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| Jane Debra Martin... | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| A Brief Auto-Biography | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Before the age of reason- | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| As a small child, my parents and I lived with my grandparents until I was 4 years old. My grandmother liked to take me on Saturday's downtown to the fashionable department stores where we would take in fashion shows and chat with the models back in their dressing room. As a child, I had very curly reddish-auburn hair, a fair complexion with freckles and big eyes. The models would always comment, "what a beautiful child...and look at that pretty curly hair...it's too bad he wasn't born a girl"! | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| By the age of seven- | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| I remember being a small child in a grammar school. Bonding with my male class mates involved rough and tumble games, routinely being 'picked on' by the bigger kids and , looking back as an adult, a certain sense of anxiety and duress trying to 'fit in'. I remember the girls , my female classmates. I liked the way they looked and how they acted. They seemed friendly and we easily engaged in conversation. The "girls" seemed interested in feelings, in the chemistry between one another. They related accordingly without seemingly being harsh or judgemental. The 'boys' seemed only interested in recruiting a teammate to play a game or have some sort of contest! The outcome of which, you were always judged as being "good or bad". | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Before I was aware of any biological difference, I wished I were born a girl. Life seemed to be a more attractive alternative. Girls had fun. Girls had friends. Boys seemed to play rough, to conspire and then rank each other, sometimes cruelly. It just didn't seem to be fair or fun. In retrospect, I don't think my adolescence was extrordinarily traumatic. It simply was "my adolescence". My feelings existed! | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| By the time I was reaching puberty, the thought had occurred to me that maybe I could perhaps "pretend" to be a girl? How would it feel? What would I do when I was alone that might be different? What would I look like? How would I act? So many questions for such a young mind. I sensed a certain degree of Catholic guilt just thinking of this! Why me? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Home alone- | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Like most parents, mine liked to go out and have a social life with their friends on saturday night. By the age of 11 or 12 I was finally old enough that I didn't need to have a baby sitter anymore. I finally owned my 'space' and I could do whatever I wanted, at least for 4 or 5 hours! | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| By this time I was starting to grow to where I was approximately my mother's height. One eventful day while rummaging around the rec. room, I discovered her storage area for older clothing, shoes and undergarments. Instinctively, I felt compelled to dress in the foundation garments and dresses! The stockings and high heeled pumps, and the feeling inwardly and externally, that my body, spirit and soul seemed in sync! Thus was the beginning of "my little secret"! | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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