How did You Find Out You were Transgendered?

I’m sure many people are curious about the process that goes through a person’s mind as they come to the realization that their body and identity are incongruent. Every account will be different, I’m not even sure if my own process could be considered typical or if it should be considered uncommon. There is of course a stereotype regarding how this realization goes. The stereotype given to transgendered people is that from a very young  age we know we are in the young bodies, insist that we are the opposite sex and will meet any opposition with great negativity and hostility, kicking and screaming, “I’m a girl! I’m not a boy!” Granted, I do know of a few trans folk who were like this as children but interestingly this, like every singe other stereotype, is mostly untrue.

 

I can’t speak for others, but I can certainly explain about myself. I wasn’t entirely sure what it was, but even as a little kid I knew that something was… off. Funny enough, I’ve even seen a series of baby pictures  in which my face looks completely blank and unhappy while wearing a dress but looked ecstatic when I got to sit naked in a small aluminum tub. I never had many friends when I was a kid, but I never knew why. While I always felt that I had more in common with boys, I recognized that I was a girl and should behave as such. I watched the girls and mimicked their behaviour. I complied with wearing dresses on Sundays to go to church and I claimed that I wanted to be the Pink Power Ranger, when really Red was my favourite. On Christmas I got Barbies as gifts but I ended up chopping their hair off and pretending that my stuffed animals were eating them. I knew I was just pretending to be like a girl, but never thought much of it until I got older. I was aware of the physical differences between boys and girls and often fantasized that I had a penis, even attempting to pee standing up on numerous occasions but knew that these thoughts were abnormal and kept them completely secret.

 

As soon as I got to Middle school the differences between boys and girls became blindingly obvious. Cliques started appearing, and I lost many of the few friends I had from Elementary school because I didn’t dress girly enough. I made new friends and fell into a pre-teen Goth clique. We were all female, but none of us were feminine. We greeted each other by punching each other, we wore baggy black clothes every day, and we all loved listening to Metal (try listening to Psyclon Nine some time, that is what I listened to when I was 12). This lack of pressure to be feminine made me feel more comfortable in my skin, but the physical changes that came with puberty still horrified me. In the gym locker room, I had a strategy with changing my shirt so that my chest was NEVER seen, and I was overwhelmed with shame the first time I experienced MANstruation. I pilfered my mom’s hygiene products and avoided absolutely any mention of my “blossoming into womanhood”, I never even talked to my mom about it until I was a junior in high school. During my puberty I began truly hating my body and wished deeply that I had been born a boy.

 

One day my best friend and I were in the locker room and she mentioned that her sister was bisexual. I had been raised in a very Conservative Christian household (my mother’s first husband was a devout Catholic and my mother’s family are vocal Republicans) and was denied any knowledge of the existence of LGBT people. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as being attracted to members of the same sex. My first reaction was to say, “Huh. That’s weird.” but never for one moment in my life have I had a negative thought about LGBT folks. She then told me that she was bisexual herself. When she came out to me, I felt like less of a freak. I finally understood that my feelings were real and that I wasn’t crazy. But when I learned about what a transsexual was, I was terrified. I knew how much suffering and judgement a transsexual had to go through to gain the body they desired, and I knew I didn’t want to go through that suffering. I shoved the idea that I was trans to the back of my mind and continued to pretend I was a girl, believing that living would be easier if I just faked my way through it.

 

This tomboyish behaviour continued on into high school. I began developing an interest in relationships when I was about 15 and realized that it would be hard for me to get significant others unless I worked to make myself more attractive. For the first time in my life, I willingly dressed in a feminine manner. All of my friends had significant others, and I was envious of the connection that they could make with another person. I had always been extremely emotionally repressed and wanted a person I could feel comfortable sharing my feelings with in a way that I couldn’t do with my friends.

I got my first boyfriend when I was 16. He was tall, muscular, and while most girls in the school thought he was just a scary Goth boy, I thought he was beautiful. He enjoyed how masculine I actually was, and for the very first time I was able to really express myself. Unfortunately, he had his eyes on someone else and the relationship only lasted a few months before he broke up with me.

The break up devastated me and I fell into the worst depressive episode of my entire life (and to this day I haven’t experienced one as bad). My self-worth evaporated and turned into a severe self-loathing. I began starving myself in the hopes that I would be more appealing if I were thinner and became frighteningly skinny. For months there was not a single day that I didn’t wish I would die, and I worked to alleviate these feelings by hurting myself. I cut myself tens of times every day, but held the secret of my self destruction completely to myself. That is, until I got my first girlfriend.

We starred in a play together, and grew close as friends. I was the lead in The Secret Garden and she played my best friend. During the time we spent together, we developed feelings for each other. She was (and is still) gorgeous. My heart melted just seeing her, but the butterflies in my stomach flared enormously when I discovered through a mutual friend that she had feelings for me as well. She eventually asked me out (much to my excitement), but sadly she was closeted. I wanted so badly to show her off as my beautiful girlfriend but I was denied that privilege except when in the company of our mutual friends. Unfortunately I made the mistake of too quickly revealing the skeletons in my closet and told her about my severe depression and that I cut myself. It made her sad, but she still cared for me. But I assume my baggage became too much for her to handle and she too broke up with me.

 

This cycle of dating people, falling for them and revealing my demons lasted for some time and was unable to hold a relationship for more than a few weeks. Each time my self loathing continued to grow. While I brooded over everything I despised about myself, I realized just how much the female aspects of my body crossed my mind. At this point I had been out of the closet as a bisexual for some time was was finally okay with admitting that I was also a transsexual. There was no more denying that I was born in the wrong body and that I was going to be miserable for the rest of my life until I accepted this as fact. In a long blog on Facebook, I finally revealed myself as a transsexual. I was greatly surprised at the acceptance I received, and virtually everyone who knew was glad that I wasn’t lying to myself anymore. A large part of my depression was lifted when I discovered that being transgendered would not be as horrific as I originally thought. Self- harm had already been a cemented addiction and it was still my relief when I didn’t know how else to deal with my depression, but when I began dating again since coming out I could no longer hide my self-mutilation and had to quit. I no longer use self-harm as a coping mechanism.

 

Since this initial coming out I learned a lot about the Transgender community. For these past years I have been analyzing myself and judging whether or not my coming out really was true and I was terrified that I didn’t fit the mold of what a trans person was. the more time I spent socializing online with other gender variant people, the more I learned that there is no single mold of what I trans person has to be. I was okay with how I felt on the inside, I knew that I was not 100% man. I don’t always feel like a man nor do I always feel like I should behave and present as one. My gender is fluid, it changes from man, woman, to something in-between and I feel different almost every day. But that doesn’t change how much I still wish I had been born a man. Nobody else can tell me that my feelings mean nothing, and I am perfectly content with not having a concrete gender. I am a genderqueer transsexual, and I’m happy this way.

Confessions of a Home-wrecking Slut

By posting this, I am probably risking damaging the opinions of other’s towards me. But I feel that this may be something worth discussing, and it is something most of my friends know about.

I’ll admit to it. I have cheated on a significant other.  Of course I do not condone this sort of behaviour, there is never a good reason to cheat. The only “reasons” are merely excuses. Cheating is a terrible thing to do to a significant other, even if they weren’t very good to you.

With my personal situation, I had been dating this guy for a little over a year. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of dating someone who was not good for me. Before we dated, he had developed a huge crush on me and resorted to hard drugs when he developed depression from me turning him down due to our age difference. At the time I was 17 and he was 21, and I was very scared that he would kill himself. To keep him from further hurting himself, I gave in and dated him.

At first he was very grateful that I was dated him and treated me very well, always trying to make sure that I felt loved. He even quit smoking when I was present. But… after a few months, I began noticing some odd behaviours. For one, he would constantly demonize my ex-boyfriends. Granted, I certainly had reasons to dislike my exes, but he went out of his was to further sour my opinion of them. He was laid off from his job and refused to look for work, instead he went on Welfare and became addicted to World of Warcraft.

Eventually those little flaws turned into serious problems. Despite the fact that he had quit doing drugs, he wanted badly to get back into smoking pot. I had always been extremely uncomfortable around the drug, but he forced me to join him in doing drugs with him (never stronger than pot).  He began refusing to spend night without me and would become very angry whenever I said “no” to anything he wanted, but never allowed me to do things I wanted to do. He also prohibited contact with men and began monitoring my text messages and Facebook conversations. If we were away, I had to be constantly texting him from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to sleep. In a nutshell: he became a smothering, controlling, paranoid ass.

Towards the relationship, one of my exes suffered a devastating breakup with someone he had been dating for a year and a half. while we had been going through a falling out, I decided to become his friend again and help him through the breakup. We began talking frequently and got to be close friends. And finally, I had someone I felt comfortable discussing my relationship problems with. I expressed my fear of breaking up with my boyfriend at the time because of his history of suicide attempts, drug abuse, and violence. He gave me amazing advice and assured me that even after the breakup, he would be there to help me deal with any issues in the aftermath. I ended up becoming physically involved with this person because of this bond of support we had developed and because in my mind, me and my boyfriend had completely broken up.

Finally, it happened. He threatened suicide, attempted suicide, claimed to be a transgendered woman, claimed that he would support my transitioning(when beforehand he had been very verbal about his opposition regarding transitioning), claimed that he could forgive me if I cheated on him. So I just told him that I didn’t love him anymore and that I was not taking him back. Within days I had completely ceased contact with him because he attempted to manipulate me into taking him back by describing suicide attempts and similar messages.

Sorry for being so long-winded. Just had to describe the situation. But anyway, after I ceased contact he began stalking the message boards I frequented and discovered that I had cheated on him. This is when I discovered how spiteful and petty he was.

First he sent messaged to administrators on a popular message board that I happen to moderate under a name he created, claiming that I said horrible things to him and his “friend” and that it was my fault that I destroyed their “home away from home”. From there, he immediately began telling all of his friends and all of our mutual friends about how I had cheated on him and brought him to attempting suicide. Of course, most people wither didn’t believe what he said or already knew that he was borderline abusive.

A different friend of mine happened to move in with my ex. In the time they lived together, he was told of all the “terrible, nasty things” I had done. I was a slut. I stole expensive items from him. I was his fiance and my friend stole me away. And along with with the incident regarding his attempt to take away my position as moderator on a message board, he looked for other ways to ruin my life. While we were together, I played World of Warcraft with him, and somehow he found out my account information and stole my account, one of which I invested over $100 and hundreds of hours. Not to mention an incident I just recently found out about in which he saw me and my new significant other together and had to be restrained by his friend to keep from stabbing my significant other.

I have been cheated on before, and I know just how bad it hurts. One boyfriend started dating a girl before breaking up with me, and the other just fooled around with a few other people while we were dating. Ironically, the inspiration for this blog came from a conversation with both of those cheating exes about the person I cheated on. Despite having been cheated on by them (and as a result, suffering the worst depressive episode of my life), I currently maintain great relationships with them. I was never vengeful and hardly even spoke negatively about them with other people. One of them was even cheated on by the person they dated the longest.

Now, whenever I complain about the petty behaviour of the ex I cheated on, I have often gotten the response, “Well, you did cheat on him.”

Yes. I cheated on him. That was a shitty thing to do, I’m not hiding that fact. But does this give my ex an excuse to give me so much hell, when every other person I know has taken their own experiences with cheating with significantly more grace? Do I deserve hatred from him and our mutual friends? Is his behaviour just, or is he just batshit fucking crazy?

Bleh. I don’t like writing about my personal life. It feels dramatic in a way that I don’t like. I just felt the need to defend myself , in a way. I’ve done my hardest not to discuss how bad my relationship was with this guy because I want to be the bigger person. I’m just getting sick of hearing crap he has been telling people about him when the only thing I ever did to hurt him was cheat, in every other aspect I was a good person. I don’t like being demonized when I know I don’t deserve it.