Meet Emily, a 29 year old MtF trans girl who, for some strange reason, everybody calls David!
The reason I've joined all you lovely people on this forum is because I've recently come out to myself and am determined to be more honest and open. I tend to get a bit carried away when I start writing, so apologies for the epic post!
....
Since I was very small, I've managed to hide my true self from the world, and even from my own brain, using a combination of denial, drugs and self-reasoning.
My childhood was a classic trans childhood; a lot of the early stuff is blocked from my memory now but Disney Princesses and my Mums heels feature a lot. When I was at Primary School, I used to sing love songs in the playground to the girls from classic acts such as the Backstreet Boys, Boyz II Men and that other boy band with Ronan Keating in it. I had 6 'girlfriends' at one point and just loved being around girls. Boys were boring to me. As I grew up though, the social gender divide became more prominent and I was expected to 'hang out' with the guys, which I struggled with a lot.
I have many memories of my teenage years being an absolute disaster. I couldn't relate to the boys at all, and never kept any friends longer than a month or two. I eventually became friends with a large group of girls (and a gay guy) but I still felt like an outsider, not unwelcome but not belonging. At the same time I was sexually confused (but didn't identify as gay), depressed and ended up self harming. Along with all this, trying on mothers clothes was a frequent occurrence, and this twinned with a high sex drive made me convinced that I was just a disgusting human being.
At the age of 16 I went to college, and found my new friend Mary Jane. I hung out with new friends and smoked a lot of weed. It was through this friendship group that I met my wife. I used to roll her joints for her =) Weed was a great distraction and my dysphoria disappeared when I was high. My girlfriend and I moved in together after a year or two and things were great. I started a burgeoning IT career. With all this comfort though, I started feeling the need to dress up again and express my femininity. I started getting more confused and used to fantasise about becoming a woman all the time. Taking hormones and being a woman seemed like an amazing but impossible thing for me to do. I was still smoking weed every day and felt socially awkward (probably due to all the weed) so going out and finding help for my dysphoria was completely out of the question.
This culminated in me splitting up with my girlfriend and admitting to her my feelings (although I told her I was a crossdresser - I still refused to call myself trans). We stayed apart for 2 weeks before getting back together. In reality I should've been experimenting with my gender at this point (I was around 23 at this time) but I was too stoned to do anything but sit around smoking.
My girlfriend and I experimented sexually with crossdressing but it didn't turn her on and the subject quickly became taboo, mostly because I was so ashamed of it. I smoked more and concentrated on work, pushing Emily back into the closet. After saving money for a deposit we bought a house together. The deposit saving involved moving back in with my parents, and during this time I smoked less weed (although still daily). Funnily enough, with a (slightly) clearer head, my transgendered feelings made a return, but still very much in secret.
We moved into our house and the smoking got serious again. During all of this work was going very well and I was fitting into the 'bloke' stereotype quite well. I had learned how to be a passable 'male' and had even proposed to my girlfriend with successful results =) My recent promotion, my weed smoking and the wedding planning started getting the better of me though. As the wedding got closer and closer I got more and more anxious. The week before the wedding I had quite a few panic attacks whilst lying in bed stoned, and literally thought I was going to die more than once. I was experiencing a lot of chest pain and serious anxiety. 2 days after the wedding I went to the doctor, who diagnosed me with Chostochondritis, an inflammation of the chest muscles. I wasn't going to die, but I really needed to relax! Gladly I did still enjoy the wedding, and it is still a very memorable day full of happy memories. I'm good at getting the best out of a bad situation!
I started doing a lot of yoga to relax and de-stress. Over the previous year I had also started teaching myself street dance from YouTube videos and I used this as another form of relaxation and energy release. But I didn't stop my daily weed smoking. 6 months later the anxiety came back again and I finally decided that I had to call it quits before something really bad happened. I went cold turkey and gave it all up, no more cigarettes, no more weed. That was a year ago now.
Since then a lot has changed; my mind is clearer and I have made a promise to be true to myself. I started exercising regularly and have found that yoga and pilates are my favourite ways to exercise. I also dance, every day, because I love it more than anything else in the world. All of these things are traditionally feminine activities which I would've previously repressed, but it makes me happy, and that's all that matters now. I feel much healthier and am getting more flexible by the day.
2015 has been a year of rediscovery for me, and earlier this year I ticked off skydiving from my bucket list. But there was something else I needed to tick off; I've always wanted to be made over, to see how feminine I could really look. So for my 29th birthday I booked myself a makeover and photoshoot. It was a fantastic day and I had a lot of fun. However it has also set off a trigger inside me which has seemingly been coiled up forever. Over the last couple of months I've finally admitted to myself that I am transgendered and am gender dysphoric. I've also been open and honest to my wife about this instead of hiding it. That said I am taking things slowly; I don't want to upset her too much as it's a stressful thing to find out, and I don't want to rush into anything which I might regret. I love her intensely, and the last thing I want is to jeopardise that. She is scared and so am I, but I must move forward on this path.
I've started buying myself the necessary tools to actually try to go out into the world as my preferred gender, and have been practicing my makeup and voice. This will all take time, but for me the next steps are working towards a more androgynous look (skinny jeans and loose shirts), followed by a trip to my GP. I'm now sure that I need some professional help, and after letting the flood gates open in my own mind I'm realising just how much I want to be recognised as a woman. Even though I am successful as a man, I can see the dysphoria getting increasingly uncomfortable as time goes on. Only a GIC/therapy, and a whole lot of self discovery can help me from here and maybe I'll end up being an even better woman. Or maybe I'll just find a way to cope. What I've learned is that there is no right or wrong answer to this conundrum; there is just the process of self discovery ahead.
If anybody gets to the end of this post then you can colour me impressed, and thanks for reading!
Emily x
