Hi all. I read the TOS a number of times and couldn't find anything about old members coming back after a few (4) years. My original account was deleted back in 2007 for inactivity, not for any TOS violation or anything bad like that. I just couldn't get online at home after I moved and the local library in my adopted hometown in VA decided to ban anything and everything Transgender related. So if I'm violating a rule, or the spirit of a rule, by rejoining just let me know and I'll move on.
Anyway.
I'm Casey Morgan (first and middle name, not legal but mine anyhow). When I was here back in the mid-2000's my nick was simply Casey. I figured that in the last 4 years somebody probably registered that name so I just went with CaseyMorgan. I used to hang out in the Androgyne section with Laurry, Zythyra (glad to see them both on here), and Kendra, plus a few others whose names escape me at the moment.
I'm a 42 year old androgyne (almost 43) and I've been struggling with my gender identity since around puberty, about 30 years now. My earliest memory of "gender variance", for lack of a better term at 12:30 in the AM, was watching a TV show when I was a pre-teen. They were showing a cruise ship that had a few interesting customs. One man was chosen to put his head through a hole in a buffet table and serving tray lined with garnish. He was the "head" table. But what really impressed me was they had a lady in a bikini lay on another table and they covered her with a sheet of plastic, then placed food on the plastic. I was just discovering girls so naturally I was smitten with her. But more than that, I also had this unexplainable, irresistable urge to BE her. When no one was looking I would lay on my bed and strike the pose she did. Over 30 years later I couldn't tell you exactly what she looked like but oh how I remember both of those feelings.
When I was 13 I found a blue pair of nylon panties mixed in with my clean clothes. For some time I just stared at them, thinking what it might be like to put them on. Finally I couldn't resist it any longer. I put them on and was in heaven. Sure I got a thrill from it but it also somehow just seemed right to wear them. They became my secret treasure, something I hid from absolutely everybody. The more I wore them the more I wanted to go even further. But being 13 and unemployed, that would have to wait a few years. I never did find out who owned those underwear and she never did get them back. NOTE: Don't do this. It's wrong. I was young and stupid.
Shortly thereafter I started questioning my gender. I knew what a transsexual was; I had seen it in a movie. Ironically it was the same movie where the main teen character openly thought about creating a woman - from himself. Darned if that idea didn't really get me interested and thinking. I wondered for a while if I might be a "woman trapped in a man's body" (this was the 80s). It didn't take me too long to figure out that while the idea of becoming physically female (something I literally dreamed about more than once) was appealing it wasn't right for me. I wasn't really female. I just wasn't really male either.
I had never heard of anyone that was neither really male nor really female before. So the only "label" I knew of that fit me was "freak". And so for the next 20 or so years I believed I was a freak. During that time I was figuring out more about what I was. I had a story idea that there were these two people, a man and a woman, who had been fused into one person by an evil sorcerer. A good sorcerer split them back into a man and a woman again but because they had once been one mind and one body they could somehow communicate and take over each other's bodies. If she needed to do something but he had the knowledge and she didn't, he could become her and vice versa.
When I was 19 I started working in the mall at a sporting goods store. I used to stare at the women's exercise wear, swimsuits, and sneakers. I wanted so badly to be able to wear them. But fortunately being a mall there were a few department stores I could shop at and pretend I was buying things for my girlfriend if anyone asked. I had a fairly long bus ride to and from work so I used to carry a backpack with me. I would buy things and put them in my backpack so I could sneak them into the house. While other guys my age were buying records and movies, I was buying women's clothes, shoes, and jewelery. Longish hair was still in fashion for men back then and it didn't take me long to discover that the corner store carried hair ribbons, barretts, hairbands, and the like. I also quickly learned that a bag's worth of cotton balls tied up in a large bandana would fill out a bra quite nicely. I had finally developed a chest. When I was transferred to another mall after my location closed, I discovered the wig shop downtown. I had the last item in place.
So now I finally realized I was a crossdresser. But not knowing any better I thought all crossdressers felt like I did, that they weren't female but not really male either. So when I went to a SOKS munch I was really thrown when one of the guys said he could crossdress. Wasn't crossdressing something you just felt you needed to do? How could you just BE between male and female "if you had to"? Something didn't make sense.
Finally in the early 2000s I accepted the fact that I was a crossdresser. So I went looking for a site where I could talk to other crossdressers. I learned that nope, sorry, I wasn't really a crossdresser either even though I crossdressed. They were all men who crossdressed for various reasons but inside they were men. But I started reading posts from other people who told all kinds of tales. I was more confused than ever. Just what the heck was I then? I wrote a lengthy post talking about how I felt and asked just what I was. I got a kindly reply saying that I already knew what I was, I just didn't know it yet.
It turns out they were right. I came across the term genderqueer and it seemed to fit pretty well. The way I understood the term, and still do, there was a lot of ground covered by the term. But I finally had an identity, something I could call myself that sounded much better than "freak". So for a few months I identified as genderqueer.
I started seeing a gender therapist. He told me that I sounded to him like an androgyne. I told him that I had always thought androgynous people dressed and acted to hide their gender, so you didn't know whether they were male or female. He told me that was an incorrect use of the term, that androgynes actually wanted to express "both" genders. I was intrigued. Was I actually an androgyne? Genderqueer was a little too open for my tastes. I wanted something a little more specific to me. So I did some research. Lo and behold what I was reading described me to a tee. From that moment on I started identifying as an androgyne.
It was somewhere around this time that I discovered this site. When I joined there wasn't an androgyne section; it was the genderqueer section. I was very happy posting here and being part of the community. I would check the forums 2 or 3 times a day.
Then everything went to you-know-where in a handbasket. My grandfather almost died, I was struggling with being transgendered (wanting to go further and being frustrated because I couldn't0, and my parents began taking prisoners in their never-ending battles. I couldn't handle it all. (I'm bipolar; I don't handle stress too well.)
I hopped a bus from Rochester, NY to Syracuse to kill myself. I checked into a motel and bought a bottle of sleeping pills. I couldn't do it. I walked around downtown Syracuse until my feet were literally bleeding. When I checked out of the motel after a week my feet were infected. (I almost lost them.) So I went to the hospital and had them taken care of. And since I was already there I decided that maybe I would talk to someone about my depression.
Long story short, I moved from NY to VA and lived with my sister for a while. I couldn't get online at her house and, being in the sticks and quite backwards, the local library banned all things transgendered so I couldn't log in here. When I finally got a job and could afford dial-up I saw my account had been terminated for inactivity. I vowed to keep my transgenderedness a secret and shut myself off from the community.
Fast forward to February 2011. I hadn't had the urge to crossdress since March or April of 2010. In June I had started dating someone in the apartment building where I lived. Things were going well at first but then, for reasons I probably won't get into, things went south with the relationship. In February the urge to crossdress hit me like a ton of bricks. I was ashamed, embarrassed, and confused. I was in a relationship. Shouldn't the urge to crossdress at the very least have turned into the urge to give her fashion advice? (I'm serious here.) Why now?
I sank into a deep depression. I couldn't talk to my girlfriend about what was going on. For one, she believed that if the bible says you're going "downstairs" for crossdressing then that's where I was going, and she wanted someone she knewe was going to heaven. For two, I simply didn't trust her with my secret. Add in all the other stressors in my life at that point and by the end of March I stopped eating and drinking altogether.
Then my ex-girlfriend (we had broken up in the meantime) said she was moving into my apartment building again. You have to understand, she enjoys emotionally and mentally abusing people, just for fun. I had hurt her. I knew I was next on the list, especially if she was moving back into the building. Already being suicidal, I flipped out. I left my apartemnt, locked the door, slipped the key into the apartment through a crack in the door, and headed west down 460 without a jacket, ID, money, or anything. After walking briskly for 3 or so hours I felt like I was going to passout so I asked somebody (at around 5:30AM) to call for an ambulance. The ambulance brought me to the ER and I was later transferred to the psych unit of a hospital in another city.
I was on the mend until I was well enough to start dealing with the root cause of my depression, the crossdressing. I still felt ashamed, embarrasses, and confused, but I also fewlt alone. I couldn't tell the staff why I was suddenly feeling so bad after having done well for the last 4 days. Could I? One of the night nurses coaxed it out of me. She didn't quite understand what I was talking about (she even asked if I might be suffering from multiple personality disorder). But told me to talk to the doctor in the morning.
I felt like my life depended on whether he could understand what I was talking about or not. "How can you be BETWEEN male and female? There's no such thing. I'm going to transfer you to another hospital where they can keep you until you're cured of this delusion you have." A life sentence in the hospital. Or not?
He took it pretty well. It didn't even seem to phase him. Granted I talked to his resident and she filled him and the rest of the team in, but he was mostly concerned that I had relapsed. I decided I needed somebody or somewhere safe to talk to. So after I got out of the hospital yesterday, I read the TOS for this site a few times and didn't see any "keep away" signs. So I signed up for the forums again and crossed my fingers that I'm not violating a rule I haven't seen.
I won't tell my doctor or psychiatrist about being an androgyne. But I will probably tell my EHS clinician (EHS provides mental health support to people in my area) and I'm considering talking to my therapist even though I've only had one session with her.
So that's my story in slightly larger than a nutshell. If I'm allowed to stay (yeah, I still have some self-esteem issues) I plan to be pretty active in the androgyne section and a few others, reconnecting with old friends and making new ones. So hopefully I'll see you around the forums.
