Hi my name is christy and im a 21 yr old mtf. I've been a long time lurker, but never really had the motivation to become a member until now because i will be starting my medical transition in a week. I first heard about this site through a therapist of mines back in high school when i was about 16. Considering that i was the only transgender person in the entire school, he provided me with resources so that i would be able to connect with others like me. I met most of my lesbian and gay friends from my school's gay straight alliance back at that time, but i still felt out of place because there was no one I could truly relate to in regards to being trans. I want to share my journey with all of you and i hope to make some great friends here n_n
Here is summary of my life story:
I had an amazing childhood in the tropics of central america. My parents were always so busy with taking care of the shop that they didn't pay much attention to the types of toys and games i would play with my other siblings. I loved to play with barbies and airplanes. I would often invert my shirt to make a little pouch to form cleavage and tried to emulate the taco lady that would set up her cart across the bridge outside my house every saturday morning. After finishing sodas, i would take the metal caps and put them under my heels to make a tapping sound like i was wearing high heels. I knew i was attracted to boys but i didn't pay much attention to it because i thought it was normal.I moved to america when i was 7 and started a new life here. My sexuality was gradually developing and becoming more pronounced in the years throughout elementary school. In 6th grade i started to have an inkling that something was off but i couldnt really figure it out so i left it alone. Also around this time, i started to become a bit jealous of the girls because they could easily flirt with the boys and they were getting prettier as they were starting to enter puberty.
The transition to middle school to high school was a really tough one. In middle school was where i realized that boys liking boys was wrong in society's eyes, oh so very wrong. I had this huge crush on this one kid and one day i decided to write him a love letter telling him my feelings hoping he would return them, but things backfired. I originally gave the letter to one of my girl friends to hand it over to him since she knew him well. I was so nervous and when first period came around she told me he read the letter and was totally disgusted by it; he ended up passing it to all his friends and they were all laughing. At that moment i literally cried my eyes out and yelled out "i never want to talk to him again!" Long story short, i unintentionally outed myself to the whole school, which would eventually cause hell in my high years to come. At this time i considered myself bisexual and the feeling that i described earlier in elementary school was still lingering, but i still couldn't quite figure out what it was. I just knew i was strongly attracted to boys, but towards girls, it wasn't exactly the same "attraction," more like admiration/jealousy.
A LOT of things happened in high school. First, everybody needed to take mandatory 2 years physical ed and oh boy, let me tell you, this was where the majority of my high school torment took place. Kids would constantly call me the usual derogatory homophobic slurs because I was your typical flamboyant boy with a high pitched voice and couldn't throw for >-bleeped-<. I was and still am always this skinny little thing with no upper body strength whatsoever. I sucked at the "big 3" of american sports (football, soccer, basketball). My friend and I would always get called last for group sports because NOBODY wanted to associate with us. The bullying got so bad that I literally begged my parents to let me change schools. I was suffering from severe depression and my parents didn't do much to help and this was also the first attempt I tried to kill myself at 15. I drank a bottle of hairspray and took a whole bunch of pills and went to sleep. I also wrote a goodbye letter because I just wanted the suffering to end. I guess whoever that is watching over me gave me a second chance because I woke up the very next day unhurt.
Second, on the day of silence in 10th grade, my life would change forever. My best friend had to be absent on a day I had to have p.e. class. I was in the locker room changing and all of a sudden a group of "gangsters" surrounded me. They were very intimidating and called me some very bad things in spanish. One kid started to breathe down my neck and started spitting at me. The others were egging him on. I literally stood there closing my eyes, frozen and scared because I didn't know if they were going to physically assault me. After they laughed and left, I started crying hysterically and tried to dress as fast as I could. There was one kid who saw everything and tried to reassure me that it everything was ok. I bolted out the lockers and ran as fast as I could bawling my eyes out finding my way to my health teacher. Ms. M was a lesbian and supervised our school's gay straight alliance. I told her everything that happened and she ended up doing so much for me. Ms. M is truly my life savior. She introduced me to an openly gay teacher and had me talk with him about his experiences with bullying and how he dealt with it. I started attending the GSA meetings and Ms. M hired therapists to come talk to me for quite a while until 11th grade when my depression went away and the sessions stopped. I used to suffer from severe PTSD episodes every year on day of silence regarding that locker room incident, but I've grown past it and moved on. I also refuse to keep my mouth shut on days of silence because of what happened to me. It gives me more reason to never stop fighting for what I believe in.
Third, I also started to identify as gay and grew my hair out. I also slowly started to incorporate my sister's clothing into my daily wardrobe, but my style was overall still androgynous. My father was always disapproving of my long hair, but when I started cross-dressing he grew even angrier. My parents are traditional chinese so anything outside the norm would bring great shame to the family. My father disapproved and said it was wrong for me to cross dress and we fought so much over it, eventually causing a great rift between us which i will talk about later. I guess it was around this time the feeling I always couldn't figure out before was starting to become clear and why my admiration towards girls wasn't an attraction. I was jealous of girls because they had what I didn't have. I wanted to be pretty, wear dresses, have a boyfriend and be able to bare children. The realization of me being trans was starting to become clearer when Ms. M took me to a LGBT fair. I have never seen so much of my kind in one place before lol!! I still haven't been to LA pride, but I can already imagine there's a whole world out there that I don't know about. Anyways lol, I attended some seminars at the fair and learned so many new things about gender identity and their different expressions. I also went to a trans 101 class and it was there that everything in the universe seemed to fall in place and made sense. After that, I went home and did so much research on the subject and watched a lot of movies. I was obsessed and I had to do SOMETHING to save my body because I was already starting to age a certain way. This was when I was ~15-16.
In between all this, I decided to embrace my new-found trans identity and started growing my hair past my shoulders and wore dresses. As a result, the relationship with my father took a turn for the worse. My family was invited out to lunch with some distant relatives(which no one really liked tbh). I was socially humiliated because my father was verbally attacking me in front of everyone and gossiped with this relative about his disapproval with my hair length. I had enough and I literally took a cup of hot tea and threw it in his face and ran out crying. After this incident, I stopped talking to him for about 3 years while living in the same house. The only times I would talk to him, and even then the convo wouldn't last more than 5secs, would be when I needed to go to school. I still wasn't out to anyone at this time, except my younger sister.
I carried on like this until my senior year in high school. I was content because I never grew a beard, never had super manly features and my voice was and still is, naturally high pitched like ross mathews/chris colfer. I'm so lucky to be blessed with my genetics, but it wasn't enough. My depression came back and my dysphoria consumed me a day before winter break started. It was time for me to come out to my dad and I had to get it off my shoulders because I couldn't keep it in anymore and the weight of holding in for so many years was just too much...I had to let it out. I needed hormones or else I wouldn't be able to be happy and live on. It was a do or die situation and I was feeling suicidal. So Ms. M and my principal set up a meeting in her room one rainy evening to break the news. My other counselor and younger sister were with me the whole time. As I started to explain to my father that I identify as female and want to become one he completely lost it. He was saying all these horrible things and that he wouldn't have any of it. He was saying he would rather die than see his son become a woman. I just crumbled and this was my second suicide attempt at 17. I almost ran out into the streets and into traffic because my father refused to acknowledge who I was. It was very painful and the toughest thing I've ever had to go through. If it wasn't for my sister or the school faculty stopping me I would've died that day. I was later sent to an involuntary holding at a psych ward for 72 hours.
After 3 days were up and I was deemed mentally stable I was sent back home. I had a long talk with my father and he tried to convince me to not do it. In asian cultures the sons are highly valued and to give that up to become a woman would be *the worst*. He said a lot of sexist things and tried to change my mind and called my aunts in China to talk me out of it, but in the end I refused all the advice. I continued my social transition in school and the bullying died down 90%. No one made fun of me as much because I passed very well, but once in a while I would get some beef from some guys because they would warn their friends "that's a man!" if their friends expressed any kind of attraction towards me. Moreover, after the psych discharge, I never bring up the issue of my trans status anymore with my dad or mom because I am giving them time and hoping one day both will come around.
Then senior prom came and I was invited by my girl friend to go. I was so excited and I chose to wear a pink gown. I couldn't wait!! On the day of, I felt so complete, I did my hair and makeup. It was about 5 months after coming out and I hoped my father would be able to accept me wearing a dress since he didn't say anything when I wore skirts or pink to school during that time frame. I guess he still wasn't fully accepting and I felt his disdain in the car. I didn't let the foul mood ruin my special day and I had a lot of fun. I told my friend that "I feel like a princess" in my dress. Of course when it was time to go home, there was a >-bleeped-< storm and my dad was yelling at my mom about how this is all her fault and that it was her genes that caused this, etc. In the end I didn't end up getting hormones because of financial reasons and school was my priority so I stuck it out for 4 years.
Now I am in college, 21, currently in a nursing program, and in the progress of starting hrt VERY soon! I was able to put off medical transition for 4 years and I've been content living stealth pre-everything, but I had the opportunity to get health insurance this year and I did not hesitate to jump on this. 'Til this day, the relationship with my father has never been the same after coming out and I can't even look into his eyes. I haven't told my parents what I am doing because I don't know how they will react (like throwing away my pills). I am an adult now and I can make decisions for myself, something I wasn't able to do back when i was 17 and desperate. My nurse practitioner at the LA LGBT center did some basic blood tests to determine my baseline 2 weeks ago and I returned for a follow-up last week. The only thing she found off was that my thyroid lvls were high so she had me redo a blood draw to make sure everything was ok. However, we were discussing my choices of E delivery and I was ecstatic. All of this seems so unreal, never in my wildest dreams would I think I would be able to finally be at peace and be who I truly am. I am so extremely lucky that I didn't die after trying twice and I don't regret any minute of the life I have, as difficult as it may be. It's not easy being trans, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
This is who I am, and this is my story. Thank you for reading. ^.^
