Hi Everyone,
Brand new to this forum...Basically, I've had a really stressful year. It was, for the most part, extremely stressful because of work and family things, but somewhere in there had another birthday, bringing me to my late 20s, and part of me realized that I'm truly a fully fledged adult now, and then somewhere after that another piece of me started to panic...panic that I had gotten to the state of being a fully fledged adult without admitting what is on the inside...and I woke up one morning not too long ago feeling as if I've withdrawn completely...from myself even...like I'd locked myself away, deep inside, without even realizing it...and so many things are rushing out of my past all at once. I can't seem to make sense of it all. And I'm exhausted. So I have worked up the courage to post some of what I've been experiencing and feeling and remembering, and see if any of you have felt similarly.
I apologize for this being long, but I can't keep it inside.
I remember extremely vividly as a child not only wishing that I was a boy, but having to coach myself out of anxiety that I was a girl. I remember when I was four or five....wanting to find some way to make myself male. In my most advanced logic, I remember trying to find a solution and being so pleased with myself when I stumbled on this line of thought: "boys pee standing up. If I can pee standing up, then I will be a boy." So I tried...and peed all over myself and the floor of the bathroom. I felt so humiliated and ashamed and stupid. I tried a few more times after that, and failed each time as well. It was heart wrenching each time. Around the same point in time in my life, I learned for the first time about menstruation (my parents being the type to start talking about all that kind of stuff early). I remember going into the bathroom closing the door. locking it. closing my eyes and trying to control my anxiety and panic and breathing by telling myself over and over 'that won't happen for at least another 7 years. It's not happening now. I can deal with it in the future. Maybe it won't happen at all" I was no older than 6.
I remember when I started kindergarten, that I felt so unbelievably out of place. I remember being in the girls bathroom, sitting on the toilet, thinking that a penis might grow as I got older...if I could only be patient, it would happen. Of course it didn't.
I was in a constant state of being liminal. I did not feel at all like a girl...but I also knew that I was different from my boy friends...and yet I also hated and detested people who actively rejected me as a girl...as if they couldn't just accept me for me...as if they had to be judging me constantly, and why couldn't they just stop?? And then I also hated when I was easily identified as a girl...as if they didn't *see* me...and even though I got to a point where I started to secretly like it when strangers accepted me as a boy, and no longer felt guilt at this, I hated that my family would always chastise that person for their 'mistake' and then chastise me for continuing to have short hair, for continuing to avoid girl fashion. So I started to become weary of situations where I might be mistaken for a boy...where I might be noticed at all.
Fast forward now to sometime my freshman year at university, I was reading around and stumbled upon gender disphoria, and the more I read the more I thought 'oh my god, this is me,' and after a long tormented day I worked up the courage to call home. I was in a blind panic and as I explained, I was listened to, but then told that most of that information was posted by conservative action groups that didn't believe in the range of types of women out there in the modern world. And I was reassured that I had done 'normal' girl things as a child, even though I had no memory of these things, and I just accepted it because I think believing that was easier.
And so I went on with university, never being all that happy, but also not being depressed...but having tucked things into a box, and locked that box fairly tightly away. And then I met a guy I had a real connection with, and not only was the connection an amazing thing, but also being with a guy meant I got to see the male body up close for the first time, and I was fascinated by all of it. And attracted to it. And we fell in love, and in this connection it made some of this fade even deeper into the background because for a brief while I felt maybe I was 'normal', and we got married.
And here I am, still married, late 20s, with all of this exploding out of me all of a sudden, realizing that my childhood is gone and won't ever come back...and knowing that any action I take now is so much more complicated than it would have been years ago...knowing that if I admit this, and my husband stays with me, his family will disown him...and if we divorce, and his family learns why, they will disown him...and so any action on my part will hurt him several times over (and the loss of him hurt me)...and then I might lose every family member and friend I've ever loved....and yet I don't know if I can or should go on as I have done for the past decade...and I feel such a coward and a failure....and I have wept into my hands at night thinking to myself 'oh god, what I have done bringing someone else into this?'
I look in the mirror and I don't recognize myself. Truth be told I don't remember a time when the face I see in the mirror is not, almost, a small surprise to me, but it's that way more than ever. Is this what anyone else is experiencing or has experienced? Please say that I'm not actually alone....
