So yesterday I shared a little about coming out. Today I'd like to share my story for those who are interested in such things.
I think I knew I was not like my brothers very early on. Even as a 5 year old, I knew that wearing mommy's clothing was something I would have to hide rather than face the ridicule of my brothers. Most of my youth was spent overcompensating for my "wrong" feeling, being as much a boy as possible because if they knew I was a girl, I would get it even worse than I did.
So I hid myself and when my parents split and my mother moved me across the country from California to New Jersey, I was free for a time and I was me for a time. She and my step-father would work weekends and that would be my time to play with her clothes and make-up and be the girl I secretly wished myself to be.
I went back to my dad because my mom had become worse and I hid when I had to. After my older brothers moved away and my father divorced his second wife, it was just him and I in our big house. When he bean to date, a girlfriend or two would move in. When they weren't around, which was often, I wore my dad's girlfriend's clothes and make-up and took their birth control pills in the hopes that it would change me in some manner.
I read John Irving's wonderful The World According to Garp and it was there I learned the word "transsexual". I and went to the library at UCLA and read about transsexualism and knew that was me and I couldn't do anything about it. Instead, I just did a lot of wishing and occasionally drinking and occasionally doing some drugs.
I went to college at UCLA and tried to be Jim Morrison for awhile, but he was a man and I didn't fit that role very well. I was really good at the taking drugs part though and did that quite a bit. I found more books in the college library and became fixated on something that I still thought out of my reach. I ultimately tried to kill myself twice because the pain of it was too much to take.
After my second attempt, I promised myself I would never do that again. Instead, I decided to disappear into a new life and ran away to be a woman. I jumped a bus to Denver to start a new life. I lived in seedy dives and went to some support meetings and learned the life of a transsexual was really difficult and I started convincing myself that I was wrong, that it couldn't be me. So I talked myself out of it and stayed a man.
I suffered through years of depression and suicidal thought until I found my esposa. I thought I could be a man with her, the man she wanted and needed and the man I wanted to be and felt like I needed to be. The woman I am didn't go away. I wanted kids. I wanted a happy marriage and you know what? I have that. But the woman I am never went away. My esposa accepted and enjoyed me as a crossdresser. It was fun for her. It was fun for me, but it was never enough.
About three years ago, I introduced her to the term "transgendered" and thought I could be that and she was okay with that. Somewhere in the middle, but really just living as a man. I tried to talk to a therapist at the time, but she was not a specialist in these matters and did not offer any good counsel.
It was not enough, though. I tried OTC herbal hormones for a month, but I knew it wasn't the right thing to do, the right way to go, so I stopped that.
I finally found a GT and told my esposa why I needed to see a therapist who was not on the insurance. She told me to do what I needed to do. So I went and I tried to kill the woman in me to be the man I felt my wife and kids needed and my therapist and I discovered that the woman in me was not about to die. I was not about to give up my life because I have always been here.
I broke the news to my esposa and she has been working through it brilliantly. She's an amazing woman and has really come a long way in her acceptance and understanding of me. She says that if I had cancer, she wouldn't leave me. If I was in a car accident, she wouldn't leave me. She understands I have no control over this and never meant to deceive her and she trusts that what I am doing must be done for my health and happiness. She knows that a happy, female partner is better than a depressed, angry suicidal male partner. She told me to start HRT because she kner it is what I needed. I would never have done it without her approval. She now supports my plans for surgery and happily tells all our new friends and acquaintances about me. She is my guide and best friend and partner in all things and I am so thankful for her. I always tell her she saved my life and she did.
So now? I'm "transitioning". I've been taking hormones for the last 18 months and will be full time in a week for the summer before I have to go back to work in the fall. The next year will be my last working as a man. By June of 2012, I hope to have finished everything up to simply living as a woman in the best way I can.