Everything is new to me now. There have been changes in my life that I never knew could happen to me. It's very hard to accept these changes and to get used to them.
When I was 19, I could barely contain these urges to live out the feminine side of myself. There were times I felt I had to be very secretive about entering society as a young girl rather than as a young man. My feminine side was quite infintile and not as mature as the masculine side. Still the side of me that was feminine was surely the dominant side from nearly as long as I could recall.
I went to counseling to see if I could work this out that way. I saw a Christian psychologist and talked with pastors at the various churches I had attended over the years. Both were set against any outward expressions that did not conform to my sex at birth. Still, the psychologist was kinder, more understanding. The psychologist knew all. I felt more and more comfortable talking with her as our sessions together progressed. When she heard of my secret forays into society as a woman she tried to redirect me into attending our sessions as a girl instead. I did that for a few years, and it only convinced me further that I felt more comfortable living in the feminine than I did as a man. I was heart broken when our time together was over and I had to disrobe only to assume the male role once again before returning home. I was irritable and frankly a grouch. Occasionally I would purge my feminine wardrobe by stuffing all articles of female clothing into a cardboard coffin that I would bury in the foothills in a symbolic gesture of laying her to rest. But she was me! How could I do such a thing to such a large part of myself? I would go for weeks feeling like a gutless, spineless hollow shell of a person until alas, I would return to liberate this part of myself again with a whole new set of clothing.
Eventually, the clothes were not enough. It was something much deeper and that is when it became for me a body problem. It always was a body problem but for years the clothing was a propt that could deliver me from the low level suffering that comes with a conflict of gender. It wasn\'t about sex although sex was involved because I was in deed a sexual being. Eventually all my sexual fantasy was rearranged until I was female and having sex with a male (in my mind). It was far too dangerous to act out these fantasies in real life. To this day I do not venture in that direction. I wouldn\'t mind working at a real relationship with a decent guy but until I find one it\'s abstinence for me that will keep me safe from harm. This world is far too dangerous for the sexual freedoms dreamed of by the past two generations.
In my college years I was in sharp pain as I watched young couples finding each other and young women with all the freedoms to carry out their lives as females and find the support they needed to blossom into the young people they were becoming. I was stuck in my psychological, emotional and sexual development. Between classes I hid in my car thinking that this would somehow spare me the additional pain of having to socialize with normal people, young men and women who were examples of what my life should have been had I not been cursed with this cruel set of circumstances.
Feeling sorry for myself didn\'t work for long though. Gradually my only satisfaction seemed to be an approach toward a full-time transition. Freedom from gender conflicts only came in increments that teased me when I had a chance to work at passing in society as a woman. The better I became at passing the more normal I felt. If I didn\'t draw attention to myself I could begin to feel more at ease with who and what I was. But that penis between my legs and the ever telling beard shadow remained a painful reminder that this was all in my head and that no matter what, I was destined to be male.
Never able to fully accept this I spent more and more time in female mode. I fought with those giveaway signs of maleness until I had to begin making whatever physical changes that I could with hormones.
\"Oh happy days\" I thought when a month or two had passed on hormones and I could feel their very subtle effects. First it was the calming effect on my nerves and everyday life. Knowing I was finally doing something eased the pain even more than cross-dressing. Knowing that soon I would not be able to hide female characteristics made me gidish and long for the future.
There were other factors in my life that I am leaving out as I tell you about my past. Like a family composed of a loving wife and my son. Oh how I wish I hadn\'t brought them any pain or suffering. How much control did I have over this? I thought I was doing the right thing to marry and have a child. I was the world\'s best parent to my son. I was so careful with him and spent every spare moment with him that I could. Those were the years before I began to transition though, when I was married and going to a therapist for help. I swore that I would never do anything that would separate me from this precious thing called family. It was sacred and I knew that.
My wife though who knew of my conflicts from before we were wed said that she couldn\'t bare to see me suffering. She had her own sexual issues from having been molested by her brother time and again when they were in High School.
I would try to keep myself available to her by always returning to our intimacy, but her issues would have killed the physical, emotional ties between us all by themselves. I suppose it\'s hard to say though because the combined effect was that two adults who were good people and loving toward their child and for the most part, each other were not able to overcome their differences and eventually fell apart. My former wife left me for a high school sweet heart.
I cried, and begged her not to do this. I promised I would never change my sex if she were to stay with me. No luck though and she was gone in a very short time (only married for four years).
I guess I should thank her though for giving me a beautiful child and the experience of being a parent. As painful as it is to have my child witness my misery and then transformation into a woman, thus robbing him of his father, I shamefully do not regret having a child amidst the strife and turmoil.
My parents too complained and grieved the loss of their child. My mother said that I had killed her son and that she didn\'t know if she could ever accept the person I had become. She was freaked out basically. My father to this day has delt with it by building a wall. I am not allowed to ever set foot on his property or to intrude upon his life. Whatever!
He\'s a nice man and this is so uncharacteristic of him but sadly this demonstrates the level of pain and difficulty that is in this for members of our families if we continue to live out the opposite sex and sex role as that to which we were born.
Ultimately I ended up having SRS because it seemed the only suitable way to permanently deal with my own and other\'s confusions as to who and what I was. Accepting that I was transsexual and going forth with my full transformation helped me personally but also added some measure of legitimacy before society. I wasn\'t pretending or walking around with a dirty little secret anymore. I was accepting myself so that others (who had the capacity) could accept me as well.
Since then, I have found my life is mostly settled. I am not normal, like other women. I\'ll never be that because of my past and the very real fact that I am not a genetic female, but a genetic male with extreme feminization.
My relationships are all effected and although I get along with people, I don\'t always fit in and see this through the many invitations I miss around the holidays or at other social events. It is too easy for people to pass over the \"Freak.\" I don\'t live as a freak though. I work at fitting in as best as I can without living a false life. The facts are, I am not all that feminine but what people don\'t understand is that I identify as female regardless. So for me to act all prissy and fem would be as bad as me acting male or masculine. I\'m basically butch I guess.
Sometimes I think that if I was able to secure a relationship with a normal heterosexual male I would polarize further toward the feminine the way I did when I was married to a woman. But the basic core identity that I am seems to be impervious to change.
Thank you very much for your wonderful message to me. I never knew anyone could feel the pain I am experencing at this moment in my life. I have a deeper appreciation of the struggles people (especially you) are going through. I wish I am able to express myself the way you do. You have stired feelings in me which I guess I have been trying to bury and hide.
I have tried to conceal what I am but it came to the point I was no longer able to do so. I never appreciated what being intersex really meant other than being different. I always knew I never fit in with other boys. Especially at school. I really did try my best to do so but it never worked out. I tended to lead a sheltered life as a ways of escaping any problems I might encounter. I was more apt to show an interest in girls things, but tried very hard not to do so. I was accepted by my parents and I guess they understood more than I did why I acted as I did.
I had or am experiecing a \"delayed\" puberty and everying went crazy for me. I physically started changes which I tried to hide from my parents. There was a point I could do so any longer. Mom noticed I was starting breast development and from there everything changed for me. I too felt I was more of a freak than ever. I hope you understand what I am trying to say.
Thank you very much for your kindness and support. You have helped me to see things in a different light.
The most important things to deal with now is for you to finish school, stay clean and sober, don\'t act out sexually and don\'t get involved with anyone in a romantic way unless you are honest with them up front. Don\'t let what happened with Gwen Araujo happen to you. You must value yourself when others are not able to.
Talk more about how things are going with your mother and father. Do you have siblings? If so, how well are you relating with them?
Since I am new here you are probably wondering why it took so long for me to respond. At any rate, I found your journal very moving and just had to make a comment. You have expressed with such passion much of what all of us has been through in one way or the other. You have touched my heart and I just wanted you to know that what you have shared in your writing has meant a lot to me. I am an older person, but have been through much of what you have and then some. Transistioning was out of the question back when I was young, and it wasn\'t even known. My life has all of the issues in one way or the other like you, but even today, I wished that I could have had a sex change many years ago. I believe it would have made a big difference in my life. Thanks again for sharing your experiance, and if you need someone to talk to,,, just let me know. You are wonderful.
Replies
I can imagine...
When I was 19, I could barely contain these urges to live out the feminine side of myself. There were times I felt I had to be very secretive about entering society as a young girl rather than as a young man. My feminine side was quite infintile and not as mature as the masculine side. Still the side of me that was feminine was surely the dominant side from nearly as long as I could recall.
I went to counseling to see if I could work this out that way. I saw a Christian psychologist and talked with pastors at the various churches I had attended over the years. Both were set against any outward expressions that did not conform to my sex at birth. Still, the psychologist was kinder, more understanding. The psychologist knew all. I felt more and more comfortable talking with her as our sessions together progressed. When she heard of my secret forays into society as a woman she tried to redirect me into attending our sessions as a girl instead. I did that for a few years, and it only convinced me further that I felt more comfortable living in the feminine than I did as a man. I was heart broken when our time together was over and I had to disrobe only to assume the male role once again before returning home. I was irritable and frankly a grouch. Occasionally I would purge my feminine wardrobe by stuffing all articles of female clothing into a cardboard coffin that I would bury in the foothills in a symbolic gesture of laying her to rest. But she was me! How could I do such a thing to such a large part of myself? I would go for weeks feeling like a gutless, spineless hollow shell of a person until alas, I would return to liberate this part of myself again with a whole new set of clothing.
Eventually, the clothes were not enough. It was something much deeper and that is when it became for me a body problem. It always was a body problem but for years the clothing was a propt that could deliver me from the low level suffering that comes with a conflict of gender. It wasn\'t about sex although sex was involved because I was in deed a sexual being. Eventually all my sexual fantasy was rearranged until I was female and having sex with a male (in my mind). It was far too dangerous to act out these fantasies in real life. To this day I do not venture in that direction. I wouldn\'t mind working at a real relationship with a decent guy but until I find one it\'s abstinence for me that will keep me safe from harm. This world is far too dangerous for the sexual freedoms dreamed of by the past two generations.
In my college years I was in sharp pain as I watched young couples finding each other and young women with all the freedoms to carry out their lives as females and find the support they needed to blossom into the young people they were becoming. I was stuck in my psychological, emotional and sexual development. Between classes I hid in my car thinking that this would somehow spare me the additional pain of having to socialize with normal people, young men and women who were examples of what my life should have been had I not been cursed with this cruel set of circumstances.
Feeling sorry for myself didn\'t work for long though. Gradually my only satisfaction seemed to be an approach toward a full-time transition. Freedom from gender conflicts only came in increments that teased me when I had a chance to work at passing in society as a woman. The better I became at passing the more normal I felt. If I didn\'t draw attention to myself I could begin to feel more at ease with who and what I was. But that penis between my legs and the ever telling beard shadow remained a painful reminder that this was all in my head and that no matter what, I was destined to be male.
Never able to fully accept this I spent more and more time in female mode. I fought with those giveaway signs of maleness until I had to begin making whatever physical changes that I could with hormones.
\"Oh happy days\" I thought when a month or two had passed on hormones and I could feel their very subtle effects. First it was the calming effect on my nerves and everyday life. Knowing I was finally doing something eased the pain even more than cross-dressing. Knowing that soon I would not be able to hide female characteristics made me gidish and long for the future.
There were other factors in my life that I am leaving out as I tell you about my past. Like a family composed of a loving wife and my son. Oh how I wish I hadn\'t brought them any pain or suffering. How much control did I have over this? I thought I was doing the right thing to marry and have a child. I was the world\'s best parent to my son. I was so careful with him and spent every spare moment with him that I could. Those were the years before I began to transition though, when I was married and going to a therapist for help. I swore that I would never do anything that would separate me from this precious thing called family. It was sacred and I knew that.
My wife though who knew of my conflicts from before we were wed said that she couldn\'t bare to see me suffering. She had her own sexual issues from having been molested by her brother time and again when they were in High School.
I would try to keep myself available to her by always returning to our intimacy, but her issues would have killed the physical, emotional ties between us all by themselves. I suppose it\'s hard to say though because the combined effect was that two adults who were good people and loving toward their child and for the most part, each other were not able to overcome their differences and eventually fell apart. My former wife left me for a high school sweet heart.
I cried, and begged her not to do this. I promised I would never change my sex if she were to stay with me. No luck though and she was gone in a very short time (only married for four years).
I guess I should thank her though for giving me a beautiful child and the experience of being a parent. As painful as it is to have my child witness my misery and then transformation into a woman, thus robbing him of his father, I shamefully do not regret having a child amidst the strife and turmoil.
My parents too complained and grieved the loss of their child. My mother said that I had killed her son and that she didn\'t know if she could ever accept the person I had become. She was freaked out basically. My father to this day has delt with it by building a wall. I am not allowed to ever set foot on his property or to intrude upon his life. Whatever!
He\'s a nice man and this is so uncharacteristic of him but sadly this demonstrates the level of pain and difficulty that is in this for members of our families if we continue to live out the opposite sex and sex role as that to which we were born.
Ultimately I ended up having SRS because it seemed the only suitable way to permanently deal with my own and other\'s confusions as to who and what I was. Accepting that I was transsexual and going forth with my full transformation helped me personally but also added some measure of legitimacy before society. I wasn\'t pretending or walking around with a dirty little secret anymore. I was accepting myself so that others (who had the capacity) could accept me as well.
Since then, I have found my life is mostly settled. I am not normal, like other women. I\'ll never be that because of my past and the very real fact that I am not a genetic female, but a genetic male with extreme feminization.
My relationships are all effected and although I get along with people, I don\'t always fit in and see this through the many invitations I miss around the holidays or at other social events. It is too easy for people to pass over the \"Freak.\" I don\'t live as a freak though. I work at fitting in as best as I can without living a false life. The facts are, I am not all that feminine but what people don\'t understand is that I identify as female regardless. So for me to act all prissy and fem would be as bad as me acting male or masculine. I\'m basically butch I guess.
Sometimes I think that if I was able to secure a relationship with a normal heterosexual male I would polarize further toward the feminine the way I did when I was married to a woman. But the basic core identity that I am seems to be impervious to change.
Thank you very much for your wonderful message to me. I never knew anyone could feel the pain I am experencing at this moment in my life. I have a deeper appreciation of the struggles people (especially you) are going through. I wish I am able to express myself the way you do. You have stired feelings in me which I guess I have been trying to bury and hide.
I have tried to conceal what I am but it came to the point I was no longer able to do so. I never appreciated what being intersex really meant other than being different. I always knew I never fit in with other boys. Especially at school. I really did try my best to do so but it never worked out. I tended to lead a sheltered life as a ways of escaping any problems I might encounter. I was more apt to show an interest in girls things, but tried very hard not to do so. I was accepted by my parents and I guess they understood more than I did why I acted as I did.
I had or am experiecing a \"delayed\" puberty and everying went crazy for me. I physically started changes which I tried to hide from my parents. There was a point I could do so any longer. Mom noticed I was starting breast development and from there everything changed for me. I too felt I was more of a freak than ever. I hope you understand what I am trying to say.
Thank you very much for your kindness and support. You have helped me to see things in a different light.
The most important things to deal with now is for you to finish school, stay clean and sober, don\'t act out sexually and don\'t get involved with anyone in a romantic way unless you are honest with them up front. Don\'t let what happened with Gwen Araujo happen to you. You must value yourself when others are not able to.
Talk more about how things are going with your mother and father. Do you have siblings? If so, how well are you relating with them?
I am in awe of your courage! I wonder how old your son was at the time and how you dealt with being a parent and changing your gender
Since I am new here you are probably wondering why it took so long for me to respond. At any rate, I found your journal very moving and just had to make a comment. You have expressed with such passion much of what all of us has been through in one way or the other. You have touched my heart and I just wanted you to know that what you have shared in your writing has meant a lot to me. I am an older person, but have been through much of what you have and then some. Transistioning was out of the question back when I was young, and it wasn\'t even known. My life has all of the issues in one way or the other like you, but even today, I wished that I could have had a sex change many years ago. I believe it would have made a big difference in my life. Thanks again for sharing your experiance, and if you need someone to talk to,,, just let me know. You are wonderful.