Post by amybee on Jun 16, 2016 0:17:50 GMT -6
I talked a little bit about this in my introduction post, but I kind of want to put this out there. I am really in need of connections at the moment. Just to be able to talk to someone going through something similar. Even if it's not all that similar. Anyway, I was born into a super conservative but really close knit family. Very old fashioned in a lot of ways, this being the deep deep South. I was assigned male at birth but I figured out fairly quickly that was never going to do. In my pre-school innocence I was totally out. That's really amusing to me in a lot of ways. I didn't bother hiding my gender identity at all. I demanded I was a girl and not just any girl, but various girls from TV shows and books. My parents and siblings sort of semi-tolerated it as "just a phase." But it wasn't.
Luckily for me most of the other kids in our neighborhood were girls, too. Which meant I had easy access to dress up and role playing and Barbie. I never wanted to be the dad playing house OR the mom. I was happy as the sister. The unlucky part is I often ran into the judgement of their parents. "Why are you wearing that? Don't you know boys don't wear those things?" Then they'd go tell my parents. I was never punished. Just lectured and made to feel ashamed. Kids at school once we started that rigamarole also rigidly enforced gender roles. So at school I played the he-man woman-haters club member and at home I'd put my longish hair back in pigtails and be Amy Isabel, the super princess or girl space pirate or Princess Leia or this or that comic book character. I always loved put upon orphan types who got by on pluck despite their outsider status. Which I always felt despite having mostly unconditional love at home. I felt like a changeling. So I was Pippi Longstocking or Blossom Culp. Or someone from the X-Men. I also spent a lot of time obsessing over ways to change my body. I absorbed every single story from TV or cartoons where someone swapped genders. I always wanted them to stay that way but of course these were only cutesy little plots about the "war of the sexes" and "seeing how the other half lives."
When I hit junior high, though, a really strange thing happened. For a while my body seemed determined to match my gender physically. I know it was just the wash of hormones and isn't all that uncommon among cisgender males to have these... you know... developments. But I stayed really skinny and androgynous for the longest time and still had to hide my chest with t-shirts. With longish hair and a high voice people often gendered me as female which thrilled me but horrified me at the same time because I was determined to become a man. After all, I was very into girls, too. It's just my interest in them was also mixed up with wanting to just hang out with them as another girl. Or to be this girl or another one. I was always having these crushes but also these "I want to BE her" feelings, too. I'm sure people thought I was a gay guy, but no, that wasn't it. Sadly, out of fear of discovery I ended up rejecting some friends who were gay. I really regret that now. Also, I ended up chopping off all my hair and trying to lift weights in an effort to be just a guy.
Well, it didn't take. Eventually, I started dating this really cool girl. "You ARE a girl" she told me one time because I have really soft skin. Another time she was like, "I hate men after what happened today. You need to get a sex change." That was what we called it back then. She also sometimes insisted she had been a boy before her own. "I have a guy personality," she would say. And it was kind of true. Through her, though, I learned feeling like a girl was totally okay. She and I were very much alike mentally. After we broke up and I got over that I realized my time with her had given me the courage to be more like her. Totally gutsy. To an extent! But at least gutsy enough to look at myself in the mirror and say, "You are not a guy. You were never a guy. Stop trying to be someone you aren't. Oh, and also, it's really GOOD that you're not a guy. It's actually a wonderful thing you're a woman. It's a wonderful thing you're a transgender woman. Don't let all those negative portrayals that gave you shame growing up rule your life."
So I started being more open. I did it in stages. First self-references in ways. Openly liking stuff I used to keep secret. Certain bands. Certain magazines. Things like Hello Kitty. Embracing the LGBTQIA community and issues in our city. After a while I was dressing in private very femmy but very unisex in public. When I moved to this place I started in with a therapist and worked really hard on my transition with exercise and diet and studies and things like that. I came out to that cool ex, to this girl I was having a long distance online relationship with (and we started having a blast with that discovery!), to my best friend. To some random people I associated with. I became more vocal about my support for transgender issues and people and stories in the news. Very conversant about them. I was about as open as I'd never dreamed I could be.
Then things changed again. I had to walk it back a bit. I'm in a committed relationship and we're kind of negotiating things together. It's interesting. But more and more I want to be involved. I want to be counted. I want to be counted on! Even though I present as male, I still have this kind of neither/nor body and I'm cool with that. Every so often I have major dysphoric episodes. Things can trigger it like certain types of ads on TV or news stories. Recent events have set it off majorly enough I feel compelled to reach out. I don't want to be alone but more importantly, I don't want anyone else to feel alone. So I want to be a positive presence. But I also want to help myself by being able to express my interests and thoughts in this way, too. Just having safe spaces to be my Amy Isabel self among others and socialize and stop being so feral.
Luckily for me most of the other kids in our neighborhood were girls, too. Which meant I had easy access to dress up and role playing and Barbie. I never wanted to be the dad playing house OR the mom. I was happy as the sister. The unlucky part is I often ran into the judgement of their parents. "Why are you wearing that? Don't you know boys don't wear those things?" Then they'd go tell my parents. I was never punished. Just lectured and made to feel ashamed. Kids at school once we started that rigamarole also rigidly enforced gender roles. So at school I played the he-man woman-haters club member and at home I'd put my longish hair back in pigtails and be Amy Isabel, the super princess or girl space pirate or Princess Leia or this or that comic book character. I always loved put upon orphan types who got by on pluck despite their outsider status. Which I always felt despite having mostly unconditional love at home. I felt like a changeling. So I was Pippi Longstocking or Blossom Culp. Or someone from the X-Men. I also spent a lot of time obsessing over ways to change my body. I absorbed every single story from TV or cartoons where someone swapped genders. I always wanted them to stay that way but of course these were only cutesy little plots about the "war of the sexes" and "seeing how the other half lives."
When I hit junior high, though, a really strange thing happened. For a while my body seemed determined to match my gender physically. I know it was just the wash of hormones and isn't all that uncommon among cisgender males to have these... you know... developments. But I stayed really skinny and androgynous for the longest time and still had to hide my chest with t-shirts. With longish hair and a high voice people often gendered me as female which thrilled me but horrified me at the same time because I was determined to become a man. After all, I was very into girls, too. It's just my interest in them was also mixed up with wanting to just hang out with them as another girl. Or to be this girl or another one. I was always having these crushes but also these "I want to BE her" feelings, too. I'm sure people thought I was a gay guy, but no, that wasn't it. Sadly, out of fear of discovery I ended up rejecting some friends who were gay. I really regret that now. Also, I ended up chopping off all my hair and trying to lift weights in an effort to be just a guy.
Well, it didn't take. Eventually, I started dating this really cool girl. "You ARE a girl" she told me one time because I have really soft skin. Another time she was like, "I hate men after what happened today. You need to get a sex change." That was what we called it back then. She also sometimes insisted she had been a boy before her own. "I have a guy personality," she would say. And it was kind of true. Through her, though, I learned feeling like a girl was totally okay. She and I were very much alike mentally. After we broke up and I got over that I realized my time with her had given me the courage to be more like her. Totally gutsy. To an extent! But at least gutsy enough to look at myself in the mirror and say, "You are not a guy. You were never a guy. Stop trying to be someone you aren't. Oh, and also, it's really GOOD that you're not a guy. It's actually a wonderful thing you're a woman. It's a wonderful thing you're a transgender woman. Don't let all those negative portrayals that gave you shame growing up rule your life."
So I started being more open. I did it in stages. First self-references in ways. Openly liking stuff I used to keep secret. Certain bands. Certain magazines. Things like Hello Kitty. Embracing the LGBTQIA community and issues in our city. After a while I was dressing in private very femmy but very unisex in public. When I moved to this place I started in with a therapist and worked really hard on my transition with exercise and diet and studies and things like that. I came out to that cool ex, to this girl I was having a long distance online relationship with (and we started having a blast with that discovery!), to my best friend. To some random people I associated with. I became more vocal about my support for transgender issues and people and stories in the news. Very conversant about them. I was about as open as I'd never dreamed I could be.
Then things changed again. I had to walk it back a bit. I'm in a committed relationship and we're kind of negotiating things together. It's interesting. But more and more I want to be involved. I want to be counted. I want to be counted on! Even though I present as male, I still have this kind of neither/nor body and I'm cool with that. Every so often I have major dysphoric episodes. Things can trigger it like certain types of ads on TV or news stories. Recent events have set it off majorly enough I feel compelled to reach out. I don't want to be alone but more importantly, I don't want anyone else to feel alone. So I want to be a positive presence. But I also want to help myself by being able to express my interests and thoughts in this way, too. Just having safe spaces to be my Amy Isabel self among others and socialize and stop being so feral.