Part 2, Bring on the Psychiatrist and what the hell is in that needle? The dark years and the road to light.
Before I continue I should tell you that, my grandmother and my aunt were my legal guardians and they loved me very much. They never intentionally set out to mess me up. They just listened to the wrong people.
Now my grandmother would indulge me when she could. Sometimes she would do makeup for me. She sewed and made a dress for me when I was about six that I could wear around the house when everyone else was away. I couldn't have a Barbie or an Easy Bake oven. But I did have a GI Joe and some stuffed animals so that was enough to have guests at my tea party. My grandmother said it would be our little secret. My aunt didn't think it wise to encourage my insistence on being a girl however my grandmother thought I should be myself.
It was the sixties however and society was a lot more intolerant. My aunt felt that as a child I could get away with it but eventually that wasn't going to fly and I should just get over it and accept my more obvious sex. We moved from the small mountain town I had always known, when I was 8. At our new place I was forbidden to tell anyone that I believed I was a girl.
My feminine physique and mannerism would however continue to earn me the ridicule of the boys and the girls did not want to play with a boy even if he did want to do girl things.
They would occasionally let me play hop scotch or skip rope if there were only two and they needed a third.
At 10 it was noted that I was just not developing like a normal boy.(duh) Teachers felt there was something wrong with me and I should be tested by a doctor and sent to a shrink for psychoanalysis. And so a new phase of my daily nightmare would begin. Due to my being shunned by both boys and girls I had become very quiet and introverted. I was darn near silent and would rarely say anything unless asked a direct question. I read voraciously. If I had to wait anywhere any length of time and there was no reading material I would read anything I could find. Advertisements, brochures, candy wrappers. As along as I didn't have to interact with anyone I was fine.
Doctors took blood and other bodily fluids and measurements. The verdict, surprise! unusual levels of female hormone. The cure, yep. testosterone before I reached puberty and developed breasts. The result. To say I became a little upset would be a severe understatement. Suddenly I was filled with feelings I did not understand. If my body was at odds with itself before this was the final insult. I was violated. My femininity was under attack.
Why was this being done to me? Why didn't anyone understand? Now it was off to the Psychiatrist, who would monitor my treatment and affect a cure for my girlishness.
The weekly one hour sessions went on for two years. He had me enrolled in pee wee football, little league baseball, basketball, and The Boy Scouts. had it been left to just that it might not have been so bad. I was no good at sports so I was always on the bench. I didn't like sports anyway, so that was fine with me, besides I didn't have to do anything and didn't get my clothes dirty. But that was not the only steps the Psychiatrist took to make a man out of me. I was amazed at how many variations of aversion therapy there are.
I won't go into the details of everything that was done to me to "cure" me. The good doctor was relentlessly in his efforts to "cure" me of my feminine ways. The whole thing was just one on going nightmare. The aversion therapy did work though. I have an aversion to anyone in the Psychology profession. I also have an aversion to needles, those shots went on for awhile and I hated them.
Ultimately the cost outweighed the benefits and the sessions ceased but they had taken there toll. I was terrified of being viewed as feminine and worked at acting and being more male. The shots did their work and puberty kicked in on schedule. My frame however retained most of it's feminine qualities and my voice retained most of it's high pitch. If I talked in a slow soft voice it would go down but if I got excited and started talking fast it would go up. My mannerisms would slip to the feminine side, and to the day I did actually come out I retained some mannerisms I was completely unaware of.
I was accused of being gay which I was not, unless you consider me a lesbian because I'm attracted to women. I was assaulted a couple of times as a result and raped once. Mind you at this time I was trying to be male I had given up on trying to be female. What I really was however would never go away but I would ultimately be successful in burying her inside.
The darkest days lay ahead. I started taking drugs, mainly because the other kids who took drugs accepted me. They were all outcasts like me. I got involved in a teenage community theatre and stayed with that for many years. Actors were considered strange anyway and were another group that was accepting.
For years because of the psychotherapy I was afraid of gays and transvestites. In those days I didn't know the difference between a transsexual and a transvestite and really it made no difference, I had been trained to view all as sick and depraved and they could be "cured" as I had been. I did not want to be identified with them because then the therapy might start again.
The years went on. I would hike up into the mountains. Sometimes I would find myself on a precipice 3000 feet or higher. I would look over the side to the long drop below and just stand there thinking. Just one little step... I would be at a friends house doing the usual. There on the table would be a razor. I would stare at it in silence all the while thinking, a slice down the length of the artery of my wrist and ..... A knife, one quick slice along the jugular like they taught us in the army and then... But I never did. I was never sure which I feared more living or dying. Overdose, poison, gas, bullet. I thought about all of them at one time or another
I drove very fast all the time. I was quite adept at avoiding speeding tickets and was fearless. Let fate decide that way I wasn't really trying to kill myself it would just be an accident. I've had more close calls in a car then I care to remember. Somehow I managed to live past the age of 21. Then I became friends with someone who was gay.
My friend was a lesbian and had the same taste in women. We would often go to the mall and sit and girl watch together as we talked politics, philosophy, metaphysics or whatever. She invited me to her parties and there I made other friends who were also gay, and some straight friends we had in common. That was when the early training broke down. Gay people weren't sick and depraved, they were just people. They had histories similar to mine, and they were good people. I liked my new friends.
I started college and studied computer science. At 23 I met my wife. We have been together ever since. We are rarely apart and we now own a business together. I have been happy but there was still this emptiness, a longing that would not go away.
A voice was calling from some deep dark pit were it had been imprisoned so many years ago. The darkness was returning. I became restless irritable and quick to anger. My wife sensed it and 2 years ago in a fit of rage which came from deep inside I yelled, I'M A WOMAN! I have always been a woman! My body is wrong and I want to fix it.
Now I remembered. I remembered all those things that happened all those years ago that I had repressed which I have now shared with you. There were many other things which I have not told you here, they too long and too painful to recount but I remember them now.
I am out now and I am living full time as a woman. I am on the road of transition. My wife loves me and supports me in this. When I came out to her, she said if that is what it will take to make you happy and whole then do it. This past Christmas she bought me a beautiful silver choker and a dark blue skirt with red trim and flowers with small rhinestones along the hem.
I am very happy and fulfilled. Before coming out I neglected my appearance. It really didn't seem to matter. Now I practically obsess over it and it feels good. I pass easily, I never did make a very masculine man. One time about 4 years ago I was out taking a smoke break at work when a man walked up to me and said "your very pretty, you'll someone a good wife one day. I was not out at the time and I was in standard business attire. Yet he spotted my feminine side. I do believe that god sends messengers to tell you things he wants you to know or think about. Perhaps he was one of those messengers.
Since coming out my friends who have found out have said, "well it's not surprising, you've always been very feminine." Apparently all these years I wasn't doing a very good job of passing for male! So much for all that training.
Life is good now. I'm better. The dark days are gone. I wont say life is any easier, just seems like it since I'm so up now. I never realized how down I really was before. My wife has noticed the difference and she is very happy for me, and we are having a lot of fun together as I transform. We're planning a trip to the nail salon together soon. If we can ever get away from our business. The people in the town were we live who have known me as a man have been great. They are good people and have simply adapted. As for everyone else they only see a woman named Cassandra. Men open doors, clerks call me mam and sales girls help me with shoes purses, jewelry etc. without so much as a second glance.
Sometimes I suspect someone has read me, that only seems to happen when I'm tired and slip up with some man-erism. Those are getting fewer and fewer. My walk has become automatic along with other things. The giggling at the end of sentences has returned. I was talking to someone one day and it just popped out. Then it happened again a couple of sentences later.
A lot of things just seem to be naturally coming back to me. I am Cassandra now. The man that I was, was just a farce, a fabrication, a mask I wore to hide the person inside. He doesn't exist anymore, perhaps he never did.
Thanks for listening,
Love to all,
Cassie
