Being trans and not knowing it is extremely difficult as I've spent my whole life not knowing what was wrong with me.I used things to take my mind off my troubles as a way of escaping my problems.My escapism's where "The Sims" game and old movies on " Turner Classic Movies".I loved playing life on The Sims as I could live the life I couldn't in reality.I love watching old movies from the silent teens to the the swingin sixties.I discovers stars that I wanted to be like Joan Crawford, Bette Davis,Clara Bow,Gloria Swanson,Ginger Rogers, and my favorite Barbara Stanwyck.I fell for leading men like Rudolph Valentino,Gary Cooper and my favorites Clark Gable, and Carey Grant.I sort off lost myself in the glitz and glamor of the past and could escape from my problems by watching these films and I've found that since finding out about myself I still enjoy "The Sims" and "TCM" but I don't rely on them like i used to.What are your opinions on the matter and what did you use to forget the pain?

Drugs,and alcohol

Self-harm, Non-purging bulimia, Purging bulimia, Cross-dressing, Obsessively ripping out my hair.

I painted and created music. It helped somewhat.

My escape was primarily crossdressing, and a lot of  it.  As mentioned in another thread, I lived in denial for most of my life when it came to being transsexual.  I desired to be female, but denied the fact that I truly wanted to be one.  I dressed, I liked the way I looked and I liked the way it made me feel.  I sacrificed any and all social contact to spend time dressed up.  I would skip school and wasn't too interested in working.

In my later teens and early twenties if I would go out I would got to bars, get stupidly drunk and sleep with some of the most hideous, disgusting females--I'm so lucky that the worst thing that ever happened to me was getting crabs.  I recall waking up one morning beside some horrid looking creature--I found out later that she had herpes.  Fortunately, for me, I never caught anything.

I also took stupid risks and just did stupid things like taking my car out onto a quiet, sometimes not so quiet highway and burying the speedometer.  I would literally shake the next morning realizing what I had done.

I soon took a job as a bar DJ.  The bars I worked in were lower class dives that were frequented primarily by bikers, strippers, skanky whores, drug dealers and various criminal element.  I was introduced to cocaine and speed and began sleeping with a lot of strippers.  I  witnessed a lot of sh***y things in my life and I met a lot of sh***y people.  I recall one evening having a conversation with a decent looking, almost distinguished looking guy over just general crap.  He looked normal in every sense of the word, but something about him just scared the living crap out of me and I just couldn't put my finger on it--but it was genuinely evil.  It was three months later when I found out that he was responsible for the killing of a woman and her child on Christmas eve over drugs--the guy that he was looking for got away.  Another person whom I had frequent contact with was responsible for shooting a small time coke dealer in the back of the head.

There were also some pretty cool people I had met.  One in particular was this wanna be biker--a striker--coke dealer and debt collector.  A real character who reminded me of the late comedian Sam Kinison.  One night we sat up in a hotel room with two strippers doing cocaine all night long.  I have no idea how much we did, but it was literally line after line after line.  Two days later I sat at a table in a club when someone told me I had a drop of blood around my nostril.  When I wiped it away a torrent of blood gushed from my nose and everyone freaked out--myself included.  It was shortly after that that I turned my back on that scene and began pursuing music.

I locked myself away and literally began playing for hours at a time learning as much as I could by listening to old blues.  A short while later I went out to a local jam session and became somewhat of a regular jamming with local blues musicians.  I did that for about seven years until the need to transition hit me hard.

After transitioning I educated myself and immersed myself into building a career and have been doing so for the past fifteen years.  Dumped everybody and moved from one city to another.  I live in Toronto now where nobody knows of me or my past.  Given my past experiences do you really wonder why I have such a difficult time relating to and fitting in with seemingly 'normal' people.  In many ways I feel like Henry Hill whose life was immortalized in the movie Wiseguy.

Now, after being fired from yet another job and as I await my surgery, I've buried myself into music once again.  This time it is different, rather than playing blues, I'm now playing solo acoustic and singing.  My style of music is old soul and R & B.  I also immerse myself into working out 5 times a week.

After surgery I'm not too sure what I will do.  Perhaps I'll lose myself in sex if all works right.  I guess I have a lot of catching up to do.

Daydreams and alcohol, still do that.

To forget the pain I'd take a nap, usually multiple times a day, not that exciting is it . I eventually considered that the only time I liked was the time I wasn't even conscious, and I started to think maybe an eternal sleep wasn't so bad . I also did some very dangerous and stupid stuff for the thrill. This was mostly how I coped with depression, how much gender had to do with that I'm not really sure.

I tried to sleep through depression too. I didn't relate it to gender tho.

Music, running, self harm (I stopped but the scars still haunt me forever.), role playing in video games, drawing, wrestling with my mind, watching tv shows and movies. All of those things let me think about other things or at least help me feel more normal like role playing female characters.

Did male things like Hunting, truck driving, auto mechanic.  Got into motorcycles.  And did the marriage thing, three times.

Tried alcohol and even suicide, numerous times.

Now I nap or spend time playing on the computer.

I pretty much live inside my head, I fantasize constantly about the future, and finding true happiness (I'm getting closer, I can feel it.  ) Sometimes when it's too much I'll cut. It's usually when I become way too overwhelmed, and I can't even cry anymore. It's usuallly the thought of never having kids, that hurts me more than anything. I'm still young though, so I guess I have some time to see what science comes up with.

Wow I feel Like kind of an underachiever.

What are your opinions on the matter and what did you use to forget the pain?
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I pretty much buried myself in one thing or another.  Anything to distract and keep my mind off of it.  If you're 'good' enough at it, you can (unfortunately) bury things so far that you don't even know what's eating at you anymore. 
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When I was young it was simple video games (Dig Dug, Centipede, Pac Man, Missle Command) (you know you're playing too much when your only challenge left is how many times you can max out the score and roll it over to 0 again )  and later on got into RPGs like FF6, Chrono Trigger and the like.  I also watched a lot of old movies.
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Then came music (Flute & French Horn at first, then all the rest), which supplied a much needed emotional outlet, but was still quite the distraction. 
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Then came school and academics.  Pushing myself as hard as I could just to fill every available moment so that there was no time to think or feel.  There was the task at hand, that was all that mattered...and then the next task...and the next one...an unending supply of distraction.  (as well as a convenient excuse to get away from my dad)
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Took up cycling pretty seriously for a year, and was training to do 100 mile races...until my muscles got huge and I quit.
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After college it was back to video games.  I gave up consoles and moved on to the PC.  Starcraft, I was an Admin on a Text MUDD for a bit (MUDDs and MMORPGs can be a *very* addictive escape...withdrawl afterward wasn't fun), Yahoo Towers, Euchre, anything to pass the time.
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...and then I got frustrated with it all and stripped all of the distractions out.  Allowing myself only one at a time, and trying to keep it somewhat constructive.  (The next one was genealogy, about 2000 pages worth.)  Stripping it all out was probably not my brightest move, as when your life is built on distractions, it's a bit empty stripped bare. *shrug*  C'est la vie.  While I've finally begun dealing with being trans...I guess I'm still trying to find some meaningful content to fill that life with.

I threw myself into a range of activities almost to obsession.  WHen younger I would paly cricket four or five times a week.  Last year I playe golf virtually every day from April to September.   I went to the gym 3 times a week, I would cycle regularly,  I took up photography (I was OK), I messed about on the guitar (terribly) but nothing could mask my desire to live as a woman.   Eventually I was left with no option but to start my transition.

I think many who don't understand our condition think all we are after is an extension of our self obsession to crossdress.  I don't think they realise that many of us fight against transition until there is no other choice.   I have reached the point in my life where either I transition or I end up in a potentially terminal depression.   That is not a place I want to go.

drugs mostly and alcohol (lots of) , music , internet ,cross dressing sometimes whenever i had the chance ,'certain' sexual activity . but now that i know (at least i know that i'm trans ) i stopped doing most of those

speaking of the sims , check out that video , it's hilarious

Cigarettes - They also help my voice sound bad, which is quite good
Starving (The feeling in my stomach takes away from the pain in my mind)
Sims 3 (Oh my god i love this game. So fun)
Reading (Its like i  hyper focus on the book, nothing else exists. I'm happiest when reading...)
Cutting (Relieves me for a few hours...then the cuts start to sting, and i obsess over the fact that they could get infected, since i use old, not so clean, scissors)
MUSIC
I love my music. Its truly the best way to forget everything! I have found that My Chemical Romance, Linkin Park, and Green Day are the best for depression, anger, and rage.   

Alcohol, world of warcraft, website design and computer junk, daydreaming and cross-dressing.

Alcohol on the weekends, weekdays, and then cut loose.  Sex, making out, and foreplay with a variety of women, only to find myself disappointed over and over again at all it is cut up to be (never forming any concrete relationships).  Lots of dreaming of what could be and desires.  Photoshopping myself to see how I would look like as a woman through hrt or ffs; or see what I would look like if I would have been born female.  Trying to prove myself to be male by doing very masculine work outs, present a feeling of indifference or disregard towards the LGBT community in public, place emphasis on displaying quintessential manly traits.  Those are some of my 'dirty' ways of escaping which I would rather like to discard out of my life.

These are more positive ways I try to escape my GID: Go traveling around the world (I spent five weeks traveling India by myself last summer for example).  Playing guitar! Hiking, skiing, rock climbing, and photography.  These are ones I love to do and keep my mind at least temporarily off of being trans!!

Tori319! I think that escaping transness depends on the nature of the activity.  For example, if it is smoking or drinking (self-medicating) that, for a variety of reasons, is bad.  If the activity is an activity that one genuinely likes to do, and it does not lead one further into the cycle of depression and anxiety, than obviously one should enjoy it.  It is all to common that people's escape is overcompensating to offset their internal gender (Think of Ted Haggard).  Really it is all about how one handles their escape and what it is in relation to their lifestyle!   

Video games, writing, lots of lesbian romance movies... (I still have a couple I haven't watched yet on my computer, but now that I'm on the transition track, I don't feel the same yearning to watch them).

Alcohol, martial arts, running, fitness freak. Studying and reading. Now a days, coming here. Not caring what people think about me anymore. Acceptance. No longer in denial. I am Cindy James. No discussion. No argument. No doubts. But have a tremendous urge to tell people that I am female, after hiding for so long I almost carry a placard.

Cindy