In the beginning my life was very uneventful. My mom dressed me as any mom would dress her young daughter in that day.Except on rare occasions she'd dress me as a boy. Durning that time she was a single mom raising three young girls.
She met a man and he became my stepfather. He did not approve of a young boy "pretending to be a girl" and forced me to take on a masculine role. This continued for about a year until my mom relized how very unhappy I was. She started arranging things so when it was just she and I home I could be Amanda without fear of reprisal from my stepfather.
The constant back and forth between being Mandy ( who I was) and being forced to take on the role of William was horriblely confusing and upsetting to me. I just wanted to be me, Amanda. I did not understand why I was forced to pretend to be a boy when i was a girl.
When i reached puberty, changes started taken place that were startling to everyone including myself. I began devopleming breasts (which was very painful) and was plagued with constant abdominal cramping. I had no idea why this was going on inside me. It scared me. I told my mom about what was going on and she talked with my stepfather. They took me to the docter for an exam. He told them not to worry about it that with medication it could be stopped. I had to take shots to stop the breast growth and get rid of the cramping. (Years later I found out that these were testorone shots to stop me from going through female puberty. The cramping was due the ovulating of my single, underdeveloped ovary. I had no uterus and therefore no place for the ovem to go exept to the outside of the ovary and form a cyst. The building up of the cysts on my ovary caused the excruitating pain in my abdomen.) After receiving these shots on an ongoing basis I became hyper masculine. All traces of Amanda vanished. I was now totally William; as even my once supportive and understanding mother had turned against me.
Soon after starting the T-shots, she used Amanda to control me. For example my mother did not want me to participate in gym class due to a prior injury and her fear foi my safety. By forceing me to wear female undies to school, i could not participate in gym. I would not change my clothes due to fear of getting the crap beat out of me. And if i did not wear the girls underware she threatened to tell my step father that i was wearing my sisters underware. He would have believed her as he had caught me dressing before. He would have beat me with in an inch of my life; as he d done before. I was often beaten just because I had feminine mannerisms and that angered him. He would force me to fight with my peers to toughen me up. He told me that my incentive was if i lost he;d beat me. The more fights i got into and the meaner i became the more Amanda faded away.
High school was not a good time for me. I was an angry young man with the body of a young teen girl. I did not date as girls were not attracted to a feminine looking man with female mannerisms. At 17 after enduring years of emotional and physical abuse from both my parents I left home the only way i could; I joined the navy.
It was the 1965; Vietnam was just gearing up and free love was the rage. When I returned from Vietnam, I met up with an old highschool friend who had moved to California. I was quite suprised to find that he was gay. He invited me to stay at his place while I was off duty. I became very comfortable around him and his friends. Yet this would be the downfall of my military career. I was discharged for co habiting with "undesirables".
Amanda reemerged in the accepting enviroment of my new friends. This was one of the happiest times in my life. At the very least it was the happiest I' d been up to this point in my life. There were no requirements or responsibilities demanded of me. I was free to be Mandy without fear or conditions.
After my discharge I moved back home with my family. I dressed only in private and with great shame. Mandy was once again back in her box.
Time went on and I became married. Mandy stayed locked away in her little box, but not forgotten. 5 Years passed and for no apparent reason and without warning Mandy came out of the box. I woke up one morning and decided I needed to be me. i put on my wives clothing and started dressing again. Sometimes late at night I would go out driving as Amanda. I continued appeasing myself with living part time as Amanda for about a year, then it just stopped. The ramifications of me being caught or seen would have been horrific to my wife and my young children. My wife needed a husband and my children a father. Mandy went back to her box. Two years later i found myself single again.
Mandy came out and I started living almost full time. The difference between the first time I lived as Mandy and this time is I had to keep it more low key and private. I had children whom i did not want to confuse or to be negitively affected by others because of me. I did not have the freedom like i did after comeing back from Vietnam.
I was 27 when I met a young woman and married her. Mandy again went back to the box. She stayed there for 10 years because I still did not understand what and who i was. I believed myself to be some kind of perverted freak and was very ashamed of myself. How could a man, a husband, a father want to be a girl. What kind of freak was I? What was wrong with me? These were the constant questions running through my mind.
i became very masculine and drinking heavily in an attempt to purge myself of her. Durning this process I became a cruel and vicious father and husband emotionally and verbally. I became my stepfather and mother all mixed together.
I was foruntate enough to become injured while working. I say i was fortunate because it was a wake up call to my aggressive behaviors towards my family. But it was debilitating to be injured in such a way. Due to the extensive injuries that i receieved I was given psychological couseling to grieve my physical losses. ( I crushed the disks in my lower back and neck and was unable to continue working.) The couselor soon discorvered Mandy. Eventually he suggested that I take hormones and start on the path to transsitioning to full time. He said it was most likely the only way I would ever be happy with myself. I blew him off as being nuttier then myself. I could not come to terms that my feelings were normal and that being a transsexual was a physical disorder not a mental one. As I stopped drinking I started dressing more, often in private. Without the help of alcohol I could not keep Mandy in the box. I would go out and buy clothing for myself at goodwill and dress while I was alone and then before anyone came home I would hide everything. This binging and purging of Amanda went on for 15 long years.
I was forced to take on the typically feminine role or a homemaker due to my injuries. I became Mr. Mom. I became obsessed with being the perfect husband and father to make up for all the drinking and abuse. I ended up over compensating. It was hard to find the much needed middle ground.
In 2000 after seeking out couseling services again and finally coming to terms with who I am I felt secure enough in my marriage that I came out to my wife. We soon divorced, although I now know that my being a transsexual hed little to do with her leaving, as she is now engaged to another transsexual. I started taking feminzing hormones and undergoing electroysis. I was starting on the road to becoming who I am.
I met a young woman and we became very close. After a year we married. For the first in my life i was honest in with someone prior to marring her. She has no problems with Amanda and enjoys and even encorages Amanda. Our marriage is not a storybook one; we have our problems. But they are typical problems in a marriage nothing having to do with Amanda.
Soon after we got together we moved out of state in order to have a fresh start. But it appears; that the place we chose is trapped in a time warp out of the fifities. The people in this area can not even spell diversity; let alone tolerate it. The area is bombarded with homophobics, ignorance and intolarance. So yet again Mandy is forced into the box. I thought it would all work this time as Debbie knew about me and accepted me, but alas little did I know how much inpact outsiders can have on Amanda. Because of mine and Debbies misplaced trust in a "friend" our daughter suffered a horrible injustice. She had to be removed from the school she attended due to peoples inability to accept me.
I am now in my mid fifties. I still have not found peace within myself. I reflect on my life and see a lot of things i would have done differently but I regret none of it; but for the drinking and becoming my parents. For if I were to change anytime in my past I would not be where I am today. I will probally never transisiton any futher then I am today, as the line of work I am in; prevents it. I guess after reading all this that you are some what dissapointed that it did not turn out to have a fairy tail ending, but you know I am not unhappy, just a little confused at times. No matter what clothes I wear, my hair do, my make up or even my physical body.....I AM AMANDA!!! I have accepted who i am. Maybe today I won't transistion but there is always tomorrow.
