When I was first starting my transition more than a year ago, one thing I found was extremely difficult was how rare it was to find personal stories from adult-onset gender dysphoria cases like me. It was extremely difficult because I also had a lot of people telling me that gender dysphoria should be present and obvious since childhood, and when I was a kid I really didn't have a strong sense of being either gender so I just went with male because that was the body I had. But I never expressed much interest in girly things (openly) or any desire to be female.
Throw in the fact that I had been encouraged by both my roommate and my mother to believe at the time that I was psychotic or experiencing borderline personality (also the opinion of a counselor trainee), and the anxiety that my gender dysphoria stemmed from a loss of touch with reality resulted in anxiety so severe I found myself unable to function or trust my own judgment. It has taken years of recovery to undo the damage that the fear of losing my mind did to me.
I figure it might be a good idea for those of us who have had this story to talk about our experiences, both for each other's benefit and more importantly, so that someone on the Internet who is going through what I went through can find some comfort beyond the vague reassurance that "everyone's story is different."
Here's my story:
I lived as a straight male from birth to age 19, then as a gay man from age 19 to 26. Up until that time, I had not been a cross-dresser (though I experimented with it and found I got no sexual gratification from it), and had presented male the entire time.
I'm not sure how it all started. I always felt like the real me was a mystery that I was forbidden to express. That's what happens when you grow up sensitive and fighting an ardent attraction to the same sex while living in a community that prizes "manliness" as a badge of worth. It didn't help either that if I cried at home, my mother would interrogate me on why I was crying until I told her (out of some fear that maybe I was being molested or perhaps so she could jot it down in her little notebook and take it to the psychiatrist to get them to up my meds again). I'd had a hard time being myself at home because that usually meant arguments and more mind-numbing meds, and I had a hard time getting on with the usual "bubbas" that made up most of the male company I had, and I think I spent all of High School trying to be a straight cis male and learning not to be so sensitive. By the end of high school, I had almost completely lost the ability to let myself cry.
I ended up developing a lot of fetishes between age 12 and 18. I developed a fixation on lycra because it changed how my genitals responded to touch. I developed a strong urge to have someone else masturbate me because it never felt as good when I did it myself. I even got into asphyxiation fetishes, and nearly died chasing the (perhaps mythical) hands-free orgasm that hanging onesself supposedly provided. The sad thing about that incident is that I wasn't actually suicidal, but none of the doctors I saw had heard of asphyxiaphilia so they accused me of lying and treated me like a suicidal case.
The truth is, the thought of being a woman did not cross my mind until I lost my virginity at age 21, when I found that not only was I much happier as a bottom, but that I had such intense, satisfying climaxes when I didn't have to touch my penis. I even found myself wondering what it would be like if it wasn't there. That first guy I was with knew exactly how to please me and I have been trying to find a guy who could make me feel like a woman quite the way he did.
But I ended up getting into high-risk encounters trying to replicate that experience. I had some scares, but I never got sick; still, I must have been with maybe 10-20 guys totaling about 40-50 specific encounters over the space of about 7 years. All too often, I got roped into being a top though, because I got pegged as a "bear" and too many guys wanted me to mount them. I hated it!
Also around age 21, I began to realize that I really wanted to be more feminine, but at the time I felt that I could never be passable or even androgynous with my body type. I started shaving my body more than occasionally, and in 2007 I started developing an eating disorder to try to thin myself out. I also kept trying to find outlets for the feminine side of me I kept hidden away, but I ended up getting to the point where I couldn't let the woman I really was out unless I was drunk or in bed. I basically kept my true self imprisoned in the bedroom, only showing her to others when I got drunk on increasingly heavy doses of alcohol. I think by age 23 I had admitted that I "might be just a little bit genderqueer."
At age 26 I had an experience that really brought it out for me. I was working with an inventory company counting things like clothes and jewelry. My coworkers were mostly female, and my hair was cut to the absolute maximum length the company would allow, which actually gave me a slightly feminine look. I found that when I was called "ma'am" by other customers, I didn't mind. I even found that I was "one of the girls" when I was out on the floor, and I was happy being more socially female than male.
I tried to get to a gender therapist at the time, but I was only able to afford one session. I backed away from it for a while, putting off my transition so I could move to the West Coast finally, but after putting it off for two years and dealing with a very unpleasant situation at home and more than a year without work, I was pretty much reduced to a crying mess unable to function. I quit drinking at age 27, after I downed a pint of Everclear and behaved in a violent and aggressive way that I still regret. I began my transition in earnest at age 28 and went full time 7 months ago at age 29.
I went through hell because I didn't know what I was dealing with. My awareness of any sort of gender dysphoria was so gradual, it crept up on me and wore me down in some very debilitating, insidious ways. I guess I was so dissociated from what I really wanted after years of trying to conform to everyone's expectations of me that I forgot who I was or what I wanted. For the first 26 years of my life the one thing I wanted more than anything was to be accepted, and I made myself miserable trying to get that at the cost of my mental and physical wellbeing. I keep telling myself "if only I'd known it was gender dysphoria" but even if I had known, I don't know if I could have ever accepted that before it became a matter of "transition or die" for me.
Does anyone else have similar stories they'd like to share?
