Introductions?
Of course! How rude of me. I guess I didn't see this thread before.
I just showed up and started sticking my nose in
I'm 56, almost 32 years post-op, and a Biber Girl.
My story isn't much different from any of the others that I have read - same old, same old - knew something was wrong at a VERY young age, figured out what it was before my teens, thought puberty would set everything right, found out that it didn't - it set everything WRONG.
Of course, in the time frame where I was encountering all this, there wasn't any "support", most of the medical profession was ignorant about TSism, and many people were just plain ignorant!
There was a "TS underground" that began forming in the 1950s and 60s to share information and offer each other mutual support but, in the days before the Internet, you can imagine how much more difficult it was to find people and to find reasonable information - most of the information in the medical community did not yet differentiate TSism from other "sexual disorders".
My home life was pretty crappy so stumbling onto the TS underground was a life saver! I am sure my copy of The Transsexual Phenomenon was a first edition (I should have had Dr. Benjamin autograph it when I was in New York in 1967
) and it was an invaluable resource. Because there was no alternative (I was under age and the medical profession was ignorant of the condition), I "self medicated" off and on through my teens, whenever I could obtain estrogen (by whatever means).
Living in a small town in a rural area was a PITA. Through most of my first 24 years, I lived a dual life. At first, there were a few people and situations where I could "be my other self" and later on, when I got old enough to be mobile, there were weekends away to the city to live the way I SHOULD have lived, and then back to the small town.
There had been a few, VERY few, doctors doing SRS off and on, but only Morocco was active when I came of age (21) and it was WAY too expensive to even be an option for me. A few other clinics has done the procedure on a trial basis (like the Clarke Institute in Toronto) but had chosen such "far out" candidates that their results were deemed unsatisfactory and the programs were not continued.
Things were getting pretty bad for me in my early 20s and, like so many others at the time, I thought I would loose my battle some dark lonely night Thankfully, early in 1974, I discovered Dr. Biber in Colorado. Within a few weeks, I was on the plane for Denver!
I had not done any "transition" (as you would call it today), only weekends and other intervals away from home but I made the jump at Easter (how appropriate!) in 1974.
At first life post-op was pretty wild! I was young, pretty, and had a good figure
>
so I set out to prove to myself that I could have any guy I wanted. (Thank gawd this was before the spread of AIDS!) After way too many wild flings, I settled into a pretty normal life.
I continued my pre-op career, which was not traditionally feminine but not outrageously so, dated, and was married within 2 years. The marriage didn't last but the career did and job opportunities led me from city to city for a few years before I finally settled in the west.
I married again, settled on the outskirts of a nice rural town, and continued in my career and community involvement. The marriage broke up almost 13 years ago so i am a single professional living the quiet rural life these days.
When I look back on the years before 1974, I see how truly lost I was! I didn't know who or what I was, I didn't know where I was going, and I had only the vaguest idea of where I wanted to be. When I returned from Colorado that glorious spring, I was like a staving person at a banquet! Life blossomed in a marvelous way, far more than I could ever expected. I quickly found that "I" had been there all along, deeply buried, and that the right circumstances allowed me to blossom! I was more than I ever dreamed I could be - funny, sensitive, loving, mischievous, friendly, out-going, empathetic - I grabbed life by the essence and wrung every drop from it!
I also look back to those times, the 1950s and 1960s, and I see how much the TS people of that time changed the world and brought TSism out of the dark corner where it was considered "a mental disorder" and shoved it down the throats of the medical community as a legitimate medical condition. I was the first TS seen at a particular university hospital and helped them write their treatment guide
Others helped bang some sense into the Clarke Institute after their screwed-up SRS "trial".
When I look back on those times, it looks like a war - a war of "enlightenment". It felt like a war in many ways because the prevailing ignorance cost so many people their lives.
So, even after 32 years of deep stealth, I still drift back to the TS community every few years to see how things are going.
In many ways, things have not changed at all! On these pages I read exactly the same stories that I have heard for the past 40 years - new people but the same thoughts, feelings, etc.
In other ways, the changes are wonderful! There are so many resources and supports available to the struggling TS person today (including boards like this one!) and the medical profession is VASTLY better informed today.
As a society, we have come a LONG way in recognizing the TS condition and treating it humanely.
Ok, enough for now - the sound of snoring is becoming deafening!
