As I was growing up, from the time as a little boy, I looked forward to becoming an adult. I saw I was a boy and knew that boys grew up to become men. So, I looked forward to becoming a man and having a relationship with a female. I had typical hobbies for a nerdy male such as an interest in electronics and computers. I rarely played sports because they didn't interest me and I never watched them on TV as I found them dreadfully boring. I loved playing video games and I loved playing outside and building things. For the most part, I enjoyed doing many of the activities that are typically male dominated. I had a sister that I would do stuff with from time to time like when she wanted to play "school" or she had friends over, we would play in the backyard on the trampoline or get out the waterslide in the summer. I also had a brother that I would spend a lot of time with. We would go for long walks in the neighborhood exploring for new spots we hadn't been to before. I didn't worry about life for the most part because I was just going along with it and it seemed to be fun.
As I grew older, what seemed to start out as a tiny seed of a feeling of something being wrong, eventually started growing. Secretly, I would crossdress and tried to do a good job hiding my "clothes" in various spots such as under the mattress and later behind and underneath my dresser and even later than that, inside of some rarely worn clothes in my dresser or sometimes under the drawers of my dresser. This seemed to be able to satisfy me for the most part. As I grew older, I learned how to sew in school and so I started sewing some of my own girl clothes in my spare time in secret using a needle and thread which could be hidden. I didn't have any patterns to go by, but I tried fitting it around my body and hoping that I cut it just right, which I did occasionally.
I knew I thought differently than other boys and I knew I approached relationships different than other boys. I would obsess about girls that I had crushes on and usually in ways that I had seen other girls doing it, like writing that I loved somebody on the inside of my shoe where only I knew it was there or doing the loves me/loves me not game. I was a hopeless romantic. I wished boys didn't have to be the ones to approach girls and that I could be asked by a girl instead of me needing to overcome my shyness. I had too many secrets to keep and felt like a dirty shameful person. Nobody could ever know my deep dark secrets.
I enjoyed hanging out with the girls at school and I have always thought so highly of women and wished I could be one of them. I wished I could one day magically trade bodies with a beautiful young woman, if only for a day just to see be a woman. If I ever found a genie, that's what I would wish for, but alas, switching bodies was something that only happened in movies and on TV. So, I tried to work on myself and hoped I could make myself attractive enough to find a girlfriend.
I looked forward to growing a beard so I could attract women and becoming strong. I wanted to be a guy and a good one. I listened to women and tried to figure out what kind of a guy I should be so that I would be attractive. I avoided to stereotypes and was always one to ask for directions or read instructions. Again, I looked up to women. I tried to find a hairstyle so that I could be fawned over. I figured when I found the right women, everything would finally feel all right.
I knew I never felt like a guy and didn't share many of the same interests as guys, except my love for women, but I kept trying. I knew if I were to suddenly be a woman, I would have to like guys and I wasn't attracted to guys and was in fact repulsed by them. Growing up, I had 3 girlfriends, that I had aquired mostly by circumstance, not me pursuing them. When I went to college, I knew I needed some new friends. I decided to become friends with several women, because I enjoyed being in the presense of other women. So I made 3 friends. One of them was to become my wife. I did stuff (as friends) with them, but I really had a crush on Shari. Consequentially, I spent a lot of time with her. So much so, that she began to worry about me. After school got out that year, I continued to spend time with Shari and would visit her often. Throughout the summer, we got to know each other much better and eventuall we had a talk and decided that we wanted to be more than friends. I asked her to marry me 1 week later. I knew she would say yes.
A year later we were married. I was finally doing what I thought would make me happy and make everyone else proud of me. However, my feelings of incompleteness still remained. I remember telling Shari how I felt like a woman (specifically a lesbian) trapped in a man's body without knowing how cliche that was at the time. She said that I was jsut a really sensitive guy. I figured I was probably crazy and just went on with life. Over the years, my ADD kept me trying hobby after hobby, alway slearning new things. I was good at learning new things. I expanded out from what I was already good at with electronics and computers and learned about raising fish and various other pets, I learned about scuba diving and learned to become quite good at Chess. I learned a number of new programming languages. I tried out darts and pool as well. I tried starting up a couple of businesses and learning about flying airplanes. I learned auto mechanics and bartending. I tried acting because that's what I always felt like I was doing anyways, but I found I wasn't very versatile when it came to male characters. I was trying to find my niche, because if I did, I would be happy and I could finally live my life as a man. One thing I note is that every single hobby (with the exception of scuba diving and chess) that I started, I was able to participate in by myself and the ones that weren't were very short-lived.
I remember wishing I could find some job where I could be a woman. Maybe a movie or something. I was desparate, but I still tried to live the life of a man. I was bound and determined. In 2004, Shari joined this volunteer group that did a haunted house in October every year. I helped a little with some of the building, but didn't participate much. The next year, I volunteered as a manager and wanted to put some of my skills I had aquired - such as electronics, building things, mechanics, etc - to good use. We got everything prepared prior to October. At one of the manager's meeting, the main guy running it (who is gay) announced that one of the events they would have in October would be centered around a rather locally well-known group of Drag Queens. He also challenged me to dress as a woman, to which I pretty much turned down.
The idea kept eating away at me and eventually I resolved to do this challenge. I went around and got the necessary stuff and got everything prepared. I put it in bags and went there in male clothes. I was so scared to change my clothes. I needed to give myself a little push and when I was asked to carry a cooler full of water to another building, I made sure to "accidentally" spill some on myself so that I would need to change my clothes. Well, I decided to change my clothes and put on everything. Makeup was the hardest since I had never put that on before. I winged it, but was told I did pretty good. I really can't remember what it looked like though. Well it ended up being much better than I thought and I talked to people and was astounded at the surrealism of naturalness I felt. I went home resolving that I would never need to dress again for my family and this was the last time. I had diffficulty getting myself to take the clothes off and ended up sleeping in them.
The next day, I realized that I had to do it again soon. Maybe for halloween. The thoughts just wouldn't leave my head. I do what I always do when thoughts won't leave my head, I did some research on the internet and did reading about crossdressers. I found out this was a branch of being transgendered and used that term to continue doing research. Within the next couple of days, I had to tell my wife. Something had shifted inside of me and I needed to do this again. After more research I learned about other terms I had never heard before like transsexual. I learned about transitioning and I knew that I would have liked to have been a female all my life. I studied the differences between transsexuals and crossdressers, because I wasn't really sure where I fell into the spectrum. This was all so new to me. I learned about HRT, SRS and RLT. I knew this was something I desparately wanted to do. However, I also didn't want to lose my wife. I knew transitioning meant losing everything. I had found Susans and did a lot of reading on there. However, all these urges just came at me so strongly. I was slipping.
Within the next week, I has shaved myself and pierced my ears. I could, after all, do that without committing to anything. Over the next month, I kept slipping little by little. Making promises I couldn't keep and breaking them. I so badly needed to transition all the way. I knew the first step was talking to my doctor and then therapy and so I made appointments and did that. Sometime in October, I knew some sort of transition was in my future, I just didn't know how far I would go. With my research I eventually realized I fit the description of a transsexual pretty darn well. I had done a good job covering my tracks and fogging out memories of wanting to be female. If you had asked me about my past then, I wouldn't have been able to tell you because it was a big blank spot. I had some digging to do in my brain and I did. Sometime in November, it all came out. The mental block had finally been released and it came out in a flood of tears. I cried for several hours as I kept telling my wife things. All during this research period I was constantly questioning myself to see if this was right for me, but in my heart I knew it was.
I fought desparately to avoid who I really was. It was more than just an acting job. It was the hope that I could somehow win this and be happy. Since then I have transitioned and am now living fulltime as a female. I am already finding that happiness I have sought for all those years during my life. This is my story and it may be somewhat unconventional for a transsexual in that I wasn't constantly begging to be a girl all my life, but none the less, the treatment is working for me.
Melissa
