How I know...

I have a lot on my mind that I could write about, but I have had something else on my mind a lot lately so I think instead I will write about that. I have been really thinking a lot lately about how I know that I am transgender, rather than just a butch lesbian or a really masculine woman. Thinking about what the difference for me is and how I can be sure that this is right, since it is obviously life changing. As my surgery date approaches I think I am giving this more consideration although there is no doubt in my mind that it is right, the consideration is more like taking a deeper look into why this is right for me. Some people may say I should have done this before I started testosterone but I really think that timing always works out so it is fine. Plus, if I really wanted to I could stop "T" at this point and go back...although that isn't what I want or is going to happen.

So anyway...why I know that I am transgender. I never knew anyone who was transgender growing up, or at least not anyone I was aware of and so had no way to know or express what I was feeling or going through as a child. I didn't even know that I had known anyone who was gay until years after the fact. All I knew in regards to the subject of gender was the drag queen Rupaul. Even then I was still really unaware of everything that related to gender that was outside the "normal box" of female and male. Even within those parameters I still really didn't get it. Gender was never something I thought about growing up. Until I hit maybe the age of 10 I wasn't even aware that there was a difference between boys and girls other than boys could stand and pee and I had to sit down (which in essence meant that I had to go inside to go to the bathroom and they got to stay outside and go which always bugged me). When I was younger I would run around without my shirt on, like many young girls do. However, when I was getting older and it was deemed unacceptable I was upset by this. I had a flat chest at that point, I didn't understand why I had to put a shirt on. I protested something great, and of course lost that battle. Looking back, when I was maybe 4 or 5 years old I even tried to pee standing up, but of course was unable to do so and was extremely disappointed. I was so jealous of the boys I knew and how they could just pee off the deck, or whatever. I felt like them, we played GI Joe together, Soldier, Cops, Knights etc but then there was this difference between us and I didn't understand because I felt like they did, in every way I identified with them I just didn't know what that meant or that I did. Had you asked I am not sure that I could have told you I felt like a boy or wanted to be a boy or was a boy...common things many children who are more aware do say.

The list is extremely long of how I hated being a little girl, how I wanted to desperately be a boy growing up. The thing was though, that I was really unaware that was how I felt or what I wanted. It was so subconscious. I did spend copious amounts of time reading history books, for many reason. One thing that I can look back on though and without a doubt know is an early indicator of being transgender was that I loved reading the biographies of such historical characters as Daniel Boone, George Washington, Davey Crockett and various other men who I really felt like embraced all things that I wanted to be. I didn't have the slightest clue that what I was going through was different than most other girls, or that I was different in anyway. I assumed everyone felt as I did, although I didn't understand how the other girls could play things like house, dolls, jump rope etc and love it and be okay wearing skirts and playing dress up. I thought they must secretly hate it...only to find out years later that they in fact really did enjoy it. What a news flash for me.

So one specific instance that sticks out in my mind, that started the path of me trying to conform and "fit" the girl mold was in elementary school when I was probably about 9 years old. I always was extremely athletic and loved to play sports with the boys at recess. If I wasn't playing football or soccer or some other sport I would sit and read my books, escaping into my own world that let me be who I really felt like I was. I think in hindsight part of why I spent SO much time reading and enjoying those stories are partly due to the fact that it was the one place I could be who I felt like I was and no one could see or judge me because no one knew what was going on inside me. So I was sitting on this one side of the wall of the school, a more secluded area I liked to go to read. As I sat there, the same way I did all the time these three girls who I hated for numerous reasons, came up to me and said to me "why are you sitting with your legs apart like that, do you want to be a boy because that is what boys do" and reacting out of extreme embarrassment I quickly defended myself, crossed my legs and felt ashamed. I thought it was okay to sit that way because all the boys did. They girls ran off telling everyone that I wanted to be a boy and teasing me about it. I sat there feeling extremely ashamed and bad about what I had done wrong...because I was convinced that I had done something wrong even though I was simply sitting there reading my book minding my own business. I really didn't understand what had happened or what was wrong, other than I was being teased about it and humiliated. That was a turning point in my life in many ways but since I don't have time I will only share the ways it related to being transgender. However, from that day forward until today I was keenly aware and self conscious of everything I did, and extremely embarrassed if I was "mistaken" for a boy from that point forward. That one moment solidified a shame in me that is only now, probably 17 or 18 years later is starting to leave me. That one moment told me I was not okay being who I was, and that because I didn't conform I was in some way less than them, and worthy to be treated badly. That was one of the very few examples that stick out to me where I was picked on specifically for doing something that was deemed outside of my gender role. However that one instance continued to shape the rest of my life up until recently.

From that moment on I can look back and see how I tried to conform to my incorrectly given gender role. How from that moment forward I lost most self esteem, most self worth and never felt comfortable in my body again, until now when I am currently learning that I am okay as I am. I am sure that those girls never knew the impact it would have on my life but it has. The funny part is that I remember very little from before the age of 13 and yet I remember that as though it happened yesterday.

I remember puberty being extremely traumatic for me, because now I was having my period and growing breasts and boys were looking at me as a sex object and I wanted to be one of them. Yet even if they considered me one of them, which for many years to come they did...on some level I was still a girl. I was never fully one of them. In my later teen years if we went out someplace nice they got to wear pants and a nice shirt and I was expected to wear a skirt or makeup or some other female article that made me literally feel uncomfortable in my body. It was a horrifying experience and yet I continued to do it, to make myself conform. I started to drink, to among other things stuff the feelings of not fitting. After that experience in elementary school I wouldn't dare share with anyone how I felt. This would go on for another ten years until I got sober in 2008 and started on what I didn't realize then but was to be this journey of truth for me.

So anyway...that is the extremely condensed version but I can think about that, read what I just wrote and that is enough to tell me without a shadow of a doubt that I am indeed transgender and that there is no real solution to my "problem" other than to transition. I will never truly be happy, no matter how masculine of a woman I were to be. I am thankful that through being able to get sober at a very young age I now have the ability to take a look at my life and see the hard but very liberating truth. When I read back through this, and think about my life and how I feel there is no doubt in my mind that transitioning is the right thing, and that I am doing the right thing at this point in my life. My question has often been not if I need to transition but rather if I need to do it so quickly, and the answer is yes I do. I have the means to do it so why wait? I have waited 27, almost 28 years for this so now is the time. It is scary to move forward so fast and yet also very exciting. It feels so good to finally be living as the person I have always wanted to be, and to be able to read back over what I just wrote and think about how that is just a very small part of my story and how I won't ever have to feel those ways again. I won't ever have to feel constrained into a box like that again. How in this world I can be who I want to be and not who I think I should be. That freedom is amazing.