How it feels - and why
I'll try and go into this a little. This is a murky area and a lot of what I'll say is my opinion. I see it from a vantage point that few have the honor of sharing, so perhaps you'll bear with me.
So what caused this ? Why does this have to be? The first question is the easier of the two. Things are set in motion before you're born. Everyone knows that who you could potentially be is pre-determined by the genes that your father and mother gave you. Your eye, hair and skin color are some of these. How tall you could be, how intelligent you could be and many other aspects of who you are are given to you in your genes. But how tall you will be and how intelligent you will be are also determined by other factors. If you don't get enough nourishment when you're a child your growth may be stunted as may your intelligence. Most people understand this. Now for some events that happen in the womb. As the fetus develops a lot of things must go right, in the correct order, or problems occur. Some children are born with a club foot, cleft lip, defective heart valves or any one of a number of problems. If the child is lucky, the problems can be fixed and no-one blames the child. After all, it's not the babies fault! But these are things you can see. What about problems that you can't? They occur also but most people don't, or won't, acknowledge this. So how does all of this relate to the transgendered? What sort of problems happen in the transgendered? Something is going on to make them who they are! But what is it?
We have to go back into the womb again for an answer. As I stated before, things have to go just right and in just the right order for the fetus to develop properly. Along with many other things, the brain is "hardwired" so that the sexual organs that will be forming soon are the ones the child will want to use to procreate the race. It also tells the child how he/she should act to attract a mate. This is very strong programming, basic to our nature and is one of the underlying foundations of who we are. Along with this programming comes the future ability to be attracted to members of the opposite sex, again to procreate the race. Notice I said "along with", this is not the same thing as the ability to present yourself to future possible sexual partners. How we present ourselves is called gender. Who you're attracted to as a sexual partner in your later life is called sexual orientation. The differance throws most people. They don't understand the concept at all. You've probably heard this before, but what's between your legs is your sex (male/female), what's between your ears is your gender and who you take to bed is your sexual orientation. In the transgendered something went wrong. The brain was set as one sex and the fetus developed as another. What happens to the child after he/she is born can also have a determining factor on the outcome of his/her life. Under the right conditions I believe the child will grow up to a be a normal adult. If something "triggers" the brain differances then the child is on the road to gender confusion and perhaps transgenderism. This is a VERY simplistic explaination and, perhaps, wrong. No one is exactly sure what goes on to make a person transgendered.
So now that the lesson in Biology is over, how does it feel to be transgendered? Why does this have to be? Ok, lets go back to being born. The doctor lifts you up, wacks you on the behind and either says "it's a boy!" or "it's a girl!". Most of the time he's right. But not always. Remember the thing with the brain? He can't see your brain to see how it's been "hardwired". He, the parents and the rest of society assume the mind matches the body, and almost all the time it does. Once in awhile though things are not as they seem. But the baby can't talk, isn't aware of anything differant about him/her. Why should they? They're having enough trouble just getting someone to change their wet diaper. So the child is put in blue for boys or pink for girls. The girls are given dolls and the boys guns. The parents talk to them differant, treat them differant, in short, raise them to be members of society in the sex gender that the doctor called out in the first few moments of life. To the transgendered, me anyway, the time before school was one that didn't have any confusion. I was just outside playing or inside watching Howdy Doody. When I started First Grade I started noticing the children that didn't look like me. They had bright, interesting clothes on. Their hair was long and they did things that seemed like fun. But I quickly learned that if I played with them I'd be laughed at so I didn't. I continued to play with the children that I now know as boys and left the girls alone. It was very important to fit in and not get laughed at. To better fit in I tried to be just like the other boys, played the same games, told the same jokes. But I always watched the girls, kind of hoping that somehow I'd be able to play with them, fit in with them, be one of them. It was during this period of wanting to be one of the other girls that I discovered my mothers clothes. The other girls wore them, so if I wore them then perhaps......? It was worth a try. The feelings were interesting, but of course wearing the clothes didn't work. But I kept trying. So how did I feel? Like I was in one group and wanted to be part of another. Now on to high school.
High school was interesting because I went through puberty. How did I feel? Embarrassed! My body was going through puberty and something just kept coming up at the worst possible times.....Oh, how did I feel about being transgendered, sorry. Well, I was by now very good at hiding my true feelings to everyone, including myself. What I wanted I now knew I could never have so I shut down. I tried to have no emotions about anything. I was lonely and not really part of any group. I read a lot. At this time of my life I didn't know I was differant, I just didn't fit in very well.
College was more of the same as was my first few years of work. I just did what everyone expected me to, acted like they expected me to, WAS who they expected me to be. By now it was very easy to repress any feelings. When I met my future wife I found someone I could talk to on a very basic level. We were very close but looking back I knew that I had repressed my emotions too well. I found it hard to love someone and I got very little personal satisfaction from anything. In short, I was existing but not living.
This lack of emotions was my life. Up until 1994 that is. I got into a business deal with a con-man up in Louisville. He was very good I'll have to grant him that. He took me for 20 grand in just a few weeks. But on the other hand he had never met anyone like me. I fought him and got all my money back. It took a summer of living in Louisville, sleeping on the office couch and working with very expensive attorneys to do it though. I lost 25 pounds from tension that summer and for the first time bought and slept in a nightie. The loneliness I felt was almost overpowering. I started buying a few outfits and wore them around the office at night. I never went outside though, the clothes alone were a comfort to me. When I was back home major dissatisfaction with life started. Over the next few years I started to wonder why was I doing all of this? There seemed absolutely no point in going on and I started thinking of ways to end my life. So this is one of those feelings you get when your transgendered - wanting to end your life. That feeling plus the feeling of not belonging to anything and loneliness kind of sum things up. Fun huh?!
So now perhaps you can understand why I was willing to give up everything to walk this path. I had nothing before. Not inside of me that is. The kids, my ex, the friends, my house and business, meant nothing to me. The only thing that was important to me was that for the first time in my life I would feel like I belonged, that who I was mattered. Everything started to fit together, to slide into place and now I could find room in my heart for others. If I get through this ok and my kids accept me then I'll be able to love them as I should have all along. I'm only saddened that my ex had to go through all of this. She deserved better.
So there you have it! How it feels to be transgendered and why. It's no picnic anyway you look at it. But this is the hand I was dealt in life so I had better learn to live with it. And THAT is THAT!
Well, almost. I'm writing this months later and have one more thing to say.
I had watched a special on TV called What sex am I? and found it to be very good at explaining some of the feelings and problems we all face. One part that got me thinking was an interview with Christine Jorgenson (she looked great BTW). She said something to the effect would we be surprised if a person wanted to get out of a wheelchair? Or that they will go to great lengths to walk again? Do they even have a choice when they learn it's possible to walk again? For the same reason a transgendered person will do almost anything to become what they feel they must be. Ok, now I'm done.
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I wrote the above sometime in early 2000. I'm going to add something to what I wrote (again). It's now November, 2000 and I'm still learning about myself and how I feel about being TS.
I went to a support group meeting last night and something came out that I found interesting. Dr Terry always teases me whenever I see her - she loves to see me blush and giggle. I asked her why she did this, and she said that now I have a personality, I used to be very shy and wouldn't talk before. I do that now, talk that is. :-) I guess I have something to say. But what struck me was that she said how I used to be was common. I suppose we subjugate our true selves and there isn't much left. I guess the best way to describe how we feel or what we're going through is we're trying to become, not women, a complete human being.
No wonder life seemed so pointless before.
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Here I go again, another little update. Almost New Years, 2001 and I'm still thinking about this stuff. Oh well, on to what I wanted to say. I had helped another girl write a letter of explanation to her daughter. It was supposed to tell her daughter for the first time about her fathers transgenderism. She had put in the first draft many references to the clothes she wore, the wigs, shoes even the panties. I told her to drop all personal mention of wearing the clothes, her daughter wouldn't like it at all and it would only cloud the issue. Then it hit me, this is exactly what I had done. I had let my daughter look at this site and she saw all those pictures of me in lingerie. That was a big mistake I think and I'm paying the price now.
We all seem to have this desire to show the people we love that we're not freaks, we look ok as women. Don't fall into that trap like I did. Show them one tasteful picture perhaps, but perhaps not. Not even one. Get the issue of being trasgendered out in the open, discuss it and then, if they think they can handle it, show them a picture.
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And yet another update! It's now May, 2002 and I have a few more things to say. This applies to those of us that are going stealth mode and it deals with the lies we've had to live with and the lies we now have to tell.
Most of our life we've hidden things from people because we've felt like something was wrong with us, right? Then we discovered that there were others like us, that this problem had a name. Then we discoved we could do something about being TS, we could fix it! Great!! But it's not all roses, you still have your past and it won't go away. What I mean is, we told lies in the past to hide how we felt from others. Now, after SRS, you have to tell lies about your past and, I for one, find it uncomfortable to do. I'm not good at it. I'm getting better but I don't like telling lies and long convoluting stories about why you don't see your kids, how you happened to run businesses and traveled and did things that most people would have thought your husband should have done. However, as much as I hate telling lies, I hate being looked upon as a freak even more, so, for the time being, I'll keep telling those lies and hoping for the best..
