Hello everyone,
it has been some time since I started writing on this Forum.
I still can't believe this is happening...
It's two years since I started discovering who I am and what I like.
There was one big thing that I was hiding since ever... a feminine part... I though to be effeminate gay.
Then I saw myself in the mirror: I am a girl! I feel a girl! I am a transgender girl, I always was.
I finished my (hated) Ph.D. and finally moved back to my family home. My parents know about me and my crisis, and are being neutral to what is happening.
Now it has been three months that I am home, recovering from the last terrible years (I would have liked to change the place/Ph.D. topic/work, but I had no courage), and I am still trying to get all the picture.
What I see in my life it was only and only one direction: boy-hood.
Here it comes my question: is it possible to have NEVER permitted to myself to show my female identity?
I know that when I was 3 y.o. my mother put me in a kindergarten, a nursery school. Since the first day I started stuttering, and never stopped until... I discovered to be a GIRL! (also, the discovery was accompanied by strong guilty feelings, feeling to be a very bad person, aggressiveness, bad mood).
I just remember that in the kindergarten I always tried to be with girls but it seems that they didn't accept me.
After the kindergarten I can recall some kind of distress feelings, a huge shyness, and a huge feeling of guilty towards my parents, especially my mother (my father was never able to be a reference for me).
(also, after 5 months from the beginning of the nursery school, my sister was born)
Does anyone relate?
Am I the only one that closed zee feelings when zee was 3 years old?
I am being followed by a therapist, and that is helping a lot, especially on the guilt and feeling a bad person.
Thanks everyone!
Ciao,
Iv.
I remember me at three. I was not a happy camper. Yes, I get it.
I don't remember anything from that age. The very earliest memory is age 4 and the only thing I remember from then is that Pres Kennedy's funeral was on every TV channel and I couldn't watch cartoons.
Sapere Aude
i can relate Manila. From the start, we are expected to behave according to the body we are in and so
what comes naturally must be repressed. My father rejected me because to him i was not a boy,
i was not the son he wanted and so i spent many years trying to be that son.
Found some childhood pictures of myself the other day, i looked like a girl in boy's clothes.
This:
https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,208438.msg1847661.html#msg1847661
and this could help:
https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,208438.msg1847638.html#msg1847638
Don't be sad ... a lot has changed the last years.
Many people would give a lot to be able to start anew.
I'd say use the help of your counselor and try to find out who you really are, and step by step go into the direction you want.
Maybe a time off for a few months would be possible, and some kind of transition ?
I'd say look forwards and try to make the best of what is now. Listen to your inner feelings, and what you feel brings you joy.
hugs
Thanks everyone for the replies!
What I am still not able to accept is how is possible that I remember not showing any impulse towards girly things?
Well... thinking deeply, I clearly remember that I tried at the nursery school to be with girls (age 3 to age 5), and what I got was nothing I think (I remember bad girls faces towards me). The first days of primary school I tried again to stay with girls, but what I got was to use boys' restrooms.
I was not that sad at home, but it's like I remember to be not happy at home either. I could feel the love of my mother (and guilt towards her if I did something wrong in general), but I could not stand my father (always nervous and with his problems - I feel I had only one specific space, and if it was not like he was expecting he was always ready to shout at me or turn really upset). Then my sister, with which I HAD to be a good brother.
So much pressure on me... is that the sufficient to bury all your feelings?
Some parents said to me that my grandma (living with us) used to give me and my sister some punishment (I can't remember, though).
I thought that these things brought to a PTSD (post-trauma stress disorder), and the fact that I started stuttering after the first day at the nursery school, the sadness, the distress, etc., seems to be in line with this hypothesis.
Maybe I am trying to find something/someone to blame, but it seems so strange to me that I buried my feelings so deep and with a lot (a lot!) of fear and guilt, and shame.
Moreover, I feel very frustrated and also... I feel a lot of social pressure from the outside world, even for the work I am going to take (to be an engineer is enough? should I be this... or that...? - I can't be simply a simple person).
I feel so angry, so squeezed, so sad.
The psico-therapy already helped me a lot: now I am living with much less shame and caring less about everything and everybody. Still I feel a lot of distress, sadness, shame, guilt.
Thanks for listening to me.
A big hug to everyone!
Iv.
Hello!
Anyone else to share zher experience, and help me understand more about me?
Thanks a lot,
Iv.
Inviato dal mio KIW-L21 utilizzando Tapatalk
I remember being unhappy for my entire childhood. I remember attempting suicide at about six years old. I don't remember ever knowing why I was so unhappy except that I knew that I didn't fit in. I buried things VERY deeply.
Hi, Manila
Yes, it's possible to hide one's feelings at three. At a very early age, children may be affected by even a single strong admonishment.
Incidentally I know one person whose stuttering was confirmedly triggered by a big scare.
Quote from: manila on May 13, 2016, 05:11:22 AM
Hello!
Anyone else to share zher experience, and help me understand more about me?
Thanks a lot,
Iv.
Inviato dal mio KIW-L21 utilizzando Tapatalk
There is a nonbinary section.
You might have a look at the links above, maybe sme materials could help you accept.
There is no need to be ashamed of whatever, people are simply that way.
hugs
Hello Dee, Zirconia, Laura,
Thanks for your replies!
Zirconia, your experience is so precious to me...
Dee, thanks for your sharing, too...
Laura, I will completely take a look.
Thanks everyone!
Anyways, the topic continues open :)
Cheers everyone, boys and girls!
We all deserve to be happy, and respect each other also in our conflicts and divergences.
Hugs!
Iv.
Inviato dal mio KIW-L21 utilizzando Tapatalk
I don't know about when I was 3. I know I buried almost everything about my childhood, at least before age 10 or so, so completely that I still can't access it. I know that the two years when I was 10 and 11 felt like one long nightmare: everything I did was wrong and every time I turned around, I was getting in even more trouble and I didn't seem to be able to do anything about it. It only stopped (or lessened at least) when I learned to not feel anything at all and to not think about anything which might make me feel, which took until about when I was 14 or 16.
Anyway, those years seem to be a wall, beyond which I can only see disconnected fragments of events and feelings. I have no idea what I felt back then or even most of what happened, other than that I felt like I had been abandoned to deal with them on my own. (And that I thought about suicide constantly.)
The only hint I have is that when I read about (M2F) transgender children, whether real-life children or in TG stories, I have an intense emotional reaction. There are stories I read which can make me cry (well, tear up, as I haven't been able to actually cry since I was 10) every time, and I don't know why.
I know I didn't feel like I was really a boy (people constantly putting me down or worse for not being enough of a boy might have helped me get that impression :( ), but I wonder if what I really felt was that I was a girl or wanted to be a girl or something. This being the 1950's, I'm sure I would have been made to feel even more unacceptable than I already felt if I had revealed any such feelings.
I could not say i was 3, but definitely it was pre-school age. Its a pain that has never gone away, maybe subdued at times, but all ways present. And suicide, yeah twice in my early teans. I hated my parents for what I was, I hated myself, I preyed at night to wake up a girl, ( unusually, it never happened ? )
I`m on my journey now, being in my later years, its not going to be easy. I just wish I knew then what I know now, and had the strength to follow thought then, as I do now.
I expected to play with the girls in kindergarten, didn't get it when people were disapproving. So yes by age 5 I was learning that.
Sometime near the age of 5 (1967 ish) I asked my mom if she was sure I was a boy and was she sure I was't a girl.
She laughed it off.
1) That was one of the most disappointing moments in my life - Yes I remember it.
2) I never verbalized, expressed, or acted upon my desires to be a girl for almost 50 years, until October 16th 2015
3) I probably thought about it every day.
In 1975 I read/watched/... every piece of news I could find on Renee Richards. She was my hero!!!
In more recent times there was a transwoman graduating from the local high school. She was my hero!!!
Yes it's very possible to bury it externally. But still be alive and kicking inside.
yes it's possible. I buried all of those feelings. Age 27 I started re-exploring them including the memories from childhood. I had forgotten about a lot of instances of gender dysphoria growing up.
That's when it started for me too. I clearly remember the desires at that age, but not before then and the years of suppression that followed.
Maybe not WHEN you are 3, but later in life, burying those memories is all too easy.
The only real, vivid memory I have from before 6-7 years old was back when both parents were working and I was being taken care of during the day by a mom with two daughters down the street. The daughters were a few years older than I was, and while their mom was napping, they'd play dress-up with me as a living doll. I liked playing with them, but eventually, their mom caught us, and I was no longer welcome there. No, I didn't understand why I couldn't play with my friends any more, I simply wasn't allowed to.
The next-earliest memory I've been able to recall was in a private religious school, probably 2nd grade. The teacher had us all silently pray, and then went through the class asking what we had prayed for. My answer got me a yardstick across the wrist, which is why I recall the event. I had prayed for God to make me a girl.
They were really quite skilled at teaching me to repress my feelings and memories.