Synopsis: MTF SRS in 1991 -> married 1994 "deep stealth post-op"
It's difficult to know what to include in this introduction. I'm sure that I could write a small book if I tried to write everything, but that would be too much. I'll try to keep this to a few of the more interesting facts.
I was born in 1959 and was very tiny at birth. As a baby many told my mother that I was a pretty girl – which she "corrected" them on. I remember that my first friends were the sisters across the street and we played the usual games with dolls.
At about age 6 we moved to a new city, Chicago, and I entered school. It was then that I have the clearest memories of scheming a way to "start over" as a girl. I thought that since we moved to a new town and I entered school as a boy, why couldn't we move again and I would start school as a girl. It made perfect sense to my 6-year-old brain. As the years went by, I did my best to conform to social expectations in every way that I could.
I will fast-forward many years because I know that almost everyone who reads this will understand how a person can repress their deepest feelings out of fear of losing everything – family, friends, and career. Furthermore, back in the 70s and 80s, before the internet, information was harder to come by.
I eventually became an engineer. At age 22, I married a woman. I did tell her something of my feelings before we were married, however, I didn't understand it very well myself. We had two kids and were married for about 8 years. I'm happy to say that she and I are friends now in spite of it all.
Then in 1989 everything changed for me. Through Usenet (kind of a pre-cursor to the internet) I found a forum of cross-dressers and some pre-op transsexuals. While I had heard about Renee Richards back when I was in high school, I had no idea what the process was. This brought on a crisis for me. Up until that time I had pushed forward on momentum. At age 30, I couldn't face the thought of continuing to live pretending to be someone that I was not. I contemplated suicide more than once. I was so afraid of what would happen if I tried to transition to become female. However, I couldn't bear the idea of going on playing the part of a man.
The worst part of the decision was thinking about what it would do to my kids. It was this that nearly drove me to self-destruction. However, a good friend of mine said "don't you abandon those children." And, I realized what a foolish, selfish, and cowardly thing that would be. I finally decided that the best I could do was to be true to myself and be the best parent that I could be. And so I did.
Now I will really move on with the story. In 1991, I had SRS. In 1993, I met my future husband. We married the following year and are still married. A couple of years into our marriage we moved to another state, closer to both our families. With the move, I managed to leave a lot of the past behind. Suddenly almost nobody, including my in-laws, knew anything about my past. I have chosen to keep it that way. The only people that I tell are doctors.
My children went back and forth a lot as many children of divorce do. However, when they were in middle school, both of them came to live with us. I'm just their other mom and always have been. My children are both adults now and I am close with them. Also, as I mentioned earlier, I have a friendly relationship with my ex and most of her family. A few of them still consider me a terrible person, but that is to be expected in this world.
Since that time I guess you could say I've gone into "deep stealth" mode. If I have one regret it's that I have not had the courage to tell my closest women friends about my past. And for that reason, I have not been very good at keeping close friends. They sense that I have a secret because I don't talk about my past and I never talk about my first marriage. Women become closer friends by sharing about themselves, but I have had a hard time with that. I enjoy so much being accepted as simply a woman, that I never want to change their perception of me.
I'm a fairly avid tennis player which means that I play on a lot of women's amateur teams. The road trips are always so much fun for me. Getting to hang out with the girls for a weekend. It almost makes up for the sleepovers that I missed out on during school years.
So that's me.
-Rhonda
