Well... let me get this off my chest.

I wish from the deepest bottom of my soul I had began hormones when I was still in puberty. Deeply, deeply, DEEPLY.

As I understand now, I'm doing a repair job but I will never be as I should have been and knowing there was one chance to stop the damage from being done, and knowing I blew it really bad, hurts. I realise it is the same for a lot of other girls and guys on the forums, but it doesn't stops it from hurting and doesn't lessens my need to write about this.

I remember I was in a huge amount of pain in my teenage years and it took me to drinking alcohol in large amounts from a early age (14 y.o.) and into smoking pot. I never tried other drugs, but those are enough to numb you really good and it was what I wanted back then. Sometimes dysphoria would hit me like a nuclear bomb and I would drink until passing out. Somehow, my parents were never quite aware of the large amount of alcohol I was drinking during those times, but at 15 I could be considered an alcoholic. Luckly, I never got addicted to the stuff, VERY luckly. I don't know how it is possible I was never addicted to alcohol and one day just managed to drop it from one day to the next, but it is what happened,

I went to a christian school with very strict rules and my parents raised me with a lot of homophobic values, so transition didn't seen like a possibility. I wanted to be a woman and not a ->-bleeped-<-, my line of thought back then went.  I was told doing drugs would send me to hell or give me some sort of capital punishment as well, so all things put into perspective I thought "To hell with it" and decided I'd slowly destroy my body to die at an early age, preferably from drug overdose or some related situation. I was a fan of many musicians that had a similiar fate, so I thought it would be fitting. Additionally, I'm a musician as well, I played the bass and the eletrict guitar in local heavy metal bands.

So there was a lot of heavy music and a huge amount of alcohol involved. Somehow I dismissed all the sex withut coming off as being gay to the band mates I was with, I guess, with long hair, black clothing and playing a five string bass nearly the same size as a chair I came off as being manly but shy around girls. It worked. Most of the folks I played with were opposed to doing cocaine at the time, but if you didn't drink alcohol you were a pussy, so that could have helped to save me into digging into heavier stuff, eventually to heroine or whatever.

Now I am well into transition, living full time, I have a wonderful gender therapist I talk to online, plenty of supportive friends, parents who aren't understanding at all (nothing is perfect!) and enough money to go on with transition on a sure pace. But, sheesh, does that dark past comes to me late at night and it is haunting. Passing out on my own vomit was not fun, but it seemed better than staying sober and being overriden with pain. What was worse, is that no one got it. I remember I was a prime candidate for exorcism at my school and some teachers thought I was some kind of antichrist. Yes, I am serious about this part, they really figured I was sent as a minion from hell or something. All I needed was a decent psychiatrist that was capable of digging into my shell and finding the dysphoria underneath. Someone that could figure the equation "He is using these substances because he is pain and he is in pain because inside him there is a woman, so he is a she"

I keep thinking, it was possible I could have stood up, stopped with the alcohol and pot and faced those demons while I was still young. Though extremely difficult for me at the time. The feeling of angst and hopelesness I had was truely overwhelming and I didn't feel capable of facing it, but anything in this world is possible, there are no limits and I totally could have held my head high and faced the situation without drugs if I really put my blood and soul into it.

On  the other side of the coin, those years I expent in utter suffering make me value what I have today. I have a perspective on things that people who never had gender dysphoria and even those who had it and managed to do something about it early on, don't. I say "Thank you" to God every time I look at myself on the mirror and see my face is feminine, everytime I go out to do anything dressed in a manner I enjoy and every time someone uses my female name or calls me a miss or ma'am. Even, everytime I wake up finally feeling like a human being, something I simply wans't until less than six months ago.

But girls, holy ->-bleeped-<-, do I wish someone had just locked me up and just forced espiro into my system, do I wish.