At about 17 I can remember standing out between my house and the neighbor�s house and all of a sudden this feeling came over me, I hated myself. I looked at my body with all its hair and muscles and thought I must have done something terrible to someone to be punished by having been given this ugly body. I then pushed this feeling deep inside and didn't tell anyone, I didn't want to be different. At about the same time I began to watch a TV show, "Wonder Woman". I found that I was really fascinated at seeing how she could catch the bad guys and still be feminine at the same time. I really liked that she could do both and I wished I could deal with the bullies in my life, both at school and at home, the way she could. One day I was at home alone and was listening to a radio talkshow and the subject turned to males that cross-dressed as a way to explore their sexuality. I had a great need to explore myself and this program made me feel okay about doing so. So I went upstairs into my parents room and looking though my mom's dresser drawer found a skirt. I tried it on and I was sexually aroused but knew that I wasn't interested in sexuality. As I looked at myself wearing the skirt I felt like it didn't look right so I went into the bathroom and took a large towel and wrapped it around my waist under the skirt. That looked better to me and I spent the next few minutes. looking at myself in the mirror. I got scared that someone would come home so I took off the skirt and towel and put them back in their places. I didn't cross-dress again until fifteen years later.
I went for a bicycle ride with a neighbor one evening. I rode my bicycle a lot and liked that I would have some company. We went out into the country and stopped to rest in a field. As we sat there he moved towards me like he wanted to play, and this confused me. I just looked at him and he stopped. We rode back to town and that was the end of it. Looking back on that experience I feel that even though he was married that maybe he was gay and because of the way I acted he thought I was gay too. Most boys seemed strange to me, they seemed to get a lot out of showing off their muscles, driving around in noisy cars, and trying to have sex as often as possible. I couldn't understand what they saw in those things, I felt they must have come from outer space. Boys often scared me with their aggression, and still do to this day, but I dare not show or talk about that with anyone until the last year or so. My dad went to work in Suede Arabia for a year when I was in grade 11. I was feeling pretty abandoned by him but I think having him so far away allowed me to feel safe to explore my feelings one afternoon when I was studying at the school library. In my minds eye I could see myself at the bottom of a very deep well. I felt that the science that I had always buried myself in was all around me and I was at the bottom. I could come out of the well, but when I did I felt too vulnerable so I went back down even though I knew that I had no real interest in science, but it was a good place to hide. School was a lifeboat for me; I found that if I buried myself in school I could hide from the pain I was feeling in the rest of my life. I found that if I pushed everything else away and concentrated on school that I felt a little better. I found that I enjoyed having problems that I could solve rather then having to face the ones I couldn't. So I buried myself in school and hoped that the other problems would work themselves out. Well I waited and waited until the end of grade 12 and still I didn't know how to solve the mystery that was myself.
One of the last things that I did in high school was to go see an end of the year play put on by the school. Part of this play had these girls in really cheap ballet outfits doing their best to put on a show. I felt sorry for them having to wear such bad outfits but the funny thing was that I felt left out that I couldn't take part and wear one of those outfits. I really dreaded graduation; to me it felt like I was going to my own funeral. But when the day came I got dressed and went though the motions. I can remember standing in the hallway where all the students were lined up before going into the gym. I felt terrible to be there and ugly because I felt wrong, something wasn�t right with this picture. After that I basically fell apart, because I didn't have my lifeboat. I tried going to the local college but I couldn�t hide anymore. I can remember my parents taking me to a psychologist because I was acting funny, I gave him the answers I knew that he wanted to hear and that was the end of that. I finally decided that the only way to start to live was to move away from the town that I grown up in. I ended up moving to 5 different cities over the next 20 years because no matter how hard I worked at living there was always something that I was missing, and I needed to find it. I did cross-dress again in that twenty years, when I bought a nighty so that I could grow my feminine side. I used it for a few months before I threw it away because I was scared of what others would think if they ever found out. About the same time I went for a swim at the local pool. After I was finished I went to another part of the recreation center to wait till my bus came. It was just before Christmas and there was a play being put on, "The Nutcracker". As I sat there and watched the young girls going back and forth from the back stage to the dressing room in their two twos I became totally mesmerized by them. I could care less about the bus or anything else for that matter. I just couldn�t stop watching them and I couldn't figure out why I felt this way. I knew that it wasn't sexual it was more like admiration or envy. I loved the grace with witch they walked and the femininity of their outfits. Anyway I spent the next few hours just watching them and then went home with another question to add to the million other ones I had about myself.
