I guess I tried the ostrich with her head in the sand approach. When I started puberty I just fantasized about being some how magically turned into a woman. I must have made up a gazillion day dreams. They ranged from getting kidnapped by a woman or women who wished to turn me into one to finding a sugar daddy who made me his dream girl to volunteering for a medical experiment and giving them permission to make me as female as possible including giving me workable female genitals. Outwardly I just stuffed it.
Now I am the oldest in my family and usually the oldest in my play group so I went to school and drove into life without much of any kind of a life's mode. As a child born just after the end of World War II adults had their world and children had theirs and many times the worlds did not exist in the same mentality. My mom, dad, and stepdad knew well the life style of the wine, sex, and gambling nature of the Deadwood I grew up in before puberty kept my brother and I protected from it. We weren't to go downtown at night. As a family we only went to the Old Style Saloon a couple of times and my folk's idea of partying at home was a game of cards and small talk with an other couple once in a blue moon.
I just ran in the hills, played softball on a narrow, street, and delivered newspapers. I went out for baseball to sit on the bench and just existed as a boy scout never getting higher than first class by the time I was 19. I was a mediocre male who day dreamed her way through life making very few connections and hardly ever getting any self satisfaction from the baseball, football, wrestling, track, where I practiced but was never quite good enough to play in many games.
I never insisted or worked for owning a car and when I was given a 22 rifle by my step dad and later he took it back saying it wasn't his to give me, I never insisted on another. I lived in the country and never insisted on having a BB gun to shoot at the birds. I eventually taught myself to drive and bought my own car. I earned my spending money delivering papers in all kinds of weather 7 days a week (male job then, male or female now), shoveling snow, mowing grass, setting pins in a bowling alley, selling concessions at the rodeo, etching pictures for newspaper, and mopping my stepdad's barbershop.
All of this didn't make me any more of a man or less of a woman. In all of this I was a polite little girl who politely waited her turn which hardly ever came, got no ego boost, and I lived in a daze wondering why when I put in the work, I got so little reward, and was totally ignored by the coaches. I spent my life trying to do things, I had little idea of knowing how to do, and stressing myself out about not achieving an unrealistic level of success. The adults worked with those who could, ignored those who struggled hoping they would quit which I was too block headed to do. Maybe I was hoping the female would fade away and the male would kick in who knows.
At home I had the female house chores of washing cloths in the old ringer washer and hanging them on the line, washing dishes, and general house keeping. Both my stepdad and mother cooked but us kids never did. I learned a little about cooking over campfires at boy scout camp outs.
In high school I had two boy friends one of which was an intellectual preacher's kid and the other a mechanical, electrical whizz whose dad was a welder and auto mechanic. At the time I thought I was one of the guys, but I was probably the Platonic girl friend to each. I watch my boy friend work on his car, but never jumped into work together with him. I waited for him to ask, he never did. I hung out with my other boy friend at his father's church and sang in the choir with him and went to youth group. I learned to think but often felt like a tagalong.
I did not date, except to take another girl, to my senior prom. I was just living one life in the world an another in my head. Others may have seen this, but I never did.
I was picked on by the toughies but I always held my ground without fighting, but never called names. I lived on the edges with two other nerds.
As far as sex goes, its fun, I like it, but I was a wuss about it. I am extremely shy in talking and joking about sex, a dismal failure at putting myself in a situation where sex could occur, I am extremely shy female and ignorant in initiating sex, and I have a male sex organ. I enjoy sex and have fun at it, but only if I feel that I am a woman in the relationship. Sex for me evolves out of a relationship with another person which so far has only been with another female. Sex and love for me are matters of sharing sex and not one person forcing it upon another. However if some one I liked was sexually aggressive with me, I would surrender to it.
I struggled like this most of my life. I got married, had kids, worked in the female world of elementary teaching, ducking male responsibilities whenever possible. Being married meant that I could acquire female clothing without breaking the barrier of buying them myself. It also meant that I spent lots of time shopping with her in the female departments of stores and became more and more comfortable there.
Struggle with being female yes. When I tried to crush my day dreaming about being a woman, it popped up in my dreams. As I grew older I grew bolder about wearing woman's clothing under my male clothing especially during the summer while I was out of town as a state bee hive inspector. So gradually femininity was moving from my fantasy world to my physical world and my fears and apprehensions grew less.
It took along time to accept the fact that I was a woman and not a man. It also took me along time to realize that there was nothing wrong with me being a woman. Then as I have gotten older I have learned that at least with myself the world didn't care that I was a woman. Then as of lately just being a woman as a matter of course. Now I have not taken any hormones or had any surgeries. I have worn woman's underclothing for at least 13 years 24/7/365. I wear make up constantly. I have three padded bras which have given me visible breasts which I wear 24/7/365. I have ghost breasts like a ghost arm which an amputee still feels.
I came to the conclusion a long time ago after my first wife left me and I was alone that it was better for me to try living and developing my femaleness in a family and in society rather than being a hermit. If I just lived in my shell in my corner of the world I would just be a fantasy dream woman of the 1950s and live a paranoid life in fear of other people. I am living with another female now who knew from the beginning that I preferred to dress as a female and she now accepts my public presentation as such. Right now I think we are just friends who share a son together, but we live as a married couple with all of the ups and downs of such a relationship.
I guess I have gotten long winded as I am want to do. I guess I just tried to ignore and live in ignorance of the fact I was a trans female and stumbled through life as a unenthusiastic male who gradually made life choices to live more in the female world until I finely surrendered to my femaleness in my middle 60's.
In many ways I have lived naive complicated life which is grounded in a very deep liberal religious faith. I guess every time I get into writing like this I am trying to rethink my life to put into perspective. I envision my life as a sweet little girl, with the body of a boy, who daintily tips her dainty toe into the male world waiting to be invited in. Some times she dresses male and wades into the male world and daintily tests out different aspects of it, but is so totally unwilling to commit herself to it. She spends many years hiding her beautiful pink dress under the camouflage of maleness while she gradually over the years does a strip tease until the femaleness is revealed and the male facade is thrown away.
