle it better now that I know what it is. My view of myself has changed drastically. One problem that has haunted me throughout my life is that I never could figure out who I was. I always had problems, trying to figure out how to act, what to say, what was "appropriate", what I should like or dislike. Even though, it's not like I couldn't have done and been everything I wanted to be as a woman, there was one fundamental thing that was wrong with the whole picture, the fact that I WASN'T a woman. That, in and of it self, for some reason, felt so limiting to me. And now, I know why. Accepting myself as a man has been the most life-changing experience of my life, and I have the people on this forum to thank for that. :) For the first time, I feel like I know who I am, and feel comfortable just being me without worrying so much about what I do or say. And I'm finding out, that I actually like myself, a lot. And I'm not all that hideous after all. XP After so many years of self-loathing and hate, I am for the first time learning to love myself for me, and realize its okay not to fit into a box. And its an amazing feeling. I truly feel like I have been reborn.
Sorry..... I typed way more than I intended to. XD Darn my rambliness. XP *double headdesk*
For me it was Nadia Komanec (sp?) at the Montreal Olympics when I was seven.
She moved so gracefully, so beautifully. And then looking at her...from what gymnasts wear you get a pretty good anatomy lesson, and I could see pretty clearly that she didn't have what I did. I wanted it gone, and I wanted to be like her.
After that came puberty, college, work, all kinds of other stuff...and the intensity of that feeling rose and fall, but I wasn't sure how far across I was on the transgender scale until the start of this year. A final determination to sit down and work through exactly what it was that was making me so unhappy brought me to a final acceptance of what I'd always been trying to evade: transsexualism.
In my experience with transgender and LGB folks many have reported the same sense or phenomena as Kai. That they/we had troubled self images and unclear, fuzzy or even no memories of our early childhood. Some of us had those ah ha moments that punctuated the fog but I submit much of it was too painful to dwell on?
Thank you all for sharing!
Quote from: Tessa James on November 20, 2013, 10:36:42 AM
In my experience with transgender and LGB folks many have reported the same sense or phenomena as Kai. That they/we had troubled self images and unclear, fuzzy or even no memories of our early childhood. Some of us had those ah ha moments that punctuated the fog but I submit much of it was too painful to dwell on?
Thanks to everybody for sharing your experiences here. It has been amazing, walking side by side with you all through the troubling, insightful, saddenning, liberating times your stories reflect.
At the beginning of this thread, I wrote of my 'when did you know' moment. Though this is something I had never spoken of with others before I hit the 'Post' button here, I have always known it was somehow an important juncture in my life - I just didn't quite get
how it was important.
Reading all the stories here, one thing - of many things! - that has come up for me is the realization that I have actually had a great many 'ah ha' moments over the years. Longing for the change in presentation that came with puberty for the girls I knew; feeling somehow that
that washroom, the girls' washroom, was where I should go; looking down with growing confusion at this body - all of these were "ah ha moments that punctuated the fog" of a very fuzzy self-image.
Why, I have been wondering, have I not noticed this before now? Tessa, of course, is right on in suggesting such moments were simply too painful to dwell on. Without a doubt. There is, however, something else in here for me...
It is, for most of us, difficult to accurately see anything we do not have a conceptual framework for. It is hard, in other words, for us to clearly see something for which we do not have a corresponding mental image. We can see a 'chair', for instance, because in our minds, we have some sort of idea labelled 'chair'.
Years ago, I was working in a rec centre swimming pool. A non-swimming friend walked by unexpectedly and wandered out to say 'hi'. The pool was absolutely empty for the first minutes of our exchange, then someone walked in, grabbed a styrofoam kick board off the deck, jumped in the water and began moving up and down the lane with this. 'I wondered what those things were,' my friend exclaimed. 'What did you think?' I asked. 'I don't know. I guessed they were just little coloured things you kept around for decoration.'
This pretty much describes my situation with regard to the 'ah ha' moments we've been sharing here. I have, I am understanding, had many of them over the years - but because I have not had any sort of conceptual framework that explained these to me, they have passed only barely noticed.
I grew up in the very white bread, middle class, suburban world of 1970s/80s North America. In this time and place, ideas of 'transgender' - the kind of ideas that would have helped me really see and understand the moments I am describing here - were very near non-existent. I vaguely remember a news story about Renee Richards wanting to play professional tennis. I listened to lots of music, so was familiar with 'Walk on the Wild Side' and 'Lola'. Beyond this, however...
So I passed many of my years with a very troubled, fuzzy, and unclear self image. Sure there were 'ah ha' moments punctuating this fog with some kind of regularity, but I really was unable to see these, understand these, welcome these for what they were. Instead they became strange little secrets that I tucked away - never looking at them, never asking of them, never feeling anything more that a hint of their significance until very recently.
In this light, reading all of your stories has been more than amazing. It has been informative in a most helpful and necessary way. Many, many thanks.
And thank You, Tanya, for creating this thread :) You were not the only one to be amazed and having walked side by side with others who shares their stories - listening to them amazed, saddened and liberated :) It is one of the best threads here and I hope there is more to come ;).
Since my 2nd memory, which was at age 3. And yeah, this is likely going to be long, so if you don't want to be stuck reading War and Peace, Volume II, Jessica vs. Her Body, given my photographic memory, I'd suggest stopping here (and no offense taken on my end). Trigger Warning: Genital mutilation, suicide attempts.
But yeah, as I said this started at age 3. I always took baths with my mother, and it was just us two in the house at that part of my life. I knew what she had vs. what I had. Something just clicked that that was wrong. And so my 3 year old brain reasoned that I, too, could simply get my body like hers, from simple getting rid of that part of my body. And so, every time I had a bit of free time, I'd go straight to the bathroom, drop down my pants, underwear, and slam down the seat, as many times as I could, so it would fall off. After all, if my mother didn't have one, how secure could it have been? In retrospect, my mind must have thought it would fall off like if you did the same with a stick, in that it surely would fall off from impact alone. It didn't quite do that, but it did prompt my mother to walk in, and remark once to me, astonishingly aghast, "A purple p****!" She never did anything about that incident.
Around that time, my favorite toy was a Madeline doll, who I slept with every night, and my favorite stories were her stories, of living in Paris; "In an old house in Paris that was covered in vines, lived twelve little girls in two straight lines..." As the traditional opening ended, I always thought of myself as Madeline, always the shortest of them all, just like I was for many a class until like 10th grade. That wound up impacting my life even today, as I speak French as my second language now, and am a bit of a Francophile.
I also attended a day care at this time, and always just wanted to play with the other girls who were doing house. And it was a small day care, too, a little area inside a church, so around the size of an average living room, for like 15 some kids. But they always, always rejected me, because I was a "boy", meaning I was physically pushed me out, every time I tried to play with them, at one point leaving me like 25 some bruises on each leg. I was an insistent bugger, you could say. Eventually, they caved one day, and they let me in, to call me over, to let me play. I was absolutely ecstatic, even though I had to play the brother, who promptly died in about 2 minutes. My thoughts at the time, they still ring in my head today, or at least the general idea of them: "Oh, wow, yay! I want be the mom or sister, like I heard them say they are a lot, but I get to be in the girl's group today!" Other than that, I mostly just sat alone, looking on, about 5 feet away, wishing and wanting. One day, we learned how to end a performance at this same day care; boys bow, girls curtsey. I can't recall any stares or anything with negative connotations, when I did only my curtsey, except the smile on my face.
Around this age, I really got confirmed the differences down there, between a boy and a girl-it was in this book shop, and I chose to read this book called The Human Body for Kids, or something of that nature. I was hopeful they would have something on the difference between boys and girls, and indeed they did ("little boys don't have a vagina"/"little girls don't have a penis"), that's the first time I learned the word vagina, and what I needed then, and still need to this day. I wished every night there on out I could wake up right, for some time...
Then when I was 4 (don't worry, these aren't all this long!), I had really envied a pair of pink Hello Kitty boots this one girl had. I remember loving the pink, and the possibly faux-fur design of their heels. I also loved to play dress up, and play as my personal favorite evil character I knew, Cruella DeVille, so I mixed up black and white wigs, clothes, etc. to make my hair match hers. We also had open house that year, and had an arts and crafts area we were displaying, and I made a pink, stapled headband that I kept on the rest of that night. While the staples were itchy, it still made me so happy, and I had to tell my mother all about it!
Then, like now, I did acting, in some courtroom theatre, which was my first taste of acting. Awesome! This one day, they actually complied with my request to play someone's daughter, and that I got to read her lines. It absolutely made my day to have done that. Like before, my mother was the only friend I had to talk with at that point, so I told her, again beaming.
In kindergarden, we had this field trip to the local airport, and I had the curse of being born with a low voice (love ya, HRT!). So all my class got to go into the cockpit of the plane, sit in the pilot's seat, to announce the city we had "landed" in. My mother, a chaperone, and my teacher made a fun game out of this, amongst themselves and the other students: Try to guess who the student was that had just spoken. It was surprising how many they actually got wrong, so I had hope when it was my turn, that they'd hear a girl when I spoke. I tried my best girly high voice, because even I knew it was a bit on the low side for a boy that age, let alone a girl, and said: "Welcome to [city]." I thought it sounded great, they totally thought it would be a girl...ah, nope. My mother said she and the teacher were laughing over how low my voice was, and how the speaker was obviously me. She meant no harm, but oh, that one just hurt.
In grade school, like grade 1, it was simple. I talked to other girls. Period. Usually I would talk about liked stuffed animals, or other soft things. I would with the boys from time to time, but they were like (as they were), the other people. Not degrading them, but just, well, like how most kids would-mostly talking to those of the same sex.
Second grade is where things got interesting, funny, and rather nasty...I thought up my first true name for myself, in a letter addressed to male classmate I had a crush on, as Juliet. Chosen because I wanted to keep the J (hey, look, I still did!), and it was romantic in a way, with Romeo and Juliet. I just knew it as a famous love story at the time, so why not use her name? Hopefully I don't meet her tragic end in the future, though! We also had self drawings, god help me if I can do better than a stick figure most days...mine was a stick kid who was seemingly normal, except for the fact that I put a taped X where my crotch was. Yeah, I meant that by it. And I got close to doing it, too. I got a tool kit that year for my birthday, which I found utterly useless except for the saw. I got up early one morning, took out the saw, pulled down my underwear, and starting to slowly to move the saw, left and right, left and right, carefully so, as to be precise. Didn't want my family knowing, so when I heard them wake up, I hid my experiment as soon as I could. They were none the wiser about this until another 8 years after this incident.
3rd grade to 6th grade, I loved going to the 'girl' gifts part of a certain site, with the label attached to its hit counter saying, "[A]nd we know if you're a girl." I always thought that true, silly me, but I hoped they saw me as a girl, but had my worries, doubts, since nobody else did but me. Around that time, my friends and I (boys, which, egad, shock, right?) would pick 'characters' from anime (which, meh, no appeal other than Pokemon now, sorry) or video games to pick to be. I wound up picking this girl from this one show, and as such my friends called me her name. I basically was their boss, in a friendly way, so they had to do it, although they took no issue with that. I remember writing in my Crayola 64 Pack, on the underside of the flap, that year that her name was MY name, and it was NOT that wrongname. I dreamed, wished, prayed I could become her one night. And so, when I woke up, I felt like her, I truly believed I had become her, and adjusted my attitudes and such to 'become' her. I didn't dare look down, since I didn't want to be disappointed about the down there part. Tried to trick myself that since if I didn't look, I still had a 'chance' of being right. I late became her later in life...always secluded, down, depressed. Rather fascinating.
But my friends were more involved with a group I was in, so there were more like group buddies. I didn't have any other friends, so I went to video games, because they would let you see yourself for whatever you wanted to. In 2001, my favorite game ever came out...and not just because you could play as a female for the first time on it, though that really helped (and, according to my father, I played all the time as female characters in video games--he remembered more than me on that front). I loved playing as her, it was so refreshing, and right! I always changed her 'back', if I was afraid my parents would see. Why that was, I don't know-but possibly because I was a kid who had her share of trouble in the classroom until 4th grade, since I likely was bored of too easy academic work. I really didn't want to start that cycle again, since I was now basically a model student behavior wise, and academically.
I read the cocoon item some people have shared here, I did the same like every day in around 5th/6th grade. Saw that one on a TV show-this boy wanted to be less scared, and so he wrapped himself up in a blanket, and eventually his blanket became his new wings, as a butterfly; a happier, braver child. Right after the episode, I thought the same could work for me, that I'd become a girl, like that. Wrap the blanket around me, go to sleep, wake up a girl! It was RIGHT THERE, had to be! Augh, no. Of course not. At least my mother bought me a pair of girl's blue shoes then, which I proudly showed off to all the bus drivers in the district: "Look! I'm wearing girl's shoes! :) " I was just happy, and proud. Can't help but wonder what they thought of it all though!
My mother got pregnant with my first sister in summer 2002, and I wound up getting a sympathy pregnancy (morning sickness, all that fun stuff!) with my mother...at least I had that, as much as I didn't know what it was. It was fascinating, almost like our symptoms lined up, like how with two natal females living together sometimes share period dates, or close to them. I'm sure it was a sympathy prenancy though, given it stopped basically immediately when my sister was born. I might not be able to birth my own, which is always devastating, but I had that. Minus the delivery, that's as close as I can ask for. :(
Towards the latter half, 5th and 6th grade, of middle school, I just talked to this one friend Claudia a lot-again about fun furry pet toys, cats, or just girly things in general. It was wonderful, and she thought as much of it as I did, which is to say, nothing.
Somewhere around 6th and 7th grade, I had this book of 100 Questions for Kids. 2 of them stuck out to me: Do you ever wish you were of the opposite sex? OH MY GOSH, YES! YES! How they knew how I felt, though, that's what I wanted to know. Felt like I was stalked! The other one asked if I would trade lives with anyone in my class, for I believe a week. And yes-this girl in my class who I was good friends with, since we shared a lot of laughs, fun, and academic interests. I mean, she had an awesome family, basically the same personality, interesting, etc. as me, AND she gets to be a girl. I was worried how she would feel though, if I did that, but I totally wanted to switch lives with her...so much.
For 8th grade, I read one of my favorite book series ever, all 8 of the Anne of Green Gables series. It was easy to imagine myself as Anne, with her fun imagination, school success, childhood mischief, her coming of age (like I was, simultaneously), and so on. As my father joked about my love of the series, "Maybe she read those books because she wanted to become a Canadian!"
Towards the end of 8th grade, it was getting to be the end of the year...and god help me I had a stalker girlfriend who always rang my number. I was NOT interested, never reciprocated those countless offers. She just was that obsessed and obnoxious. Around that time, I played The Sims all the time, just a fun game. I made a fictionalized version of my family, with me being named Jasmine, or another girl's name that can also serve as the name of a spice. It was really cool...and I boasted about it to my friend how awesome it was that I got to be a girl (that I saw myself as, reflected back in the screen). He was, understandably so, tepid and a bit confused as to why I did so, in his reaction. That family made me so happy to play with, it made things okay that summer, since I was on the computer basically all the time, and I got to be a girl during it.
Then, sigh, the joys of high school. I had a late puberty, and so I basically started in 9th grade. Only then did I notice secondary sexual characteristics between men and women...god help me, I wanted to look like THEM! And I knew it was going to get bad, fast. I knew too much about puberty to know this one would not end well at all. Day after day of secluded depression, wondering WHY!? Ready to smash a mirror if I so much as saw my reflection of the NIGHTMARE of changes that took place. I wanted to end it daily, never was successful. The closest I got in high school was I think sometime in early 2008, when I hung a belt around my neck, and tightened it more than it should have been, in an attempt to cut off the throat's ability to breathe. I did get a few remarks about why I had such marks, and I fed them the BS that I was simple exercising my neck, with a demonstration. Somehow, they bought that (hey, I am an actress, you know) and gave me neck exercises (which I would remember now, I'd like to exercise the area) to do instead. I had NO friends in 9th grade, so academics, save for geometry, were my one salvation. I adored algebra and French, so rather than talk to people during lunch most days (seriously, HS was 90%+ days of sitting alone at a table), I'd just read my books to learn more. Books were my friends.
I couldn't take much more in 10th grade, at which point I couldn't take it anymore. Around October 2008, I started to write something called Jenny's (the name I liked for myself at the time) Journal, which was a slightly humorous attempt (though more self-necessity than anything else) at writing my day from a girl's perspective, including the crush I had on the [American] football team's quarterback. Well, naturally, it got back to him, since a lot of my fans were jocks, and it got to the principal about this, under potential sexual harassment. If I had been born right, it sure as heck wouldn't have been-and it wasn't here, but... yeah. My parents got called in to the school about it, which made me feel embarrassed, and asked me if I felt like this. I did not say yes, since I didn't think the time was right.
Same reasoning with the two times we were asked flat out on an evaluation sheet (0-2 scale, 2 is highest): "I wish I was a member of the opposite sex." Once on my 16th birthday, once in 4th or 5th grade. Still wondered how they knew my life, but was worried I'd be harmed if I put yes, so I put 0 both times, stupid me (though truthfully, it was a 2, of course--and one person was actually shocked I was a 0, after she was told).
Anyway, after that journal snafu, I tried to hide my thoughts, that they were shameful, and more importantly hurtful to others. I couldn't hold them back. It just HURT to do so, on top of the puberty hell, and made me cry internally. I would have done so externally, but pre-HRT, I couldn't cry as well, even if I had wanted to. And so, the year flipped to 2009. I went to see then-president elect Barack Obama get inaugurated, with this group who I had done a law camp with before, the summer prior, in 2008. Rooming with like 6 boys, who were super girl crazy, and peering out the windows for them all the time, and their crushes, well, I think I was the bigger one crushed. It felt so TERRIBLE, because while they were nice enough, I did not belong, and I longed so much to be in a room with the other girls for girl chat...sigh...
Anyway, January 2009, prior to the swearing in, our first night there, we were divided not only for room purposes between male and female, but for a guideline talk. After they separated, god I wanted to RUSH to the girl's one, but I knew that one would go over oddly. First question they ask once they women are gone: "WE'RE ALL MEN HERE, RIGHT?" Unlike the others who roared like their local team had scored a winning touchdown, goal, or what have you, I stayed silent, cowered my head in fear, and depression, as I thought to myself, "This is wrong...." And I knew it was absolutely enough. I had to tell my family directly at this point, as if it hadn't been obvious enough to that point. Add that to some guy, who actually was quite nice, but felt the need to mention getting his pants fitted a certain way, to show off his "junk in the trunk". I had no idea how to react, I honestly just grimaced, because it was just awkward to hear that. I couldn't hack it as a guy, ever. Talking about those parts I detested like they are some glorious gift, it's not for me. I never had a doubt I was female, but, really, this showed me for the first and only time, just how bizarre the male world is, and why it doesn't work for me.
Obama was sworn in (not about politics, I swear, I'm only adding context to the dates!), I came home, did an interview about going there, getting a special ticket that got my close to the event, from a state senator, about the experience. About a week after, I was sitting in the car, in the parking lot of a little local diner or cafe, when I told my mother, at 16. I read Just Evelyn's Mom, I Need to be a Girl countless times the prior few nights, as well as seeing 20/20's My Secret Self, with Jazz and her mother, Jeanette, praying my mother (and father) would be similar to those two in her response. She totally did in time-and these days, I keep in contact via FB with Jazz's mother. My originally thought increasing my T levels would help cure this-not to be mean, but to offer a viable solution. I went to therapy, for many years. Nobody knew ANYTHING, or wouldn't see me as an under 18.
I was SO bummed I couldn't go my senior year as the female I knew myself to be, but given my lack of HRT to that point, and my voice, probably would have been a huge messy national article bit about it, like a bathroom spat. Still didn't make my senior year any less depressing, academics aside...I didn't want to even go to my HS graduation since it would be under the wrong name. I had to be threatened with no graduation dinner if I didn't, and I reluctantly went. Of course, oh nononono! It didn't stop at names, it went to dang robe colors, black for men, red for women. I really, REALLY wanted a red one. So much. That still bugs me. At least my family called me JD cheering for me when I graduated, which are still my initials (Jessica Danielle, to be exact). I graduated friendless, the one friend I did have found others, and basically drifted from me. Can't say I'd blame him with how I was then. That didn't mean I didn't want female friends though...I did more than almost anything else! I just worried they'd see me trying to hit on them, and not just as friends, girl-to-girl, so I abandoned the idea, at least in my high school.
So I went to driving school that summer, since I was unconfident about my abilities, as well as that I wanted to NEVER have that M marker on my driver's license. I found it super easy to talk with the other girls there, as we talked about fashion, and advice for life, and such. It was awesome! All the girls loved talking to me about, well, whatever. One told me I just had to be her fashion guide once she got her license, and we'd go together to shop! I think they thought I was a homosexual male, which nothing wrong with that, except the male part...that made the experience a touch less special, sigh.
I actually met my first 'other' (I use 'other' since this person since detransitioned) TS person, a few years younger than myself working at a local Burger King, after my first driving lesson, which was neat, but honestly rather scary to me, since the look was a bit garish, over the top. I met my 2nd one (FTM this time) while acting, and we were assigned 'partners' for one of the dance numbers, who made it a point to tell me to use male pronouns, which of course, no issue there. I asked why he was talking about names, hormones one day, turns out he said he was FTM, as thought (given a pound on his chest was hollow, sounded like a binder), and told me how I'd feel if I woke up one day in a girl's body. I didn't laugh, somehow, as not to be rude, but HA!
College was more of the same, great academics, love the professors for their intellect, and so on. Hey, I learned a lot about the awesome stuff like business, more about French, more theatre, amazing astronomy, and so on! No friends, sadly, and body hurt like hell, every day, still, and I was a Dean's List student a few times. Even this spring, my junior year, the pain, loomed over my like the black shoe over the helpless ant. I am glad I was not successful (don't do this!!), but I basically smothered myself with a pillow one night, and think I saw the afterlife, where I was free of all pain, dancing, like a music box ballerina, that it was all over. I recovered. Thankfully, I started HRT November 2012, which rebounded a 2ish GPA at that point in the semester, into a Dean's List GPA. That's the power of estrogen, baby!
And so, months went by...I waited until my birthday this year, June 2nd, my 21st, to start living partly (read: everywhere but class) as me. I went to the Philly Health Conference, this past June, which I'm hoping to present at next year with some close people in my life, to live as me all day, everyday there, haven't looked back since! I'm much more open, easier to talk with now, since other girls just see me as just another one of them, talking about whatever is on mind, and that soars my confidence. Everybody sees me as Jessica, anywhere; thank you great genes! It's AMAZING! It's like a perfect puzzle piece fit. Still need SRS to feel complete, personally, someday...in the meantime, to tell my story, like here, I've done an interview that should be out by year's end, as well as appearing in a documentary that begins work in December. Why do this? In addition to helping youth who truly need a role model or example, these actions are also in memorial of my father, who passed unexpectedly in his late 50s this July-he stood for social justice, equality, for all, which his parents instilled in him with the UN. I want to carry on his traits as a person in me, and I can't think of any better way to do so.
In conclusion, I've never lived life as a guy. He didn't exist-people did not see his shadow, literally so, as I prevented people from seeing me, outside of classes, or if they did they had to be in my really close circle, or I would be studying, or eating alone. I've always been female, and always will be. This life is SO much better now. I can't imagine how AMAZING, at LONG last SRS will be in hopefully a year! Hope you enjoyed my story. :)
I first suspected something was up when I was 4 years old. My mom took me to the beach and I told her I wanted a swimsuit like the ones the girls were wearing. In turn, I got the first of many lectures about what is "appropriate" for boys.
At this time the majority of my friends were girls. In preschool, boys and girls were separated during one play time period each day and I always hated it. Boys played too rough for my taste and I hated that whole male pecking order thing from the get-go. I didn't fit in, and it was obvious to everyone. I just wanted to play nice inside with my girl friends.
Eventually I was forced to socialize with boys, but I never really quite fit in. I learned how not to get my ass kicked every day by forced assimilation. I always felt sort of fake and spent a lot of time alone in my room. I often wished I could just trade places with every girl on my street. When I was 6 years old, I was able to get naked with one of my girlfriends and even tried to have sex with her. Actually I just wanted to be her, and I spent a lot of my childhood trying to shove my genitals "back up in there where they belonged".
In 7th grade the cojones kicked in and I became miserable. I had almost no friends and I spent most of my days at school dodging bullies. I remember crying one day at lunch, feeling the testosterone turning me into a man and hating these new feelings. One one hand, getting bigger could help deter the violence I encountered almost every day and I knew it would help me socially, but on the other hand it was causing what I now know to be dysphoria. I became very attracted to girls, and desperately wanted a girlfriend at the time. I kept telling myself that my transgender feelings were probably normal but nobody ever spoke of them, I wasn't gay after all and maybe some female essence is actually the root of being heterosexual, like in a yin-yang symbol or something. At this time I began experiencing recurring dreams that I was growing breasts that I hated waking up from, sometimes in tears.
Then one day my right testicle swelled up to the size of a tangerine and I was rushed to surgery. I don't recall the details exactly, but I ended up having "vestigial girl parts" removed from it. My brother had to have an undescended testicle removed when he was 3. I believe now that my mother took DES when pregnant with us.
My mother gave birth to my one and only sister when I was 14, and I recall wishing every day that I could just trade places with her. My mom was often too busy to deal with a baby, so my sister became primarily my responsibility. I recall feeling strangely maternal on one hand, but raging from testosterone on the other.
At 17 I started having sex with girls, but often imagined myself being the one the receiving end and often found myself jealous of how pretty they were, wishing I could look like them. I dismissed it as "normal" to feel that way, and I learned to cope with the dysphoria by denial, suppression, overcompensation, booze, drugs, and playing guitar for hours at a time.
I tried growing my hair long many times, but my dad always managed to force me to cut it. My parents moved away when I was 20 and in college, so I finally was able to grow it out and pierced my ears. Why they always pestered me to cut my hair was beyond me, but I've kept it long for most of my adult life. Now I know why...
I met my wife at 23, married her at 25 and tried to forget about my gender issues. Every time they surfaced, I'd shove them back down. Why would you have a sex change just to be a lesbian? I like girls, I like having sex with them, and hell, I'd make a pretty ugly woman. This worked until last year when I had a breakdown over it. The transgender feelings were at the surface, and I couldn't make them go away anymore. I told my wife, not knowing how she'd take it, but I had to do it as she knew something was really bothering me and deserved to know what it was. Originally I thought I was an androgyne or bigender, as the dysphoria wasn't constant and I'd have moments where I was still basically OK with being a guy. If this was the case, I thought that transitioning fully might cause dysphoria from the other direction, so I avoided that notion like the plague at first. I didn't want to tell the whole world about my issues if I could still manage being a guy sometimes. Hell, it would have been easier not to have to go there.
I finally got therapy after I tried to drink myself to death on a couple of occasions while trying to come to grips with being transgender. My therapist, an expert in gender issues, shocked me at first by telling me I needed to get on a low dose of estrogen ASAP. If I was truly transgender, then this would bring me some much needed relief. If not, then it would just make me irritable and moody and I could put this whole thing to bed once and for all. Of course 2 hours after my first dose my brain felt like it had finally unclenched itself- like it felt before puberty. I still had reservations about transitioning at that time and only dressed privately. My therapist later asked me why it was that I wouldn't just want to be Jill 24/7, so I pondered that for a time. As my tight fitting shirts were about to out me, I decided to give full time a shot. I figured that if I ever wanted to stop because I preferred to present myself as male sometimes, then a full transition would not be in the cards and I wouldn't have to tell the whole world. I turned out that I actually never wanted to present as male at all, and I only did it out of a perceived need to fulfill others' expectations of me. That's when I knew 100% for sure that I needed to make it permanent.
How thick am I?
I previously wrote that I knew when I was 14 when I wanted to be the girl on the back of the bike but the clues were there many years before.It's only with hindsight I could see them.I was born in 1957,"sex changes" were only ever in seedy Sunday newspapers which my parents never read.I remember imagining starting school as a girl and thinking I was in the wrong school when I went to an all boys junior school. I can recall other boys being terrified of having to play a girl in the school play,our teacher was a fearsome battleaxe and if Miss Bennett told you you were playing a girl you were,no argument.I wondered what all the fuss was about and wished I could play the girl. We also got an exchange student called Jean from France and I wished I was French because I thought French boys had girls names.Although I was tall I was a quiet timid kid who hated fighting,I had few friends and preferred to be alone,fishing and model making.I often daydreamed about living as a girl and knew one day I would.I didn't know how but I knew it would happen.I hated having boy's haircuts but it was the late 60s/early 70s so I got away with a grown out DA while at school.I liked girls and had a girlfriend at 12,nothing happened we never even kissed,I liked boys also,not as much as girls but this made me feel even more weird.I knew there were gay people and straight but not bisexual.For many years I wrongly assosciated gender identity and sexual preference.
I skipped meals,drank and cut myself as puberty started,I saw my chance of living as a girl getting further away each day.My schoolwork went to hell,I dropped 20 places and was rarely out of trouble,I got in a ton of fights I didn't care if I lost as the pain took the edge of dysphoria.I first dressed up at 13 in some old clothes of my Mum and sister I was supposed to take to a jumble sale at Church.I took the ones that fitted and I liked best for myself.About a year later came the incident with the older boy and his girlfriend on the BSA where I wished I was the girl.
I continued drinking,dressing,skipping meals and cutting until one day in 1973 I was flicking through the TV channels(all 3 of them back then!) and an old Pathe news film came on with a beautiful blonde lady in a racing car.She was Roberta Cowell the former Spitfire pilot and at last I knew it was possible to live as a woman.I realised long ago no one could ever know my secret so I rarely made friends or had long term relationships and covered up by being a biker(now I could have long hair and not get crap about it)driving muscle cars drinking even more and smoking weed and taking speed to take the edge off dysphoria.
Shortly after my 21st birthday I saw an article in a sleazy paper about a transexual and it was like I got an electric shock and a bucket of cold water over me at the same time.I realised the feelings were not going away and i would have to deal with them.I covered up even more,I bought a 327 Chevy Chevelle and a Triumph Bonneville and chased even more girls.I'd had the occasional fling with guys but usually preferred girls.I was going to transition in 1979 but I lost my nerve,I knew nothing of HRT,electrolysis and convinced I would be some sort of monster I lost myself in dope and booze for 10 years.
By 1989 I was desperate,I was a mess smoking to much weed,drinking to much not eatingenough with thinning hair and I knew i had to do it soon.I started electrolysis and self medicating early in 1990 and living in role at nights and going out to a gay club at weekends These were the happiest times I had ever known,I watched spellbound over the next 18 months as my facial hair diminished,my face changed to a more female shape,my hair grew back even in the bald patch and my breasts grew.In the last week of September 1991 I went full time,what I had wanted so long was happening at last.
Sorry if I've gone on to long and bored you
OMG how very personal and profound you all can be. Tears are not enough!
WRITE on!
My mother realised that there was something different about me by the time I was 18 months old. As far as she knew, she'd given birth to a pretty little girl with enormous blue eyes and masses of blonde curls; her own little Shirley Temple. And so she expected me to act like I looked: sweet, demure, girly. Instead, I was a little tearaway: single-minded, determined, adventurous, and far more boisterous than my elder brother. She was perplexed: I was supposed to be girly, right? So why wouldn't I act like a girl?
Before the age of 3 I didn't have any major problems with my gender, because I didn't know anything about gender. I used to play with a mixed group of children, and we played the sort of games that young children tend to play so there wasn't any gender-based segregation. But when I was 3 I started attending Nursery School, and it was there that it slowly dawned on me that I wasn't like the other girls. I grew up in a very sexist era (the 1970s) when gender roles were strictly enforced, and it was in Nursery School that the teachers first split us into groups of boys and groups of girls so that we could play with our own kind. I didn't see anything wrong with being grouped with the girls at first - I was a girl, after all - but for the first time in my life I forced to play the sort of games that girls are supposed to like, and oh my god! it was incredibly weird, frightening and lonely for me.
We were given tea sets and dolls and prams and things. We were expected to play make-believe games with these toys, and I didn't have the first clue where to start. It was the social aspect of these games that knocked me for six. Girls would each assume a social role in these games, and there'd be lots of talking about who was going to take what role and what they'd be expected to do, and then the game would be all about social interaction between our respective assumed roles. I was completely and utterly lost: not only about how to do this, but also about why anyone could possibly be interested in playing this way. I would sit there in a group of yammering girls, looking longingly over at the boys who were running around, shooting each other with toy guns, playing with marbles, having fun on the playground equipment: playing the sort of games I loved and knew how to play. But I knew I wasn't allowed to go and join them: the teachers made it perfectly clear that those games were not for girls, and I knew instinctively that I'd be 'outed' as a weirdo if I even tried to join in. I realised that the other girls would identify me as an outsider, and the boys didn't want a stinky girl with cooties to join their games. So my only recourse was to be the socially awkward kid on the outskirts of a group of girls, feeling more & more distressed as time wore on.
By the time I was 5 I knew for sure that I wasn't like other girls and that I felt more like a boy. I went to my parents and told them that I was really a boy, that I wanted to wear boys' clothes and be known by a boy's name, and they dismissed me as 'going through a tomboy phase'. My mother told me that once puberty hit, I would grow out of my tomboy phase and get on with the business of being a girl again. So she let me cut my hair a bit shorter, and although she wasn't particularly happy about it, she let me wear shorts & t-shirts for the most part. But there were times when I was forced to wear dresses: I remember having screaming, crying arguments with my mother because she insisted that I had to wear a dress if I wanted to attend any parties because girls were expected to dress formally for the occasion - but my brother wasn't subject to the same restrictions. I have a photo of my brother and myself dressed up & ready to attend my mother's work Christmas party: he's wearing a Superman t-shirt, slacks and brown sandals; I'm there in a %$*£ing dress. He's smiling happily; I look miserable as sin. Because I was miserable at being forced to present myself to other people whilst wearing something that identified me as a girl.
Puberty hit, and I was elated at first because I thought that I would at last start getting over feeling so terrible about myself, just like my mother predicted. However, it soon turned into a nightmare when my body started sprouting obvious female attributes. To my horror, I had B-cups and wide hips by the time I was 9 years old, and I felt absolutely mortified and betrayed that my body was undoing all the hard work I'd been doing for years. I'd been trying to convince the kids in the neighbourhood that I was a boy but as soon I developed an hourglass figure there was no way I could convince anyone of my masculinity. So I took to wearing baggy clothes to try to hide my curves, and I started mentally disassociating myself from any part of my body below my neck. Oh, and having breasts and hips as a 9-year-old attracts all sorts of unwelcome attention from heterosexual men, let me tell you. It was awful.
So my teens were like a slow-motion car crash in which I felt more & more miserable in a body that was careening out of my control, heading in completely the wrong direction. I had no idea why I felt this way... until at age 19 I read the same article Emily mentioned in a previous post: the one about the transsexual Bond girl, Caroline Cossey. Caroline told a heart-felt story of what it was like for her growing up with everyone expecting her to be a Good Little Boy. She explained how puberty made her body feel alien, and how she decided to transition to ease her discomfort. By the time I got to the end of that article, I was crying and physically shaking. Here, at last, was somebody else who had experienced the exact same horrors as I had, albeit from the opposite direction. She described perfectly how I'd felt whilst growing up. Finally, I had a name for what had been 'wrong' with me all these years: 'transsexual'. But I'd only ever heard of transsexuals as being of the MtF variety. I had no idea whether it was even possible to be the other way round; there was (and is) so much less information about FtMs out there that I'd never even heard of such a thing. So I went to the municipal library and did as much research as I could.
There was precious little information about female-to-male transition, particularly in the days before the Internet, but I did eventually find some decent medical journals that had some good info. However, I was disheartened to read that the surgical procedures at the time were so poor that I would effectively wind up mutilating myself whilst permanently sacrificing my ability to orgasm. The detriments seemed to outweigh the benefits, so I broken-heartedly decided that I had no choice but to abandon all plans of transition and instead try to figure out how to live as a woman. I did that for almost 22 years, going so far as to get married and give birth to two children, whilst constantly struggling with an underlying discomfort at being expected to be a woman. Last year, the dam broke and I realised I had no choice but to transition because I couldn't bear wasting my life like this any longer. I did more research and was delighted to discover that surgical techniques have moved on considerably in the last two decades, so here I am medically transitioning at long last.
I will say one thing though: being born female-bodied made it possible for me to hide my sexuality. I've always been sexually attracted to men, but that's not considered unusual for a teenage girl, is it? So I managed to fly under everyone's gaydar, until I was ready to come out on my terms. But on the flipside, being attracted to men made me stay in denial for much longer.
Great topic! It is really nice to know how everyone discovered their real selfs, and eveyone writes so well! :)
I did not realize I was a transgener until around one year ago, when I was prescribed with testosterone blockers for my male pattern baldness and I decided to research about other ways to stop baldening...then I found a lot of transgender sites telling how testosterone blockers and hormones are used for MtFs and found about gender disphoria!
It was like something dinged on my head! I have gender disphoria! Now everything makes sense! I started remembering a lot of my past, I linked the dots and saw so clearly! I was supposed to be a girl! I am a girl!
My oldest memory is from when I was around 6-7yo. I remembered how I loved to wear my mother shoes, especially the high heels! I loved to walk on high heels and look at me on the mirror. I was so beautiful! I really wished that I could wear those kind of shoes when I grew up! But when my mother discovered she got angry and told me to never use them again.
Actually I was a lonely child. I didn't have brothers or sisters and never had friends on my neighborhood...so I learned to play alone.
I loved to play with my stuffed animals and I spent a good part of my childhood playing with my beloved furry friends (I still sleep with some of them :D). My favorite stuffed animal was my teddy bear and when I impersonated me into it I have always changed my voice with a falsetto and turned it into a very feminine voice...yes, that was me!
But the most girly thing I loved to play was with my mini-market, with beautiful small cans of beans, vegetables, fruits and all kind of things you buy on a real supermarket! I also loved to build a small house for me and make is very tidy and pretty!
Then years passed and I never really fitted into any group nor had friends at school. I was always the lonely weird shy boy who loved to study and that talked to nobody.
I was overweight when I was around 10-11 yo and the boys mocked me because of my moobs. They were always pursuing me and squeezing my nipples, calling me a girl...I hated that! I felt so defenseless! I felt abused...I didn't know what to do and I did not have the courage to tell it to anybody because I was so embarassed! It should be normal to a girl to be mocked that way, but not for a boy...one day I ended telling the school director and that was one of the most shameful moments of my life. I really felt like a girl telling the director "help me, the boys are squeezing my boobs!"
When all the boys were talking about girls, I was never interested and I avoided those subjects. One day a boy bought to school a lot of playboy magazines and they passed it to me. I got very embarassed and could not see the magazines...because of that some people started to call me gay...but I was not gay...I was just, I don't know, assexual, perhaps.
My beautiful handwriting with lots of different colors and markers did not help at all. Everyone always told me that my notebook was really girly! The other girls were envious of my beautiful letter!
And years passed until I started to realize how I I hated the fact that I was a man, I knew I would never be a real man, I just didn't fit! I was too shy, too polite, too educated, too defenseless and I never wanted to be different than that.
I knew I couldn't do nothing about it and I closed myself on a shell. I never allowed anyone to know my real feelings and I decided to bury it deep into my brain and forget about it.
When my hormones kicked in (some years later than for most boys) I started to watch porn. First I started watching girls, but I was never really excited watching their beautiful bodies...I realized I wanted to have their bodies...when I moved from softcore to hardcore I realized that on a relation I would like to be the girl. My mind was always on the girl and on the though of being the girl. Oh god, how badly I desired to be a girl!
And then I started to play Second Life back in 2006. My first avatar was a girl named Natalia (coincidence?). I got a boyfriend there, married with him and spent almost two years getting online 5 hours daily every night. I loved to be with him, to be a girl, to talk my feelings, to buy beautiful clothes, to be who I am really suposed to be! He didn't know I was not a girl and it became harder to hide it...when we ended our relation it was one of the worst days of my life.
It may seem ridiculous to cry over a virtual relationship, but I never had a real one...I cried for hours! :( My first and only relationship was with a boy and I was the girl and it wasn't even real! (my life sucks!)
But when I linked the dots and discovered about gender disphoria, wow, suddenly all got bright and clear! My life now have a different meaning and I need to go after it. I need to seek my real self and to allow it to flourish out of this male shell!
*Explicit* Seriously, read no further if anything that has to do with sex offends you.
Ill never forget the moment I realized i was transgendered. EVER. I was 16 and in high school, my life up to that point had been a mess, between abuse, neglect, and a pharm shill psychiatrist and i was finally out the other side. I had finally lost as much weight as i could from having been on zyprexa. At the time i was attending alternative school, class sizes were very small. maybe only 60-80 kids in the whole school. A trans girl transferred in from public school. At the time id never ever thought of anyone else penis as attractive. She was VERY hyper femme and over exaggerated, alot of my classmates were super critical of her and made fun of her. And its not that i felt bad for her, but i was just strangely attracted to her and i did not know why. My motto is pretty much to try everything at least once(as far as legal things were concerned or sometimes drugs back then), anyways, half way through the school year we got to talking and I got my dad and his now ex-wife, to drive me over to her house one weekend.
We both climbed into bed and watched MTV(TrL?) and then little mermaid and some other classic girl cartoons. She was the first girl i had ever kissed, even with her beard she was beautiful to me :-)
Almost automatically i went down on her without even thinking(and let me tell, at 28, still the biggest joystick ive ever seen, not even many bigger in porn lol). Anyways, I sucked her and swallowed(something that created a life long fetish even, my female friend tell me now that they would never :-(). After that i tried without thinking again to put her inside me(she was seriously huge) and it hurt pretty bad and never fit. She tried to console me and at least reciprocate, but could never get it up.
It was during that moment(seriously) that i realized everything at once. I didnt come there to get with a (in my mind GG, and is still how i think of all transwomen), it was because i loved who she was, and what she was doing. I loved watching girly cartoons(and still do) with her and I wanted to do exactly what she was doing. I knew that i wanted her then male body as a women wants a mans and that one day id finally become a woman. Like a rush of memories, i remembered playing with my female cousin as a kid with barbies and other girl toys instead of my brother and our friends. I grew up best of friends with her. And the previous summer i had gone to an indian pow wow(yeah a real one, somehow my uncle is part of a native american tribe) During that camp out and before she had shown me how to do foundation eye liner and lipstick. You can bet i wore it all week too that we were there, i was happy as could be even with all the strange looks. That same year id also been a school girl for Halloween.
I knew, and i still regret to this day not coming out right then and there. I feel like ive missed 28 years of my life, and for the most part ive been silently miserable with a smile mask. I'm sorry to be so graphic, but i feel that it really outlines one of the biggest GD inducing things for me. I like girls and guys, yet i can't achieve fulfilling intimacy with either, with the body of a man. It's haunted my relationships all my life. Either i can't do it, or im so bored doing it for her after a time. This has destroyed virtually all of my relationships, and left me feeling worthless and unwanted. Every day im desperate to become a complete girl just so i can stop feeling lonely. For that matter even enter into relationships, since im both highly submissive and shy. I just hope for the day when i get to be approached.
Sorry for that whole tirade. GD is bad today.
Wow... I just want to hug everyone on this thread. All your stories are so moving! :P Thank you all for sharing.
I thought I might tack on a couple other things I forgot to mention. First, just an observation about my sexual orientation. I've always been a bit confused by what I found physically attractive in people. I consider myself bi, but in truth I'm not really attracted to men or women. There are traits in both that I admire, and I've often felt more attracted to people who embody a bit of both. I've never in my life found myself attracted to very feminine women or very masculine men. So I guess you could say I'm attracted to androgyny? (is there a word for that? :/) The weird thing is though, I have never really thought much about it until recently having realized I was trans. I just thought I had odd taste in men. My mom likes guys with long hair too, after all, so maybe I get it from her. I told my mom when I was 14 that I thought I was bi, but she kinda laughed at me and told me I was just doing it for attention. So I kinda let it slip back into the closet and told myself, as part of fitting into the role, to just be straight. At the time, I thought I was more attracted to men anyway because of the genitals, but I think that was mainly because if I couldn't have a penis of my own, a boyfriend would be the next best thing. But what I've come to realize is, when it comes to finding a partner, what someones got between their legs actually means very little to me.
Another strange thing is, I can't remember exactly when I first heard about transsexuals. I think I was kind of always aware of their existence from a young age, as my parents weren't very discerning about what my siblings and I watched, so I was exposed to a lot of things that probably weren't considered appropriate for my age. But, in my early 20s, I think that was when I really got engrossed in the subject. I really like watching things like the Science Channel and Discovery... (yes, I am a science nerd... :icon_no1swatching-nerd:) and for a period of time they had a lot of documentaries about transsexuals. I started to develop a secret fascination with the subject. There was this particular show called Taboo, which I became a bit obsessed with. They had a few episodes that focused on the subject of transsexualism. That was the first time I heard of Balian Buschbaum, and I remember sitting there wishing I could be him. I recorded all the episodes to my DVR, and every once in a while I would sit in my room alone and watch them all over and over again, wishing I could do what they were doing. But every time this happened, I would sit there wondering why. I wasn't ready at that point in my life to actually consider that I might be trans. I didn't really think I wanted to be a boy, I told myself I could never cut it as a guy because I would just be a nerdy, effeminate wimp. :P But I was still pretty deep in denial about everything back then, so I would just brush it off and try to go about my miserable life continuing to try to be this woman I knew deep down I wasn't.
Actually, as I was writing that, I remembered something else I forgot to mention, and I can't believe I didn't think about it earlier because this was the biggest "ah-hah" moment of them all! It was a few months back. Between April and August, a bunch of not-so-good things happened all at once, and I was feeling really depressed, kind of at the end of my rope, almost to the point of giving up. I was starting to wonder what the point of life was anymore, as mine seemed to be one big joke. For the first time, I actually started to have suicidal thoughts. I just had this overwhelming feeling I couldn't go on the way I was, but still, couldn't bring myself to consider it had anything to do with my gender. It scared me, so I decided I needed to figure out a way to be happy. I started trying things, exorcising more, eating better, trying to get out more and improve my life. Even tried to get a job, although my social anxiety started getting to me too much after going to 4 interviews and not getting hired, so I gave up. :P So, I decided to start spending more time writing, and really working on finishing my book. Things improved a little, but I still felt trapped. Then, in the middle of June, I think it was, or maybe July, I found an article on facebook about Chelsea Manning. A US soldier who had been sentenced to 35 years in prison for releasing classified government documents. After her sentencing, the soldier who had previously gone by the name Bradley had come out publicly as Chelsea. For some reason, that got me right in the heart. I felt a strong sense of admiration for her bravery to come out to the world whilst already at the center of so much controversy. And at the same time, an unexplainably heavy feeling of empathy. I couldn't understand why it made me feel so emotional, so I tried to tuck it away in the back of my mind, as I did every time I had that explainable feeling. Then, a short while later, as I was working on my book one day, I inexplicably started playing with the idea of changing the main character of the story from a cis-woman to a trans-woman. (I've always had a funny way of expressing myself through my writing without really realizing I'm doing it until later.) The idea stuck, and as I started tweaking her character and her background story, and writing in scenes dealing with her sexual identity, I realized I was expressing my gender frustrations through her, and my own feelings about my gender started to surface harder and more clearly than ever. I'd found that, without realizing it, I had backed myself into a corner. Suddenly, I couldn't bring myself to continue writing the story I had been working on nearly every day for the past several years, without having to deal with the feelings I had worked so hard to repress my entire life. I wasn't about to stop writing, so, that's when I decided I had to figure this out once and for all. I had to find a way to determine whether I really was trans, or if I was just going crazy...
That's when I got online and found this forum, and it's opened my eyes so much. Ever since then, everything has just kind of been falling into place, like the pieces to a puzzle I've never quite been able to put together. Maybe a few pieces are still missing, but I can see the picture clearly now, and it's an amazing view. I still can't believe it sometimes. All that's left now is to place the final pieces, glue it all together, and hang it up on the wall for everyone to see. For the first time in my life, I actually feel happy. I never thought I could be this happy. :) I only wish I could have come to accept it much earlier in life, instead of wasting so much time avoiding it.
My very first memory of my gender identity comes from when I was either 5 or 6. I remember having these grey cargo shorts, a white Mickey Mouse wife beater and boots. And though I never liked Mickey I loved the combination. I remember looking in the mirror and thinking to myself "I'm a boy and I look good", even though I had long hair and bangs (which I until I graduated high school). I wore that outfit for as long as possible and remember getting really depressed when my mom finally realized my boots were way too small for my feet (I wore them anyway) and through them out. It would be a long time before I wore boyish clothes again. Pretty soon after my sister (Holly) and I unknowingly befriended a pedophile. He never laid a hand on us and though he wore short shorts we never saw his junk (he played with himself under his jacket on a slide while talking to us at the park though). He taught us about the difference between boys and girls. This and saying good-bye to him when he moved are all I remember of him. Awfully enough though I ended up pantsing my brother while he slept to confirm the mans stories. I was very introverted and never asked questions or made comments to my parents. I would look at myself anytime my pants were off or down and now I knew "I don't have a penis". I was so horrified that I couldn't pee standing up that I tried to make a S.T.P. out of toilet paper. Then when that didn't work the empty roll itself. Neither worked of course. Though I decided I had to be a girl I was still a tomboy and throughout elementary school I mostly had guy friends. But for the most part I just loved insects, dirt and bikes. Even saving a bike designed to look like a motor cross bike from the trash of a neighbor. I'm not saying I didn't play dress up or barbies. I did and though I didn't like dresses as real clothes I didn't have as much of a problem wearing them to play make believe. To this day I love costumes and pretending I'm someone or something else. Me and my lesbian sister (Melissa) competed for the male role in barbies which didn't go over well. By the time elementry school was over so were many of my friendships. It seems by that time boys only hungout with boys and girls only hungout with girls. And I spent more time by myself looking for bugs and keeping them as pets or playing with our pet dog. Around this time too I had over stayed my welcome in the mans restroom. I'm actually pretty happy my dad didn't decide this on his own. It took a boy around my age complaining that I was a girl and shouldn't be in that restroom for my dad to stop escorting me when I need to use the toilet. I actually spent a lot of time with him on weekends. He would do carpentry work, making new items for around the house. I helped him out and got to learn about his tool collection. At this put I became contain in being nothing. Not a boy, not a girl just me.
Around 6th grade I was no longer content. A year of constant teasing from boys and girls at school made me decide to become my straight girly sister, Holly. It was easy to follow her footsteps. We weren't even a year apart in age, we'd always shared a room and we were always very close. Growing up she would play with the insects I kept and we rode bikes together. But she was still older than me and was becoming a woman. I tried to get clothes like she had, listened to her Backstreet Boys and N'Sync cd's and hung around with her and her friends. For the most part I was quiet, but I tried my hardest. I even tried having a boyfriend. It wasn't until I was in 8th grade I decided being a her wasn't working out for me. We also had seperet rooms at this point and I had made my own friends tried just being myself (aside from sexual preference). This is a point where I began feeling extremely worthless. And though I never told my friends at the time how I felt it was just good to know I had friends and that they liked having me around. I tried this for a few years. Being straight, having an androgynous personality (which is my normal) and being a girl. There's not too much to say here. 6th, 7th and 8th grade all seemed to have lasted longer than they really did. And though I had some fun I was pretty much just sad all the time. Actually at the end of 8th grade I befriended a group of children, 5-12 year old boys, in the courtyard I lived in. They found out I had Legos and a lightsaber. I kind of see this as my second childhood were I actually got to be a real boy. They didn't care that I wasn't like them and though they called me by female pronouns they never treated me like a girl. This is one of the happiest points in my life.
We moved from that housing area when I was ending freshman year. It was hard on because I felt that I had to put childish things away and readjust to having an "age appropriate peer group" of high schoolers... I did make some friends with the outcasts. My sister Holly and I actually shared friends and acquaintances in this group. I finally shared how I felt about myself to a couple of my own friends. "I don't feel like a girl it makes me think that life would be better as a blade of grass then I wouldn't know the difference".
Melissa had graduated and decided to come out of the closet. The family took it very well, in fact we all knew before. She started going to a LGBT group called youth quest. Soon I followed suit in my own way. I came out as Bisexual and actually started getting to know my oldest sister. I was still trying to be normal by having a boyfriend who was one of two real friends I had. While seeing him I started going to youth quest Melissa, hanging out with that group and actually went to a couple parties. Melissa had this friend that was a trans guy (I'll call him A later). I was intrigued. I ended up asking how he knew he was really trans. His response really struck a cord with me. He had also tried to be a girl, he never felt right. He tried girly, straight, normal (personality) bi and lesbian. He found out he liked girls, but didn't want to be one.
At this point I had gotten physical with my boy friend I knew I didn't like him like that. I shared a lot of thoughts with him though so, for some odd reason I decided to let him know I was questioning my sex. He didn't take that well, but my other friend was there and she ended up supporting me. We even dated, but that was weird too. But I had come to terms that I preferred women by this point. Only sharing it with my friend, Melissa and her girl friend. Melissa's girlfriend and I were also close and she knew before my sister how I felt about myself. She actually asked me if I'd like to try out male pronouns to which I said yes and I asked her to call me Xavier (that name didn't last). This is when my family found out that I was questioning, they didn't really care, but other than sending me to therapy didn't really support it yet. Well aside from Melissa. She like her girl friend was trying to see if I really knew what I was doing. She told me about how growing up as a lesbian she thought that being a boy would be easier. She never tried like me, but she didn't know if I was thinking it through. I told her that by talking to A about being trans and the process of passing and possible surgeries that I knew it was no easy path. Finally when I graduated a couple years later I let them know I was serious about being transgender. I told them to call me Ashton...However I then because a pronoun Nazi. I had tried every other road, I knew who I was and I'd be damned if you called me anything else. I'm 25 now and have been happy for years.
That was more of a life story than "I knew I was a" boy when story. But once I started I couldn't stop the beginning and when I met A didn't make enough since to tell on there own.
I didn't have any early clues that I am transsexual - I never wanted to play with dolls, or dress in girls clothes or anything like that. I was clearly a boy and boys just didn't do stuff like that in the early 60s. I did have a more girl friends than boy friends, until I got old enough that the "boys - ick!" factor kicked in for the girls LOL..... and then I was on my own.
My mother had a very difficult pregnancy with me and had a hysterectomy right after I was born. DES was commonly prescribed back then for difficult pregnancies and I'm quite sure that my mom took it. I think that DES had a lot to do with me being transgender. I got more clues about my DES exposure much later in life.
In the state I lived in it was possible to start a kid in first grade at 5 years old instead of the usual 6 years of age. For some reason my mother thought that doing that would be a capital idea. I was physically small, with a femme looking face, and I was both emotionally and physically a year behind the other boys. My mother could not have devised a better scenario for me to become a target on the playground, and indeed that was what happened.
I believe that I was very female back before 1st grade begin, but I had to quickly manufacture a boy persona to prop out in front of me to protect and hide who I was. I got very good at acting the boy part, since I remained physically small and femme looking and a year physically and emotionally behind the other boys.
My ONLY clue to what I would figure out many years later was that I didn't fit in with the guys. It was pervasive, and it continued all through my life. Testosterone had flooded my brain and masked the female feelings and inclinations. I got picked on and bullied and was mercilessly made fun of. I got very good at the art of avoiding getting into fights. A lot of times I knew that the guys wanted to fight so I would hang out in the library at school to avoid them.
As i grew into my pre-teen years I became a recluse. I stayed in my room and listened to music. We lived in an area that had woods and I would ride my motorcycle out there and shut it off and enjoy the peacefulness. I was also painfully shy; a cute teenage girl and her family moved in next to me and she came over one day to meet me and I couldn't even look at her much less have a conversation. I noticed her hair and her body and there was just.... something.... there besides the normal teenage boy lust that I couldn't identify. It's clear to me now that I wanted to be her.
Moving on to the high school years just brought more misery. I began to act out and I was quite the little terror, having several close brushes with the law, and drinking. The drinking would continue for 34 more years, and it would get a very hard edge on it later. We lived in an area with a lot of woods and the kids all had 4x4 pickups so it was common to head out to the woods or river bottoms with a keg and get loaded. I was right there with them. Drinking allowed me to fit in a little with the other kids and be cool.
I was also trying to man myself up - I got involved in several activities that were very dangerous, but boosted my man cred. Luckily I survived all of that.
I dated a few girls but I never knew what to do with them. My friends were making it all the way around the bases and I wasn't getting much past 1st base. I think that the girls figured out some of what was going on with me and moved on to other guys. I still had no clue what was wrong.
By the time I got to high school I was a total recluse. In my senior year I only needed .5 credits to graduate and I'd get that with senior english, so I disengaged entirely from everyone. I had 3 classes and I left school for work. My senior year was a non-event.
My family moved and I later managed to get myself into IT work. I self-taught myself enough to keep moving up the ladder. These were good years for me.
I met a girl and we clicked and got married. She is a sweetheart and even though she will not admit it now I think that she was attracted to me because of my femme personality. We got on extremely well, just like a couple of lesbians, talking endlessly and sharing our feelings.
We tried to start a family and nothing happened. After seeing some doctors they examined me and found some problems that are believed to be side effects of DES exposure. My sperm was thin and weak and it wasn't doing it's job. So we adopted two beautiful daughters, and I would not trade that for anything now.
A few years later I started a business with a group of alpha males. We had all worked together for years before, but when faced with running our own company I immediately clashed with them and again I felt that I didn't fit in with them. I needed to income so I put up with it for many years, but the clashes eventually led me to leave that company.
I volunteered for a habitat for humanity house build, and I got humiliated there as well by more alpha males because they thought that I didn't know what I was doing.
Humiliation from other guys was becoming the story of my lifeso I decided to try to find out exactly why I didn't fit it. Luckily the internet had been invented by then, so the searches began.
I discovered some online gender tests and I took them all. They all said that I had mixed male/female thinking patterns. I know that these tests are not in any way a valid test of being transgender, but they did open up an concept that I had never considered before.
That concept began to unlock some of the pieces of my past - things began to click. I still had no clue, but I was about to become a classic late life transitioner since my testosterone level was dropping like a rock.
The first solid clue I had was that I suddenly wanted breasts. The thought became an obsession. I tried various ways to make that happen, and I eventually found a way that worked extremely well.
I joined Susans and some other online forums and began reading. A lot of things were now clicking into place. I thought that I could still handle things and still be the son/husband/father that everyone saw me as. I thought that I was genderfluid, and then androgyne, and later bigender.
Then I had some severe dysphoria episodes that convinced me otherwise. I knew that I needed to see a therapist, but I didn't have the time or the money. I started medicating myself with a low dose of DIY hormones to get by, and that lessened the dysphoria and let me live my boys life for a few more years. I did go out fully dressed en femme during this time and I got told my my bigender friends that I was with that night that "you pass better as a girl than you do as a guy". Hmmmm...... more clues. Being out en femme just felt normal to me.
Eventually the low dose stopped working. The dysphoria and the constant thoughts were making it hard for me to live. I had gotten myself to a point that I had time and money to see a therapist, so I made nervously made my first appointment, and went and sat on the couch and spilled my guts.
Within 5 sessions I knew the truth, and I knew that my old male life was a lie, and that big changes were coming my way. I accepted that I was transsexual.
I am working my way toward full time now with plans to flip the switch sometime early next year. My wife left me two weeks ago. I am out to one daughter with good results, and I'm outing myself to the other one next weekend.
My life has been totally upended by this; nothing remains the same and some days I lose my confidence and start second guessing what I've done. It hard, very hard, to live as your authentic self - it comes with a HUGE price tag. But I cannot got back to the boy life and the drinking again; the only way for me is forward from this point.
The more I think about my childhood the more I see that it was always just below the surface for me. I wanted to do what the guys were doing, wanted to dress in boy's clothes, wear the boy shoes, have the G.I. Joes and the Ninja Turtles and the skateboards and cool looking boy bicycles.. Later in life I sometimes had the passing thought that "I wish I were born male" and I never really thought more on it then just that.. I also related to guys better.
I didn't really know why I disliked my body, I guess I just thought that was a normal "girl thing". But it was more than just that and I know that now.
My realization came a few days after watching a youtuber's vlogs about his FTM transition. Like I somehow came across them and I just started watching.. and I didn't stop until I was out of video to watch on his channel. Then I had to digest it for a few days.. and do more reading on other people and their experiences and read medical stuff about it.. and in that few days I didn't know what to think I suddenly felt... that I needed to know more about ->-bleeped-<-..
Anyways the more I read and watched, and after watching Dade's videos (That's his name) and realizing how much I related to these men and women who have discovered themselves and knowing that I could do something about my, until that point, unkown dysphoria.. That I myself am transgender.
So I started small of course.. friends knew first and they were calling me he and him instead of. she and her (as I'm FTM).. the more I was referred to as male the better I felt and then I started wearing a chest binder and going by Kade.. It was just the confirmation for me.. Now I have my first transgender related doctor visit next week and I am both excited and nervous about it.
But that's my story and this has all happened in under a year so far. I uh... "found out" about myself just before March this year.
Eva Marie your post about girls dumping you happened to me so many times.I was dumped for not trying to get into my girlfriends pants so many times,it never occurred to me I was supposed to!
I'd say when I was in elementary school, there was this tomboy who I basically wanted to be. I had no idea what transgender or that being something other than your birth sex was possible, but she had everything I wanted. I drew a picture of "me" aka what I saw myself as. It was an androgynous person, very feminine. A few years later I googled if sex changes were possible, because I wanted one. I knew nothing of the trans world. This was around puberty when I realized this was possible, and I wanted breasts, but I saw it as so taboo so I never told anyone. I realized that I'm trans (learned the word, matched myself up with it) at age 19, soon after I started hormones.
Once again I offer an appreciative bow to every story shared in this thread. Some are so similar; some are so different; all are so affecting.
Reading these over the last weeks, I have found my body offering up memory after memory, feeling after feeling. It's like your stories have created a very safe and affirming place and finally, finally it has become okay for these things to arise. And arise they have, leaving me feeling as if I am sometimes swimming in a life I was barely aware of and certainly did not understand.
The discomfort I've felt in pants because of the bulge 'down there'. The euphoria of wearing a girlfriend's volleyball shorts. The confusion over being put with the 'boys' yet again. How I could never sleep on road trips because I was always roomed with these same 'boys'. The delight of listening to 'Hotel California' in the dark with a couple of girls - not because the music was good, but because the darkness dissolved my ability to see our differences. The yearning when puberty hit to go this way and not that. How I used to shave certain parts of my body back then in a vain attempt to stop the coming changes.
On and on it comes. More and more - and then more again. I find myself exhausted and confused and grief-stricken. I want to go back to that kid and offer encouragement - no, better than this, an explanation where instead there was nothing. 'You're transgender,' I want to whisper. 'And you're not alone.'
But alone is how it felt pretty much all of the time. Even now I can feel the blush in my cheeks as I stand there in those volleyball shorts. My girlfriend and the friend also present are laughing because it's such a big joke - a 'guy' in a 'girl's' shorts! I force a grin and stuff way down deep the notable loosening throughout my body, the sense of rightness that is so rare and yet unmistakable. 'This is something to be ashamed of,' I understand. 'This is something to keep to myself.'
And I have, for the most part, done just this - been ashamed and kept these experiences secret even from myself. Until now, that is. When I find myself sitting before a flickering screen, utterly amazed that there are others out there. When I find myself writing about the 'pants thing' and 'Hotel California' and those horrible road trips for the first time ever.
OK - there is a few moments which really reinforced it for me... one was a school play, i was 7 yrs old, the writer was a woman who decided to make all the boys dress as girls and all the girls dress as boys.. i DIDN'T want to wear a dress/skirt because i was embarrassed as to how much my inner self wanted to grab and flaunt it (weird at that age).
Another when i was around the same age.. having some curious moments where i would sneak into the spare room of my house (where mum would keep all these disused dresses) i would secretly go into the cupboard where they were hanging, pretending to play hide and seek and standup while underneath them ~ i remember really enjoying the silky smooth feeling of them on my skin, it always gave me a smile, until i decided to put one on and go and stand in front of the mirror, i saw my face and body and knew then why i hated haircuts, why i was always wagging school and that something was dreadfully wrong and that i was different - that my uncomfortably within my own skin was NOT normal
at some point, i wanted to change my body to fit the curves.... it was a subconscious revelation...
also it feels weird to be writing this after all this time, the more i write the more i want to reveal and realize about myself -
Quote from: Jillian on November 15, 2013, 05:39:46 PM
Just this week in therapy I remembered something I hadn't thought about in probably 20+ years. I used to steal my mom's underwear out of her dresser and lock myself in the bathroom and try them on. I'd be so afraid of getting caught I'd make a mental note of exactly how they looked in the drawer, so when I put them back there was no evidence that they'd been removed. Wearing her underwear felt good but I never got into dressing fully. I remember staring at my girlfriend's clothes in her closet and wishing I could try them on, but hating myself for having such unacceptable desires. The few times I did try on women's clothes it didn't make me feel good at all. It just reinforced my hatred for my body, and left me feeling like a pervert.
omg...I did the
EXACT same thing
Quote
When I was about 5 or 6 I was at day camp at a community center/club, changing into my swimsuit in the boy's locker room. I remember looking around at all the naked boys and feeling so awkward! I can't really describe the feeling other than it just felt wrong. Like I was in the wrong place. Like I was invading their privacy or something. I knew in my head that I was a boy so this is where I'm supposed to change, but it just felt all wrong. Of course I knew I couldn't change in the girls locker room either, so it was just another taste of a feeling that would become very familiar as I grew up: feeling like I don't belong anywhere. Not with the boys, not with the girls. Always feeling different.
Again, I experienced the same thing. I remember in Jr. High PE...I absolutely HATED it when I had to be in the shower room with the other guys. Same thing in HS PE.
Quote
I always struggled with the shame. Boys aren't supposed to want to be girls! Being a boy is better, so they tell us. Maybe not in so many words, but that's the message they send. At least that's the lesson I learned. So it wasn't until my early twenties that I finally admitted to myself that I really do want to be a girl. And it wasn't until age 37 that I finally told someone.
I can relate. I'm really seeing a very common thread in our personal experiences here. It's all starting to make sense now.
When did all this start? How do I start to explain this? It was 1963 and I was a 9 year old boy. I was going to a Halloween party at my church. Yeah, it was 1963, this was before people worried about Halloween being "satanic". It was just a fun time of fellowship. Anyway, my Mother suggested that I fool everyone and go as a witch. I was sort of uncertain about the idea, but agreed. Long story short, my Mother made me a black witch dress. The outfit was completed with black stockings, witch hat, long black wig, etc. The night of the party came and I put the outfit on for the first time. I can't capably explain how that witch outfit made me feel, but it was almost like someone had flipped a light switch on inside me. It made me feel unbelievable. The dress flowing around my ankles, the long hair, the fake boobs, etc. I don't remember anything at all about the party except wearing that costume. I didn't know what had happened to me, but it was some kind of awakening for a 9 year old boy.
Now, the complex part... How does wearing a Halloween costume initiate an awakening like this in the mind of a 9 year old boy? Through the years, I developed an inexplicable desire to dress, and stole various items from my Mother to wear whenever I could in private. I can't explain the urge, but I felt like it was something I was compelled to do. I can also distinctly recall stealing panties and pantyhose and other items from a store at various times. I also remember buying my very own female clothes when I was 16 and got my driver's license. This was the thing I was most excited about when I got a car. I could now sneak off and buy my very own female clothes. My very first purchase was a dress from Zayre, a discount store at that point in time. I was scared to death when I bought it, but rushed home to try it on. I'll never forget that. Dresses, tops, skirts, shoes, etc, I was slowly acquiring my own little wardrobe and I had a perfect hiding place, even though I was still living at home. I became an expert at stealth dressing, and I never once got caught.
Depression, shame, guilt, self loathing. Yes...I made very intimate acquaintance with these terms thru the years. My escape was music. I learned to play drums in Jr. High band and that turned into a lifelong career for me. It's been a blessing and a curse. A curse because I grew up in the 60's-70's when LOUDER was better. Nobody thought about hearing protection back then. I can't tell you how many nights I spent playing in or listening to LOUD rock bands. I now have Tinnitus in my left ear, which developed into Meniere's Disease, which I'm on disability for. My experience with Meniere's is a whole different story I won't go into right now. But in retrospect, I realize all the loud rock music was an escape to try and drown out what was going on inside my head. Another escape for me was food. I've been large all my life. I still struggle with my weight, another long story. In my 20's I also drank very heavily. I remember one time I chugged a fifth of Jack Daniels on a dare. I almost died. A veiled suicide attempt? Yet another long story.
Fast forward to 2005. I had never told anyone about my crossdressing revelation when I was 9 years old. It was all locked away in a sealed vault inside my head. The mental baggage had definitely taken a toll on me during all these years. I decided I needed to tell my story to a therapist and see if that would help me find some answers. I saw a therapist and shared my story, and he advised me that it would be good if I shared it with my Mother. I'd never done this, and it wasn't going to be easy for me. One day I finally got up the nerve to call my Mother and talk to her. Well...she said this was sick and perverse and I should be ashamed. Try to imagine how this made me feel after keeping this bottled up inside all those years. Long story, but I'd never really been close to my Mother. My Mother died in 2008 from pancreatic cancer. I didn't even want to go to her funeral, but I went.
My complete experience with dressing is hard to for me to describe. I felt inexplicably compelled to do it, but also felt a mountain of guilt, shame, self-loathing, and mental anguish when I did it. Normal guys aren't supposed to want to wear female clothing. I felt like a freak and a pervert. What was I thinking? What the hell was wrong with me? Yes, I've purged my clothing stash countless times through the years. Five years ago, I'd basically given up, and felt like a complete fool when I thought about dressing. I desperately wanted to, but I never did feel like I made a passable woman. I was a fat man in a dress. The image I saw in the mirror didn't match up with what I saw in my head and felt in my heart.
Fast forward to one month ago. Thoughts of suicide...a bright neon light was flashing in my brain..."Game Over! Time To Get REAL"!!! It was different this time, I knew I couldn't bury it any longer or I'd be buried. I joined this forum shortly after that. I have my first appointment with a highly recommended GT in four days. Yes, I'm scared to death. I know the flood gates are going to burst forth, and I hate crying in front of people. I think I already know in my heart what I'm going to hear. It will be a relief, but starting this journey at age 59 will be very scary. I know this was long and I hope I didn't ramble too much. Hugs... J
Quote from: JordanBlue on November 29, 2013, 12:01:01 PM
omg...I did the EXACT same thingAgain, I experienced the same thing. I remember in Jr. High PE...I absolutely HATED it when I had to be in the shower room with the other guys. Same thing in HS PE. I can relate. I'm really seeing a very common thread in our personal experiences here. It's all starting to make sense now.
Same here too :). Hate of the changing room, unable to take shower with boys. Borrowing underwear and putting it back exactly as it was before... There was one padded bra, which was my favourite too... sigh...
Quote from: JordanBlue on November 29, 2013, 01:01:27 PM
But in retrospect, I realize all the loud rock music was an escape to try and drown out what was going on inside my head. Another escape for me was food. I've been large all my life. I still struggle with my weight, another long story. In my 20's I also drank very heavily. I remember one time I chugged a fifth of Jack Daniels on a dare. I almost died. A veiled suicide attempt? Yet another long story.
Wow - a powerful post for me, Jordan. Especially the above. It makes me ask, 'How did I try to escape?' Put another way, how did I try to cope? Like you, I had many strategies that, while keeping me alive yet one more day, also damn near killed me on so many levels.
I suspect many of us have similar tales to tell... So I just started another thread entitled, 'How Did You Cope?'
Many thanks for the provocation. And for sharing - you
certainly did not ramble too much!
Well i knew something was up when i was very young, probably 4 or so. My sister used to like to dress me and my brothers up as girls and while they protested, i rejoiced! They found it odd so i did too. I didnt know for sure till that fateful Thursday evening in 2003 when i saw a show called "Super Surgery: Gender Swap" on Discovery Health. It followed two transwomen, one young and one older. I knew right then and there what was going on in my mind. From then on anytime i was on the internet i would research as much as possible on the topic. Ive become a bit of a guru on the subject of "gender variance."
I haven't shared the whole story before, might as well at least try to do some of it now.
I've done a lot of looking back over the past few months since being on HRT, and I don't know the answer still. I remember as a kid not understanding why my cousin got to be called a girl and I didn't. My grandparents showered her with affection, but my brothers and I got "meh" most of the time (it wasn't really us kids, it was my grandma's favoritism towards her dad over all the other siblings, it just ended up filtering down to the grandkids). My cousin and I were close, and house was a favorite of ours to play. Me, being the totally passive one, always played the dad, but I was jealous all the time.
I probably had an inkling back then... but I learned really quick that it was out of bounds. My dad's youngest brother (my dad was the oldest of six) was effeminately gay, and dad wasn't very fond of that. I really liked him though, had a good time around him. He ended up dying of AIDS in the mid-80's, and I remember the near total isolation he received once it was known he was dealing with that disease. He was marginalized before then, and isolated after. It pretty much told me that being different was not kosher.
I was a quiet kid... never had friends and had to be forced outside. I didn't know how to socialize (still don't... I'm still amazed how much I've opened up over the past couple of months) so I kept my nose in the books. I knew I was different... I preferred crochet and cross-stitch to playing football and that never went over well with dad. Don't get me wrong, I love my dad and think the world of him. He was no-nonsense and hard on us at times, but he was doing what he thought was best for us. Maybe a bit close minded about things, but it was how he was brought up and I can't fault him for that.
School was a chore. I lived in the shadows, the nerd and loner nobody understood. I was super helpful with homework and all things school-related, but when it became about just being social I would clam up and run away. I didn't fit in, I knew it, and so did everyone else. I used that to my advantage though. Bullies only picked on me one time. EVERYONE came to me for school help... once bullies realized that my help seemed to be wrong and they started getting zeros after picking on me, it was like I had purchased an invisible force field of protection. And so it was through school... I was the computer they came to for help, then left alone when social life was calling. I was flat out jealous of the girls, and I didn't know why.
On to college, the perennial nerd that had every chance in the world in front of him. I walked that college campus the first few days every semester, the distant observer watching everyone and everything around me, but involved in nothing. I saw the guys and knew I was not like them. I saw the girls and knew I was not one of them. Here I was, smartest kid on the planet, and I couldn't figure this one simple thing out. It ate at me then, knowing I wanted to be like the girls but never would be and not understanding what those thoughts really meant. And I feared the wrath of the professors... what would they think if I missed a class? Inevitably, I would be distracted by my thoughts and miss one. I would never go back to my class after missing one. Needless to say I flunked out. Smart as could be but no social ability or understanding whatsoever.
I met a girl, lost my virginity, and we got married (another weird, long story for another time, perhaps). That's what guys are supposed to do, right? Get married, make a family, go to work and support them? I got my oldest son from her, and that was it. She left me when he was one, and I convinced her that she wouldn't be able to take care of our son alone, so she left him with me and all but disappeared from the planet. Now I was a single parent, and it occupied my brain for a long time. I didn't allow myself time to dwell on my little "problem". After divorce , I met my second wife. That's what guys are supposed to do, right? Get married, make a family, go to work and support them? It was all I knew: do what you're supposed to do. Be a man (STILL don't know what that means) and be responsible. I think it was about midway through that marriage that I figured out I was gender dysphoric. But as fate would be so cruel, she got diagnosed with breast cancer and I spent the next four years of my life being caregiver, student at the local community college, and breadwinner. That's what guys are supposed to do, right?
She passed, leaving me with three kids now. I knew what my problem was, and I knew what would happen if I told anyone, so I did what any guy would do. I found a girl I really loved with kids of her own and I got married. Be responsible, take care of the family, my feelings aren't important... guys aren't supposed to have feelings. ENOUGH!!! I couldn't take it anymore. I was more than mostly dead inside. I had been through too much, too many suicidal thoughts and plans, to keep going like this. I told my wife, she was (impressively) supportive and wanted me to deal with it, so we've started dealing with it together.
My lord, I could probably keep typing forever. So much I left out LOL. HRT makes you a chatterbox! For those of you that made it to this point I should probably roll credits and all :)
The End
-hugs to all-
Quote from: Tanya W on November 30, 2013, 01:07:11 AM
Wow - a powerful post for me, Jordan. Especially the above. It makes me ask, 'How did I try to escape?' Put another way, how did I try to cope? Like you, I had many strategies that, while keeping me alive yet one more day, also damn near killed me on so many levels.
I suspect many of us have similar tales to tell... So I just started another thread entitled, 'How Did You Cope?'
Many thanks for the provocation. And for sharing - you certainly did not ramble too much!
Thanks, Tanya, I appreciate your comments. There are many other times I did incredibly stupid things, such as slamming a brand new 1973 Ford Maverick into a tree and totalling it. Another attempt to try and drown out the noise in my head? I now look back and wonder if it was because I just didn't care if I lived or not?
I knew I was a boy around maybe 4 or 5. I've always got along more with boys than girls because I was a tomboy. I'd rather play with action figures than Barbie dolls and I'd NEVER wear a dress or skirt unless I was forced to. My mom really doesn't have a problem with me getting boys clothes when we go to the store but she still buys me girls clothes when it's just her out shopping for me and it's pretty awkward. She doesn't know I'm trans yet and I'm pretty scared to tell her..
Well anyways.. when I was younger I guess I had a lot of penis envy. I don't remember the first time I'd ever seen a boy naked but for some reason I was fascinated by it and I wanted a penis. I do remember seeing one of my guy friends peeing standing up and taking off their shirts during the summer and I wished I could do that. I was sorta obsessed with wanting to have a penis back then and I asked my cousin, Nathan once to pull down his pants and underwear so I could see which ended up with him running away and telling his mom I asked to see his 'pee-pee'. Then, my aunt had to give me a talk about boys and girls having different body parts and that I was a girl and was different from boys and I shouldn't ask to see boys parts anymore. I was so sad that I couldn't have a penis and used to pray that I'd wake up as a boy. I ended up imagining myself as a guy during a lot of my childhood and I would always play the dad or son whenever I played house with friends.
The first time I heard about transgender was when I was about 11. I think I searched something like "how to be a boy" on the internet and I found out that I could have a sex change when I'm older. I considered the idea and thought about telling my mom how I felt but I forgot about it. I did go through a little goth phase I guess you could say. I didn't know how to tell my mom my feelings. When I imagined myself as a man I wanted to be a muscular guy with tattoos so I thought of wearing makeup and having tattoos as a goth girl.. but I got over that quickly.
Now, I'm older and I started researching transgender again during the summer (and still am) and I started consider myself a trans-guy. I got my hair cut short and I'm wearing guys clothes all the time. Like I said, I'm still in the closet though. I plan on telling them soon at the right time. :)