Hello everyone. I've posted here before, but that was nearly two years ago, and I didn't say or do much before leaving. I sometimes hit the chat room, but my laptop recently crashed, so for the past half a year my only means of getting online has been my Wii browser (which sucks).
I'm 22 years old, and all my life I knew I was in the wrong body. When I was four or five years old, I remember asking my aunt why I had to be a boy. She never liked me much (still doesn't), and I remember she gave some snappy, angry answer. My mom to this day tells me stories of when I was younger, "cute" things I would do. Like when I asked for a pink purse and lipstick for christmas, or when I would walk around in her heels, or when I started crying one day when she told me I'd grow up to be like my dad, instead of growing up into a woman like her. Honestly, she thinks all this stuff is just past cuteness; I have no idea whatsoever how she hasn't figured anything out about the truth yet.
I never was a very social kid. I'm a stay-indoors-doing-geeky-things kind of person, I guess. When I was youngest, my best friends were girls, but in first grade I transfered to a new school, and by that age all the girls thought boys were icky, so I made friends with whatever boys would talk to me. I spent most of my days in elementary school actually pretty happy, only very rarely if ever noticing that much was wrong. I never liked sports that much (but I tried SO hard, if only to fit in; I spent a year on each team my school had). My friends were the geeky weird kids, and that worked fine for me.
Around middle school, puberty kicked in, and that's when it hit me that something was seriously wrong. I knew and dreaded what was happening to me, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I spent many nights wishing to stars and praying that I could wake up the next day in the right body, but of course that was to no avail.
Suddenly, in the eighth grade, I transfered schools again. So here I was in a new school, no friends and not social enough to make any very quickly. That year went slowly for me, and I remember it specifically because puberty was also in full swing and I was feeling pretty much awful all the time.
By high school, I'd yet again managed to make friends with the geeks and weird kids, since not only was I a new kid, but I was apparently obviously different myself. I recently found out from a friend that all the kids talked about how weird I was back then, and even had a few nicknames for me that I didn't know of. High school was fun, I guess. I put the transsexual thoughts to the side and just enjoyed hanging with my new friends during school, then going home and geeking it up with video games and anime and whatever novel I was reading at the moment. I even dated a girl (who I'm still friends with) for a while, but broke it off when I admitted to her that my heart just wasn't in the relationship and I wanted to go back to being friends like before. I graduated with honors and went off to college.
College sucked. About two weeks into my freshman year, I was researching something online when I accidentally learned a new word: transsexual. Suddenly I realized that those feelings I'd been forcing to the side weren't unique to me, and I looked into it and researched it as much as I could. During that semester, I started realizing that the reason I always hated my body and why I was so miserable all the time was because of those feelings I had repressed for so long.
Well, my research on trans materials interfered with my studies and I flunked out of school. I ended up going back home to attend a local college, which I dropped out of halfway through the semester. I got a job at a retail store and just kind of wasted a year being miserable, and around this time I started to get very, very depressed. Not only was my life going to hell fast, but the fact remained that I was in the wrong body. At first, when I was in college, the thought was just kind of there, but the longer I left it alone the more it ate at me, and soon it was nearly all I could think about. It was torture, I was aware every moment of every day that something was very, very wrong.
I eventually grew depressed enough that I just quit showing up for work. To this day, I haven't shown my face in that store; they never even got the opportunity to properly fire me, though I'm sure I was terminated fairly quickly.
I waited for the next semester to begin, and then I started school at that local college again. About a year passed, and even though my life was on the right track, I just got more and more miserable every day. I passed most of my classes (didn't do so hot in trig) and then spent the summer working for some friends (since no real job will hire me anymore, probably based on what had happened a year before).
Right now I'm in my second year of schooling, though I can only afford to go part time, so I'm still a freshman. I find myself staying up all night, depressed and obsessing over being trans. I can't stop thinking about it anymore, it won't even give me a break for a few days/weeks at a time like it used to. At most, I can go maybe fifteen minutes without thinking about it. It's slowly getting worse and worse and it's driving me crazy. And so here I am, to seek advice and maybe a friend or two.
Anyway, sorry for the long, dramatic, incredibly emo post. Just thought I'd follow the guidelines at the top of the forum and post exactly what brought me here. It's nice to meet you all, and I'll be around.
