Greetings,
I will first admit that I have never joined an online forum before. So I find navigating and understanding how forum and account management extremely difficult. please excuse me if I do something extraordinarily stupid. With that out of the way, let me introduce myself.
The name I go by, for those who know me better, is Joseph KyungTaek Ahn. I am a natural born citizen to the United States, but spent the better half of my childhood raised in South Korea.
I spent most of my very early years straddling between very "behavior and very "feminine" behavior. I wanted to be Batman strong, who remains one of my heroes to this day, but I loved princess-y things, pink, fluffy, ruffly and delicate. I loved to rough house, though my extreme physical weakness made this hard, and also dress-up. I probably seemed like a very pretty girl who had a surprisingly tomboyish personality. This mixture would only make sense to me in the latter half of my college years.
In middle school I became obsessed with Korean boybands. This would have been normal for most girls, expect while I fawned over these pretty young men with all the enthusiasm most pre-teens have I also had an extreme desire be a member of a boyband. Actually, I still harbor this unrealistic dream despite now being a couple years too old to even start. It was at this time I also became fascinated with the possibility of a military career. I was until this time an extremely sickly child, spending half my school year in and out of hospitals and the nurse's office. Just as a started to force myself to become stronger, by changing my diet and trying to exercise, I convinced my mother to enroll me into martial arts classes, I hit puberty. It was awkward, strange and just felt weird. I didn't quite go through all the self-loathing many people express, I just felt like something was off, that sure this was a natural thing, but for me it shouldn't have been. That was 8th grade, when I moved from Seoul, Korea back to suburban California.
High school rolled along. I hated it for various reasons, but possibly one of the worst things was the constant search for identity. I didn't feel American or Korean, was in the process of leaving the church but still believed in God, couldn't stand any social group and couldn't for the life of me figure out id I was gay, bi, queer of what. For a while I thought I was bisexual. At the time was attracted to women and rarely men at all. Then I thought I must be a lesbian as I only seemed to be interested in pursusing relationships with women. I later realized, many years later, that though I could appreciate a women's beauty sexually somehow I am not wired to be romantically involved with women. In fact, I couldn't stand being in a relationship with one, but I did because it let me be "the man." So for the most part, I was a horrible boyfriend, but as teenage girls love a man who angst, broods and cuts himself I had plenty of girls waiting their turn.
Eventually, I got a boyfriend and things changed drastically. Over many strange experiences with just felt comfortable sexually and romantically I realized I am a homosexual man in a woman's body. It was a strange and irritating revelation. Most of my friends just thought it was extremely weird, many still do, and some believe I do it to be "unique" but not have to go through the trouble of pretending to be lesbian. Most of my male friends, however, seem to understand me, and actually start to sympathize my situation when I say "I knew I should have been born a man when I realized the worst thing about being female is that I'll never get to be a father." I know that's not necessarily true for all ftm's, but it's how I felt and to some degree I still feel cheated by my birth gender for this.
I am now a college graduate. I'm a 2nd degree black belt, and work as a martial arts instructor while floating from internship to internship in hopes to make a career out of the world's most useless degree: art. I live with one of my best friends and his girlfriend who I can barely stand, and for some reason always get into relationships with men who everyone else think is gay or will come out eventually. My friends often joke that I'm the transitional relationship before a man comes to term with his homosexuality, despite none of my boyfriends ever having come out. I have not confessed to my family my identity and am still in the process of figuring out how to pass on a regular basis. In social events I am a young woman with long black hair, tiny waist and impeccable manners and good taste, and at home I am an obsessive nerd who's much too fond of anything that punches, bleeds or explodes and spends way too much time making sure my hair looks like I just got out of bed.
If you've read this post until the end, thank you for putting up with my rambling. I hope I meet many people here with whom I may make mutually beneficial relationships with. For those of you who are especially internet savvy, I would love your help.
Best Regards
Joseph
