If it could not be any more apparent, I am new to this forum. After many weeks of hopelessly searching that desolate wilderness we call the Internet, I believe I have a found a place where I can find the comfort and the support I need to make it through this exciting but often hellish journey of life.
To get the basics out; I go by the name of Vincent and I am a nineteen year old FTM transsexual in the very early stages of transitioning.
Going into more detail... I honestly can't say that I have very clear, detailed early childhood memories of knowing that I am a boy. I can recall various occasions when I wished I was a boy, but I can't list off exact scenarios. I thought it was normal for little girls to wish they were little boys. It never bothered me. Even when I became a little older and started to develop a women's body, that desire to be masculine meant nothing to me. I told myself that all girls despise the the day they are informed that they need to wear a bra. I convinced myself that every girl dreads the day she begins her monthly cycle. It was okay that I hate dresses and dolls and the pretty little things that my mother shoved at me. As a unique individual, it was perfectly alright for me to smash ant hills and melt my twin brother's toy soldiers. I could adopt the title "tomboy" and be as boyish as I want, and everything would be just fine.
Naturally, my personality changed as I hit those awkward years of puberty. I became shy, introverted. A loner. During middle school, I was the awkward chubby girl that wore all the wrong clothes and didn't understand the basics of apply makeup. Teased and ridiculed, I learned to despise myself and my body in a way that I didn't understand, and didn't want to understand. Not when it was so, so much easier to retreat and withdraw and hide.
For years, the hate for myself went unexplained and ignored. It wasn't until I was thirteen that I began to really consider why I had so many problems with the face I saw in the mirror. It wasn't until I was thirteen that I began to find peace with my personality. I was okay with being the awkward, dorky, quiet kid. I wasn't okay with my body. Something was definitely wrong with it. Unlike so many of the girls around me, I had not begun to cycle. I didn't want to. I dreaded it. Feared it. Wanted nothing to do with it. I hoped and hoped that something terrible would happen to my system, that I would be some kind of freak of nature that would never have to deal with the horror of bleeding every single month for days on end. I didn't want to be a women.
The ticking time bomb finally exploded half way through my fourteenth year of life. A "late bloomer" is how my mother described me. "Monster" was the adjective I preferred. Never before had I been so afraid. Never before had I felt so out of control. Hours were spent sobbing into a pillow. How could my body betray me? How could it do something so disgusting and wrong? Wasn't it already bad enough that I didn't possess those coveted, graceful feminine features and that slender, hourglass build? I believed myself to be a good person. I didn't deserve to be suffering like this. I never asked to be transsexual.
So that was the first time I ever really questioned my gender. I did as much research as I could. I experimented with my looks. I studied the boys and the girls around me, trying to find the difference between them, trying to find where I stood in their ranks. I knew in my heart that I wasn't, and never would be, one of those girls bouncing around in their heels and their glitter. I knew in my heart that I felt like one of the guys. I wanted to be one of them. Not in the sense that I was the cool chick that "got" them, but physically and mentally. Especially physically. But to label myself as transsexual? Oh, no. I couldn't do that. My family would never accept it, and they meant everything to me.
The problem was shoved to the back of my mind. I ignored it. Denied it. Hoped that one day I would learn to appreciate my female body, and that I would stop being this freak that wanted to swap places with my male twin so badly. No fairy godmother descended from the heavens to grant me my desperate wishes and make me into a proper princess. Instead, something else happened just before my nineteenth birthday. The female cycle that I had learned to loath... stopped. For no particular reason, it just stopped. I was free. The liquid red proof that I was female was gone, and I found a sense of comfort and confidence in knowing that.
But after five months, concern for my health stepped in. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong. No matter how much I hated it, I needed to see a doctor. All I could while in the waiting room of the ob-gyn doctor's waiting room was cry, and cry, and cry some more. My mother couldn't understand why I was so scared. It was alright to concerned that something was wrong with my ovaries, but the amount of tears I was shedding was not only unnecessary, but drawing attention and humiliating.
I felt weak, crying like that.
Weak, pathetic, unworthy, and female.
Young as I am, that was easily the worst day of my life. It must be said, though, that in a way, it was the best thing that could have happened to me. It made me face the fact that lying to myself and denying who I am will only lead to rash decisions and pain in the end.
I hate the idea of pain and everything to do with it.
So here I am, a wimpy, quiet, awkward, dorky, chunky, little man.
